t on quietly in the house without a master. Anna Maria was busy
until late in the evening; she possessed an endless capacity for work.
'I can bear Klaus's absence easier so,' she said, when I urged her to
give herself some rest. 'I miss him infinitely, aunt!' Stuermer came
occasionally to inquire for the ladies. Once he arrived at the same time
with Anna Maria; she, like him, was on horseback; they had probably met
on the highway, for Anna Maria came from the fields, the bailiff behind
her. I was standing at the window with Susanna. 'What a splendid
couple!' said I, involuntarily, and indeed I thought I had scarcely ever
seen Anna Maria look so handsome.

"Klaus wrote rarely; those times were not like the present, and one was
well satisfied to receive a letter once a fortnight. Anna Maria answered
promptly; her accounts must have been sufficiently detailed, for no
letter or inquiry in regard to our secret came to me. Anna Maria used to
read Klaus's letters, with the exception of the business portions,
aloud, after supper. There was a certain homesick sound in the words,
calmly and coolly as they were written. But her face beamed at every
word which he wrote from the enchanted Silesia in praise of the poor
home in the Mark; it stirred her whole heart. Next to her tender
affection for her brother, she clung with an idolizing love to her
home; no mountain lake could compare with the brown, oak-bound pond in
the garden, no high mountain-range with the charm of the heath, with the
pine-forests in the cradle of Prussia.

"And the object which doubled all the longing, which made the old
manor-house at Buetze seem in the eyes of the distant owner like a fairy
castle, like a rendezvous of the elves--this object sat playing with her
kitten during the reading, and now and then I even had to tap her
shoulder as she yawned slightly.

"'Is that only feigned indifference?' I asked myself. Then, again, a
sad, weary smile would play about her mouth if Klaus were the subject of
conversation. I thought at the time that she was fretting over the
long-delayed continuation of that hot declaration of love; that she,
with her ardent nature, was tormenting herself to death with doubts. And
I could not speak a consoling word to her; Klaus did not wish it. Why
should Susanna be spared a

"'Hangen und Bangen
In schwebender Pein'?

"One morning a peasant lad came running into the yard, bringing a letter
for Susanna; the old mam'selle