to one infinitely her superior in nobility of soul, and with
cruel defiance she refused it.

His whole heart was full of gratitude and love for Dona Magdalena, who
by her unvarying kindness and elevating example had healed his wounded
soul, and no ignoble wish had sullied this great and deep affection.
Although for years he had devoted to her all the ability and good will
which he possessed, he still felt deeply in her debt and, now that the
first opportunity of rendering her a great service presented itself, he
was deprived of the possibility of doing it by the woman who had already
destroyed the happiness of his youth.

So bitter was the resentment which filled his soul that he could not
bring himself to seek her on the following day; but she awaited him
with the sorrowful fear that she had saddened the return of her best
and truest friend. Besides, she was now beginning to be tortured by the
consciousness of having broken or badly fulfilled the vow by which she
had won from the Holy Virgin the life of her sick Conrad. Why had she
sent her boys away the day before, instead of showing them to the friend
of her youth with maternal joy? because her heart had been full of the
image of the other, whose rare beauty and patrician bearing Wolf had so
enthusiastically described. True, her pair of little boys would not
have borne comparison with the Emperor's son, yet they were both good,
well-formed children, and clung to her with filial affection. Why could
she not even now, when Heaven itself forced her to be content, free
herself from the fatal imperial "More, farther," which, both for the
monarch and for her, had lost its power to command and to promise?

When, on the evening after Wolf's visit, she bent over the children
sleeping in their little bed, she felt as a nurse may who comes from
a patient who has succumbed to a contagious disease and now fears
communicating it to her new charge. Suppose that the gracious
intercessor should punish her broken vow by raising her hand against
the children sleeping there? This dread seized the guilty mother with
irresistible power, and she wondered that the cheeks of the little
sleepers were not already glowing with fever.

She threw herself penitently on her knees before the priedieu, and the
first atonement to be made for the broken vow was apparent. She must
allow Wolf to restore peace to Dona Magdalena's troubled mind. This
was not easy, for she had cherished her resentment ag