d Heinz seemed to understand her; for after
their eyes had met, his glance of helpless enquiry told her that he
would leave her to find an escape from this labyrinth.

The merry party, who now perceived that they had interrupted the
nocturnal tryst of lovers, did not instantly know what to do and, as
one looked enquiringly at another, an embarrassed silence followed their
noisy jollity.

But the hush did not last long, and its interruption at first seemed to
Els to bode the worst result; it was a peal of gay, reckless laughter,
ringing from the lips of the very Cordula von Montfort, into whose eyes,
as the only one of her own sex who was present, Els had just gazed with
a look imploring aid.

Had Eva's aversion to the countess been justified, and was she about to
take advantage of her unpleasant position to jeer at her?

Had the two quarreled at the ball the night before, and did Cordula now
perceive an opportunity to punish the younger sister by the humiliation
of the older one?

Yet her laugh sounded by no means spiteful--rather, very gay and
natural. The pleasant grey eyes sparkled with the most genuine mirth,
and she clapped her little hands so joyously that the falcon's chain on
the gauntlet of her riding glove rattled.

And what was this?

No one looks at a person whom one desires to wound with an expression of
such cheerful encouragement as the look with which Cordula now gazed at
Els and Heinz Schorlin, who stood by her side. True, they were at first
extremely perplexed by the words she now shouted to those around her in
a tone of loud exultation, as though announcing a victory; but from the
beginning they felt that there was no evil purpose in them. Soon they
even caught the real meaning of the countess's statement, and Els was
ashamed of having feared any injury from the girl whose defender she had
always been.

"Won, Sir Knight--cleverly won!" was her first sentence to Heinz.

Then, turning to Els, she asked with no less animation: "And you, my
fair maid and very strict housemate, who has won the wager now? Do you
still believe it is an inconceivable thought that the modest daughter
of a decorous Nuremberg race, entitled to enter the lists of a tourney,
would grant a young knight a midnight meeting?" And addressing her
companions, she continued, in an explanatory yet still playful tone:
"She was ready to wager the beautiful brown locks which she now hides
modestly under a kerchief, and even her bet