A SISTER'S LOVE

A NOVEL

BY W. HEIMBURG

TRANSLATED BY
MARGARET P. WATERMAN

CHICAGO:
M. A. DONOHUE & CO.
407-429 DEARBORN ST.

CONTENTS

[CHAPTER I.]
[CHAPTER II.]
[CHAPTER III.]
[CHAPTER IV.]
[CHAPTER V.]
[CHAPTER VI.]
[CHAPTER VII.]
[CHAPTER VIII.]
[CHAPTER IX.]
[CHAPTER X.]
[CHAPTER XI.]
[CHAPTER XII.]
[CHAPTER XIII.]
[CHAPTER XIV.]
[CHAPTER XV.]
[CHAPTER XVI.]
[CHAPTER XVII.]
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
[CHAPTER XIX.]
[CHAPTER XX.]
[Lives of Famous Men]

A SISTER'S LOVE.

CHAPTER I.

A severe storm had been raging all day, and now, in the approaching twilight, seemed as if it would overleap all bounds in its wild confusion. Straight from the North Sea, over the broad Lüneburg heath, it came rushing along, and beat against the gray walls of the manor-house, shook the great elms in the garden, tossed about the bushes, and blew from the bare branches the last yellow leaf yet spared them by the November frost.

The great castle-like building, inhabited for centuries by the Von Hegewitz family, looked dismal and gloomy under the cloud-laden sky; in almost spectral gloom it lay there, with its sharply pointed gables, its round tower, and heavy buttresses supporting the walls.

If did not always look thus, this old manor-house; in summer it was very picturesque behind its green trees, the golden sunshine lying on its slate roof, the pointed gables sharply outlined against the blue sky, and the gray walls, framed by huge, old oaks, reflected in the brown water of the pond. Beside it lay the farm-buildings and the houses of the village, whose shingled roofs emerged in their turn from the foliage of the fruit-trees. Far out into the Mark country extended the view, over fields of waving corn, over green meadows and purple heath, bounded on the horizon by the dark line of a pine forest. A narrow strip of pine woods, besides, lay to the north, extending nearly to the garden, and on hot summer afternoons an almost intoxicating fragrance was wafted from it toward the quiet house.

Within it was still a real, old-fashioned German house; for there were dim corridors and deep niches, great vaulted rooms and large alcoves, little staircases with steep steps worn by many feet, and curious low vaulted doors. A flight of steps would lead quite unexpectedly from one room into the next, and here and there a door, instead of leading out of a room, opened, to one's surprise, into a huge closet. Then there were cemented floors, and great beams dividing the ceilings, and the smallest of window-panes. And yet where could more real comfort be found than in such an old house, especially when a November storm is howling without, and here indoors great fir logs are crackling in the gay-tiled stove?

And just now, down the stairs from the upper story, came an old lady, looking as if comfort itself came with the green silk knitting-bag on her arm, her large lace cap, and the brown silk shawl over her shoulders. She might have been in the fifties, this small, spare figure, and she limped. Fräulein Rosamond von Hegewitz had limped all her life, and yet a more contented nature than hers did not exist. She now turned to the left and walked along the narrow corridor. This was her regular evening walk, as she went to her nephew and niece in the sitting-room—a dear old walk, which she had taken for years, since the time when the children were little, and her brother and sister-in-law were still alive; when twilight came she could no longer endure the solitude of her spinster's room.

Just as she was about to lay her hand on the bright brass door-handle, she perceived by the dim light of the hall-lamp a girl who was sobbing gently, her coarse linen apron thrown over her face.

"What are you crying about, Marieken?" asked the old lady kindly, coming back a step or two. The curly brown head was raised, and a young face, bathed in tears and now red from embarrassment, looked up at Fräulein Rosamond.

"Ah, gracious Fräulein, I am to leave," she stammered, "and I——"

"Why, what have you—?" The old lady got no further, for just then the door was opened a little way and the clear, full tones of a youthful feminine voice came out into the corridor.

"That is my last word, Märtensen; I will not suffer such things in my house. She may thank God that I have noticed her folly in good season. Only think of Louisa Keller!"

"God in heaven, Fräulein!" the person accosted replied in defence, almost weeping. "The lass has done nothing bad, and he is certainly a respectable man. O Fräulein, when one is young one knows too——"

"For shame, Märtensen!" This came vehemently. "You know what I have said. Take your Marieken and go. I will have no frivolous maids in my house!"

The door was now opened wide, and an old woman came out, her wrinkled face red with excitement.

"Come, lass," she called to the girl, who had just put her apron over her eyes again; "troubles don't last forever! She'll feel it herself some day yet! Driving away my girl as if she had been stealing!" And without greeting the old lady, she seized her daughter by the arm and drew her away with her.

Rosamond von Hegewitz turned slowly to the door. A half-mocking, half-earnest expression lay on the wise old face. "Bon soir, Anna Maria!" said she, as she entered the brightly lighted sitting-room.

A girl rose from the chair before the massive secretary, went toward the new-comer, and received her with that formality which at the beginning of our century had not yet disappeared from the circle of gentle families, pressing to her lips the outstretched hand with an expression of deepest respect.

"Good evening, aunt; how are you feeling?"

It was the same rich voice that had spoken before, and, like it, could belong only to such a fresh young creature. Anna Maria von Hegewitz was just turned eighteen, and the whole charm of these eighteen years was woven about her slender figure and the rosy face under her braids of fair hair. In contradiction to this girlishness, a pair of deep gray eyes looked out from beneath the white forehead, seriously, and with almost a look of experience, which, with a peculiar self-conscious expression about the mouth, lent a certain austerity to the face.

"Thank you, my dear, I am well," replied the old lady, seating herself at the round table before the sofa, upon which were burning four candles in shining brass candlesticks. "Don't let me interrupt you, ma mignonne. I see I have broken in upon your writing; are you writing to Klaus?"

"I have only been looking over the grain accounts, aunt; I shall be done in a moment. I shall not write again to Klaus, for he must return day after to-morrow at the latest. If you will excuse me a moment——"

"Oh, certainly, child. I will occupy myself alone meanwhile." The old lady drew her knitting-work from the silk bag and began to work, at the same time glancing dreamily about the large, warm, comfortable room.

She had known it thus long since; nothing in it had been altered since her youth—the same deep arm-chairs around the table, the artistic inlaid cupboards, even the dark, stamped leather wall-paper was still the same, and the old rococo clock still ticked its low, swift to-and-fro, as if it could not make the time pass quickly enough. And there at the desk, where the young niece was sitting, her only brother had worked and calculated, and at that sewing-table on the estrade at the window had been the favorite seat of the sister-in-law who died so young. But how little resemblance there was between mother and daughter!

The old lady looked over toward her again. The girl's lips moved, and the slender hand passed slowly with the pencil down the row of figures on the paper. "Makes five hundred and seventy-five thaler, twenty-three groschen," she said, half-aloud. "Correct!

"Now, then, Aunt Rosamond, I am at your service." She extinguished the candle, locked the writing-desk, and bringing a pretty spinning-wheel from the corner, sat down near her aunt, and soon the little wheel was gently humming, and the slender fingers drawing the finest of thread from the shining flax. For a while the room was quiet, the silence broken only by the howling of the storm and the crackling of the burning log in the stove.

"Anna Maria," began the old lady at last, "you know I never interfere with your arrangements, so pardon me if I ask why you send Marieken away."

"She has a love affair with Gottlieb," replied the niece, shortly.

"I am sorry for that, Anna Maria; she was always a girl who respected herself; ought you to act so severely?"

"She gives him her supper secretly, and runs about the garden with him on pitch-dark nights. I will not have such actions in my house, and know that Klaus would not approve of it either." The words sounded strangely from the young lips.

"Yes, Anna Maria "—Rosamond von Hegewitz smiled "if you will judge thus! These people have quite different sentiments from us, and—and you cannot know, I suppose, if their views are honest?"

"That is nothing to me!" replied Anna Maria. "They cannot marry, because they are both as poor as church mice. What is to come of it? The girl must leave; you surely see that, dear aunt?"

