True, on her father’s account all the members of the Council were present, but scarcely half the wives had appeared.  Their daughters—­Els had counted them—­numbered only nine, and but three were included among her friends.  The others had probably come out of curiosity.  And the common people, the artisans, the lower classes, who in countless numbers had accompanied her brother’s coffin to its resting place, and during the mass for the dead had crowded the spacious nave of St. Sebald’s?  There had been now only a scanty group.  The nuns from the convent were present, down to the most humble lay Sister; but they were under great obligations to her mother, and their abbess was her father’s sister.  There were few other women except the old crones from the hospitals and nurseries, who were never absent when there was an opportunity to weep or to backbite.  In going through the nave of the church into the chapel the sisters had passed a group of younger lads and maidens, who had nudged one another in so disrespectful a way, whispering all sorts of things, that Els had tried to draw Eva past them as swiftly as possible.

Her wish to keep her more sensitive sister from noticing the disagreeable gestures and insulting words of the cruel youths and girls was gratified.  True, Eva also felt with keen indignation that far too little honour was paid to her beloved dead; that the blinded people believed the slanderers who repeated even worse things of her Els than of herself, and made their poor mother, who had lived and suffered like a saint, atone for what they imagined were the sins of her daughters; but the jeers and scorn which had obtruded themselves upon her father and sister from more than one quarter, in many a form, had entirely escaped her notice.  She had accustomed herself from childhood to indulge in reflections and emotions apart from the demands of the world.  Whatever occupied her mind or soul absorbed her completely; here she had been wholly engrossed in this silent intercourse with the departed, and a single glance at the group assembled in the church had showed her everything which she desired to know of her surroundings.

Heinz had gone to the field the day before yesterday.  Her silent colloquy concerned him also.  How difficult he made it for her to maintain the resolution which she had formed during the mass for the dead, since he remained aloof, without giving even the slightest token of remembrance.  True, an inward voice constantly repeated that he could not part from her any more easily than she from him; but her maidenly pride rebelled against the neglect with which he grieved her.  The defiant desire to punish him for departing without a word of farewell urged her back to the convent.  She had spent many hours there daily, and in its atmosphere of peace felt better and happier than in her father’s house or any other spot which she visited.  The close association with her aunt, the abbess, was renewed.