"'Years do not make the age, Aunt Rosamond, but the soul, the nature, the experiences. If God will, she shall find in me rather a mother, for as a companion I am worth nothing. I should have to conform her to myself—oh, never!'
"I knew that Anna Maria's whole heart, usually so coldly closed, had opened to receive a fatherless and motherless creature, to love it, in her way, with all her might—in her way, indeed, and that was not understood by every one. How much time have I spent in trying to fathom that nature, which apparently lay open to every eye, against whose sharp corners and angles almost every one ran, who had anything to do with her.
"'Has Klaus gone to meet your guest?' I asked.
"'No, he rode out into the fields. Why should he?' she rejoined. 'Old Maier drove away to S—— yesterday, and I think every second she must come. I only hope it will be before the approaching thunder-storm breaks!'
"The unpleasant stillness before the threatening storm pervaded the outside world. I went up to Anna Maria at the open window and looked at the black clouds looming up in the horizon. My eyes roved beyond the trees in the garden, out into the country; strangely near seemed the dark forests and Dambitz with its clumsy tower.
"'How near Dambitz looks,' I remarked, 'and it is really so far away.'
"Anna Maria turned quickly. 'Very far,' she said listlessly.
"'Stürmer still stays away,' I began, designedly. I felt compassion for the man whom an incomprehensible whim of a girl had driven away into the world, just when he had hoped to find a home and heart; I had once, for the space of half an hour, imagined that she loved him.
"I received no answer, but about the girl's lips there lay such an expression of pride and defiant resolution that I resolved never to mention that name again. She gazed fixedly at the dark clouds, and at last said, in a wearily oppressed tone: 'Is not that the rumbling of a carriage?'
"'Perhaps the thunder,' I replied. But before we had closed the window and I had looked around the room again, Brockelmann stood, with flushed face, before Anna Maria. 'Gracious Fräulein, she is—they are here—God in Heaven!'