The old lady now laughed aloud. "One can see, Anna Maria, that you know nothing yet of a real attachment, or you would not proceed in so dictatorial a manner."

The slightest change came over the young face. "I will not know it, either!" she declared firmly, almost turning away.

"But, sweetheart," came from the old voice almost anxiously, "do you think that it will always be so with you? You are eighteen years old—do you think your heart will live on thus without ever feeling a passion? And do you expect the same of your brother, Anna Maria? Klaus is still so young——"

The little foot stopped on the treadle of the wheel, and the gray eyes looked in amazement at the speaker.

"Don't you know then, aunt, that it is a long-established matter that Klaus and I should always stay together? Klaus promised our mother on her death-bed that he would never leave me. And I go away from Klaus? Oh, sooner—sooner may the sky fall! Don't speak of such possibilities, Aunt Rosamond. It is absurd even to think of."

"Pardon me, Anna Maria"—the words sounded almost solemn—"I was present when your dying mother took from Klaus his promise never to leave you, always to protect you. But at the same time to forbid him to love another woman, a woman whom his heart might choose, she surely did not intend!"

"Aunt Rosamond!" cried the girl, almost threateningly.

"No, my child, I repeat it, your mother was much too wise, much too just, to wish such a thing; she was too happy in her own marriage to wish her children—But, mon Dieu, I am exciting myself quite uselessly; you have such a totally false conception of this promise."

"Klaus told me so himself, Aunt Rosamond," declared the girl, in a tone which made contradiction impossible.

Aunt Rosamond was silent; she knew well that all talking would be vain, and that nothing in the world could convince Anna Maria that any object worthy of love beside her beloved brother could exist. "Nous verrons, ma petite," thought she, "you will not be spared the experience either!"

And now her thoughts wandered far back into the past, to the night when Anna Maria was born. A terrible night! And as they passed on, there came a day still more terrible; in the heavy wooden cradle, adorned with crests, lay, indeed, the sweetly sleeping child, but the mother's eyes had closed forever, not, however, without first looking, with a fervid, anguished expression, at the little creature that must go through life without a mother's love! And beside her bed had knelt a boy of fifteen, who had to promise over and over again to love the little sister, and protect and shield her.

How often had Aunt Rosamond told this to the child as she grew up; how often described to her how she had been baptized by her mother's coffin, how her brother had held her in his arms and pressed her so closely to him, and wept so bitterly. Indeed, indeed, there was not another brother like Klaus von Hegewitz, that Aunt Rosamond knew best of all.

She remembered how he had watched for nights at the child's bed when she lay ill with measles; with what unwearied patience he had borne with her whims, now even as then; how carefully he had marked out a course of instruction and selected teachers for her, looked up lectures for her, read and rode with her, and did everything that the most careful parental love alone can do, and even more—much more! Indeed, Anna Maria knew nothing of a parent's love; the father had always been a peculiar person, especially so after the death of his wife: it almost seemed as if he could not love the child whose life had cost a life. He was rarely at home; half the year he lived in Berlin, coming back to the old manor-house only at the hunting season. But never alone; he was always accompanied by a young man, a Baron Stürmer, owner of the neighboring estate of Dambitz, and two years older than Klaus.

It was a singular friendship which had existed between these two men. Hegewitz, well on in the sixties, gloomy and unsociable, and from his youth distrustful of every one, and not even amiable toward his own children, was affable only to his friend, so much younger. To this moment Aunt Rosamond distinctly remembered the pale, nobly-formed face with the fiery brown eyes and the dark hair. How gratefully she remembered him! He had been the only one who understood how to mediate between father and son, the only one who, with admirable firmness, had again and again led the struggling little girl to her father; and he did all this out of that incomprehensible friendship. The two used to play chess together late into the night; they rode and hunted together; and still one other passion united them—they collected antiquities.

They searched the towns and villages for miles about for old carved chests, clocks, porcelain, and pictures, and would dispute all night as to whether a certain picture, bought at an auction, was by this or that master, whether it was an original or a copy. They often remained away for days on their excursions, and the treasures they won were then artistically arranged in a tower-room—"a regular rag-shop," Aunt Rosamond had once said in banter. "I only wonder they don't get me too for this 'Collection Antique.'" After the death of Hegewitz this really valuable collection was found to be made over, by will, to Baron Stürmer, "because Klaus did not understand such things." Stürmer accepted the bequest, but he had it appraised by a person intelligent in such matters, and paid the value to the heirs. Klaus von Hegewitz refused to accept the sum, and so the two men agreed to found an almshouse for the two villages of Bütze and Dambitz.

That had happened ten years ago, and the collecting furor of the old gentleman had borne good results.

Soon after his death, Baron Stürmer went away on a journey; he had long wished to travel, and had deferred his cherished plan only on his old friend's account. His first goals had been Italy, Constantinople, and Greece; he went to Egypt, he visited South America, Norway and Sweden, and had travelled through Russia and the Caucasus. No one knew where he was staying at present. He had written seldom of late years, at last not at all; but his memory still lived in Bütze. Only Anna Maria no longer spoke of him; indeed, she scarcely remembered him now: she was just eight years old when he went away. Only this she still knew: that Uncle Stürmer had often taken her by the hand and led her to her father, and that at such times her heart had always beaten more quickly from fear. Anna Maria had stood in real awe of her father, and when he died and was buried, not a tear flowed from the child's eyes. Her entire affection belonged to her brother, as she used to say, full of pride and love for him.

Aunt Rosamond had never been able to exert the slightest influence over the girl's independent character.

As soon as Anna Maria was confirmed, she hung the bunch of keys at her belt, and took up the reins of housekeeping with an energy and circumspection that aroused the admiration of all, and especially of the old aunt, who was particularly struck by it, since she herself was a tender, weak type of woman, to whom such energy in one of her own sex could but seem incomprehensible.

Anna Maria spun on quietly as all these thoughts succeeded each other behind the wrinkled brow of her companion. She could sit and spin thus whole evenings, without saying a word; she was quite different from other girls! She did not allow a bird or a flower in her room, nor did she ever wear a flower or a ribbon as an ornament. And yet one could scarcely imagine a more high-bred appearance than hers. Whether she were walking, in her house dress, through kitchen and cellar, or receiving guests in the drawing-room, as happened two or three times a year, she lost nothing in comparison with other ladies and girls; on the contrary, she had a certain superiority to them, and Aunt Rosamond would sometimes say to herself: "The others are like geese beside her!"—"Yes, what may happen here yet?" she asked herself with a sigh.

"A letter for the Fräulein!" A youth of perhaps twenty-five years, dressed in simple dark livery, handed Anna Maria a letter.

"From Klaus!" she cried joyfully, but held the letter in her hand without opening it, and fixed her eyes upon the firm, resolute face of the servant.

"Well, Gottlieb, what is the matter with you?" she asked. "You look as if your wheat had been utterly ruined."

"Gracious Fräulein," the youth replied, with hesitation yet firmly, "the master will have to look about for some one else—I am going away at New Year."

"Have you gone mad?" cried Anna Maria, frowning. "What is it here that you object to?" She had risen and stepped up to the youth. "As for the rest," she continued, "I can imagine why you have such folly in your head. Because I have sent away Marieken Märtens, do you wish to go too? Very well, I will not keep you; you may go; there are plenty of people who would take your place. But if your father knew it he would turn in his grave. Do you know how long your father served at Bütze?"

"Fifty-eight years, Fräulein," replied the young fellow at once.

"Fifty-eight years! And his son runs away from the service in which his father grew old and gray, after a frivolous girl! Very well, you shall have your way; but mind, any one who once goes away from here—never returns. You may go."

The servant's face grew deep red at the reproachful words of his young mistress; he turned slowly to the door and left the room.

Anna Maria had meanwhile broken the great crested seal, and was reading. "Klaus is coming day after to-morrow!" After reading awhile, now as happy as a child, she cried to the old lady: "Just hear, Aunt Rosamond, what else he writes. I will read it aloud.

