The old countess had summoned two relatives, both elderly canonesses, to
aid her in her assault upon the intruder, and perhaps they were the
persons who advised locking up Sir Casper's nurse, to whom they denied
the right of still calling herself the bride of the young master of the
house.

Frau Christine had arrived at the right time. Els was beginning to lose
courage. She had found nothing which could aid her to sustain it.

Since Biberli had been deprived of his liberty she had rarely heard from
Wolff, and his invalid father, for whose sake she remained in the house,
seemed to view her with dislike. At first he had tried neither to speak
to nor look at her, but that morning, while raising a refreshing cup to
his parched lips, he had cast at her from the one eye whose lid still
moved a glance whose enmity still haunted her.

Even the priest who visited him several times was by no means kindly
disposed towards her. He belonged to the Dominican order, and was the
confessor of the old countess and Frau Rosalinde. They must have
slandered her sorely to him; and as the order of St. Francis, to which
the Sisters of St. Clare belonged, was a thorn in his flesh, he bore her
a grudge because, as the Abbess Kunigunde's niece, she stood by her and
her convent, and threatened to win the Eysvogel household over to the
Franciscans.

Before the magistrate and his wife left their niece, Herr Berthold
ordered the men and maidservants to stand in separate rows, then, in the
physician's presence, introduced Els to them as the mistress whom they
were to obey, and requested her to choose those whose services she wished
to retain. The rest would be compensated at the Town Hall the next day