ought to the door, or my father will be anxious. I was obliged to
await your return, because----Well, my flight from the hospital certainly
was not praiseworthy, and it affords me no special pleasure to confess
it. But you must not think me even more pitiful than I proved myself, so
I stayed to tell you myself----"

"That it is one thing," interrupted Sir Boemund, "to nurse worthy
wood-cutters, gamekeepers, fishermen, and charcoal-burners, who, when
wounded and ill, look up to their gracious mistress as if she were an
angel of deliverance, and quite a different matter to mingle with the
miserable rabble yonder. The bloody stripes which the executioner's lash
cuts in the criminal's back do not render him more gentle; the mutilation
which he curses, and the disgrace with which an abandoned woman----"

"Stop!" interrupted Cordula, whose lips and cheeks had again grown
colourless. "Do not mention those scenes which have poisoned my soul. It
was too hideous, too terrible! And how the woman with the red band around
her neck, the mark of the rope by which she carried the stone, rushed at
the other whose eye had been put out! how they fought on the floor,
scratching, biting, tearing each other's hair----"

Here the tender-hearted girl, covering her convulsed face with her hands,
sobbed aloud.

Frau Christine drew her compassionately to her heart, pressed the
motherless child's head to her bosom, and let her weep her fill there,
whilst the magistrate said to Sir Boemund: "And Eva Ortlieb also
witnessed this hideous scene, yet the delicate young creature endured
it?"

Altrosen nodded assent, adding eagerly, as if some memory rose vividly
before him: "She often looked distressed by these horrors, but
usually--how shall I express it?--usually calm and content."

"Content," repeated the magistrate thoughtfully. Then, suddenly
straightening his short, broad figure, he thrust his little fat hand into
a fold of the knight's doublet, exclaiming: "Boemund, do you want to know
the most difficult riddle that the Lord gives to us men to solve? It
is--take heed--a woman's soul."

"Yes," replied Altrosen curtly; the word sounded like a sigh.

While speaking, his dark eye was bent on Cordula, whose head still rested
on Frau Christine's breast.

Then, adjusting the bandage which since the fire had been wound around
his forehead and his dark hair, he continued in a tone of explanation:
"Count von Montfort sent me, when it grew dark, to