And yet above all this pain there hovered a feeling of infinite happiness, through the dark veil of sadness gleamed bright rays--the premonitions of a wonderful future, the suspicion that the life which she had led hitherto was hardly to be called living, because that one thing had been wanting which first consecrates and gives value to a happy life.
She rose and went up to her brother's portrait. "Klaus, dear Klaus, I cannot help it, indeed!" she whispered; and then she wandered about the room, a tender smile on her lips, and a laugh in her eyes.
The sound of the servants' supper-bell roused her from her dreams; she changed her riding-habit for a house-dress, but laid the snow-drops in the Bible on her writing-desk, and gave the little white blossoms a caressing touch before she took up her basket of keys to leave the room. She was met on the way to the sitting-room by a fresh, curly-haired girl, carrying an armful of flashing brass candlesticks, her black eyes almost as bright as the shining metal.
"Well, Marieken," asked Anna Maria, "is the outfit ready?"
The brisk girl laughed all over her face. "Oh, not quite, Fräulein; but it is three weeks to Easter, and Gottlieb is painting the rooms now in our house, and the cabinet-maker is going to bring our things next week."
Anna Maria nodded kindly, but did not reply. Her thoughts were already again in Dambitz, wandering through the rooms of the castle. Most of them were still empty, but a time was doubtless coming for her too when the cabinet-maker would bring her things. And Anna Maria looked at the girl and smiled; she knew not why herself; it was from overflowing happiness. And Marieken laughed too--a perfect harmony of youth, hope, and happiness. Then the girl ran on with her candlesticks, and Anna Maria walked down the corridor, and in both hearts was the same sunshine. She must hurry, for Klaus would surely be waiting for her, he wanted to speak with her about the work in the garden.
Next to Klaus's room was a small room, where Anna Maria remembered to have put away in her portfolio of drawings the roughly sketched plan of the alterations, and as Klaus was not yet in the sitting-room she hurried back to get it.
It was almost dark, and she could but indistinctly discern the objects in the little room, which Klaus jokingly called his library because of a bookcase which found its place there. So the more distinctly came to her ears a hearty laugh from her brother, and, with the laugh, the sound of her own name.