ork, at the
same time glancing dreamily about the large, warm, comfortable room.

She had known it thus long since; nothing in it had been altered since
her youth--the same deep arm-chairs around the table, the artistic
inlaid cupboards, even the dark, stamped leather wall-paper was still
the same, and the old rococo clock still ticked its low, swift
to-and-fro, as if it could not make the time pass quickly enough. And
there at the desk, where the young niece was sitting, her only brother
had worked and calculated, and at that sewing-table on the estrade at
the window had been the favorite seat of the sister-in-law who died so
young. But how little resemblance there was between mother and daughter!

The old lady looked over toward her again. The girl's lips moved, and
the slender hand passed slowly with the pencil down the row of figures
on the paper. "Makes five hundred and seventy-five thaler, twenty-three
groschen," she said, half-aloud. "Correct!

"Now, then, Aunt Rosamond, I am at your service." She extinguished the
candle, locked the writing-desk, and bringing a pretty spinning-wheel
from the corner, sat down near her aunt, and soon the little wheel was
gently humming, and the slender fingers drawing the finest of thread
from the shining flax. For a while the room was quiet, the silence
broken only by the howling of the storm and the crackling of the burning
log in the stove.

"Anna Maria," began the old lady at last, "you know I never interfere
with your arrangements, so pardon me if I ask why you send Marieken
away."

"She has a love affair with Gottlieb," replied the niece, shortly.

"I am sorry for that, Anna Maria; she was always a girl who respected
herself; ought you to act so severely?"

"She gives him her supper secretly, and runs about the garden with him
on pitch-dark nights. I will not have such actions in my house, and know
that Klaus would not approve of it either." The words sounded strangely
from the young lips.

"Yes, Anna Maria "--Rosamond von Hegewitz smiled "if you will judge
thus! These people have quite different sentiments from us, and--and you
cannot know, I suppose, if their views are honest?"

"That is nothing to me!" replied Anna Maria. "They _cannot_ marry,
because they are both as poor as church mice. What is to come of it? The
girl must leave; you surely see that, dear aunt?"

The old lady now laughed aloud. "One can see, Anna Maria, that you know
nothing yet of a real att