The countess would not be detained long, for the sun had already sunk behind the towers and western wall of the fortress, and the reflection of the sunset was tinging the eastern sky with a roseate hue.  The warden really ought to have refused them admittance, for the time during which he was permitted to take visitors to the imprisoned “Honourable” had already passed.  But for the daughters of Herr Ernst Ortlieb, to whom he was greatly indebted, he closed his eyes to this fact, and only entreated them to make their stay brief, for the drawbridge leading to the tower must be raised when darkness gathered.

The young girls found their father, absorbed in grief as if utterly crushed, seated at a table on which stood a leaden inkstand with several sheets of paper.  He still held the pen in his hand.

He received his daughters with the exclamation, “You poor, poor children!” But when Els tried to tell him what had given her so much pleasure, he interrupted her to accuse himself, with deep sorrow, of having again permitted sudden passion to master him.  Probably this was the last time; such experiences would cool even the hottest blood.  Then he began to relate what had induced him to raise his hand against the tailor, and as, in doing so, he recalled the insolent hypocrite’s spiteful manner, he again flew into so violent a rage that the blow which he dealt the table made the ink splash up and soil both the paper lying beside it and his own dress, still faultlessly neat even in prison.  This caused fresh wrath, and he furiously crushed the topmost sheet, already half covered with writing, and hurled it on the floor.

Not until Els stooped to pick it up did he calm himself, saying, with a shrug of the shoulders, “Who can remain unmoved when the whirlwind of despair seizes him?  When a swarm of hornets attacks a horse, and it rears, who wonders?  And I—­What stings and blows has Fate spared me?” Els ventured to speak soothingly to him, and remind him of God, and the saints to whom he had made such generous offerings in building the convent; but this awakened an association, and he asked if it were true that Eva had refused to take the veil.

She made a silent gesture of assent, expecting another outburst of anger; but her father only shook his head sorrowfully, clasped her right hand in both his, and said sadly:  “Poor, poor child!  But she, she—­your mother—­would probably——­The last words her dear lips bestowed upon us concerned you, child, and I believe their meaning——­”

Here the warden interrupted him to remind the girls that it was time to depart; but whilst Els was begging the man for a brief delay, Herr Ernst looked first at the paper and writing materials, then at his daughters, and added with quiet decision:  “Before you go, you must hear that, in spite of everything, I did not wholly lose courage, but began to act.”

“That is right, dear father,” exclaimed Els, and told him briefly and quickly what the Council had decided, how warmly old Berthold Vorchtel had interceded for Wolff, and that the management of the business was to be confided solely to him.