"'I found my old Mattoni over his books as usual, but it seemed to me he looked ill. I asked him about it, but he declared he was well. A proposal to come and recuperate next summer in our beautiful country air he dismissed with a shake of the head, "he had no time!" He is an incorrigible bookworm.

"'But now here is something particularly interesting! Do you know whom I met yesterday "Unter den Linden," sunburned and scarcely recognizable? Edwin Stürmer! He was standing by a picture-store, and I beside him for some time, without a suspicion of each other; we were looking at some pretty water-colors by Heuselt. All at once a hand was laid on my arm, and a familiar voice cried: "Upon my word, Klaus, if you had not developed that fine beard, I should have recognized you sooner!"

"'I was exceedingly glad to see Edwin again, and rejoice still more at the future prospect. The old vagabond is going to fold his wings at last, and take care of his estate. He is coming shortly to Dambitz; consequently we shall have a good friend again near us. As for the rest, he wouldn't believe that you have become a young lady and no longer wear long braids and short dresses.'"

Anna Maria stopped, and looked into the distance, as if recalling something. "I don't know exactly now how he looked," she said. "He wore a full black beard, didn't he, aunt, and must be very old now?"

"No indeed, mon cœur; he may be thirty-five at the most."

"That is certainly old, Aunt Rosamond!"

"That is the way young people judge," said the old lady, smiling.

"It may be, aunt," said Anna Maria, and put the letter in her pocket. She had begun to spin again, when an old woman in a dazzlingly white apron entered the room.

"Gracious Fräulein," she began respectfully, yet familiarly, "Marieken is off, and has made a great commotion in the house, and the eldest of the Weber girls has just applied for the place, but she asks for twelve thaler for wages and a jacket at Christmas!"

"Ten thaler, and Christmas according to the way she conducts herself," Anna Maria replied, without looking up.

The housekeeper disappeared, but returned after awhile.

"Eleven thaler and a jacket, Fräulein; she will not come otherwise," she reported. "You can surely give her that; she has no lover, and will hardly get one, for she is already well on in years, and——"

Anna Maria drew a purse from her pocket, and laid an eight-groschen piece on the table. "The advance-money, Brockelmann; do you know that Gottlieb wishes to leave?"

"Oh, dear, yes, Fräulein." The old woman was quite embarrassed. "I am sorry; he doted upon the lass at one time, and at last—oh, heavens, fräulein, one has been young too, and if two people love each other—see, Fräulein, it is just as if one had drunk deadly hemlock. I mean no offence, but you will know it yet some day, and, if God will, may the handsomest and best man in the world come to Bütze and take you home!"

The old woman had spoken affectingly, and looked at her young mistress with brightening eyes. Only she would have dared to touch on this point. She had been Anna Maria's nurse, and a remnant of tenderness toward her was still hidden somewhere in the girl's heart.

"Brockelmann, you cannot keep from talking," she cried, serenely. "You know I shall never marry. What would the master do without me? Is supper ready?"

"The master!" said the good woman, without regarding the last question. "He ought to marry too! As if it were not high time for him; he will be thirty-three years old at Martinmas!"

CHAPTER II.

A few days afterward Edwin Stürmer came to Bütze. Anna Maria was standing just on the lower staircase landing, in the great stone-paved entrance-hall, a basket of red-cheeked apples on her arm, and Brockelmann stood near her with a candle in her hand. The unsteady light of the flickering candle fell on the immediate surroundings, and, like an old picture of Rembrandt's, the fair head of the girl stood out from the darkness of the wide hall. Round about her there was a great hue and cry; all the children of the village seemed to be collected there, and sang with a sort of scream, to a monotonous air, the old Martinmas ditty:

"Martins, martins, pretty things,
With your little golden wings,
To the Rhine now fly away,
To-morrow is St. Martin's Day.
Marieken, Marieken, open the door,
Two poor rogues are standing before!
Little summer, little summer, rose's leaf,
City fair,
Give us something, O maiden fair!"

They were just beginning a new song when the heavy entrance-door opened, and Baron Stürmer came in. Anna Maria did not see him at once, for, according to an old custom of St. Martin's Eve, she was throwing a handful of apples right among the little band, who pounced upon them with cries and shouts. Only when a man's head rose up straight before her, by the heavily carved banister, she glanced up, and looked into a pale face framed by dark hair and beard, and into a pair of shining brown eyes.

For an instant Anna Maria was startled, and a blush of embarrassment spread over her face; then she held out her hand to him and bade him welcome. Far from youthful was her manner of speaking and acting.

"Be still!" she called, in her ringing voice, to the noisy children; and as silence immediately ensued, she added, turning to Stürmer: "They are meeting me on important business, Herr von Stürmer, but I shall be ready to leave at once; will you go up to Klaus for awhile?"

He kept on looking at her, still holding her right hand; he had not heard what she said at all. With quick impatience, at length she withdrew her hand.

"Brockelmann, bring the candle here, and take the gentleman to my brother," she ordered; but then, as if changing her mind, she threw the whole basketful of apples at once among the children, who scrambled for them, screaming wildly. The baron made his way with difficulty through the groping throng to the stairs, where Anna Maria was now standing motionless, and with earnest gaze regarding the man who in her childhood had so often held her in his arms, and had so many a kind word for her.

Yes, it was he again; the slender figure of medium height, the dark face with the flashing eyes—and yet how different!

Anna Maria had to admit to herself that it was a handsome man who was coming up the steps just then; and old? She had to smile. "One sees quite differently with a child's eyes!" she said to herself. Was it not as if years were blotted out, and he was coming up as in the old times, to hold her fast by her braids and say, "Don't run so, Anna Maria"?

Silently up the stairs they went together, to the top, their steps reëchoing from the walls.

It really seemed now to Anna Maria as if her childhood had returned, the sweet, remote childhood, with a thousand bright, innocent hours. Involuntarily she held out to him her slender hand, and he seized it quickly and forced the maiden to stand still. The sound of the children's shouting came indistinctly to them up here; there was no one beside them in the dim corridor.

Words of pleasure at seeing the friend of her childhood again trembled on Anna Maria's lips, but when she tried to speak the man's eyes met hers, and her mouth remained closed. Slowly, and still looking at her, he drew the slender hand to his lips; she allowed it as if in a dream, then hastily caught her hand away.

"What is that?" she asked, half in jest, half in anger; "I gave you my hand because I was glad to greet the uncle of my childhood, and an uncle——"

"May not kiss one's hand," he supplied, a smile flitting over his face. Anna Maria did not see it, having stepped forward into the sitting-room. "A visitor, Klaus!" she called into the room, which was still dark.

"Ah!" at once replied a man's voice. "Stürmer, is it you? Welcome, welcome! You find us quite in the dark. We were just talking of you, and of old times; were we not, Aunt Rosamond?"

A merry greeting followed, an invitation to supper was given and accepted, and Klaus von Hegewitz called for lights.

"Oh, let us chat a little longer in the dark," said Aunt Rosamond. "Who knows but we should seem stranger to each other if a candle were lighted? Does it not seem, cher baron, as if it were yesterday that you were sitting here with us, and yet——"

"It is ten years ago, Stürmer," finished Klaus.

"Truly!" assented Stürmer, "ten years!"

"Oh, but how happy we have been here," the old lady ran on. "Do you remember, Stürmer, how you carried me off once in the most festive manner, in a sleigh, and on the way the mad idea came to you to drive on past our godfather's, and then you landed us both so softly in the deepest snow-drift—me in my best dress, the green brocade, you know, that you always called my parrot's costume?"

Klaus laughed heartily. "À propos, Stürmer," he asked, "have you seen Anna Maria yet?"

"Yes, indeed, I have already had the honor, on the landing down-stairs," replied the baron.

"The honor? Heavens, how ceremonious! Did you hear, dear?" asked the brother. But no answer came. "Anna Maria!" he then called.

"She is not here," said Aunt Rosamond, groping about to find the way out of the room. "But it is really too dark here," she added.

"Why haven't you married, Hegewitz?" Stürmer asked abruptly.

