"'May I say something to you, Klaus?'
"'Certainly, Anna Maria,' he replied.
"'Then do not give Susanna any bonbons; that is, do not contradict me so directly when I have occasion to reprove her.'
"Klaus sat bolt upright in his wooden chair. 'Anna Maria,' he began, 'I don't think you can complain of my having found fault with or revoked any regulation of yours with regard to Fräulein Mattoni; although'—he stopped, and knocked the ashes from his pipe against the flagstones.
"'Did I do anything with Susanna which displeased you?' she asked.
"But she got no answer, for just then the subject of discussion flew up the steps, and sat down again, modestly, in her place. Anna Maria rose, took a shawl from her shoulders, and wrapped it about the girl who was breathing very fast. 'You are heated, Susanna, you might take cold.' Klaus now smoked the faster, and on saying good-night held out both hands to Anna Maria; but she placed hers in them only lightly.
"Ah, yes, the first omens, slight and scarcely noticeable! Perhaps they would have escaped my eyes if I had not had, from the very first, a foreboding of coming evil. I do not know if Susanna received the promised bonbons. Probably not; and after that episode everything went on in the usual course, until there came a day full of unforeseen events, full of developments, which placed us all at once in the most dreadful entanglements.
"It was an oppressively hot day, just in the middle of the harvesting. In the court-yard and in the house a veritable deathly stillness reigned, and not even a leaf on the trees stirred under the scorching midday sun. I sat in one of the deep window-niches of the great hall which lies on the garden side of the house and opens out on the terrace. Here it was endurable, for the heat could not easily penetrate the thick walls, and the tall elms which shaded the terrace, and the wild-grape which covered it with its luxurious festoons, made a cool, green, dim light. Even now the garden-parlor is my favorite retreat during the warm weather. At that time, however, there was no carved-oak furniture here, nor was there a gay mosaic pavement on the terrace; the white varnished chairs and the couches covered with red-flowered chintz answered the same purpose, as did the worn old sandstone flags with which the terrace was paved, in whose crevices grass and all sorts of weeds sprung up picturesquely; and the heavy gray sandstone railing had quite as feudal a look as the artistic wrought-iron balustrade there now, and, to tell the truth, pleased me better. Some of us have such an affection to the old things; but that is pardonable, I think.
"So I was sitting in the garden-parlor, and growing a little dreamy, as I still like to do, and listening abstractedly to Anna Maria's voice as she went over her accounts, half aloud, in the sitting-room close by. Klaus was in the fields again, for the first wheat was to be brought in to-day, and I was waiting for Susanna to come for a sewing lesson, but in vain. She must be asleep, I thought, half content to think so, for the heat fairly paralyzed my will-power. And so a long time passed, till a heavy step sounded on the stone flags outside, and immediately after Klaus, dusty and red with heat, came in and threw himself wearily into the nearest chair.
"'Where is Susanna?' he asked, wiping his hot forehead with his handkerchief.