The latter shook her head, but Cordula added, as if soliloquising:  “It seems as though the hands of the Madonna herself had adorned a sleeping saint with garden flowers, and child-angels had scattered over her the blossoms of the forest.”

Then Els, who hitherto had refused to talk in this place and this solemn hour, broke her silence and briefly told Cordula who had artistically and lovingly adorned her mother.

“Eva?” repeated the countess, as if surprised, gazing at her friend’s younger sister who, as the music of the organ and the alternate chanting had just begun, had already risen from her knees.  Cordula felt spellbound, for the young girl looked as fresh as a May rose and so touchingly beautiful in the deep, earnest devotion which filled her whole being, and the white purity of her mourning robes, that the countess did not understand how she could ever have disliked her.  Eva, with her up lifted eyes, seemed to be gazing directly into the open heavens.

Cordula paid little attention to the sacred service, but watched the Es, as she liked to call the sisters, all the more closely.  The elder, though so overwhelmed with grief that she could not help sobbing aloud, did not cease to think of her dear ones, and from time to time gazed with tender sympathy at her father or with quiet sorrow at her sister.  Eva, on the contrary, was completely absorbed by her own anguish and the memory of her to whom it was due.  The others appeared to have no existence for her.  Whilst the large tears rolled slowly down her cheeks, she sometimes gazed tenderly at the face of the beloved dead; sometimes, with fervent entreaty, at the image of the Virgin.  The pleading expression of the large blue eyes seemed to the countess to express such childlike need of help that the impetuous girl would fain have clasped her to her heart and exclaimed: 

“Wait, you lovely, obstinate little orphan; Cordula, whom you dislike, is here, and though you don’t wish to receive any kindness from her, you must submit.  What do I care for all the worshippers of a very poor idol who call themselves my ‘adorers’?  I need only detain wandering pilgrims, or invite minnesingers to the castle, to shorten the hours.  And he for whom yonder child-angel’s heart yearns—­would he not be a fool to prefer a Will-o’-the-wisp like me?  Besides, it is easy for the peasant to give his neighbour the cloud which hangs over his field.  True, before the dance——­But the past is past.  Boemund Altrosen is the only person who is always the same.  One can rely upon him, but I really need neither.  If I could only do without the open air, the forest, horses, and hunting, I should suit convent walls far better than this Eva, whom Heaven itself seems to have created to be the delight of every man’s heart.  We will see what she herself decides.”

Then she recognised Sir Boemund Altrosen in the congregation and pursued her train of thought.  “He is a noble man, and whoever thus makes himself miserable about me I ought to try to cure.  Perhaps I will yet do so.”