But Eva still saw her mother before her! it was indeed a touching picture; the pale lady with those large, enthusiastic eyes, which the daughter had inherited; for the small, sparkling coal black eyes of her adopted mother had nothing in common with that heritage, and she saw these orbs veiled in tears, as she had seen them at the last farewell, and thus this picture accompanied her through life.
And again the weeping willows rustled! How gloomy was the boarding school, were the classes! Eva was no light-hearted girl, and was avoided by the other pupils; questions were upon her lips that did not stand in the catechism, nor in her school books; these queries displeased her teachers, all the more so, because often they could not give an answer to the enquiries; the best meaning one amongst the governesses jokingly called Eva the little philosopher; but in the school she was universally called the girl with the inquiring eyes. Her eyes did indeed speak many questions of her heart to which life alone could impart a reply. Yet Eva was not happy! Her heart thirsted after love; but she did not possess the art of winning it easily by ready acquiescence.
Once, it might be in her twelfth year, she had found a little friend, an innocent girl with merry eyes, who attached herself to Eva like a burr. The latter even became merry in her company, beginning to jest, to play, to dance with the child. This continued throughout one whole winter; when the little one returned after the Easter holidays, she was distant and shy towards Eva, and withdrew entirely from her. For long Eva bore this unmerited estrangement silently, at last she enquired its cause.
"I am not to associate with you," replied the little one, with downcast eyes, "on account of your mother--"
This word buried itself deeply in the girl's heart, and became united to all her sad thoughts; and again in the head class of the school, an enlightened teacher, who in deep draughts had inhaled the air of pure reason which was wafted thither from the Königsberg philosophical dyke, had made remarks about the sad consequences of false piety, which could be seen in many near examples, and thereupon all her schoolfellows looked with meaning glances at Eva, who became alarmed at the enigmatic nature of this insinuation.
Thus she had a right to enquire with her eyes, and with her heart; because a dark shadow fell upon her life.
And again the weeping willows rustled! should no friend then approach her, no love adorn her life? The only one of whom she had dreamed that he might stand nearer to her heart, had become estranged from her again, and her life was lonelier than ever!
But why the wreath of rosemary? Does he deserve such mourning, who flutters heedlessly from flower to flower? No, he does not deserve it. And she flung the rosemary wreath aside; she left the shade of the weeping willows and through the high, bushy ferns sprang down the hill.
"A blue campanula the proud singer called me; good, so may they ring around me, those blue bells; I will be sad no more, I will deck myself with the joyous, open hearted children of the wood."
And she hastened into the cooler valley where the woodland rivulet rippled between alders, and plucked the tiny bells of the wood, the flower of the manifold campanula, which like a blue ribbon intersected the valley.