fury which might lead him to the most unprecedented deeds. Els, however,
had clung to him and, while holding him back with all her strength, cried
out in a tone of keen reproach, "Is this the way you keep your promise?"

Then, lowering her voice, she continued with loving entreaty: "My dear,
dear father, can you doubt that she was asleep, unconscious of her acts,
when she did what has brought so much misery upon us?"

And, interrupting herself, she added eagerly in a tone of the firmest
conviction: "No, no, neither shame nor misery has yet touched you, my
father, nor the poor child yonder. The suspicion of evil rests on me,
and me alone, and if any one here must be wretched it is I."

Then Herr Ernst, regaining his self-control, drew back from Eva, but the
latter, as if fairly frantic, exclaimed: "Do you want to drive me out of
my senses by your mysterious words and accusations? What, in the name of
all the saints, has happened that can plunge my Els into misery and
shame?"

"Into misery and shame," repeated her father in a hollow tone, throwing
himself into a chair, where he sat motionless, with his face buried in
his hands, while Els told her sister what had occurred when she went down
into the entry to speak to the knight.

Eva listened to her story, fairly gasping for breath. For one brief
moment she cherished the suspicion that Cordula had not acted from pure
sympathy, but to impose upon Heinz Schorlin a debt of gratitude which
would bind him to her more firmly. Yet when she heard that her father
had given back his daughter's ring to Herr Casper Eysvogel and broken his
child's betrothal she thought of nothing save her sister's grief and,