Violande, however, when she saw the man whose love she had aspired to married, after all, to another had not given up the frequent use of her talent for mischiefmaking, for fear she might get out of practice. The older she grew the more artistic became her endeavors in that line, but without success for herself, since she remained a spinster, and since even the men themselves whom by her wiles she had alienated from other women turned away from her as from a dangerous person, feeling in their hearts only contempt and hatred for her. Then it was she turned her face heavenwards, giving it out that she was on the point of entering a convent and becoming a nun. But she changed her mind in the last hour, and instead of a convent entered a house devoted to some holy order, but such a one as would permit her, in case the chance of becoming a wife should unexpectedly present itself to her, to leave it. Thus she disappeared for years from view, since she was in the habit of going from one town to another at short intervals, and nowhere feeling rested or contented. Suddenly, when the forester's wife was lying sick to death, she reappeared again, in Seldwyla, and in worldly dress, and so it had come about that here she was as one of the guests at this funeral celebration, seated opposite the widower. She put restraint on her restlessness, and now and then looked modest and almost childlike, and when the women rose and walked about in couples, the while the men remained seated at table drinking and talking, she went up to Kuengolt, kissed her on both cheeks, and made friends with her. The half-grown girl felt honored by these advances of a semi-clerical woman, one who had apparently great knowledge of the world and had been about a good deal, and so these two were at once involved in a long and intimate conversation, as though they had known each other all their lives. When the company broke up Kuengolt asked her father to invite Violande to his house, in order to manage the big household, a task for which she herself felt not equal and entirely too young and inexperienced. The forester whose mood at that moment was a curious compound of mourning and vinous elation, and whose thoughts still belonged altogether to his departed wife, raised no objection to this request, although he did not care much for his cousin and thought her a queer sort of person.