My wife, however, looked over to us with a significant glance that seemed quite distinctly to say, "There, you can see now that she is free from prejudice, and full of imperturbable kindness."
Notwithstanding her love and respect for us, Annette found great pleasure in her intimate relations with the neighboring family of Baron Arven. This may have been the result of her having formerly been kept in the background.
Her constant journeyings to and fro were the occasion of our making some delightful acquaintances.
Just beyond the boundary line, where I owned a large piece of woodland, there resided a young forester, who was of noble birth, and a relative of Annette's husband. We had before that been strangers to each other; but Annette knew how to draw him and his wife into our circle, and we were charmed by the simple manners of these highly cultivated people.
Our family was so widely extended that we found it quite easy to trace a distant relationship to our newly discovered friends. The young wife was the daughter of a high official. Though living in the woods, she did not neglect her intellectual life, and found good music of great assistance in that regard. She had also been able to bring up sturdy boys; and we were quite pleased to learn that her only rule with them had been truthfulness and obedience. These two requisites had been firmly and inexorably insisted upon, and as a result the boys did their parents great credit.
The new element that Annette had thus introduced into our circle often caused us to forget that the very next hour might bring us the saddest news.
CHAPTER III.
It was eventide. The clear tones of the village bell filled the valley and were echoed back from the mountains opposite. The young woods down by the stone wall seemed transparent with the reflection of the rosy sunset, and all looked as if bathed in golden clouds.
We were sitting in the arbor, and every one was probably thinking to himself, "Perhaps at this very moment men of the same nation--yea, brothers--may be murdering one another on the battle-field."
In a low voice, and with an absence of all that resembled her usual excessive excitability, Annette remarked that my wife ought to feel very happy to think that she had planted yonder wood.