Meanwhile tidings reach the Court at Wolfenbüttel that the retired Court lady has been attacked with a virulent plague on her homeward journey, and has expired after a painful illness of only a few hours.
The Court is aghast at the news; Henry retires to his private apartments. Duchess Maria, softened to hear of the lady Eva's death, sends members of her Court to attend the funeral.
And now we have the second act of the drama in old Gandersheim.
The convent church is brilliant with a thousand tapers. High on a rich catafalque before the great altar stands Eva's coffin in a blaze of light. The face of the dead is of a wondrous beauty, the long brown curls fall over the breast, the small white hands, marked with plague-spots, are crossed above the still, cold heart.
The nuns, the Abbess at their head, chant the mournful dirge, and the organ weeps and wails as if it were the very soul of sorrow. The courtiers wear the deepest black, and are completely overwhelmed with the awful solemnity of the scene.
Through all the ceremony the novice Alice seems like one in a dream. The suddenness of the thing is to her incomprehensible. Only a few days ago she took leave of her foster-sister, and now she gazes on the dead! Finally the coffin is lowered; they are about to close it for ever, when Alice, before the Abbess or the two priests, who alone knew the truth, can prevent her, rushes forward with a cry of agony and kisses the cold hands in her sorrow. Suddenly she discovers they are only wax! Conscious of the danger to herself if she betrays her discovery, she weeps and sobs louder than ever, and must be almost forcibly removed. They bear the coffin to the convent vaults, the courtiers return to the Court to picture the marvellous beauty of the departed Eva to the Duke and Duchess.
In the meantime novice Alice is no novice. She ponders over the matter in secret.
"Eva is not dead," she reflects. "Where can she be? What can it all mean? I will find her if I walk every inch of the Harz mountains. I will disguise myself as an old woman, a seller of lace; thus I can gain admittance everywhere. But I must get away from here without exciting suspicion."
As the result of these soliloquies, Alice informs the Abbess she must relinquish her plan of becoming a nun, at least for the present, and go to her mother, who must be in great distress at the sudden loss of her nursling.
But on her arrival at the castle of Wolfenbüttel, Magda has disappeared, and no one knows what has become of her.