She remembered how he had watched for nights at the child's bed when she lay ill with measles; with what unwearied patience he had borne with her whims, now even as then; how carefully he had marked out a course of instruction and selected teachers for her, looked up lectures for her, read and rode with her, and did everything that the most careful parental love alone can do, and even more--much more! Indeed, Anna Maria knew nothing of a parent's love; the father had always been a peculiar person, especially so after the death of his wife: it almost seemed as if he could not love the child whose life had cost a life. He was rarely at home; half the year he lived in Berlin, coming back to the old manor-house only at the hunting season. But never alone; he was always accompanied by a young man, a Baron Stürmer, owner of the neighboring estate of Dambitz, and two years older than Klaus.
It was a singular friendship which had existed between these two men. Hegewitz, well on in the sixties, gloomy and unsociable, and from his youth distrustful of every one, and not even amiable toward his own children, was affable only to his friend, so much younger. To this moment Aunt Rosamond distinctly remembered the pale, nobly-formed face with the fiery brown eyes and the dark hair. How gratefully she remembered him! He had been the only one who understood how to mediate between father and son, the only one who, with admirable firmness, had again and again led the struggling little girl to her father; and he did all this out of that incomprehensible friendship. The two used to play chess together late into the night; they rode and hunted together; and still one other passion united them--they collected antiquities.
They searched the towns and villages for miles about for old carved chests, clocks, porcelain, and pictures, and would dispute all night as to whether a certain picture, bought at an auction, was by this or that master, whether it was an original or a copy. They often remained away for days on their excursions, and the treasures they won were then artistically arranged in a tower-room--"a regular rag-shop," Aunt Rosamond had once said in banter. "I only wonder they don't get me too for this '_Collection Antique_.'" After the death of Hegewitz this really valuable collection was found to be made over, by will, to Baron Stürmer, "because Klaus did not understand such things." Stürmer accepted the bequest, but he had it appraised by a person intelligent in such matters, and paid the value to the heirs. Klaus von Hegewitz refused to accept the sum, and so the two men agreed to found an almshouse for the two villages of Bütze and Dambitz.