against her pitying
friend's bosom. Heliodora saw the tears which had risen with unaffected
feeling to the girl's eyes; her tender soul was full of sympathy with the
sorrow of such a gladsome young creature, who had already had so much to
suffer, and she leaned over the child, kissing her affectionately on the
brow, and murmuring words of consolation. Katharina clung to her closely,
and pointing to the top of her head where that burning hand had pressed
it, she said: "There, kiss there: there is where the pain is worst!--Ah,
that is nice, that does me good."

And, as the tender-hearted Heliodora's fresh lips rested on the
plague-tainted hair, Katharina closed her eyes and felt as a gladiator
might who hitherto has only tried his weapons on the practising ground,
and now for the first time uses them in the arena to pierce his
opponent's heart. She had a vision of herself as some one else, taller
and stronger than she was; aye, as Death itself, the destroyer, breathing
herself into her victim's breast.

These feelings entirely possessed her as she knelt on the soft carpet,
and she did not notice that another woman was crossing it noiselessly to
her comforter's bed-side, with a glance of intelligence at Heliodora.
Just as she exclaimed: "Another kiss there-it burns so dreadfully," she
felt two hands on her temples and two lips, not Heliodora's, were pressed
on her head.

She looked up in astonishment and saw the smiling face of her mother, who
had come after her to ask how the bishop was, and who wished to take her
share in soothing the pain of her darling.

How well her little surprise had succeeded!

But what came over the child? She started to her feet as if lightning had
struck her, as if an asp had stung her, looked horror-stricken into her
mother's eyes, and then, as Susannah was on the point of clasping the
little head to her bosom once more to kiss the aching, the cursed spot,
Katharina pushed her away, flew, distracted, through the sitting-room
into the vestibule, and down the narrow steps leading to the bathroom.

Her mother looked after her, shaking her head in bewilderment. Then she
turned to Heliodora with a shrug, and said, as the tears filled her eyes:

"Poor, poor little thing! Too many troubles have come upon her at once.
Her life till lately was like a long, sunny day, and now the hail is
pelting her from all sides at once. She has bad news of the bishop, I
fear."

"He is dying, she said," replie