to a dance, to be given this very day, being his name-day, at his lodgings in the Castle.  I likewise was bidden and had accepted my godfather’s kindness; but my timid endeavor to move Ann to do his will, as her best and dearest old friend, brought forth the sorrowful answer that I myself must judge how little she was fit for any merry-makings of the kind.  My friendship with her, which had once been my highest joy, had thus lost all its lightheartedness, albeit it had not lost all its joys, nor was she therefore the less dear to me though I dealt with her now as with a well-beloved child for whose hurt we are not wholly blameless.

Now it fell that on this day, the 20th December, being my godfather’s name-day, I found her not with the rest, but in her own chamber in violent distress.  Her cheeks were on fire, and she was in such turmoil as though she had escaped some terrible persecution.  Thereupon I questioned her in haste and fear, and she answered me with reserve, till, on a sudden, she cried: 

“It is killing me!  I will bear it no more!” and hid her face in her hands, I clasped her in my arms, and to soothe her spoke in praise of her stepfather, Master Pernhart, and his high spirit and good heart; then she sobbed aloud and said:  “Oh, for that matter!  If that were all!”

And suddenly, or even I was aware, she had cast her arms about me and kissed my lips and cheeks with great warmth.  Then she cried out:  “Oh, Margery!  You cannot turn from me!  I indeed tried to turn from you; and I could have done it, even if it had cost me my heart’s blood!  But now and here I ask you:  Is it just that I should lay myself on the rack because he has so cruelly hurt me?  No, no.  And I need your true soul to help me to shake off the burden which is crushing me to the earth and choking me.  Help me to bear it, or I shall come to a bad end—­I shall follow her who died here in this very chamber.”

My soul had ever stood open to her and so I told her right heartily, and her face became once more as it had been of old; and albeit those things she had to tell me were not indeed comforting, still I could in all honesty bid her to be of good heart; and I presently felt that to unburden herself of all that had weighed upon her these last few weeks, did her as much good as a bath.  For it still was a pain to her to see her mother cooing like a pigeon round her new mate.  She herself was full of his praises, albeit this man, well brought up and trained to good manners, would ever abide by the old customs of the old craftsmen, and his venerable mother likewise held fast by them, so that his wife had striven in vain to change the ways of the house.  Thus master and mistress, son and daughter, foreman and apprentice, sewing man and maid all ate, as they had ever done, at the same table.  And whereas the daughters, by old custom, sat in order on the mother’s side, the youngest next to her and the oldest at the end, it thus fell