hindered him in walking.

When, presently, my Aunt Jacoba left the hall that the men might the
better enjoy the heady wine and freer speech, we maidens were bound to
follow her duteously; but Herdegen signed to me to come apart with him,
and now I hoped he would open his heart to me and treat me as he had been
wont, as my true and dear brother, whose heart had ever been on the tip
of his tongue. Far from it; he spoke nought but flattery, as "how fair
I had grown," and then desired news of Cousin Maud, and Kunz, and our
grand-uncle, and at last of Ursula Tetzel, which made me wroth.

I answered him shortly, and asked him whether he had no more than that to
say to me. He gazed down at the ground and said to himself: "To be sure,
to be sure." But in a minute he went back to his first manner, and when
I bid him good-night in anger he put his arm round me and turned me about
as if to dance.

I got myself free and went away, up to our chamber, hanging my head.
There I found my old Sue, taking off Ann's fine gown; and whereas Ann
nodded to me right sweetly and, as I thought, with a secret air,
I guessed that it was the waiting-woman who stayed her speech and I sent
my nurse away.

Now I should sooner have looked for the skies to fall than for Ann,
my heart's closest friend, to keep the secret of what had befallen
that very morning; and yet she kept silence.

We were commonly wont to chirp like a pair of crickets while we braided
our hair and got into our beds; but this night there was not a sound in
the chamber. Commonly we laid us down with a simple "Good night,