very fond of Erica, Mme. Lemercier loving her for her brightness and readiness to help, and monsieur for her beauty and her quickness of perception. It was surprising and gratifying to meet with a girl who, without being a femme savante, was yet capable of understanding the difference between the Extreme Left and the Left Center, and who took a real interest in what was passing in the world.
But Erica's greatest friend was a certain Fraulein Sonnenthal, the German governess. She was a kind-eyed Hanoverian, homely and by no means brilliantly clever, but there was something in her unselfishness and in her unassuming humility that won Erica's heart. She never would hear a word against the fraulein.
"Why do you care so much for Fraulein Sonnenthal?" she was often asked. "She seems uninteresting and dull to us."
"I love her because she is so good," was Erica's invariable reply.
She and the fraulein shared a bedroom, and many were the arguments they had together. The effect of being separated from her own people was, very naturally, to make Erica a more devoted secularist. She was exceedingly enthusiastic for what she considered the truth and not unfrequently grieved and shocked the Lutheran fraulein by the vehemence of her statements. Very often they would argue far on into the night; they never quarreled, however hot the dispute, but the fraulein often had a sore time of it, for, naturally, Luke Raeburn's daughter was well up in all the debatable points, and she had, moreover, a good deal of her father's rapidity of thought and gift of speech. She was always generous, however, and the fraulein had in some respects the advantage of her, for they spoke in German.
One scene in that little bedroom Erica never forgot. They had gone to bed one Easter-eve, and had somehow fallen into a long and stormy argument about the resurrection and the doctrine of immortality. Erica, perhaps because she was conscious of the "weakness" she had confessed to Brian Osmond, argued very warmly on the other side; the poor little fraulein was grieved beyond measure, and defended her faith gallantly, though, as she feared, very ineffectually. Her arguments seemed altogether extinguished by Erica's remorseless logic; she was not nearly so clever, and her very earnestness seemed to trip her up and make all her sentences broken and incomplete. They discussed the subject till Erica was hoarse, and at last from very weariness she fell asleep while the Lutheran was giving her a long quotation from St