A Sister's Love: A Novel

A severe storm had been raging all day, and now, in the approaching twilight, seemed as if it would overleap all bounds in its wild confusion. Straight from the North Sea, over...

A few days afterward Edwin Stuermer came to Buetze. Anna Maria was standing just on the lower staircase landing, in the great stone-paved entrance-hall, a basket of red-cheeked...

"The time passes away, one scarcely knows what has become of it; even in my solitude, it does not seem long to me. Really, the starlings are here already. Where has the winter g...

Meanwhile Anna Maria had gone quickly down-stairs and entered her brother's room. He was sitting at his desk, rummaging about in the drawers for the missing papers. Klaus von He...

Spring had come again. Two years had passed since that evening. In Buetze Manor-house there was a vaulted, out-of-the-way room, which was entered by a low, small door at the end...

Thirty years had passed away, and on a stormy autumn evening a young couple sat before a crackling fire, in Buetze Manor-house--she, a slender, girlish figure, fair, with pleasa...

"My first inquiry the next morning was for the old woman. She was gone, I learned, and the Fraeulein was already with the stranger in her room. 'Anna Maria's education is beginn...

"The next morning broke as prosaic and calm as I could desire. The sun shone with obtrusive clearness into the most remote corner, and mercilessly set out everything in a dazzli...

"I could not sleep that night; I rose from my bed again and sat down by my window in the gray dawn, and my old heart was fearful for what must come now. I loved both the childre...

"Late in the afternoon one dull rainy day we were sitting in the garden-parlor, Anna Maria with her sewing, Klaus reading the newspaper and smoking, when Stuermer came in to tal...

"Life went on quietly in the house without a master. Anna Maria was busy until late in the evening; she possessed an endless capacity for work. 'I can bear Klaus's absence easie...

"It was a fearful night! I was almost astonished to see the bright sunshine streaming in my window, and the blue sky, the next morning. Brockelmann helped me dress, for my shoul...

"A few hours later a carriage drove into the court. I recognized Stuermer's livery, and from my chamber window saw Brockelmann help out the old actress, hardly with the haste of...

"The harvest festival was celebrated more quietly than usual this year, at least at the manor-house. Otherwise everything was as usual. Under the four great oaks in the yard, ne...

"It seemed as if the autumn had only delayed commencing its sway in order not to interfere with the Buetze harvest festival. Now it broke in all the more violently, with its gus...

"It was almost evening, on the 13th of November, as an extra post drove quickly into the court. 'Another visit!' was my first thought, so many people had been turned away in tho...

"Anna Maria did not become ill, as we expected; hers was too firm, too strong a nature; but she had grown bitter and gloomy. She did not belong to that class of people whom a gr...

"May came on in the country in all its glory; the trees blossomed and the seeds sprouted, and Buetze lay as in a snowy sea. The sun laughed in the sky, as Susanna walked through...

"As formerly Anna Maria had been baptized beside the dead body of her mother, so now was the little boy at his father's coffin. On the same spot where, scarcely a year before, t...

"The winter passed quietly away, and with the spring, just as the trees were blossoming, Susanna came back. Anna Maria had sent the best carriage to meet the home-comer, and put...