After a long, sleepless night, she arose at dawn, and, while Ernestine was still sleeping, sat down and wrote to Hilsborn. She wrote hurriedly, and the long letter was wet with tears that Ernestine would have been grieved to see. She finished it before Ernestine awoke, and her eyes began to sparkle again, as if they trusted that this letter would change the whole aspect of affairs.
"Gretchen," said Ernestine, as Gretchen leaned over her to give her a morning kiss, "how gay you look! Do you not feel the heavy burden that I have laid upon your shoulders?"
"Oh, Ernestine," her sister replied, "as long as I have you I will be thankful for you, however dark matters may look outside."
Ernestine looked at her thoughtfully. "Gretchen, there is a greatness in your fidelity and self-sacrifice that I never before conceived of. Now first I know what Dr. Möllner meant by true womanliness. This womanliness your father took from me,--you, his child, have restored it to me. It is the greatest gift you have given me, and it atones for his depriving me of it."
Gretchen breathed a sigh of relief. "When you say so, I seem to hear the angels tell me that mercy will be shown to my poor father. Indeed, dear Ernestine, you are in alliance with beings of a better world, or you could not know how to console and inspire me thus. Indeed, when you look at me so tenderly I must believe there is redemption for the soul of my father. What can I do to repay you for such consolation?"
[CHAPTER XII.]
THE THIRD POWER.
"'What the law of force fails to accomplish, the intellect will effect,--where the intellect fails, love succeeds!' That was what he said," said Ernestine. Again her thoughts were involuntarily occupied with Johannes. "I wish I could write the sermons for his reverence, instead of copying them,--that would be such an excellent text." Thus she broke forth one day while seated with Gretchen at the table, where the latter was busy finishing the new dress that Hilsborn had sent her.
"Have you proposed it to Herr Pastor?" asked Gretchen with a smile.
"If he were not so conceited, I certainly would do so. But I suppose he would be offended."