Only the voice sounded to me even more like a muffled bell used only for funerals, especially when she said, in reference to Fritz's entering the cloister, "Praise to God, and the blessed Virgin, and all the saints. At last, then, He has heard my unworthy prayers; one at least is saved!"
A cold shudder passed over me at her words. Had she then, indeed, all these years been praying that our happiness should be ruined and our home desolated? And had God heard her? Was the fatal spell, which my mother feared was binding us, after all nothing else than Aunt Agnes's terrible prayers?
Her face looked as lifeless as ever, in the folds of white linen which bound it into a regular oval. Her voice was metallic and lifeless; the touch of her hand was impassive and cold as marble when we took leave of her. My mother wept, and said, "Dear Agnes, perhaps we may never meet again on earth."
"Perhaps not," was the reply.
"You will not forget us, sister?" said the mother.
"I never forget you," was the reply, in the same deep, low, firm, irresponsive voice, which seemed as if it had never vibrated to anything more human than an organ playing Gregorian chants.
And the words echo in my heart to this instant, like a knell.
She never forgets us.
Nightly in her vigils, daily in church and cell, she watches over us, and prays God not to let us be too happy.
And God hears her, and grants her prayers. It is too clear He does! Had she not been asking Him to make Fritz a monk? and is not Fritz separated from us for ever?