[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
entire meal of them. D.W.]





THE BURGOMASTER'S WIFE

By Georg Ebers

Volume 4.



CHAPTER XX.

The burgomaster's wife had been anxious about Henrica, but the latter
greeted her with special cheerfulness and met her gentle reproaches with
the assurance that this morning had done her good. Fate, she said,
was just, and if it were true that confidence of recovery helped the
physician, Doctor Bontius would have an easy task with her. The dead
Castilian must be the wretch, who had plunged her sister Anna into
misery. Maria, surprised, but entirely relieved, left her and sought her
husband to tell him how she had found the invalid, and in what relation
the Spanish officer, slain by Allertssohn, seemed to have stood to
Henrica and her sister. Peter only half listened to her, and when
Barbara brought him a freshly-ironed ruff, interrupted his wife in the
middle of her story, gave her the dead man's letter-case, and said: