longer at the
hospital.

She would not have hesitated to require her niece's return home had not
maternal solicitude urged her to deprive her of nothing which could aid
her troubled soul to regain its poise. If possible at all, it would be
through devotion to an arduous work of charity that she would understand
her own nature, and find an answer to the question whether, when the
slanderers were silenced, she would take the veil or cling firmly to the
hopeless love which had mastered her young heart.

If she succeeded in remaining steadfast here and, in spite of the glad
consciousness of having conquered by the sign of the cross, was still
loyal to her worldly love, then the latter was genuine and strong, and
Eva did not belong to the convent; then her sister, the abbess, was
mistaken in the girl whose soul she had guided from early childhood.

Frau Christine, who usually formed an opinion quickly and resolutely, had
not dared to give Eva a positive answer the previous evening.

With sympathising emotion the matron had heard her confess that during
her nocturnal wanderings a new feeling, which she could no longer still,
had awakened in her breast. When she also told her the image of true love
which she had formed, she could not bring herself to undeceive her.

The abbess had made a somewhat similar confession to her, the older
sister, when her young heart--how long ago it seemed!--had also been
mastered by love. The object of its ardent passion was no less a
personage than the Burgrave von Zollern.

Frau Christine had seen his marriage with the Hapsburg princess awaken
her sister's desire to renounce the world. Kunigunde was then a maiden of
rare, majestic beauty, and only the Burgrave's exalted station had
prevented his wedding "Eva," as she was called before she took the veil.

As a husband and father, he had found deep happiness in the love of the
Countess Elizabeth, the future Emperor Rudolph's sister, yet he had
remained a warm friend of the abbess; and when he treated Eva with such
marked distinction at the dance, she owed it not only to her own charms
but also to the circumstance that, like the girl whom he had loved in his
youth, she bore the name of "Eva Ortlieb," and the expression of her eyes
vividly recalled the happiest time in his life.

The abbess, after a still more severe renunciation, had attained even
greater happiness in the convent. Her sister could not blame her for
wishing the same lot for