“I have made choice and can never turn back.  Long life to every pleasure, call it by what name you will!  You have a gleeful, rich, and magnificent brother, little Margery; and albeit the simple lad of old, who chose to wife the daughter of a poor clerk, may have been dearer to you—­as he was to my own heart—­yet love him still!  Of his love you are ever sure; remember him in your prayers; and as for that you have to say to Ann, say it in such wise that she shall not take it over much to heart.  Show her how unworthy of her is this brother of yours, though in your secret soul you shall know that my guardian saint never had, nor ever shall have, any other face than hers.

“Now will I hasten to seal this letter and wake Eppelein that he may give it to the post-rider.  I am weary of tearing up many sheets of paper, but if I were to read through in all soberness that I have written half drunk, this letter would of a certainty go the way of many others written by me to you, and to my beloved, faithful, only love, my lost Ann.”

CHAPTER XIV.

Master Pernhart was wed on Tuesday after Palm Sunday.  Ann was wont to come to our house early on Wednesday morning, and this was ever a happy meeting to which we gave the name of “the Italian spinning-hour,” by reason that one of us would turn her wheel and draw out the yarn, while the other read aloud from the works of the great Italian poets.

Nor did Ann fail to come on this Wednesday after the wedding; but I had thrust Herdegen’s letter into the bosom of my bodice and awaited her with a quaking heart.

Her spirit was heavy; I could see in her eyes that they had shed tears, and at my first question they filled again.  Had she not seen her mother this morn beaming with happiness, and then remembered, with new pangs of heartache, the father she had lost scarce a year ago and whose image seemed to have faded out of the mind of the wife he had so truly loved.

When I said to her that I well understood her sorrow, but that I had other matter to lay before her which might bring her yet more cruel grief, she knew that it must be as touching Herdegen; and whereas before I spoke I could only clasp her to me and could not bring out a single word, she thrust me from her and cried:  “Herdegen?  Speak!  Some ill has come upon him!  Margery—­Merciful Virgin!  How you are sobbing!—­Dead—­is he dead?”

As she said these words her cheeks turned pale and, when I shook my head, she seized my hand and asked sadly:  “Worse?  Then he has broken faith once more?”

Meseemed I could never speak again; and yet I might not keep silence, and the words broke from my bursting heart:  “Ah, worse and far worse; more strange, more terrible!  I have it here, in his hand.—­Henceforth—­my uncle, his rich inheritance....  All is over, Ann, betwixt him and you.  And I—­oh, that he should have left it to me to tell it!”