ball-dress off her back, and then let it lie on the floor. Disgraceful,
disloyal, shameless [Pg 108] hussy! Where could she be sleeping so
sweetly that she neither heard nor saw anything?

When Mr. Tiralla came into the room his wife snubbed him as angrily as
if he had been Marianna.

He tried to appease her. "That'll do, that'll do, my love. We know all
about it." He laughed good-naturedly. "They're young, we must excuse
them."

Oh, so he condoned such things? Perhaps even considered them right?
Well, then! There was a strange expression in Mrs. Tiralla's eyes as
she stared straight in front of her. She let her husband press a kiss
on her neck without feeling it, and then she ran in her petticoat and
without anything over her shoulders through the cold house up to her
bedroom.

There lay Rosa with the feather bed drawn up to her eyes. The woman
fell on her knees beside the child's bed, and, burying her head in the
bedclothes, she sobbed aloud.

Rosa awoke. "Mother, sweet mother?" There was a note of anxious inquiry
in her exclamation; was her mother in a good humour again, was she no
longer cross as the evening before?

"Do you love me?" stammered the sobbing woman. "Tell me that you love
me."

"Oh, I do love you, I love you so dearly."

"Tell me that you'll pray for me. Swear that you'll pray for
me--always."

"Oh, I'll pray for you. I always pray for you."

"Pray for me, pray for me," sobbed the excited woman. "I'll pray with
you, perhaps that'll help me. Rosa, my angel"--she covered the child's
face with kisses--"we'll pray."

"What shall we pray?" asked the child. "What do you want to pray now,
mother dear? Shall I pray [Pg 109] to the beautiful guardian angel,
'Holy angel, thou who standest before the throne of God,' or shall I
repeat the litany to the sweet name of Jesus? Or shall I pray as I did
at my confirmation, 'Come, thou Heavenly Physician, I need Thee. Heal
my soul, oh Saviour. Come, save me'? Oh, you left me alone," cried the
child, in a plaintive voice, as she broke off in the midst of her
prayer. "You were at the ball, you were so beautiful, mother. Daddy was
with you. Marianna went away as well. She said it would only be for
half an hour; she wanted to see her little ones, who are living with an
old woman in the village; but she stopped away. I was all by myself in
the house. And something creaked in the big cupboard, and in the stove,
and in all the furniture. And something moved in al