"And she went, she really went away! On one of the first days of April, early in the day, the carriage which was to take her away stopped before the front steps.
"Anna Maria went down the steps with me, followed by Brockelmann. She quickly got in, and drew her dark gauze veil over her face. 'Greet Klaus heartily for me,' she whispered to me again; 'all the happiness in the world to him and his wife!'
"Then she was gone, and I went quietly up the steps. It seemed unspeakably strange and lonely here to me all at once. I wandered through the newly furnished rooms; they had all been heated and the windows opened. Comfortable, elegant, very pleasant it looked all about here, as if made expressly for Susanna's beauty; but they were no longer the old Bütze rooms, with their ancestral comfort, their dear associations. I stood now in Susanna's little boudoir; I noticed a fold of the pale blue portière yonder hanging, out of order, over an indistinguishable object—the upholsterer surely had not intended it so. I went over and lifted up the heavy silk to lay it again in regular folds on the carpet, when my eye fell upon a little old wooden cradle, painted with a crest, and oddly curved, strangely contrasting, in its rude form, with the elegant appointments of the room; and gently rocking in it were shining white, fine, lace-trimmed pillows, daintily tied with little blue bows; a basket pushed half under the couch of the young wife concealed little clothes of the finest linen, most beautifully sewed, hem-stitched, and trimmed with lace, made as only a skilled hand knows how.
"'Anna Maria,' I said, softly, looking with moist eyes upon the old cradle in which she, in which Klaus had once lain, and which now stood here, a greeting of reconciliation to the heart of the young wife who had robbed her of her peace and happiness.
"Two days later there was a lively stir at Bütze. Unfortunately, a bad headache banished me to a sofa in my dark room, so that I could not welcome the young couple on the threshold of their home. But I heard up here the unusual moving about; the bell in the servants' room, which had been formerly so seldom used, rang a regular alarm, and there was such a slamming of doors and rushing and running about for the first few hours that I had to draw the thickest pillow over my aching head in order to have any quiet.
"Klaus came up to me very soon; he sat down quietly by my bed and pressed my hand.
"'You are glad to be at home again?' I asked kindly. 'How is your little wife?'
"'Thank you,' he replied, 'she is asleep now. I do not know; I must accustom myself to it first; it has been made so different, so strange, with all these alterations. And then'—he was silent—'one misses Anna Maria everywhere,' he added.
"'You incorrigible people, you!' I scolded vexatiously, 'Bend or break, but not yield, and then perish with longing for each other! A silly, stupid set you are!'
"He made no reply to that. 'After three months in the country,' said he, 'I will go and get her. Now it is better that Susanna should remain alone.'