of showing them to the friend of her youth with maternal joy? because her heart had been full of the image of the other, whose rare beauty and patrician bearing Wolf had so enthusiastically described.  True, her pair of little boys would not have borne comparison with the Emperor’s son, yet they were both good, well-formed children, and clung to her with filial affection.  Why could she not even now, when Heaven itself forced her to be content, free herself from the fatal imperial “More, farther,” which, both for the monarch and for her, had lost its power to command and to promise?

When, on the evening after Wolf’s visit, she bent over the children sleeping in their little bed, she felt as a nurse may who comes from a patient who has succumbed to a contagious disease and now fears communicating it to her new charge.  Suppose that the gracious intercessor should punish her broken vow by raising her hand against the children sleeping there?  This dread seized the guilty mother with irresistible power, and she wondered that the cheeks of the little sleepers were not already glowing with fever.

She threw herself penitently on her knees before the priedieu, and the first atonement to be made for the broken vow was apparent.  She must allow Wolf to restore peace to Dona Magdalena’s troubled mind.  This was not easy, for she had cherished her resentment against this woman’s husband, through whom she had experienced bitter suffering, for many years.  His much-lauded wife herself was a stranger to her, yet she could not think of her except with secret dislike; it seemed as if a woman who bore the separation from the man she loved so patiently, and yet won all hearts, must go through life—­unless she was a hypocrite—­with cold fish blood.

Besides——­

What right had this lady to the boy to whom Barbara gave birth, whose love would now be hers had it not been wrested from her?  What was denied to her would be lavished upon this favoured woman, and when she bestowed gifts upon the glorious child for whom every pulse of her being longed, and repaid his love with love, it was regarded as a fresh proof of her noble kindness of heart.  To withhold from this woman something which would give her fresh happiness and relieve her of sorrow might have afforded her a certain satisfaction.  To bless those who curse and despitefully use us was certainly the hardest command; but on the priedieu she vowed to the Virgin to fulfil it, and in a calmer mood than before she bent over the boys to kiss them.

The next day glided by in painful anxiety, for Wolf did not return.  The following morning and afternoon also passed without bringing him.  Not until the rays of the setting sun were forcing their way through the pinks and rose bushes with which Pyramus kept her window adorned throughout the year, because she loved flowers, and the vesper bells were chiming, did her friend return.

This time she had dressed her boys with her own hands, and when, through the door which separated her from the entry, she heard Wolf greet them with merry words, her heart grew lighter, and the swift thanksgiving which she uttered blended with the dying notes of the bells.