ere,
which could not be better or more seemly in the richest man's dwelling.
In truth, to my knowledge there was not the smallest thing in the little
house by the river of which a virtuous damsel need feel ashamed. But at
night, in our bed-chamber, Ann confessed to me that she had taken it as a
favor of fortune that she should be allowed, at once, to lay bare to the
great lady who had been so unwilling to open her doors to her, exactly
what she was and to whom she belonged.

"To be deemed unworthy of heed by my lady hostess," said she, "would have
been hard to bear; but whereas she truly cared to question me, a simple
maid, and I have nothing hid, all is clear and plain betwixt us."

My aunt doubtless thought in like manner; for she was a truthful woman,
and Ann's honest, firm, and withal gentle way had won her heart. And yet,
since she was strait in her opinions, and must deem it unseemly in me and
my kinsfolk to receive a maid of lower birth as one of ourselves, she
stoutly avowed that Ann's worthy father, as being chief clerk in the
Chancery, might claim to be accounted one of the Council. Never, as she
said to my uncle, would she have suffered a workingman's daughter to
cross her threshold, whereas she had a large place, not alone at her
table but in her heart, for this gentle daughter of a worthy member of
the worshipful Council.

And such speech was good to my ears and to my uncle Conrad's; but the
best of all was that already, by the end of a week or two, Ann seemed
likely to supplant me wholly in the love my aunt had erewhile shown to
me; Ann thenceforth was diligent in waiting on the sick lady, and such
loving duty won her more and more of my uncle's love, who found his
weakly, suffering wife much on his hands, and that in the plainest sense
of the words, since, whenever he might be at home, she would allow no
other creature to lift her from one spot to another.

Now, whereas Uncle Conrad had taught Ann to mark the divers voices of the
forest, so did she open my eyes to the many virtues of my aunt, which,
heretofore, I had been wont to veil from my own sight out of wrath at her
hardness to my cousin Gotz.

Ann, in her compassion and thankfulness, had truly learnt to love her,
and she now led me to perceive that she was in many ways a right wise and
good woman. Her low, sheltered couch in the peaceful chimney-corner was,
as it were, the centre of a wide net, and she herself the spider-wife who
had spun it,