east showing her betrothed
husband how he should regard the gossip of idle tongues if it penetrated
to his hiding-place.

Els uttered a sigh of relief. Surely Wolff must trust her! Yet what
viciously coloured reports might reach him from the Eysvogels! Now that
he would learn the actual truth from the most credible eye-witnesses she
no longer dreaded even the worst calumny.

No one appeared at supper except her father. Eva had begged to be
excused. She wished to remain undisturbed; but the world, with rude yet
beneficent hand, interrupted even her surrender to her grief for her
mother.

The tailor, who protested that, owing to the mourning for young Prince
Hartmann, he had fairly "stolen" this hour for the beautiful Ortlieb
sisters, came with his assistant, and at the same time a messenger
arrived from the cloth-house in the market-place bringing the packages of
white stuffs for selection. Then it was necessary to decide upon the
pattern and material; the sisters must appear in mourning the next
morning at the consecration, and later at the mass for the dead.

Eva had turned to these worldly matters with sincere repugnance, but Els
would not release her from giving them due attention.

It was well for her tortured soul and the poor eyes reddened by weeping.
But when she again knelt in the chamber of death beside her dear nuns and
saw the grey robe, which they all wore, the wish to don one, which she
had so often cherished, again awoke. No other was more pleasing to her
Heavenly Bridegroom, and she forbade herself in this hour to think of the
only person for whose sake she would gladly have adorned herself. Yet the
struggle to forget him constantly recalled him to her mind, no matter how
earnestly she strove to shut out his image whenever it appeared. But,
after her last conversation, must not her mother have died in the belief
that she would not give up her love? And the dead woman's last words?
Yet, no matter what they meant, here and now nothing should come between
her and the beloved departed. She devoted herself heart and soul to the
memory of the longing for her.

Grief for her loss, repentance for not having devoted herself faithfully
enough to her, and the hope that in the convent her prayers might obtain
a special place in the world beyond for the beloved sleeper, now revived
her wish to take the veil. She felt bound to the nuns, who shared her
aspirations. When her father came to send her to her rest and