Peter is too old, yet, on the other hand, he owns the Golden Cross, and,
besides, has inherited a great deal of money and a flourishing business.
I keep both at a distance, and I did the same--only more rigidly--last
year when the Count Palatine von Simmern made me proposals which would
have rendered me a rich woman, but only aroused my indignation. I dealt
more indulgently with the Ratisbon men, but I certainly shall take
neither of them, for they care more for the wine in the taproom than the
most exquisite pleasures which music offers, and, besides, they are foes
of our holy faith, and Herr Schlumperger is even one of those who most
zealously favour the heretical innovations."

Here she hesitated and her eyes met his with distrustful keenness as she
asked in an altered tone:

"And you? Have not you returned to the false doctrines with which your
boyish head was bewildered in the school of poetry?"

"I confided to you then," he exclaimed, deeply hurt, "the solemn vow I
made to my poor mother ere she closed her eyes in death."

"Then that obstacle is removed," Barbara answered in a more gentle tone,
"but I will not take back even a single word of what I have said about
other matters. I am not like the rest of the girls. My father--Holy
Virgin!--how much too late he was born! Among the Crusaders this fearless
hero, whom the pepper-bags here jeer at as a 'Turkey gobbler,' would have
been sure of every honour. How ill-suited he is for any mercantile
business, on the other hand, he has unfortunately proved. Wherever he
attempted anything, disappointment followed disappointment. To fight in
Tunis against the crescent, he let our flourishing lumber trade go to
ruin! And my mother! How young I was when her dead body was borne out of
the house, yet I can still see the haughty woman--whose image I am said
to be--in her trailing velvet robe, with plumes waving amid the curls
arranged in a towering mass upon her head. She was dressed in that way
when the men came to sell our house in the Kramgasse at auction. She must
have been one of the women under whose management, as a matter of course,
the household is neglected."

"How can you talk so about your own mother?" Wolf interrupted in a
somewhat reproachful tone.

"Because we are not here to flatter the dead or to speak falsely to each
other, but to understand how matters are between us," she answered
gravely. "How you are constituted is best known to yourself, but it seems