"I might pass the question back to you," replied Klaus. "But let us leave that alone, Stürmer, I will tell you something about it another time." Klaus von Hegewitz had risen and stepped to the nearest window; for a while silence reigned in the quiet room. Stürmer regretted having touched upon a topic that evidently aroused painful emotions.

"Every one has his experiences, Stürmer, so why should we be spared?" Klaus turned around, beginning to speak again. "But it is overcome now. I do not think about it any more," he added. "Will you have another cigar?"

"Not think about it any more?" cried the baron, not hearing the last question. He laughed aloud. "At thirty-four? My dear Klaus, what will become of you, then, when Aunt Rosamond dies and Anna Maria marries?"

"Anna Maria? I haven't thought about that yet, Stürmer; she is still so young, and—although—But one can see that it is possible to live so: you give the best example!" Klaus was out of humor.

The baron did not reply. He soon turned the conversation to agricultural matters, and a discussion over esparcet and fodder was first interrupted by the announcement that supper was served.

Aunt Rosamond had, meanwhile, gone through the main hall and knocked at a door at the end of the passage. Anna Maria's voice called, "Come in!" She, too, was sitting in the dark, but she rose and lit a candle. The light illuminated her whole face. "Anna Maria, are you ill?" her aunt asked anxiously, and stepped nearer.

"Not exactly ill, aunt, but I have a headache."

"You have taken cold; why do you ride out in this sharp wind? You are both inconsiderate, you and Klaus! Show me your pulse—of course, on the gallop; go to bed, Anna Maria."

"After supper, aunt; what would Klaus say if I were not there?"

"But you are really looking badly, Anna Maria."

The young girl laughed, took her bunch of keys in her hand and thus compelled Aunt Rosamond to go with her. "Don't worry," she bade her, "and above all, don't say anything to Klaus. He might think it worse than it is."

"Klaus, and always, only Klaus—incroyable!" murmured the old lady.

"If that wasn't a remarkable company at table this evening," said Klaus von Hegewitz, as he reäntered the sitting-room, after escorting Baron Stürmer down-stairs. "You, Anna Maria, did not say a word, and the conversation dragged along till it nearly died out; if Aunt Rosamond had not kept the thing up, why—really, it was peculiar. But how nice it is when we are by ourselves, isn't it, little sister?"

He had put his arm around Anna Maria, who stood at the table, looking toward the window as if listening for something, and looked lovingly in her face.

The brother and sister resembled each other unmistakably in their features, except that beside his earnestness a winning kindness spoke from the brother's eyes, and the harsh lines about his mouth were hidden by a handsome beard.

"Yes," she replied quietly.

"Now tell me, little sister, why you were so—so, what shall I call it—icy toward Stürmer?"

Anna Maria looked over at her brother and was silent.

"Now out with it!" he said jokingly. "Didn't Stürmer treat you with sufficient deference, or——"

"Klaus!" She grew very red. "I will tell you," she then said; "the recollections of old times came between us and spoke louder than words; my childhood passed before my eyes, and—" She broke off, and looked up at him; it was a sad look, yet full of unspeakable gratitude. Klaus drew her to him, and pressed the fair head to his breast with his large white hand.

"My old lass, you're not going to cry?" he asked tenderly; but he, too, was moved.

She took his hand and pressed a kiss upon it. "Dear, dear Klaus," she said softly, "I was only thinking how it would have been if you had not loved me so very, very much?"

Klaus von Hegewitz was silent, and looked thoughtfully down at her. "Quite different, my little Anna Maria," said he at last; "it would have been quite different—whether better? Who can fathom that; it must have been so——"

She looked up at him in astonishment, he had spoken so slowly and earnestly. Then he stroked her forehead, pressed his sister to him again, and then turned quietly to the corner-shelf and took down his favorite pipe.

"There, now we will make ourselves comfortable," said he. "Come, Anna Maria, 'Tante Voss' is very interesting to-day."

Anna Maria stood long at her bedroom window and looked at the drifting clouds of the night-sky. Now and then the moon peeped out, and tinged the edges of the clouds with silver light; as they sped in strange forms over her golden disk, there was a continual change in the fantastic shapes, but Anna Maria saw it not. Confused thoughts chased each other about in her brain, like the clouds above, and now and then, like the brilliant constellation, a bright look from the long-known dark eyes came before her mind. "It is the memory of childhood," she said to herself, "yes, the memory!"

Twelve o'clock struck from the church-tower near by, as, shivering with cold, she stepped back from the window. She heard hasty steps coming along the corridor; she knew it was Brockelmann going to bed. The next moment she had opened the door; she hardly knew herself first what she wanted, when the old woman was already crossing the threshold.

"You are not sleeping yet, Fräulein? Ah, it is well that you are still awake. I had a fine fright a little while ago. What do you think, Marieken Märtens, the crazy thing, tried to drown herself; a man from the village pulled her out of the pond."

Anna Maria had grown white as a corpse; she had to sit down on the edge of her bed, and her great eyes looked in sheer amazement at the old woman. "What for?" she asked hastily, and almost sharply.

"Indeed, Fräulein, for what else but because of the stupid affair with Gottlieb? You know what his mother is. Marieken did not dare go home all at once—there are mouths enough to feed: so her sweetheart took her home to his mother, and she told him he should not come to her with a girl whom the gracious Fräulein had dismissed, that he must not think of marrying the girl as long as she lived; you know, Fräulein, the old woman swears by the family here. And so the stupid thing took it into her head to go into the water."

Anna Maria looked silently before her, and her whole body shook as if she had a chill.

"Heavens, you are ill!" cried the old woman.

"No, no," the girl denied, "I am not ill; go, only go; I am tired and want to sleep."

Brockelmann went to her room, shaking her head. "Well, well," she murmured, "I did think she would be sorry for the poor girl, but no!" She sighed, and closed the door behind her. But toward morning she was suddenly startled from her slumber by the violent ringing of a bell in her room.

"Good heavens, Anna Maria!" she cried. "She is ill!" In her heart the old woman still called her young mistress by her child's name. Hastily throwing on one or two garments she hurried through the cold passage, just lighted by the gray dawn. Anna Maria was sitting upright in her bed, a candle was burning on the table by her side, and lit up a face worn with weeping. The old woman saw plainly that the girl had been weeping, though she extinguished the candle at once.

"Brockelmann!" she called to her, but not as usual in the old imperious manner, and she now hesitated; "as soon as it is light, send for Gottlieb's mother; I want to talk with her about the girl. And now go," she added, as the old woman was about to say something, "I am so tired to-day!"

CHAPTER III.

"The time passes away, one scarcely knows what has become of it; even in my solitude, it does not seem long to me. Really, the starlings are here already. Where has the winter gone? Strange!"

Aunt Rosamond held this soliloquy at her chamber-window, as her gaze followed the little messengers of spring, who vanished so briskly into the wooden boxes, a large number of which had been placed for them on the trees and buildings. It was no sunny spring day there without; the clouds hung low and gray over the earth, and a warm, sultry wind tossed about the budding branches unmercifully, as if to shake them into complete awakening.

The old lady did not like the overcast sky at all, it put her out of humor. She could not wander about far out of doors, to be sure, but she would fain have seen the little spot of earth that lay stretched out before her window looking cheerful, and blue sky and sunshine lighting up the fresh green of the meadows, and the oaks in foliage.

"It ought to be always May or September here in the Mark," she used to say; "then it would be the loveliest country in the world. In winter one does best to draw the curtains, so as not to cast a single look out of doors, it looks so melancholy outside, brown upon brown, with a shade of dirty gray."

And so she turned from the window and its dull outlook, and limped quickly through the room, here and there arranging or straightening something. That was such a habit of hers. Now the candelabra on the spinet were moved a little, and now the delicate, withered hands picked a yellow leaf from a plant on the flower-stand, or gave an improving touch to the canopied bed which so pretentiously occupied an entire side of the room. Aunt Rosamond called that her throne; one had to climb up a pair of carpeted steps to reach it, and with its crimson silk hangings, somewhat faded indeed, and gilded knobs, it really gave you the impression of one. Then here and there she pushed back a coverlet or straightened a picture which tipped a little to one side. The latter she did most frequently, for the high walls were almost covered with pictures, a collection of portraits, mostly in oil or pastel. Aunt Rosamond knew a history about each one of the faces that looked so quietly from the frames in her room; she had known them all, these men and women there above, and strangely enough it sounded to hear her, as she stood before some picture, tell its story in a few words.

