She ran her fingers through her singed locks and brandished the bread-knife with which she was cutting her roll in half. Next she turned up her sleeves, put on her blue working apron, and declared that she would start the packing that very instant. She turned out the wardrobe and piled clothes on the foot of the bed. Underwear and linen out of the linen-press she scattered over the floor in wildest confusion. The veins stood out in knots on her shrivelled arms, perspiration ran down her face. Lilly, with a feeling of oppression at her heart, looked on. When she saw the score of "The Song of Songs," their dearest treasure, carelessly thrown on the floor, she stooped to pick it up from amongst the litter of sheets and nightgowns. "What are you doing with 'The Song of Songs'?" cried her mother, rising in haste from her knees. "Nothing," said Lilly in surprise. "I was merely putting it on the table." "You're a liar," the woman screeched, "and an abandoned girl! You want to steal the score from me as you stole the receipt. But I'll be even with you!" Lilly, to her horror, saw a sudden flash of steel before her eyes, felt a sharp pain at her throat and something warm trickling soothingly over her left breast. It was not till her mother attempted a second thrust that Lilly realised it was the bread-knife that her mother held in her hand. With a piercing scream, she grasped her mother's wrist; but she had developed all at once the strength of a lioness, and Lilly would most probably have been worsted in the struggle if neighbours had not rushed in to see what all the noise was about. Frau Czepanek was caught from behind and bound with towels, the bread-knife still clenched in her hand with a tenacity that no power on earth could loosen. Not till the doctor, who was called in to give her a soothing draught, came did she let it fall. Lilly's wound was dressed, and she was taken to the hospital, where she was kept because no one knew what to do with her. There she learnt, in due course, that her mother had been removed to the provincial lunatic asylum, of which she was likely to be an inmate for the rest of her days. Lilly was alone in the world. CHAPTER V "Yes, my dear young lady," said the distinguished lawyer, Herr Doktor Pieper, "I have been appointed your guardian, and have accepted the post because I considered it my duty. Ah! you want the papers _re_ Lemke _versus_ Militzky," he went on, interrupting himself to speak to the head clerk. "What was I saying? Oh, to be sure. I considered it my duty, although I am a very busy man, to befriend, as far as lies in my power, the widow and orphan." He passed his well-manicured left hand over his shining bald pate and straw-coloured beard, which half concealed the mouth of a man of the world and an epicure.