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. _Voila 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 s