She had just limped to a card-table, over which was hung an oval pastel portrait of a man with curled and powdered hair and a blue silk coat. She gave the portrait a gentle push toward the right, but whether it was the cord or the nail that had become loose, matters not, down fell the picture, and lay face downward before Aunt Rosamond.

"Let it lie, aunt, I beg you!" called Anna Maria's voice at this moment; and before the old lady could collect herself, the girl had bent her slender form, and handed her the picture.

"Merci, ma petite!" she cried kindly, and looked into her niece's face; and, indeed, if Aunt Rosamond missed the spring without, now it had come, bodily, into her room.

Anna Maria still had on a dark-blue riding-habit which closely fitted her fine, strong figure, and the young face looked out from behind the blue veil with such a spring-like freshness, that it quite warmed Aunt Rosamond's heart.

"Have you been riding, Anna Maria?" asked the old lady, as the girl endeavored to find the fallen nail.

"Yes, aunt, I rode with Klaus for an hour on the Dambitz cross-road; afterward we met Stürmer by chance, and took a cup of coffee at Dambitz Manor."

"Indeed!" Aunt Rosamond seemed quite indifferent to this, although she looked searchingly at the reddening face of her niece, who, apparently, was very attentively regarding the rescued nail in her hand.

"Are the snow-drops in bloom already at Dambitz?" inquired the old lady. "Well, the garden lies well protected. But what do you say, Anna Maria, will you stay and rest with me? I think we will sit down a little while—n'est-ce pas, mon cœur?"

Anna Maria stood irresolute; she looked over at her aunt, who had already seated herself on the straight-backed, gayly flowered sofa, and pointed invitingly to an easy-chair. It was so comfortable in this cosey old room; the rococo clock with the Cupid bending his bow told its low tick-tack, and a sudden shower beat against the window panes; it was a little hour just made for chatting of all sorts of possible things, of the past and of the future.

Anna Maria slowly seated herself in the chair; she neither leaned back gracefully and comfortably nor rested her fair head on the cushions. Always straight as a candle, she carried herself perfectly, and so she remained now. But sudden blushes and deep pallor interchanged on her face, which turned with an expression of perfect, modest maidenliness toward the old lady's face. One could see that she wished to say something, and that her severe, unsympathetic nature was struggling with an overflowing heart.

Her aunt did not seem to notice it at all; she had taken up a book whose once green velvet binding was worn and faded with age. The delicate fingers turned leaf after leaf; then she glanced over a page, and after a pause said:

"Actually, Anna Maria, Felix Leonhard has fallen from the wall on his birthday; how singular! Now people call that chance, but how strange it is! I have always remembered the day hitherto, until to-day, and have been going about all the time with a feeling as if I had forgotten something, I could not exactly think what And then he announced himself. Mon pauvre Felix! You shall have your flowers to-day, as every year." And she caressingly touched the picture before her on the table. Then she looked over to Anna Maria almost shyly, for she knew that her niece sometimes smiled scornfully at signs and forebodings.

But to-day the deep line about Anna Maria's mouth was not to be seen; she looked thoughtfully at the picture, and asked: "Who was Felix Leonhard, aunt?"

"An early friend of my brother's," replied the old lady.

"Is he the one, aunt—I think you told me a strange story once about some one shooting himself for the sake of a girl?"

"Yes, yes, quite right, my child. This gay, handsome man once took a pistol and shot himself for the sake of a girl; quite right, Anna Maria. And he was no youth then, he was well on in the thirties, and yet did this horrible deed, unworthy of a peaceable man. Oh, it was a misery not to be described, Anna Maria!" She shook her head and passed her hands over her eyes, as if to frighten away a horrible picture.

"Why did he do it, aunt?" asked Anna Maria, in an unusually warm tone; "was she faithless to him, or——"

"She did not love him, ma petite; she had been persuaded by her parents and brothers and sisters to become engaged to him. He was in most excellent circumstances, and one of the best men I ever knew. He became acquainted with her at a ball in Berlin, and fell violently in love with her, although before that no one had ever considered his a passionate nature. She was not young at the time, not even particularly pretty, and with the exception of a pair of melancholy great eyes did not possess a charm. Eh bien, after endless doubts and struggles, she accepted his suit. The engagement lasted a whole year, and she was as shy and discreet a fiancée as could be found; he, on the other hand, was full of touching attentions to her; indeed, to use a worn-out figure, he carried her about in his hands. The nearer the wedding-day approached, the more dreadful grew the poor girl's state of mind. She had repeatedly asked various people if they believed she could make her lover happy, and she was always turned off with a jest, yet quite seriously as well, on the part of her brothers and sisters. Then on the wedding-day, half an hour before the ceremony was to take place, pale and trembling, she announced that she must take back her word, she could not speak perjury—she did not love him, and she did not wish his unhappiness! Ah, I shall never forget that day—the anxious faces of the guests as the report of this refusal began to spread, and the terrible anger of her brother. What followed in her room was never made public; I only know that she persisted in her refusal, and that same evening he shot himself in the garden. Voilà tout!"

Anna Maria was silent; she had turned pale. "And she, aunt?" asked the girl after a pause.

"She! Well, she lived on, and even married not very long afterward; she did not love him at all, Anna Maria. Who knows his own heart?"

For an instant it seemed as if Anna Maria was about to answer, but she closed her lips again. The room was still. She was leaning back now; she was almost trembling, and her eyes turned thoughtfully to the picture before her. Without, the rain was beating with increased force against the windows, and the wind drove great snowflakes about in a whirling dance, between whiles; April weather, fighting and struggling, storming and raging, so spring will come.

The old lady on the sofa looked out on this raging of the elements, and thought how such a powerful spring storm rages in every human heart, and how scarcely a person in the world is spared such a fight and struggle; she knew it from her own experience, though she was only a poor cripple, and a hundred times had she seen the storm rage in the breast of another. To many, indeed, out of the struggle and longing, out of snow and sunshine, had arisen a spring as beautiful as a dream; but for many was the stormy April weather followed by a frosty May, killing all blossoms; as for herself, as for Kla—She left the thought unfinished, and quickly turned her head toward her niece, as if fearing she might have guessed her thoughts. And then—she was almost confounded—then the young girl's rosy face bent down to her, and Aunt Rosamond saw a shining drop in the eyes always so cold and clear. Anna Maria sat down beside her on the figured sofa, and threw her soft arms about her neck.

The heart of the old lady beat faster; it was the first time in her life that Anna Maria had showed any tenderness toward her. She sat quite still, as in a dream, as if the slightest movement might frighten the girl away, like a timid bird. And "Aunt Rosamond!" came the half-sobbing sound in her ear. "Oh, aunt, help me—advise me—for Klaus——"

Just then the door was quickly thrown open. "The master sends word for the Fräulein to come down-stairs at once," called Brockelmann, quite out of breath. "He can't find Isaac Aron's receipts for the last delivery of grain, and——"

"I am coming! I am coming!" called the girl. She had sprung up, and quickly thrown the skirt of her riding-habit over her arm. The spell was broken; there stood Anna Maria von Hegewitz again, the mistress of Bütze, as firm, as full of business as ever.

She crossed the room with quick steps, but turning again at the door, she said softly, and embarrassed, "I will come up again this evening, aunt." Then she closed the door behind her.

Aunt Rosamond remained as still as a mouse in her sofa-corner; she had to reflect whether this blushing, caressing girl who had just been sitting beside her were really Anna Maria von Hegewitz, her niece. She passed her hand over her forehead, and confused thoughts passed through her mind. "Quelle métamorphose!" she whispered to herself, and at length said aloud, "Anna Maria is certainly in love; love only makes one so gentle, so—je ne sais quoi! Anna Maria loves Stürmer! How disagreeable that Brockelmann happened to come in with her grain bills! Mon Dieu! the child, the child! I wonder if Klaus suspects it? What is to become of you, my splendid old boy, if Anna Maria goes away? But what if he should marry, too?"

