anticipation. When she at last saw that it was an extremely simple
matter, she realised how completely her daughter had been shut off from
the world since her birth. At first she had doubted the reality of the
girl's quiet manner in the circumstances, but she soon discovered that
Hilda behaved during Greif's visits exactly as she had always done,
meeting him gladly, parting from him regretfully, speaking with him as
though there were no difference in their relations in the present, nor
were to be in the future, excepting that Greif would always be present,
instead of only coming from time to time. She knew that Greif himself
was far from looking at the matter with such supreme calm. She saw the
colour come and go in his fair face in a way that showed a constant
emotion, and she feared lest such a very susceptible young man as he
appeared to be should be entrapped, when away from home, by the
designing mother, of whom every other mother sees the type in the
background of her thoughts.

But Greif did not fall a victim to any such schemes. If Hilda had at
all resembled most girls of her age, he could have compared her with
them, and the comparison would not have been to her advantage. She
could not have possessed their cheap accomplishments, their knowledge
of waltzing, or their intimate acquaintance with their neighbours'
affairs. She could not have put on their sentimentality with men, nor
their cynicism with each other. She could not imitate their glances and
she did not imitate their dress. She was a creature apart from them
all. Deeply imbued as he was with all the prejudices of an exclusive
caste, Greif could not have looked upon Hilda as he did, if she had
been a peasant's child, even though she had been herself in all other
respects. There was that in her position which appealed to the
romanticism of his nature. The noble but unfortunate maiden, the last
of an ancient race, dwelling in dignified retirement in her half-ruined