n?" asked Lady Adelheid
impatiently. "Aye, to be sure, my lady, and the steward's lady will
reckon it a high honour----" At this moment the Baron chanced to pass.
He looked across at our group rather astonished, and whispered with a
sarcastic smile to the Baroness, "So you have to take counsel of
Francis again, I see?" The Baroness cast down her eyes blushing, whilst
old Francis breaking off terrified, suddenly threw himself into
military posture, his head erect, and his arms close and straight down
his side. The old aunts came sailing down upon us in their stuff gowns
and carried off the Baroness. Lady Adelheid followed her, and I was
left alone as if spell-bound. A struggle began to rage within me
between my rapturous anticipations of now being able to be near her
whom I adored, who completely swayed all my thoughts and feelings, and
my sulky ill-humour and annoyance at the Baron, whom I regarded as a
barbarous tyrant. If he were not, would the grey-haired old servant
have assumed such a slavish attitude?

"Do you hear? Can you see, I say?" cried my great-uncle, tapping me on
the shoulder;--we were going upstairs to our own apartments. "Don't
force yourself so on the Baroness's attention," he said when we reached
the room. "What good can come of it? Leave that to the young fops who
like to pay court to ladies; there are plenty of them to do it." I
related how it had all come about, and challenged him to say if I had
deserved his reproof. His only reply to this, however, was, "Humph!
humph!" as he drew on his dressing-gown. Then, having lit his pipe, he
took his seat in his easy-chair and began to talk about the adventures
of the hunt on the preceding day, bantering me on my bad shots. All was
quiet in the castle; all the visitors, both gentlemen and ladies, were
busy in their own rooms dressing for the evening. For the musicians
with the twanging fiddles, untuned violoncellos, and braying oboes, of
whom Lady Adelheid had spoken, were come, and a merrymaking of no less
importance than a ball, to be given in the best possible style, was in
anticipation. My old uncle, preferring a quiet sleep to such foolish
pastimes, stayed in his chamber. I, however, had just finished dressing
when there came a light tap at our door, and Francis entered. Smiling
in his self-satisfied way, he announced to me that the manichord had
just arrived from the land-steward's lady in a sledge, and had been
carried into the Baroness's apartments.