Only too often the same drinking and carousing had gone on below as to-day-Henrica had always been compelled to join her aunt’s guests, elderly dissolute men of French or Italian origin and easy morals.  While describing these conventicles, the blood crimsoned her flushed cheeks still more deeply, and the long strokes of the pen grew heavier and heavier.  What the abbe related and her aunt laughed at, what the Italian screamed and Monseigneur smilingly condemned with a slight shake of the head, was so shamelessly bold that she would have been defiled by repeating the words.  Was she a respectable girl or not?  She would rather hunger and thirst, than be present at such a banquet again.  If the dining-room was empty, other unprecedented demands were made upon Henrica, for then her aunt, who could not endure to be alone a moment, was sick and miserable, and she was obliged to nurse her.  That she gladly and readily served the suffering, she wrote, she had sufficiently proved by her attendance on the village children when they had the smallpox, but if her aunt could not sleep she was compelled to watch beside her, hold her hand, and listen until morning as she moaned, whined and prayed, sometimes cursing herself and sometimes the treacherous world.  She, Henrica, had come to the house strong and well, but so much disgust and anger, such constant struggling to control herself had robbed her of her health.

The young girl had written until midnight.  The letters became more and more irregular and indistinct, the lines more crooked, and with the last words:  “My head, my poor head!  You will see that I am losing my senses.  I beseech you, I beseech you, my dear, stern father, take me home.  I have again heard something about Anna—­” her eyes grew dim, her pen dropped from her hand, and she fell back in the chair unconscious.

There she lay, until the last laugh and sound of rattling glass had died away below, and her aunt’s guests had left the house.

Denise, the cameriera, noticed the light in the room, entered, and after vainly endeavoring to rouse Henrica, called her mistress.

The latter followed the maid, muttering as she ascended the stairs: 

“Fallen asleep, found the time hang heavy—­that’s all!  She might have been lively and laughed with us!  Stupid race!  ‘Men of butter,’ King Philip says.  That wild Lamperi was really impertinent to-night, and the abbe said things—­things—­”

The old lady’s large eyes were sparkling vinously, and her fan waved rapidly to and fro to cool the flush on her cheeks.

She now stood opposite to Henrica, called her, shook her and sprinkled her with perfumed water from the large shell, set in gold, which hung as an essence bottle from her belt.  When her niece only muttered incoherent words, she ordered the maid to bring her medicine-chest.

Denise had gone and Fraulein Van Hoogstraten now perceived Henrica’s letter, raised it close to her eyes, read page after page with increasing indignation, and at last tossed it on the floor and tried to shake her niece awake; but in vain.