The Progressionists, and Angela. Conrad von Bolanden

diffused a bewitching loveliness over her person. Seraphin, on the other hand, stood leaning against the arbor, and became conscious with fear and surprise of a turmoil in his soul that he had never before experienced.

      "I have been keeping myself quiet in this shady retreat," said she sweetly, "not wishing to disturb your meditations. Carl's wager is a strange one, but it is a peculiarity of my brother's occasionally to manifest a relish for what is strange."

      "You are right--strange, very strange!" replied Seraphin, evidently in allusion to his actual state of mind. The beautiful young lady, perceiving the allusion, became still more dazzling.

      "I should regret very much that the wager were lost by a guest of ours, and still more that you were deprived of your splendid race-horses. I will prevail on Carl not to take advantage of his victory."

      "Many thanks, miss; but I would much rather you would not do so. If I lose the wager, honor and duty compel me to give up the stakes to the winner. Moreover, in the event of my losing, there would be another loss far more severe for me than the loss of my racers."

      "What would that be?" inquired she with some amazement.

      "The loss of my good opinion of men," answered he sadly. "What I have heard, miss, is base and vile beyond description." And he recounted for her in detail what had taken place.

      "Such things are new to you, Mr. Seraphin; hence your astonishment and indignation."

      The youth felt his soul pierced because she uttered not a word of disapproval against the villainy.

      "Carl's object was good," continued she, "in so far as his manœuvre has procured you an insight into the principles by which the world is just now ruled."

      "I would be satisfied to lose the wager a thousand times, and even more, did I know that the world is not under such rule."

      "It is wrong to risk one's property for the sake of a delusion," said she reprovingly. "And it would be a gross delusion not to estimate men according to their real worth. A proprietor of fields and woodland, who, faithful to his calling, leads an existence pure and in accord with nature's laws, must not permit himself to be so far misled by the harmlessness of his own career as to idealize the human species. For were you at some future day to become more intimately acquainted with city life and society, you would then find yourself forced to smile at the views which you once held concerning the present."

      "Smile at, my dear miss? Hardly. I should rather have to mourn the destruction of my belief. Moreover, it is questionable whether I could breathe in an atmosphere which is unhealthy and destructive of all the genuine enjoyments of life!"

      "And what do you look upon as the genuine enjoyments of life?" asked she with evident curiosity.

      He hesitated, and his childlike embarrassment appeared to her most lovely.

      "I beg your pardon, Mr. Seraphin! I have been indiscreet, for such a question is allowable to those only who are on terms of intimacy." And the beauty exhibited a masterly semblance of modesty and amiability. The artifice proved successful, the young man's diffidence fled, and his heart opened.

      "You possess my utmost confidence, most esteemed Miss Greifmann! Intercourse with good, or at least honorable, persons appears to me to be the first condition for enjoying life. How could any one's existence be cheerful in the society of people whose character is naught and whose moral sense expired with the rejection of every religious principle?"

      "Yet perhaps it might, Mr. Seraphin!" rejoined she, with a smile of imagined superiority. "Refinement, the polished manners of society, may be substituted for the rigor of religious conviction."

      "Polished manners without moral earnestness are mere hypocrisy," answered he decidedly. "A wolf, though enveloped in a thousand lambskins, still retains his nature."

      "How stern you are!" exclaimed she, laughing. "And what is the second condition for the true enjoyment of life, Mr. Seraphin?"

      "It is evidently the accord of moral consciousness with the behests of a supreme authority; or to use the ordinary expression, a good conscience," answered the millionaire earnestly.

      A sneering expression spontaneously glided over her countenance. She felt the hateful handwriting of her soul in her features, turned crimson, and cast down her eyes in confusion. The young man had not observed the expression of mockery, and could not account for her confusion. He thought he had perhaps awkwardly wounded her sensitiveness.

      "I merely meant to express my private conviction," said Mr. Seraphin apologetically.

      "Which is grand and admirable," lauded she.

      Her approbation pleased him, for his simplicity failed to detect the concealed ridicule. After a walk outside of the city which Gerlach took towards evening, in the company of the brother and sister, Carl Greifmann made his appearance in Louise's apartment.

      "You have at last succeeded in capturing him," began he with a chuckle of satisfaction. "I was almost beginning to lose confidence in your well-tried powers. This time you seemed unable to keep the field, to the astonishment of all your acquaintances. They never knew you to be baffled where the heart of a weak male was to be won."

      "What are you talking about?"

      "About the fat codfish of two million weight whom you have been successful in angling."

      "I do not understand you, most mysterious brother!"

      "You do not understand me, and yet you blush like the skies before a rainstorm! What means the vermilion of those cheeks, if you do not understand?"

      "I blush, first, on account of my limited understanding, which cannot grasp your philosophy; and, secondly, because I am amazed at the monstrous figures of your language."

      "Then I shall have to speak without figures and similes upon a subject which loses a great deal in the light of bare reality, which, I might indeed say, loses all, dissolves into vapor, like will-o'-the-wisps and cloud phantoms before the rising sun. I hardly know how to mention the subject without figures, I can hardly handle it except with poetic figures," exclaimed he gaily, seating himself in Louise's rocking--chair, rocking himself. "Speaking in the commonest prose, my remarks refer to the last victim immolated to your highness--to the last brand kindled by the fire of your eyes. To talk quite broadly, I mean the millionaire and landholder Seraphin Gerlach, who is head and ears in love with you. Considered from a business and solid point of view, it is exceedingly flattering for the banker's brother to see his sister adored by so considerable a sum of money."

      "Madman, you profane the noblest feelings of the heart," she chidingly said, with a smile.

      "I am a man of business, my dear child, and am acquainted with no sanctuary but the exchange. Relations of a tender nature, noble feelings of the heart, lying as they do without the domain of speculation, are to me something incomprehensible and not at all desirable. On the other hand, I entertain for two millions of money a most prodigious sympathy, and a love that casts the flames of all your heroes and heroines of romance into the shade. Meanwhile, my sweet little sister, there are two aspects to everything. An alliance between our house and two millions of florins claims admiration, 'tis true; yet it is accompanied with difficulties which require serious reflection." The banker actually ceased rocking and grew serious.

      "Might I ask a solution of your enigma?"

      "All jesting aside, Louise, this alliance is not altogether free from risks," answered he. "Just consider the contrast between yourself and Seraphin Gerlach's good nature is touching, and his credulous simplicity is calculated to excite apprehension. Guided, imposed upon, entirely bewitched by religious phantasms, he gropes about in the darkness of superstition. You, on the contrary, sneer at what Seraphin cherishes as holy, and despise such religious nonsense. Reflect now upon the enormous contrast between yourself and the gentleman whom fate and your father's shrewdness have selected for your husband. Honestly, I am in dread. I am already beginning to dream of divorce and every possible tale of scandal, which would not be precisely propitious for our firm."

      "What contradictions!"