dness.

A smile, so faint and brief that Barbara did not perceive it, was
hovering meanwhile around the valet's thin lips. The causes of this
strange change of opinion and mood would have been sufficiently
intelligible to him, even had he not perceived one of the reproving
glances which Frau Lerch cast at Barbara.

She, too, had met one; but since she had once obeyed the impulse of her
own nature, and felt content in doing so, she troubled herself no further
about the monitor, and there was nothing in her new home which was not
far more beautiful than what she had had in the precentor's modest house.

The marquise displeased her most deeply, and this also she plainly told
Master Adrian, and begged him to inform his Majesty, with her dutiful
greeting. His best gift was the precaution which he had taken that she
should live apart from the old monkey.

The valet received this commission, like all the former ones, with a
slight, grave bow.

On the whole, the experienced man was not ill-pleased with her, only it
seemed to him strange that Barbara did not mention the serious misfortune
which had befallen Wolf; yet she knew from his own lips that he loved the
knight, and had learned that the latter's life was in serious danger.

So he turned the conversation to his young friend, and in an instant a
remarkable change took place in Barbara. Wolf's sorrowful fate and severe
wound had weighed heavily upon her heart, but what the present brought
was so novel and varied that it had crowded the painful event, near as
was the past to which it belonged, into the shadow.

She now desired to know who the murderer was who had attacked him, and
cursed him with impetuous wrath. She thought it base and shameful that
she had been denied access to his couch.

Poor, poor Wolf!

Of all the men on earth, he was the best! Meanwhile tears of genuine
compassion flowed from her eyes and, with passionate vehemence, she
declared that no power in the world should keep her from him. The mere
sound of her voice, she knew, would be a cordial to him.

So Master Adrian had not been mistaken.

It was not only in song that she was capable of deep feeling, and the
love which had seized the Emperor Charles so late, and yet so powerfully,
had not gone far astray.

He could scarcely have bestowed it upon a more beautiful woman. While
pleasure in her new surroundings held sway over her, it was a real
pleasure to see her face. But this creature, so ric