the
court was quiet. And then Brockelmann came in again: 'It broke out in
the second house from the forge, the lads say, and the forge is
half-burned, too.' Oh, Heaven, and Anna Maria does not come!

"The old woman sat down by my bed. 'She does not think of herself,' she
complained; 'she will run into the burning house if it is possible. Ah,
if the master were only here!' Good Brockelmann, she knew better than
Stuermer how to judge Anna Maria.

"'Fraeulein,' she whispered, already following another train of thought,
'do you know--but you must not take it amiss--the baron comes so often
now, and as I saw them both drive out of the yard to-day, then--I keep
thinking she will marry him yet.'

"'Oh, how can you talk such nonsense?" said I, chiding these words in
vexation.

"'Yet, I say, the next thing will be a wedding in the house!' declared
the old woman. 'The great myrtle down-stairs is full of buds, and I also
found a bridal rose in the garden. And last New Year's eve I listened at
the door and heard the young master just saying: "Invite to the
wedding!" And that will all come true. And then--but you must not act as
if you knew it--I have had Anna Maria in my arms from the day she was
born, and know her as no one else does, and I know how she cried over
the note that the baron wrote her at the time when he went far away into
the world, and, Fraeulein, she always has it with her! Oh, I see so much
that I am not intended to see; but she cannot dissemble, Anna Maria.'

"Ah! what the old woman was saying was of no importance to me; only news
of Susanna; everything else later! 'My God, Susanna,' I murmured, 'if
anything has happened to her!' And unable to stay quietly in bed any
longer, I bade Brockelmann help me dress. At last a carriage rolled in
at the gate and stopped before the house. I sat up in bed, and kept my
eyes on the door. Susanna _must_ come! Brockelmann had hurried
down-stairs; I heard Anna Maria's voice on the stairs, and her
footsteps, and then she came in.

"'For God's sake, where is Susanna?' I cried to her.

"'With her old nurse, who has been made really ill from fright,' she
said quietly, and sank exhausted into the chair by my bed.

"'But, Anna Maria,' I wailed, 'the forge is burned down!'

"'They are at the castle,' she replied, gently. 'Stuermer has given a
shelter to all who were burned out.'

"'In the castle?' At the first moment the thought was quieting to me,
but then my heart grew he