She rose from the sofa and stepped to the window again. It had stopped raining, and a last lingering ray of sunshine broke from the clouds and was spread, like a golden veil, over the wet, budding trees and shrubs. "Spring is coming," she said half aloud. And now she began to walk up and down the room, but this time the pictures were undisturbed. Her hands were clasped, and now and then she shook her gray head gently, as if incredulously.

CHAPTER IV.

Meanwhile Anna Maria had gone quickly down-stairs and entered her brother's room. He was sitting at his desk, rummaging about in the drawers for the missing papers. Klaus von Hegewitz was exactly like other men in this respect, that he never could find anything, and grew so vexed in hunting, that from very irritation he found nothing. At the door stood the farm inspector and a little old man who was well known at Bütze, Isaac Aron the Jew. He made a deep reverence to Anna Maria, and said contentedly: "Now matters will be brought into good shape; the gracious Fräulein knows the place of everything in the whole house."

Anna Maria paid no attention to this, but, going to the desk, confidently put her hand into a drawer, and gave a little packet of papers to her brother. "There, Klaus," said she, looking with a smile in his flushed face, "why did you not call me at once?"

The troubled face grew bright. "Upon my word, Anna Maria," he cried gayly, "these are stupid things; I have had that package in my hands twenty times at least. A thousand thanks! I say again and again, Anna Maria, what would become of me without you?"

The smile suddenly disappeared from her face, and she looked thoughtfully at the stately figure of her brother, who had stepped up to the men and was negotiating with them. The words fell on her ears as in a dream, and quite mechanically she took up her train and walked out of the room. As she was about to close the door, her brother called after her: "Anna Maria, shall I meet you by and by in the sitting-room? The gardener wants to talk with us about the new work in the wood."

She had no idea, as she stood outside, whether or not she had answered him; then she sat down in her room, and her eyes wandered about the familiar spot and rested at length on her brother's portrait. But she saw it not; in her mind was another picture, another man's head. The red-tiled roof of Dambitz Manor rose before her eyes, and over him and her the brown, budding branches of the linden-walk in the Dambitz garden fluttered and beat in the damp spring air, and at their feet long rows of snow-drops bloomed and shook their little white heads.

"Anna Maria," he had called her, "Anna Maria," as in her childhood. She started up, as if awakening from a long, deep dream. Ah, no! it was true; scarcely an hour ago he had spoken thus to her, and Anna Maria von Hegewitz had stood before him as if under a spell.

What else had he said? She knew no longer, only the words "Anna Maria" sounded to her very soul; and as on that St. Martin's Eve she had put her hands in his, and he had drawn her close to him—only one short moment, she scarcely knew whether it were dream or reality. Then Klaus had come down the steps—"Klaus! ah, Heaven, Klaus!"

She leaned her head against the back of the sofa and closed her eyes. She saw herself going away from the old house here. Could her foot cross the threshold? And she saw Klaus looking in the door-way, looking after her with his kind, true eyes, perhaps with tears in them. And there came to her all the words which she had so often spoken to him, caressingly: "I will stay with you, Klaus, always, always!" And now the strong girl began to weep; she scarcely knew what tears were, but now they gushed from her eyes with all the force of a shaken soul.

And yet above all this pain there hovered a feeling of infinite happiness, through the dark veil of sadness gleamed bright rays—the premonitions of a wonderful future, the suspicion that the life which she had led hitherto was hardly to be called living, because that one thing had been wanting which first consecrates and gives value to a happy life.

She rose and went up to her brother's portrait. "Klaus, dear Klaus, I cannot help it, indeed!" she whispered; and then she wandered about the room, a tender smile on her lips, and a laugh in her eyes.

The sound of the servants' supper-bell roused her from her dreams; she changed her riding-habit for a house-dress, but laid the snow-drops in the Bible on her writing-desk, and gave the little white blossoms a caressing touch before she took up her basket of keys to leave the room. She was met on the way to the sitting-room by a fresh, curly-haired girl, carrying an armful of flashing brass candlesticks, her black eyes almost as bright as the shining metal.

"Well, Marieken," asked Anna Maria, "is the outfit ready?"

The brisk girl laughed all over her face. "Oh, not quite, Fräulein; but it is three weeks to Easter, and Gottlieb is painting the rooms now in our house, and the cabinet-maker is going to bring our things next week."

Anna Maria nodded kindly, but did not reply. Her thoughts were already again in Dambitz, wandering through the rooms of the castle. Most of them were still empty, but a time was doubtless coming for her too when the cabinet-maker would bring her things. And Anna Maria looked at the girl and smiled; she knew not why herself; it was from overflowing happiness. And Marieken laughed too—a perfect harmony of youth, hope, and happiness. Then the girl ran on with her candlesticks, and Anna Maria walked down the corridor, and in both hearts was the same sunshine. She must hurry, for Klaus would surely be waiting for her, he wanted to speak with her about the work in the garden.

Next to Klaus's room was a small room, where Anna Maria remembered to have put away in her portfolio of drawings the roughly sketched plan of the alterations, and as Klaus was not yet in the sitting-room she hurried back to get it.

It was almost dark, and she could but indistinctly discern the objects in the little room, which Klaus jokingly called his library because of a bookcase which found its place there. So the more distinctly came to her ears a hearty laugh from her brother, and, with the laugh, the sound of her own name.

"Anna Maria, do you say? My own aunt, it is perfectly ridiculous!"

"Laugh then, you unbeliever, you will soon be convinced of the truth of my conjecture. We women, especially we old maids, Klauschen, look at such things more sharply. Soon some one will come and carry away your darling, and then we too may sit here and have the dumps, my beloved boy! What will become of us?"

"Some one, aunt? You speak in riddles."

"Well, since you are so dreadfully smitten with blindness, mon cher, it is a Christian duty on my part to open your eyes. Do you not see the girl's entirely altered manner? Have you never—But to what purpose is all this? In short, Anna Maria loves Stürmer!"

Another hearty laugh interrupted the old lady. But Anna Maria, with closed eyes, leaned against the door-post; the ground seemed to give way beneath her feet.

"Kurt Stürmer? Uncle Stürmer? But, my dear aunt," cried the young man, "he might almost be her father!"

"Is that a hindrance, Klaus?"

"No! I don't believe it, however. Shall we bet?"

Anna Maria straightened up. She was on the point of going in and saying, "Why do you argue? I do love him—yes! a thousand times, yes!" But she stood still; her brother's voice sounded so strangely altered.

"Aunt Rosamond, I cannot believe it!"

"Klaus! Have you not thought for a long time that it must happen some day?"

"Yes, yes! But—Ah! I have stood in fear of this hour, since the child is the only one to whom my heart clings; you do not know how much, perhaps, aunt!"

"Klaus,"—the old lady's voice was melting with tenderness—"my dear old lad, you are still young: why should there not be a happiness yet in store for you? I have often told you you ought to marry."

"Marry? You say that to me, aunt? and you know that I have been a wretched being for years, because——"

"But, Klaus, do you still think of that?" sounded the anxious voice of the aunt.

"Still?" he repeated ironically. "Am I not daily reminded of it? Do you think, because I live so peacefully now and can join in a laugh, because food and wine taste good to me—I see the tower of her family home whenever I go to the window, I see Anna Maria, I cannot pass that fatal spot in the garden without the words she then spoke reächoing in my soul. I know them by heart, aunt, I have called and whispered them for weeks in fever; and ever again her enchanting figure stands before my eyes, and that sweet, beseeching tone rings in my ears, as seductive as Satan himself: 'Put that obstinate, disagreeable child out of your house; she interferes with our happiness!'"

He laughed scornfully. "And because I would not consent to that, and did not break a promise given to my dying mother, then—she cast me off like a garment that does not fit comfortably enough—then—then——"

"Klaus! Klaus! for God's sake!" The anxious voice of the old lady interrupted his speaking, which had risen to vehemence.

