ery little about political
affairs, and her interest in them died completely when a visitor called
who threw them, as well as everything else, wholly into the shade.

CHAPTER XIII.

Wolf Hartschwert had come to Brussels and sought Barbara.

Her husband was attending to the duties of his office in the Rhine
country when she received her former lover. Had Pyramus been present, he
might perhaps have considered the knight a less dangerous opponent than
seven years before, for a great change had taken place in his outer man.
The boyish appearance which at that time still clung to him had vanished
and, by constant intercourse with the Castilian nobility, he had acquired
a manly, self-assured bearing perfectly in harmony with his age and
birth.

As he sat opposite to Barbara for the first time, she could not avert her
eyes from him and, with both his hands clasped in hers, she let him tell
her of his journey to Brussels and his efforts to find her in the great
city. Meanwhile she scarcely heeded the purport of his words; it was
enough to feel the influence exerted by the tone of his voice, and to be
reminded by his features and his every gesture of something once dear to
her.

He appeared like the living embodiment of the first beautiful days of her
youth, and her whole soul was full of gratitude that he had sought her;
while he, too, had the same experience, though his former passion had
long since changed into a totally different feeling. He thought her
beautiful, but her permitting their hands to remain clasped so long now
agitated him no more than if she had been a dear, long-absent sister.

When Barbara was told who awaited her in the sitting roam and, with
flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, clad in a light morning gown which was
very becoming to her, had hastened to greet him, his heart had indeed
throbbed faster, and it seemed as though an unexpected Easter morning
awaited the old buried love; but she had scarcely uttered his name and
exchanged a few words of greeting in a voice which, though no longer
hoarse, still lacked melody, than the flood of newly awakened emotions
swiftly ebbed again.

She was still only half the Wawerl of former days, whose musical voice
had helped to make her the queen of his heart. So he had soon regained
the calmness which, in Spain and on the journey here, he had expected to
test at their meeting. Even the last trace of a deeper emotion passed
away when she told him of her hus