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 Stuermer, 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