an to praise the virtue and piety of the servant as well as
his lord; but Eva again interrupted, and asked what Sir Heinz Schorlin
desired.

Katterle, with new-born confidence, repeated, as if it were some trivial
request, the words Biberli had impressed upon her mind.

"By virtue of the right of every good and devout knight to ask his lady
for her colour, Sir Heinz Schorlin, with all due reverence, humbly prays
you to name yours; for how could he hold up his head before you and all
the knights if he were denied the privilege of wearing it in your honour,
in war as well as in peace?"

Here her mistress again interrupted with a positive "I know," and, still
more emboldened, Katterle continued the ex-schoolmaster's lesson to the
end:

"His lord, my lover says, will wait here beneath the window, in all
reverence, though it should be till morning, until you show him your
sweet face. No, don't interrupt me yet, Mistress Eva, for you must know
that Sir Heinz's lady mother committed her dear son to my Biberli's care,
that he might guard him from injury and illness. But since his master met
you, he has been tottering about as though he had received a
spear-thrust, and as the knight confessed to his faithful servitor that
no leech could help him until you permitted him to open his heart to you
and show you with what humble devotion----"

But here the maid was interrupted in a manner very different from her
expectations, for Eva had raised herself on her pillows and, almost
unable to control her voice in the excess of her wrath, exclaimed:

"The master who presumes to seek through his servant----And by what right
does the knight dare thus insolently----But no! Who knows what modest
wish was transformed in your mouth to so unprecedented a demand? He
desired to see my face? He wanted to speak to me in person, to confess I
know not what? From you--you, Katterle, the maid--the knight expects----"

Here she struck her little hand angrily against the wood of the bedstead
and, panting for breath, continued:

"I'll show him!----Yet no! What I have to answer no one else----From me,
from me alone, he shall learn without delay. There is paper in yonder
chest, on the very top; bring it to me, with pen and ink."

Katterle silently hurried to obey this order, but Eva pressed her hand
upon her heaving bosom, and gazed silently into vacancy.

The manservant and the maid whom Heinz Schorlin had made his messengers
certainly could have