Likewise at home everything assumed a good aspect.  Effi truly regretted to see her mother return to Hohen-Cremmen, even after her treatment had been prolonged to nearly six weeks, as she had predicted in the beginning.  But the loss was partly offset by Johanna’s arrival in Berlin on the same day.  That was at least something, and even if the pretty blonde was not so near to Effi’s heart as the wholly unselfish and infinitely good-natured Roswitha, nevertheless she was treated on an equality with her, both by Innstetten and her young mistress, because she was very clever and useful and showed a decided, self-conscious reserve toward the men.  According to a Kessin rumor the roots of her existence could be traced to a long-retired officer of the Pasewalk garrison, which was said to explain her aristocratic temperament, her beautiful blonde hair, and the special shapeliness of her appearance.  Johanna shared the joy displayed on all hands at her arrival and was perfectly willing to resume her former duties as house servant and lady’s maid, whereas Roswitha, who after an experience of nearly a year had acquired about all of Christel’s cookery art, was to superintend the culinary department.  The care and nurture of Annie fell to Effi herself, at which Roswitha naturally laughed, for she knew young wives.

Innstetten was wholly devoted to his office and his home.  He was happier than formerly in Kessin, because he could not fail to observe that Effi manifested more artlessness and cheerfulness.  She could do so because she felt freer.  True, the past still cast a shadow over her life, but it no longer worried her, or at least much more rarely and transiently, and all such after-effects served but to give her bearing a peculiar charm.  In everything she did there was an element of sadness, of confession, so to speak, and it would have made her happy if she could have shown it still more plainly.  But, of course, she dared not.

When they made their calls, during the first weeks of April, the social season of the great city was not yet past, but it was about to end, so they were unable to share in it to any great extent.  During the latter half of May it expired completely and they were more than ever happy to be able to meet at the noon hour in the Tiergarten, when Innstetten came from his office, or to take a walk in the afternoon to the garden of the Palace in Charlottenburg.  As Effi walked up and down the long front, between the Palace and the orange trees, she studied time and again the many Roman emperors standing there, found a remarkable resemblance between Nero and Titus, gathered pine cones that had fallen from the trees, and then walked arm in arm with her husband toward the Spree till they came to the lonely Belvedere Palace.

“They say this palace was also once haunted,” she remarked.

“No, merely ghostly apparitions.”

“That is the same thing.”

“Yes, sometimes,” said Innstetten.  “As a matter of fact, however, there is a difference.  Ghostly apparitions are always artificial, or at least that is said to have been the case in the Belvedere, as Cousin von Briest told me only yesterday, but hauntings are never artificial; hauntings are natural.”