was to the other. Her mother need not doubt, nor did she, that, whatever
obstacles life might place in her pathway, Els would pursue the right
course even without counsel and guidance. But Eva needed her love and
care so much just now, and when the sufferer gave her older daughter
also a tender glance and vainly strove to falter a few words of thanks,
Els herself replaced in Eva's the hand which her mother had withdrawn.

Fran Maria nodded gently to Els, as if asking her sensible elder
daughter to watch over her forsaken sister in her place.

Then her eyes again sought her husband, but the priest, to whom she had
just confessed, approached her instead.

After the holy man had performed the duties of his office, she again
turned her head toward Eva. It seemed as though she was feasting her
eyes on her daughter's charms. Meanwhile she strove to utter what more
she desired to say, but the bystanders understood only the words--they
were her last: "We thought--should be untouched--But now Heaven----"

Here she paused and, after closing her eyes for a time, went on in a
lower but perfectly distinct tone: "You are good--I hope--the forge-fire
of life--it is fortunate for you The heart and its demands The
hap--pi--ness--which it--gave--me----It ought--it must--you, too----"

Whilst speaking she had again glanced towards her husband, then at the
Abbess Kunigunde, who knelt beside him, and as the abbess met the look
she thought, "She is entrusting the child to me, and desires Eva to
be happy as one of us and the fairest of the brides of Heaven!" Ernst
Ortlieb, wholly overpowered by the deepest grief, was far from enquiring
into the meaning of these last words of his beloved dying wife.

Els, on the contrary, who had learned to read the sufferer's features
and understood her even without words when speech was difficult, had
watched every change in the expression of her features with the utmost
attention. Without reflecting or interpreting, she was sure that the
movements of her dying mother's lips had predicted to Eva that the
"forge fire of life" would exert its purifying and moulding influence on
her also, and wished that in the world, not in the convent, she might be
as happy as she herself had been rendered by her father's love.

After these farewell words Frau Maria's features became painfully
distorted, the lids drooped over her eyes, there was a brief struggle,
then a slight gesture from the physician announced to the