"The next three days passed quietly. Anna Maria had given Isabella a little room next Susanna's, had told her Klaus's plans for his wedding; and the old woman agreed to all the arrangements without a word of opposition, but without showing any joy either. The sewing for the trousseau was to be begun immediately after the harvest festival. Isabella had arranged a cushion for lace-making, and under her thin, skilful fingers grew filmy lace of the finest thread--'for the wedding toilet!' she said softly to me.
"Susanna's manner was quite altered; she unsociably avoided not only our company, but Isa's as well. Meanwhile the old woman seemed little concerned that her darling ran about half the day in the wood and garden, looked pale, and ate little or nothing, and now and then started up impetuously from her quiet, absorbed state, looking about with terrified eyes. 'That is the way with people in love,' she would say in excuse, with a peculiar smile, if I worried about Susanna's pale looks.
"In a few days there came a letter from Klaus for Susanna. I went up-stairs to give it to her. The first love-letter, a wonder in every girl's life! With beating heart it is opened, read in the most secret corner, kissed a thousand times, and kept forever. After long years there still rises from such a yellow, crumpled paper a faint odor of roses; a blush flits over the wrinkled cheeks, the dimmest eyes shine once more in recollection of the hour when they first fell on those lines. I was in quite a festive mood. What might not be enclosed in that blue envelope? All the love, all the trust, all the true, noble sentiment that could come only from such a heart as Klaus's! And all this fell like a golden rain into the lap of the little vagabond girl.
"I opened her door and looked in. Isabella sat, making lace, at the open window. Susanna lay on the sofa, her head buried in the cushions, apparently dreaming. The golden autumn sun streamed in through the trees, which were already becoming less shady, and played upon the inlaid floor, and Susanna's little kitten, with a blue ribbon around its neck, was jumping nimbly about after the bright, moving flecks.
"'Susanna, a letter from Klaus!' I cried, going to the sofa.