ed
any regulation of yours with regard to Fraeulein 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