I don't mean these pitiful burns, but a deep and deadly one." "You ought to have spared yourself these," said Els in a tone of affectionate warning.

"Consider what you are to your father, and how your suffering pains him! To risk a precious human life for the sake of a stupid brute--" "They call it a sin, I know," Cordula burst forth.

"And yet I would commit the same tomorrow at the risk of again--Oh, you cautious city people, you maidens with snow-white hands! What do you know of a girl like me?
You cannot even imagine what my child life was; and yet it is told in a single word--motherless! I was never permitted to see her, to hear her dear, warning voice.

She paid with her own life for giving me mine.

My father?
How kind he is! He meant to supply his dead wife's place by anticipating my every wish.