trance. Soon after
Lisabethli entered, and found her mother sitting at her desk, as though
evening had overtaken her at her accounts and letters.

"Dearest mother," said the girl, "he has sent me another letter--a boy
brought it to Donate; he wrote it as soon as he had got beyond the
gates, because you said he might write when far away. Will you read it?
He says that I am to be as sure of his truth as of your love, and that
nothing can ever part us but death."

She held the letter out to her mother, but the latter did not take it.
"Leave me alone, awhile, child," she replied. "I have got something to
think over."

The girl went away, happy to keep her treasure all to herself. The
mother remained an hour longer in the darkening room, absorbed in
darkest thoughts, through which pierced not one heavenly ray. She never
for a moment doubted that the ring on the finger of the dead man, was
the same that she had placed on the finger of her Andreas the first
time that he went to Holy Communion. As to any accident which had
transferred this ring to the hand of some one else, she never
entertained the idea. He who lay in the dead house of the hospital with
that sword-thrust in his breast was none other than her much-loved,
much-wept son. And he who had killed this son--in self-defence it is
true--was one to whom she had promised her daughter, who would probably
return in a few weeks as a happy bridegroom to the desolate house, and
with laughing face carry off her daughter, so that through him she
should be bereaved of both her children. She hated him at that moment,
she cursed the hour in which he entered her house, cursed her own
tongue that had promised him protection and ratified that promise with
a falsehood, when saving him from his pursuers. And yet the next moment
her heart recalled that curse, for in her mind's eye she saw again the
candid face of the innocent fugitive, heard his clear tones, remembered
her own words when she vowed to be a mother to him, and her daughter's
voice when she came to her on the previous evening with her letter, and
said, "I should have died, dearest mother, had he not loved me." She
knew her child, and that these words were not lightly spoken. She felt,
moreover, what she owed to this child, who had been for years defrauded
of her due share of maternal love. Would she not have cause of bitter
complaint against a brother who, after years of long wild wandering,
had only returned to his coun