Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/109

 by the child against the gray background of the cloister. Madame Holstein had travelled far with her chubby little girl, and Ernestine had turned wide-open, intelligent eyes on all she saw. Flooding the picture was an atmosphere of German home life. Herr Holstein, the husband and father, was an eminent scholar, held in Germany by his duties as professor in a large university. Sister Cecilia saw his letters to his child, and liked the simple, fatherly spirit they breathed. They were written in English, and Ernestine was exhorted to perfect herself in that tongue, during the opportunities afforded her so plentifully.

The two strangers whom she had never seen became vividly familiar figures in the nun's life. She saw the quiet professor, living among his books, loving his wife and child in his matter-of-fact fashion, keeping them in mind and heart, yet bearing with much philosophy their absence from him. And far from him, in the scenes she called up, was the radiant figure of his wife, "the greatest contralto in the world," sweeping on in her brilliant and triumphant career, winning fame and wealth and countless hearts by the magic of her glorious voice. She was a dignified and noble woman, if one might judge by the picture in Ernestine's little locket and those