ing my head. 'Oh, Klaus, for my part, I wish your bird of paradise
were in the moon, at any rate not here.' I overtook her at the next turn
of the path, where there was a red thorn in the splendor of full bloom;
it bent its branches almost humbly under this superabundance of rosy
adornment, at which Susanna was looking admiringly.

"'Oh, how charming!' she cried, as she saw me. 'Oh, how wonderfully
beautiful!' And the purest joy shone from her eyes. How did that accord
with the bonbon motto?

"In that moment I resolved not to lose confidence in the girl's
character, and at every opportunity to help lift the young spirit into
higher regions. I have honestly striven to fulfil this promise. I may
testify to it to myself--not so violently, not in so dictatorial and
severe a manner as Anna Maria did I proceed; not like Klaus either. Ah,
me--Klaus! Those first eight weeks in general! Ah, if I only knew how to
describe the time which now followed! There is so little to say, and yet
such an immense change was brought about in our house.

"Whether Susanna Mattoni ever missed her old nurse, I did not know. When
she awoke on that first morning and found Anna Maria by her bed instead
of the little actress, to inform her that the latter had left the house,
great tears had streamed from her eyes. Anna Maria had said: 'Be
reasonable, Susanna, and do not make a request that I cannot grant.' And
Susanna had replied, with an inimitable mingling of childishness and
pride: 'Have no fear, Fraeulein von Hegewitz, I never ask a second time!'

"Anna Maria told me about it later, years afterward. Indeed, there was
no slight amount of pride in that little head.

"Anna Maria began the practical education with the thoroughness peculiar
to her in everything. With her iron constitution, her need of bodily
activity, she had no suspicion that there were people in the world for
whom such activity might be too much. Susanna had to go through kitchen
and cellar, Susanna was initiated into the mysteries of the great
washing, and Susanna drove with her, afternoons, in the burning heat
into the fields, in order to explore the agricultural botany. Anna
Maria's face showed a glimmer of happiness; she now had some one to whom
she was indispensable, so she thought.

"And Klaus? Klaus had never in his life sat so constantly in his room as
now; he went into the garden-parlor seldom or never, and only at
mealtimes came to look into the sitting-room or out on