“By daybreak to-morrow I will be with them,” Johannes said, and he hastily took leave.

As soon as they were alone Berenike observed “There he goes, quite offended, as if I had done him a wrong.  That is the way with all these Christians.  They think it their duty to force on others what they themselves think right, and any one who turns a deaf ear to their questionable truths they at once set down as narrow-minded, or as hostile to what is good.  Agatha, of whom you were just now speaking, and Zeno her father, my husband’s brother, are Christians.  I had hoped that Korinna’s death would have brought the child back to us; I have longed to see her, and have heard much that is sweet about her:  but a common sorrow, which so often brings divided hearts together, has only widened the gulf between my husband and his brother.  The fault is not on our side.  Nay, I was rejoiced when, a few hours after the worst was over, a letter from Zeno informed me that he and his daughter would come to see us the same evening.  But the letter itself”—­and her voice began to quiver with indignation—­“compelled us to beg him not to come.  It is scarcely credible—­and I should do better not to pour fresh oil on my wrath—­but he bade us ‘rejoice’; three, four, five times he repeated the cruel words.  And he wrote in a pompous strain of the bliss and rapture which awaited our lost child—­and this to a mother whose heart had been utterly broken but a few hours before by a fearful stroke of Fate!  He would meet the bereaved, grieving, lonely mourner with a smile on his lips!  Rejoice!  This climax of cruelty or aberration has parted us forever.  Why, our black gardener, whose god is a tree-stump that bears only the faintest likeness to humanity, melted into tears at the news; and Zeno, our brother, the uncle of that broken dower, could be glad and bid us rejoice!  My husband thinks that hatred and the long-standing feud prompted his pen.  For my part, I believe it was only this Christian frenzy which made him suggest that I should sink lower than the brutes, who defend their young with their lives.  Seleukus has long since forgiven him for his conduct in withdrawing his share of the capital from the business when he became a Christian, to squander it on the baser sort; but this ‘Rejoice’ neither he nor I can forgive, though things which pierce me to the heart often slide off him like water off grease.”

Her black hair had come down as she delivered this vehement speech, and, when she ceased, her flushed cheeks and the fiery glow of her eyes gave the majestic woman in her dark robes an aspect which terrified Melissa.

She, too, thought this “Rejoice,” under such circumstances, unseemly and insulting; but she kept her opinion to herself, partly out of modesty and partly because she did not wish to encourage the estrangement between this unhappy lady and the niece whose mere presence would have been so great a comfort to her.

When Johanna returned to lead her to a bedroom, she gave a sigh of relief; but the lady expressed a wish to keep Melissa near her, and in a low voice desired the waiting-woman to prepare a bed for her in the adjoining room, by the side of Korinna’s, which was never to be disturbed.  Then, still greatly excited, she invited Melissa into her daughter’s pretty room.