With a deep sigh Susie drew out the key of the room from beneath her pillow and handed it to her young mistress, who was hastily pulling off her velvet jacket. "Of course the corner room is not heated," she said, taking up a basket of wood by the stove.
"No, 'tis impossible you should do that," said Doctor Bruck, with a glance at her rich dress. He laid hat and cane on the table.
"I should be very much ashamed if I could not," she replied, gravely, but with a blush, as she noticed his glance.
She went out, and in a few moments a fine fire was crackling in the stove of the corner room, where Doctor Bruck opened the windows, that the fresh warm breath of March might replace the odour of soap and water.
Kitty entered. "I beg you to observe, Herr Doctor," she said, "that I am still fit to be seen," displaying as she spoke, not without some scorn in the gesture, her small, rosy hands, their wrists encircled by snowy linen cuffs.
An expressive smile lit up his grave face; he said nothing, however, but turned away to close again the southern window, through which a strong draught came so freshly that it fluttered the brown curls upon the girl's forehead. The curtain, too, blew into the room; Kitty seized it with a skilful hand and tried to replace each stiff fold as it was before.
"Poor dear Susie! if she only knew how I detest these curtains!" she said, half laughing, half provoked. "They must stay now whether I like them or not, for she must have coaxed them out of my guardian entirely for me. Figured muslin curtains before such arched windows in the finest mediæval room that can be imagined! I meant to arrange and furnish it just as it might have been three centuries ago, with round, leaded panes of glass, and broad, oaken, cushioned window-seats; and there, upon the huge door leading out upon the stairs, I meant to have large antique brass bolts and hinges. Grandpapa must have had the old ones taken off; the marks are still there to show where they were. And then, with old Susie sitting by the window at her spinning-wheel!—I had imagined it all so pretty and cosy,—and now I shall have to give up the whole thing."
"But I can't see—— Are you not mistress here?"
"Oh, I shall never be able to do anything in such a case; I know myself too well," she replied, almost dejectedly. "In such matters I am a terrible coward." The contrast between this frank confession and the young girl's commanding exterior was so great that there needed indeed a keen glance into her hazel eyes to convince one that she spoke only the simple truth. These eyes were not very large, but well shaped and clear; their calm gaze was in thorough harmony with her independent, self-assured bearing. How quietly and practically she arranged everything for the coming of the invalid! A bed was made up on the sofa; the castle miller's huge leather-cushioned arm-chair was drawn out of the window-niche and placed so as to shelter the patient from every draught. She brought a little table from the recess, and placed the well-scoured footstool before the high sofa, and all was done as regularly and easily as if she had never been away from the mill. She was so absorbed in the occupation of the moment that she seemed to have quite forgotten the presence of the man standing by the southern window. Only when she opened the table-drawer and took out a white cloth with a woven red border, to spread it upon the little table in front of the arm-chair, did she turn to him and say, "There is something delightful in this old bourgeois order; nothing is ever out of place. Here it all was before I was born, and in all these six years that I have been away nothing has been changed. I am at home at once." She pointed to the mirror above the table. "There, behind the frame, I see the corner of the almanac, where grandpapa kept his accounts, and over the top is still sticking the rod, with its faded ribbon, once my mother's terror."
"And yours too?"