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 no conception of the bond that united her to him;
even her own sister had misunderstood it. He should now learn that
Eva Ortlieb knew what beseemed her! But she, too, longed for another
meeting, and this conduct rendered it necessary.

The sooner they two had a conversation, the better. She could
confidently venture to invite him to the meeting which she had in view;
her aunt, the abbess, had promised to stand by her side, if she needed
her, in her intercourse with the knight.

But her colour?

Katterle had long since laid the paper and writing materials before
her, but she still pondered. At last, with a smile of satisfaction, she
seized the pen. The manner in which she intended to mention the colour
should show him the nature of the bond which united them.

She was mistress of the pen, for in the convent she had copied the
gospels, the psalms, and other portions of the Scriptures, yet her hand
trembled as she committed the following lines to the paper:

"I am angered--nay, even grieved--that you, a godly knight, who knows
the reverence due to a lady, have ventured to await my greeting in front
of my father's house. If you are a true knight, you must be aware that
you voluntarily promised to obey my every glance. I can rely upon this
pledge, and since I find it necessary to talk with you, I invite you to
an interview--when and where, my maid, who is betrothed to your servant,
shall inform him. A friend, who has your welfare at heart as well as
mine, will be with me. It must be soon, with the permission of St.
Clare, who, since you have chosen her for your patron saint, looks down
upon you as well as on me.

"As for my colour, I know not what to name; the baubles associated with
earthly love are unfamiliar to me. But blue is the colour of the pure
heaven and its noble queen, the gracious Virgin. If you make this colour
yours and fight for it, I shall rejoice, and am willing to name it
mine."

At the bottom of the little note she wrote only her Christian name
"Eva," and when she