ered
among the admirers of another woman, like your detestable brother-in-law.
Besides, he is wasting time with Cordula. Her worldliness repels Eva, it
is true, but I have heard many pleasant things about her. Alas! she is a
motherless girl, and her father is an old reveller and huntsman, who
rejoices whenever she does any audacious act. But he keeps his purse open
to her, and she is kind-hearted and obliging to a degree----"

"Equalled by few," interrupted Wolff, with a sneer. "The men know how to
praise her for it. No paternoster would be imposed upon her in the
confessional on account of cruel harshness."

"Nor for a sinful or a spiteful deed," replied Els positively. "Don't say
anything against her to me, Wolff, in spite of your dissolute
brother-in-law. I have enough to do to intercede for her with Eva and
Aunt Kunigunde since she singed and oiled the locks of a Swiss knight
belonging to the Emperor's court. Our Katterle brought the coals. But
many other girls do that, since courtesy permits it. Her train to the
Town Hall certainly made a very brave show; the fifty freight waggons you
are expecting will scarcely form a longer line."

The young merchant started. The comparison roused his forgotten anxiety
afresh, and after a few brief, tender words of farewell he left the
object of his love. Els gazed thoughtfully after him; the moonlight
revealed his tall, powerful figure for a long time. Her heart throbbed
faster, and she felt more deeply than ever how warmly she loved him. He
moved as though some heavy burden of care bowed his strong shoulders. She
would fain have hastened after him, clung to him, and asked what troubled
him, what he was concealing from her who was ready to share everything
with him, but the Frauenthor, through which he entered the city, already
hid him from her gaze.

She turned back into the room with a faint sigh. It could scarcely be
solely anxiety about his expected goods that burdened her lover's mind.
True, his weak, arrogant mother, and still more his grandmother, the
daughter of a count, who lived with them in the Eysvogel house and still
ruled her daughter as if she were a child, had opposed her engagement to
Wolff, but their resistance had ceased since the betrothal. On the other
hand, she had often heard that Fran Eysvogel, the haughty mother,
dowerless herself, had many poor and extravagant relations besides her
daughter and her debt-laden, pleasure-loving husband, Sir Seitz
Sieb