Sometimes the display in church had been scarcely less brilliant, and
even without her sister's request she had gazed at it, but how entirely
different it was! There she had rejoiced in her own modest garb, and
told herself that her simplicity was more pleasing to God and the saints
than the vain splendour of the others, which she might so easily have
imitated or even surpassed. But here the anxious question of how she
appeared among the rest of the company forced itself upon her.

True, she knew that the brocade suckenie, which her father had ordered
from Milan, was costly; that the sea-green hue of the right side
harmonised admirably with the white on the left; that the tendrils and
lilies of the valley wrought in silver, which seemed to be scattered over
the whole, looked light and airy; yet she could not shake off the feeling
that everything she wore was in disorder--here something was pulled awry,
there something was crushed. Els, who had attended to her whole toilet,
was not there to arrange it, and she felt thoroughly uncomfortable in the
midst of this worldly magnificence and bustle.

Notwithstanding her father's presence, she had never been so desolate as
among these ladies and gentlemen, nearly all of whom were strangers.

Her sister was intimate with the other girls of her age and station,
few of whom were absent, and if Eva could have conjured her to her side
doubtless many would have joined them; but she knew no one well, and
though many greeted her, no one lingered. Everybody had friends with
whom they were on far more familiar terms. The young Countess von
Montfort, a girl of her own age and an inmate of her own home, also gave
her only a passing word. But this was agreeable to her--she disliked
Cordula's free manners.