Ann had gone to pack her little baggage with Susan’s help, but she had bid me remain with the child.  It was going on finely; it would play with the doll my Aunt had given it in happy pastime, and now I did the little one’s bidding and was right glad to be her play fellow for a while.  Time slipped on as I sat there making merry with little Katie, doing the dolly’s leather breeches and jerkin off and on, blowing on the child’s little shoulder when it smarted or giving her a sweetmeat to comfort her, and still Ann came not, albeit she had promised to join me so soon as her baggage was ready.

Hereupon a sudden fear seized me, and as soon as the housekeeper came up I went to seek Ann in our chamber.  There stood all her chattel, so neat as only she could make them; and I learnt from Susan that Ann had gone down, some time since, into Aunt Jacoba’s chamber.

I was minded to seek her there, and went by the ante-chamber where the sick lady’s writing-table and books stood, and which led to the sitting chamber.  I trod lightly by reason that the knight’s chamber was beneath; thus no one heard me; but I could see beyond the dark ante-chamber into the further one, where wax lights were burning in a double candlestick, and lo!  Ann was on her knees by the sick lady’s couch, like to the linden-tree which the storm had overthrown yesternight; and she hid her face in my aunt’s lap and sobbed so violently that her slender body shook as though in a fever.  And Aunt Jacoba had laid her two hands on Ann’s head, as it were in blessing.  And I saw first one large tear, and then many more, run down the face of this very woman who had cast out her own fair son.  Often had I marked on her little finger a certain ring in which a little white thing was set; yet was this no splinter of the bone of a Saint, but the first tooth her banished son had shed.  And, when she deemed that no man saw her, she would press her hand to her lips and kiss the little tooth with fervent love.  And now, whereas love had waked up again in her heart, that son had his part and share in it; for albeit none dared make mention of him in her presence she ever loved him as the apple of her eye.

I was no listener, yet could I not shut mine ears; I heard how the frail old lady exhorted the love-sick maid, and bid her trust in God, and in Herdegen’s faithfulness.  Also I heard her speak well indeed of my brother’s spirit and will as noble and upright; and she promised Ann to uphold her to the best of her power.

She bid her favorite farewell with a fond kiss, and many comforting words; and as she did so I minded me of a wondrously fair maiden, the daughter of Pernhart the coppersmith, known to young and old in the town as fair Gertrude, who, each time I had beheld her of late, meseemed had grown even sadder and paler, and whom I now knew that I should never see more, inasmuch as that only yestereve Uncle Christian had told us, with tears in his eyes, that this sweet maid had died of pining, and had been buried only a day or two since with much pomp.  Now my aunt had heard these tidings, and she had shaken her head in silence and folded her hands, as it were in prayer, fixing her eyes on the ground.