I saw them for certain.—­And at that moment I besought the Lord that He would rather chastise and try me with pain and grief, but bring these two together and let their marriage be crowned by the highest bliss ever vouchsafed to human hearts.

CHAPTER XIII.

Spring was past, and again the summer led me and Ann back into the green wood.  Aunt Jacoba’s sickness was no whit amended, and the banishment of her only and comely son gnawed at her heart; but the more she needed tending and cheering the more Ann could do for her and the dearer she became to the heart of the sick woman.

Kunz was ever in Venice.  Herdegen wrote right loving letters at first from Padua, but then they came less often, and the last Ann ever had to show me was a mere feint which pleased me ill indeed, inasmuch as, albeit it was full of big words, it was empty of tidings of his life or of his heart’s desire.  What all this must mean Ann, with her clear sense and true love, could not fail to see; nevertheless she ceased not from building on her lover’s truth; or, if she did not, she hid that from all the world, even from me.

We came from the forest earlier than we were wont, on Saint Maurice’s day, forasmuch as that Ann could not be longer spared and, now more than ever, I could not bear to leave her alone.

Uncle Christian rode to the town with us, and if he had before loved her well, in this last long time of our all being together he had taken her yet more into his heart.  And now, whereas he had given her the right to warn him against taking too much wine, he was fain to call her his little watchman, by reason that it is the watchman’s part to give warning of the enemy’s onset.

But while Ann was so truly beloved at the Forest lodge, on her return home she found no pleasant welcome.  In her absence the coppersmith Pernhart had wooed her mother in good earnest, and the eldest daughter not being on the spot, had sped so well that the widow had yielded.  Ann once made bold to beseech her mother with due reverence to give up her purpose, but she fell on her child’s neck, as though Ann were the mother, entreating her, with many tears, to let her have her will.  Ann of a certainty would not now be long under her roof to cherish the younger children, and it was not in her power as their mother to guide them in the way in which their father would have them to walk.  For this Ulman Pernhart was the fittest man.  Her dead husband had been a schoolmate of her suitor’s, and of his brother the very reverend lord Bishop, and he had thought highly of Master Ulman.  This it was gave her strength to follow the prompting of her heart.  In this way did the mother try to move her child to look with favor on the desire of her fiery Italian heart, now shame-faced and coaxing, and anon with tears in her eyes; and albeit the widow was past five and thirty and her suitor nigh upon fifty, yet no man seeing the pair together would have made sport of their love.  The Venice lady had lost so little of her youthful beauty and charms that it was in truth a marvel; and as to Master Pernhart, he was not a man to be overlooked, even among many.