convent walls. No one except her quiet, silent sister Christine had been
permitted to witness the mental struggle, and the latter now saw repeated
in her young niece what Kunigunde had experienced so many years before.
Difficult as it had then been for her to understand the future abbess,
now, after watching many a similar contest in others, it was easy to
follow every emotion in Eva's soul.

During a long and happy married life, in which year by year mutual
respect had increased, the magistrate and his wife had finally attained
the point of holding the same opinions on important questions; but when
Herr Berthold returned from the city, and finding Eva already at the
hospital, told his wife, at the meal which she shared with him, that from
his point of view she ought to have strenuously opposed her niece's
desire, and he only hoped that her compliance might entail no disastrous
consequences upon the excitable, sensitive child, the remarkable thing
happened that Frau Christine, without as usual being influenced by him,
insisted upon her own conviction.

So it happened that this time the magistrate was robbed of the little
nap which usually followed the meal, and yet, in spite of the best will
to yield, he could not do his wife the favour of allowing himself to be
convinced. Still, he did not ask her to retract the consent which she
had once given, so Eva was permitted to continue to visit the hospital.

The nurse, a woman of estimable character and strong will, would
faithfully protect her whatever might happen. Frau Christine had placed
the girl under her special charge, and the Beguine Hildegard, a woman of
noble birth and the widow of a knight who had yielded his life in Italy
for the Emperor Frederick, received her with special warmth because she
had a daughter whom, just at Eva's age, death had snatched from her.