But in the little room lay Anna Maria on her knees, her head almost touching the floor. It had become still in the next room, except for the sound of rapid steps as the young man paced the floor.

"And now—yes, yes, it had to happen!" said he softly. "I am no egoist, certainly not, but it will be unspeakably hard for me to give her up. Oh, yes, I shall see her often. I can ride over any minute; she will come to us too—certainly. But see, aunt—but I am a fool, really, a fool! It is the way of the world, and I do not understand why I did not see long ago that Stürmer is fond of Anna Maria; it is, indeed, so natural. How good it is that I am prepared; not the slightest shadow shall fall on Anna Maria's happiness. Your eyes ask that, Aunt Rose? No, be quiet, be quiet!"

Anna Maria remained motionless on the cold floor, leaning her head against the door-post. She no longer understood what they were saying in the next room; she kept hearing only that one dreadful speech: "Put the child out of the house; she interferes with our happiness!" His happiness! Klaus's happiness! She passed her cold hand over her forehead, as if she must convince herself whether or not it was a dream. No, no; she was awake, she could move her feet as well, she could walk out of the little room, along the corridor, to her own room.

Marieken was just coming along the passage. Anna Maria stopped, and bade her say to Fräulein Rosamond that she was not coming to the table; she had a headache, and wanted to be alone that evening.

The girl looked in alarm at the pale face of her mistress. "Shall I call Brockelmann?" she asked anxiously.

Anna Maria made a negative gesture, and laid her hand on the door-knob, and then turned her head. "Marieken!"

The girl came back.

"It is nothing—only go!" She then hastily turned away, and shut and bolted her door at once.

"She wishes to be alone with her thoughts," remarked Aunt Rosamond at the supper table, where she and Klaus sat, right and left of the absent one's place. Klaus did not reply at once, but looked at that place and said at length: "So it will always be, soon!" And the old lady nodded sadly; she knew not what to reply, and a secret anxiety about the future stole over her, since she had seen that Klaus still bore the old wound which he had received many years ago. She had supposed it healed long since.

The next morning Anna Maria went as usual, with her bunch of keys, through kitchen and cellar. She was pale, and her orders sounded shorter and less friendly than they had of late. Only to Klaus she gave a friendly smile, but it was forced, and her eyes had no share in it. She looked over accounts with him for two hours, and, though he was distracted and restless, the results were perfectly correct. Aunt Rosamond alone was alarmed at the girl's appearance, but she did not venture to ask any questions. Anna Maria was as icily cold as often heretofore.

The next day, toward evening, Klaus came into Aunt Rosamond's room. The old lady had just hung up Felix Leonhard's portrait again, after carefully making fast the broken cord.

"Well, who was right, Aunt Rose?" he asked. He was standing beside her, and she saw that his face had grown very red, and that his whole being was stirred.

"Right? In what, Klaus?"

"In your assertion about Anna Maria. She does not love him!"

"Did she say so? Oh, well, it doesn't follow at all that a girl has spoken the truth, if she says she does not love a certain person, does not even like him. I have experienced the contrary a hundred times; those who talk so hide a warm affection under cold words."

"Not this time, Aunt Rose. Anna Maria has definitely refused him!"

The old lady sank, quite overcome, into the nearest chair. "Klaus! Est-il possible? Has he spoken already, then?"

"Not to her, but to me, aunt. He came about five o'clock this afternoon; Anna Maria was sitting at the window as he rode into the court, and she got up at once and went to her room. Stürmer sent in word to me that he wanted to speak to me alone; and then—truly, Aunt Rose, you do know how to observe—then he said to me that he loved Anna Maria, that he thought his affection was reciprocated, and other things that people usually say on such occasions; he spoke of his age, and said that he would be not only a husband but a father as well to Anna Maria. I assured him that I had the deepest respect for him, which is quite true, and after about an hour went to Anna Maria to get her answer. Her door was open; she was sitting at her little sewing table by the window, looking out into the garden; she held her New Testament in her hand, but laid it down as I came near her. I thought she had been crying, and turned her face around to me; but her eyes were dry and burning, and her forehead feverishly hot. As I began to speak she turned her head to the window again and sat motionless as a statue. I must have asked her certainly three times: 'Anna Maria, what shall I answer him? Will you do it yourself? Shall I send him to you?' 'No, no!' she cried at length, 'don't send him! I cannot see him; tell him that I—he must not be angry with me—I do not love him! Klaus, I cannot go away from here! Let me stay with you!' And then she sprang up, threw her arms about my neck, and stuck to me like a bur; but her whole frame trembled, and I thought I could feel her hot hands through my coat. After much persuasion, and promising that I would never force her, I got her so far as to sit down quietly at last; but I had to give the poor fellow his answer—and that was no trifling matter!"

"For God's sake, Klaus, what did Stürmer say?"

"Not one word, aunt; I spared him all I could, but he grew as white as the plaster on the wall. At last he asked: 'Can I speak to Anna Maria?' I said, 'No,' in accordance with her wish; then he took up his hat and whip, and bade me good-by as heartily as usual, to be sure, but the hand he gave me trembled. Poor fellow! I do pity him!"

"And Anna Maria?"

"I cannot find her, aunt, either in the sitting-room or in her own room."

At the farther end of the Hegewitz garden stood an old, very old linden; the spot was somewhat elevated, and a turfy slope stretched down to the budding privet-hedge which bounded the garden. Under the linden was a sandstone bench, also old and weather beaten, and from here one could look away out on the Mark country, far, far out over cornfields and green meadows, dark pine forests and sandy patches of heath.

There stood Anna Maria, looking toward the meadow on the other side of the road, with its countless fresh mole-hills, and the wet road which ran along beside the quiet little river, on whose banks the willows were already growing yellow. How often of late had she stood here, how often waited till a brown horse's head emerged from among the willows, and then turned quickly and hurried into the house, for he must not see that she was watching for him with all the longing of a warm, first love. And to-day? She did not know herself how she had come hither, and she looked blankly away into the mist of the spring evening as if she neither saw the golden rays of the setting sun nor heard the shouting of the village children in the distance. The air was intoxicatingly soft and played gently with the black lace veil which had fallen from Anna Maria's fair hair. She noticed it not. Then she quickly turned her head; the breathing and step of a horse sounded along by the hedge: "Kurt Stürmer!" she whispered, and started to go. But she stopped and saw him come near, saw him ride away in the rosy evening; his eyes were cast downward. How could he know who was looking after him with eyes almost transfixed with burning pain? She stood there motionless, and looked after him; the horse's tread sounded ominously in her ears as he stepped upon the little bridge which united the Dambitz and Hegewitz fields, and she still remained motionless after the willows had hidden the solitary horseman from sight.

Meanwhile the sunset glow had become deep crimson, and faded again; the wind blew harder, and rocked the budding linden-boughs, and bore along with it the sound of a maiden's voice; an old song floated past Anna Maria out into the country:

"I had better have died
Than have gained a love.
Ah, would I were not so sad!"

Then she turned and ran along the damp garden path as if pursued; she stood still by the fish-pond, so close to it that the water touched her foot, and looked into the dark mirror. In these Marieken had sought oblivion when she might not have her Gottlieb! Was it really such madness, if one—? And Anna Maria stretched out her arms and sprang into the little decaying boat by the bank.

"Anna Maria! Anna Maria!" called a man's voice just then, through the still garden.

"Klaus!" she murmured, as if awakening; she tried to answer, but no sound came from her lips. With a shudder, she climbed out of the floating boat and turned her steps toward the house.

CHAPTER V.

Spring had come again. Two years had passed since that evening. In Bütze Manor-house there was a vaulted, out-of-the-way room, which was entered by a low, small door at the end of a dark passage; the windows looked out upon the garden. Tall trees forbade entrance to the light, which had to seek admission through an artistic old lattice-work as well. This had been the lumber-room from time immemorial. All sorts of things lay, hung, and stood there, in perfect confusion. Old presses and chests, old spinning-wheels with yellowed ivory decorations, and dark oil portraits on which one could hardly detect the trace of a face; a huge bedstead with heavy gilt knobs—a French general had slept on it in the year nine, and the late Herr von Hegewitz had banished the bed to the lumber-room as a desecrated object after that, for it had originally been made to shelter a prince of the royal family for a night. The wings of the gilded eagle who sat so proudly at the top were broken off, and his beak held now only a shred of the crimson curtain, as the last remnant of former splendor. Fine cobwebs reached from one piece of furniture to another, and yellowish dust lay on the floor, a sign that the wood-worm was undisturbed here.

