It was the same rich voice that had spoken before, and, like it, could belong only to such a fresh young creature. Anna Maria von Hegewitz was just turned eighteen, and the whole charm of these eighteen years was woven about her slender figure and the rosy face under her braids of fair hair. In contradiction to this girlishness, a pair of deep gray eyes looked out from beneath the white forehead, seriously, and with almost a look of experience, which, with a peculiar self-conscious expression about the mouth, lent a certain austerity to the face.
"Thank you, my dear, I am well," replied the old lady, seating herself at the round table before the sofa, upon which were burning four candles in shining brass candlesticks. "Don't let me interrupt you, ma mignonne. I see I have broken in upon your writing; are you writing to Klaus?"
"I have only been looking over the grain accounts, aunt; I shall be done in a moment. I shall not write again to Klaus, for he must return day after to-morrow at the latest. If you will excuse me a moment——"
"Oh, certainly, child. I will occupy myself alone meanwhile." The old lady drew her knitting-work from the silk bag and began to work, at the same time glancing dreamily about the large, warm, comfortable room.
She had known it thus long since; nothing in it had been altered since her youth—the same deep arm-chairs around the table, the artistic inlaid cupboards, even the dark, stamped leather wall-paper was still the same, and the old rococo clock still ticked its low, swift to-and-fro, as if it could not make the time pass quickly enough. And there at the desk, where the young niece was sitting, her only brother had worked and calculated, and at that sewing-table on the estrade at the window had been the favorite seat of the sister-in-law who died so young. But how little resemblance there was between mother and daughter!
The old lady looked over toward her again. The girl's lips moved, and the slender hand passed slowly with the pencil down the row of figures on the paper. "Makes five hundred and seventy-five thaler, twenty-three groschen," she said, half-aloud. "Correct!
"Now, then, Aunt Rosamond, I am at your service." She extinguished the candle, locked the writing-desk, and bringing a pretty spinning-wheel from the corner, sat down near her aunt, and soon the little wheel was gently humming, and the slender fingers drawing the finest of thread from the shining flax. For a while the room was quiet, the silence broken only by the howling of the storm and the crackling of the burning log in the stove.
"Anna Maria," began the old lady at last, "you know I never interfere with your arrangements, so pardon me if I ask why you send Marieken away."
"She has a love affair with Gottlieb," replied the niece, shortly.
"I am sorry for that, Anna Maria; she was always a girl who respected herself; ought you to act so severely?"