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!"