Here Anna Maria stood and looked about her, as if in search of something. She scarcely knew herself just why she had come in here; she had happened to go by, and then it had flashed across her mind that it might be well to give the old lumber-room a breath of fresh spring air, and she had taken the bunch of keys from her belt and come in. The young linden leaves outside let one or two inquisitive sunbeams through the window, and myriads of grains of dust floated up and down in them. It was so quiet in the room, among the antique furniture. Anna Maria was just in the mood for it; she sat down in an arm-chair and leaned her head against the moth-eaten cushion, her eyes half-closed, her hands folded in her lap.

She felt so peaceful; the old furniture seemed to preach to her of the perishable nature of man. Where were all the hands that had made it? the eyes that had delighted in it? She thought how some time her spinning-wheel, too, would stand here, and how many days and hours must pass before strange hands would bring it here, as superfluous rubbish. Strange hands! She felt a sudden fear. Strange hands! For centuries Bütze had descended in direct line from father to son—and now?

Anna Maria rose quickly and went to the window, as if to frighten away unpleasant thoughts; the soft, mild spring air blew toward her and reminded her of the most unhappy hour of her life, and again she turned and walked quickly through the room. Then her foot struck against something, and she saw the cradle, lightly rocking in front of her—the heavy, gayly painted old cradle in which the Hegewitzes had had their first slumber for more than two hundred years—Klaus too, and she too. And Anna Maria knelt down and threw her arms about the little rocking cradle, and kissed the glaring painted roses and cherubs, and a few bitter tears flowed from under her lashes, the first that she had shed since that day.

"Why did I, too, have to lie there in the cradle? It might have been so different, so much better," she thought. "Poor thing, you must decay and fall to dust here, and at last irreverent hands will take you and throw you into the fire. Poor Klaus! For my sake!" And almost tenderly she wiped the dust from the arabesques on the back, and shook up the little yellow pillows.

Just then came the sound of a quick, manly step in the passage, and before Anna Maria had time to rise, Klaus stood in the open door.

"Do I find you here?" he asked in astonishment, and at first laughing, then more serious, he looked at Anna Maria, who rose and came toward him.

"I wanted to let some fresh air in here, and found our old cradle, Klaus," she said quietly.

"Yes, Anna Maria—but you have been crying," he rejoined.

"Oh, I was only thinking that it was quite unnecessary that the poor thing should have been hunted up again for me!" The bitterness of her heart pressed unconsciously to her lips to-day.

"Anna Maria! What puts such thoughts into your head?" asked Klaus von Hegewitz, in amazement. And drawing his sister to him, he stroked her hair lovingly. "What should I do without you?"

She made a slight convulsive movement, and freed herself from his arms.

"But, listen, sister," he continued, "I know whence such feelings come. You must become low-spirited in this old nest; you have no companions of your own age, you withdraw more and more from every youthful pleasure, and, although you think you can do without these things, you will have to pay for it some day."

Anna Maria shook her head.

"Yes, yes!" he continued, stepping in front of the window, and his tall figure obstructed the sunlight so that the room grew dark all at once. "I have seen more of life, I know it. What should you think, Anna Maria, if you—" He paused and drew a letter from his pocket. "I had better read the letter to you. I was just looking for you, to talk with you about it. Professor Mattoni is dead!"

Anna Maria looked over to him sympathetically. Klaus had turned around and was looking out of the window; the paper in his hand shook slightly. She knew how deeply the news of this death touched him. Professor Mattoni had been his tutor, had lived in Bütze for years, and the pleasantest memories of his boyhood were connected with this man. As a youth he had had in him a truly fatherly friend and adviser, and had since visited him every year, in Berlin, where he held a position as professor in the E—— Institute.

Anna Maria took her brother's hand and pressed it silently. "Yet one true friend less," she then said; "we shall soon be quite alone, Klaus!"

"He was more than a friend to me, Anna Maria," he replied gently, "he was a father to me."

She nodded; she knew it well. "And the letter?" she asked.

"A last request, almost illegible; he wishes that I should take charge of his little daughter, till she—so he writes—till she is independent enough to take up the battle of life."

"His little daughter?" asked Anna Maria. "Had he still so young a child?"

"I am sorry to say," said Klaus, "that I know nothing at all of his family affairs. He married late in life, and probably had every reason for not presenting his better half: some said he picked her up somewhere in Hungary; others, that she had been a chorus singer in one of the inferior theatres in Berlin. I never spoke to him about it, and when I went to his house I saw in his study no indications that any female being presided there. I have never noticed anything on my frequent visits to show that such a person lived with Mattoni, and remember just once that while we were having a pleasant hour's chat, a child's cry came from the next room, whereupon he got up and knocked emphatically on the door. The screaming child was probably carried to a back room, for it grew still next door, and we talked on. Then I once heard that his wife was dead; I have never seen any outward tokens of affliction on him, but the child seems to be alive."

"And now, Klaus?"

The tall man had turned, and was looking absently at the little wooden cradle.

"And now, Anna Maria? I owe him so much"—he spoke almost imploringly—"may I impose such a burden upon you?"

"Klaus, what a question! Of course! Please take the necessary steps at once, and have the child come."

"The child, Anna Maria? Why, I think she must have reached the limits of childhood now!"

"That doesn't matter, Klaus. Then I will instruct her in housekeeping, and all sorts of things which she may find useful in her life."

"I thank you sincerely, Anna Maria," he replied; "I hope you will take pleasure in the girl." He said this with a sigh of relief, which did not escape Anna Maria's ear.

"You act exactly as if you had been afraid of me, Klaus," she remarked, with a passing smile; "as if I should not always wish anything that seemed desirable to you."

"Just because I know that, Anna Maria," he said, grasping her hands affectionately, "I wish, too, that you might do it gladly, that it might be no sacrifice to you——"

"I am really and truly glad the child is coming," she said honestly. And so they stood opposite each other in the forsaken lumber-room; it was now flooded with sunshine, and the two strong figures stood out from a golden background. The shadows of the young leaves about the window played lightly over them, and the call of the thrush echoed from the woods far away without.

"A sacrifice!" he had said, and yet they had each already made the greatest sacrifice of which a human heart is capable, and each thought it unknown to the other. And at their feet rocked the heavy cradle, moved by Anna Maria's dress, and it rocked on, long after the two had left the room.

CHAPTER VI.

Thirty years had passed away, and on a stormy autumn evening a young couple sat before a crackling fire, in Bütze Manor-house—she, a slender, girlish figure, fair, with pleasant blue eyes; he, tall, or seeming so from a certain delicacy of form, and also fair; but a pair of bright brown eyes contrasted strangely with his light hair.

Without, the wind was raging about the old house, as it had done many years before, and sang of past times; now and then it set up a howl of furious rage, and then sounded again in low, long-drawn, plaintive tones, as if singing a long-forgotten love-song.

The young wife in the comfortable easy-chair had been listening to it a long time; now she said in a clear voice:

"Klaus, this would be just the evening to read aloud the journal."

He started up out of a deep revery. "What journal, my child!"

"That little packet of papers that we found the other day, in rummaging about in Aunt Rosamond's writing-desk."

He nodded. "Yes, we will do it," he said, "it will be a bit of family history, perhaps about my parents. I was just thinking how little I know of them, and it makes me sad. Mother Anna Maria makes her account so short and scanty, as if she did not like to talk about it, and whenever she mentions her only brother her eyes grow moist. Come, sit down on the sofa with me; I will get the papers."

He rose, went to an old-fashioned desk, and took a little packet of papers from the middle drawer. The young wife had meanwhile taken up a bit of dainty needlework, and now they sat, side by side, on the sofa, before the lamp, and he unfolded the sheets.