The bishop thought he understood.  She was horror stricken by the idea of the sudden, cruel end that hung over the young bride, and he replied sadly; “I shall not be able to restrain the wretches; still, no means shall remain untried.  The patriarch’s rescript, condemning this mad crime, shall be made public to-day, and I will read and expound it at the Curia, and try to give it keener emphasis.—­Would you like to read it?”

As she eagerly assented, the prelate signed to the acolyte who had waited on him with the holy vessels, and he produced from a packet a written sheet which he handed to Katharina.  As soon as she was alone she read the patriarch’s epistle; at first superficially, then more carefully, and at last in deep attention and growing interest, stirred by it to strange thoughts, till at length her eyes flashed and her breath came fast, as though this paper referred to herself, and could seal her fate for life.

When the bearers came in to fetch away the body she was still sitting there, gazing as if spell-bound at the papyrus; but she sprang up, shook herself, and then bid farewell to the cold rigid form of the mother on whose warm heart she had so often rested, and to whom she had been the dearest thing on earth—­and even then the solace of tears was denied her.

She no longer suffered the deep remorse that had tormented her; for she felt now that her intercourse with her last mother had not been put an end to by death; that after a short parting they would meet again—­soon perhaps, perhaps even to-morrow—­meet for a fulness of speech, an outpouring of the heart, a revelation of all the past more open and unreserved than could ever be between mortal beings, even between mother and daughter.  And when she who was sleeping there, blind, deaf, and senseless, should awake again, up there, with eyes clearer than those of men below, and the ears and senses of a spiritual being to see and hear and judge all she had known and done, all she had felt and made others feel—­then, she told herself, her mother might perhaps blame her and punish her more than she had ever done on earth, but she would also clasp her more closely to her heart and comfort her more earnestly.

She whispered gently in her ear as if she were still alive:  “Wait awhile, only wait:  I shall come soon and tell you everything!”

And then she kissed her so passionately and recklessly that the nuns were shocked and dragged her away, ordering the bearers to close the coffin.  They obeyed, and when the wooden lid fell over the sleeping form, shutting it in with a slam, and hiding it from the girl’s sight, the barrier gave way which had hitherto restrained her tears and she began to weep bitterly; now, too, the feeling that she had indeed lost her mother took complete possession of her—­the sense of being an orphan and alone, quite alone in the wide world.

She saw and heard no more of what took place round the beloved dead; for when she took her hands from her face streaming with tears, the house of the rich widow no longer sheltered its mistress; her remains had been borne away to the nearest mortuary.  The law forbade its being any longer kept within doors, but did not allow of its being buried till night fell.  The child might not follow her own mother to the cemetery.