CHAPTER IV.
Meanwhile Anna Maria had gone quickly down-stairs and entered her brother's room. He was sitting at his desk, rummaging about in the drawers for the missing papers. Klaus von Hegewitz was exactly like other men in this respect, that he never could find anything, and grew so vexed in hunting, that from very irritation he found nothing. At the door stood the farm inspector and a little old man who was well known at Bütze, Isaac Aron the Jew. He made a deep reverence to Anna Maria, and said contentedly: "Now matters will be brought into good shape; the gracious Fräulein knows the place of everything in the whole house."
Anna Maria paid no attention to this, but, going to the desk, confidently put her hand into a drawer, and gave a little packet of papers to her brother. "There, Klaus," said she, looking with a smile in his flushed face, "why did you not call me at once?"
The troubled face grew bright. "Upon my word, Anna Maria," he cried gayly, "these are stupid things; I have had that package in my hands twenty times at least. A thousand thanks! I say again and again, Anna Maria, what would become of me without you?"
The smile suddenly disappeared from her face, and she looked thoughtfully at the stately figure of her brother, who had stepped up to the men and was negotiating with them. The words fell on her ears as in a dream, and quite mechanically she took up her train and walked out of the room. As she was about to close the door, her brother called after her: "Anna Maria, shall I meet you by and by in the sitting-room? The gardener wants to talk with us about the new work in the wood."
She had no idea, as she stood outside, whether or not she had answered him; then she sat down in her room, and her eyes wandered about the familiar spot and rested at length on her brother's portrait. But she saw it not; in her mind was another picture, another man's head. The red-tiled roof of Dambitz Manor rose before her eyes, and over him and her the brown, budding branches of the linden-walk in the Dambitz garden fluttered and beat in the damp spring air, and at their feet long rows of snow-drops bloomed and shook their little white heads.
"Anna Maria," he had called her, "Anna Maria," as in her childhood. She started up, as if awakening from a long, deep dream. Ah, no! it was true; scarcely an hour ago he had spoken thus to her, and Anna Maria von Hegewitz had stood before him as if under a spell.
What else had he said? She knew no longer, only the words "Anna Maria" sounded to her very soul; and as on that St. Martin's Eve she had put her hands in his, and he had drawn her close to him—only one short moment, she scarcely knew whether it were dream or reality. Then Klaus had come down the steps—"Klaus! ah, Heaven, Klaus!"
She leaned her head against the back of the sofa and closed her eyes. She saw herself going away from the old house here. Could her foot cross the threshold? And she saw Klaus looking in the door-way, looking after her with his kind, true eyes, perhaps with tears in them. And there came to her all the words which she had so often spoken to him, caressingly: "I will stay with you, Klaus, always, always!" And now the strong girl began to weep; she scarcely knew what tears were, but now they gushed from her eyes with all the force of a shaken soul.
And yet above all this pain there hovered a feeling of infinite happiness, through the dark veil of sadness gleamed bright rays—the premonitions of a wonderful future, the suspicion that the life which she had led hitherto was hardly to be called living, because that one thing had been wanting which first consecrates and gives value to a happy life.