her face deadly pale, and her tall figure drawn up to its full
height, stood before the door of the nursery with a stern, cold
expression on her lovely lips, like a princess pronouncing sentence upon
a criminal. She was panting for breath, and before her, her mother, and
her grandmother, Countess Cordula's pretty page, whom Siebenburg knew
only too well, was moving to and fro with eager gestures. He held in his
hand the bunch of roses which Seitz had sent to his newly-won wife and
darling as a token of reconciliation, and Siebenburg heard his clear,
boyish tones urge: "I have already said so and, noble lady, you may
believe me, this bouquet, which the woman brought us, was intended for my
gracious mistress, Countess von Montfort. It was meant to give her a fair
morning greeting, and--Do not let this vex you, for it was done only in
the joyous game of love, as custom dictated. Ever since we came here your
lord has daily honoured my countess with the loveliest flowers whose buds
unfold in the region near the Rhine. But my gracious mistress, as you
have already heard, believes that you, noble lady, have a better right to
these unusually beautiful children of the spring than she who last
evening bade your lord behold in you, not in her, fair lady, the most
fitting object of his homage. So she sent me hither, most gracious madam,
to lay what is yours at your feet."

As he spoke, the agile boy, with a graceful bow, tried to place the
flowers in Isabella's hand, but she would not receive the bouquet, and
the abrupt gesture with which she pushed them back flung the nosegay on
the floor. Paying no further heed to it, she answered in a cold, haughty
tone: "Thank your mistress, and tell her that I appreciated her kind
intention, but the roses which she sent me were too full of thorns."
Then, turning her back on the page, she advanced with majestic pride to
the door of the nursery.

Her mother and grandmother tried to follow, but Siebenburg pressed
between them and his wife, and his voice thrilled with the anguish of a
soul overwhelmed by despair as he cried imploringly: "Hear me, Isabella!
There is a most unhappy misunderstanding here. By all that is sacred to
me, by our love, by our children, I swear those roses were intended for
you, my heart's treasure, and for you alone."

But Countess Rotterbach cut him short by exclaiming with a loud chuckle:
"The unripe early pears will probably come from the fruit market to the
housewif