Eva’s courage, which had blazed up so brightly, instantly fell again.

“Good heavens!  What has happened?” she cried in terror; but her father answered in a hollow tone: 

“For the sake of your noble sister, to whom I pledged my word, I will force myself to remain calm.  But look at her!  Her poor heart must be like a graveyard, for she was doomed to bury what she held dearest.  And who,” he continued furiously, so carried away by grief and indignation as to be unmindful of his promise to maintain his composure, “who is to blame for it all, save you and your boundless imprudence?”

Eva, with uplifted hands, tried to explain how, unconscious of her acts, she had walked in her sleep down the stairs and out of the house, but he imperiously cut her short with: 

“Silence!  I know all.  My daughter gave a worthless tempter the right to expect the worst from her.  You, whom we deemed the ornament of this house, whose purity hitherto was stainless, are to blame if people passing on the street point at it!  Alas! alas!  Our honour, our ancient, unsullied name!”

Groaning aloud, the father struck his brow with his clenched hand; but when Els rose and passed her arm around his shoulders to speak words of consolation, Eva, who hitherto had vainly struggled for words, could endure no more.

“Whoever says that of me, my father,” she exclaimed with flashing eyes; scarcely able to control her voice, “has opened his ears to slander; and whoever terms Heinz Schorlin a worthless tempter, is blinded by a delusion, and I call him to his face, even were it my own father, to whom I owe gratitude and respect—­”

But here she stopped and extended her arms to keep off the deeply angered man, for he had started forward with quivering lips, and—­she perceived it clearly—­was already under the spell of one of the terrible fits of fury which might lead him to the most unprecedented deeds.  Els, however, had clung to him and, while holding him back with all her strength, cried out in a tone of keen reproach, “Is this the way you keep your promise?”

Then, lowering her voice, she continued with loving entreaty:  “My dear, dear father, can you doubt that she was asleep, unconscious of her acts, when she did what has brought so much misery upon us?”

And, interrupting herself, she added eagerly in a tone of the firmest conviction:  “No, no, neither shame nor misery has yet touched you, my father, nor the poor child yonder.  The suspicion of evil rests on me, and me alone, and if any one here must be wretched it is I.”

Then Herr Ernst, regaining his self-control, drew back from Eva, but the latter, as if fairly frantic, exclaimed:  “Do you want to drive me out of my senses by your mysterious words and accusations?  What, in the name of all the saints, has happened that can plunge my Els into misery and shame?”

“Into misery and shame,” repeated her father in a hollow tone, throwing himself into a chair, where he sat motionless, with his face buried in his hands, while Els told her sister what had occurred when she went down into the entry to speak to the knight.