last of all, herself.

Her arms dropped by her side: powerful and terrible as she had felt
herself this morning, she was now crushed by a sense of miserable and
impotent weakness. Her defiance had been addressed to a mortal, a frail,
tender woman; and God and Fate had put her in the front of the battle
instead of Heliodora. She shuddered at the thought.

As she went up from the bath-room, her mother met her in the hall and
said:

"What, still here, Child? How you startled me! And is it true? Is
Plotinus really ill of a complaint akin to the plague?"

"Worse than that, mother," she replied sadly. "He has the plague; and I
remembered that a bath is the right thing when one has been in a plague-
stricken house; you, too, have kissed and touched me. Pray have the fire
lighted again, late as it is, and take a bath too."

"But, Child," Susannah began with a laugh; but Katharina gave her no
peace till she yielded, and promised to bathe in the men's room, which
had not been used at all since the appearance of the epidemic.
When Dame Susannah found herself alone she smiled to herself in silent
thankfulness, and in the bath again she lifted up her heart and hands in
prayer for her only child, the loving daughter who cared for her so
tenderly.

Katharina went to her own room, after ascertaining that the clothes she
had worn this evening had been sacrificed in the bath-furnace.