ed conversation with her. His daughter's presence
was probably due to that of the guests quartered in his home, especially
Cordula, whom, since she disturbed the peace of his quiet household
night after night, he regarded as the personification of restlessness
and reckless freedom. He would have preferred to pass her unnoticed, but
she had clung to his arm and was trying, with coaxing graciousness, to
soften his indignation by gaily relating how she had come here and
what had detained her and her companions. But Ernst Ortlieb, who would
usually have been very susceptible to such an advance from a young and
aristocratic lady, could not now succeed in smoothing his brow. In his
excitement he was not even able to grasp the meaning of the story she
related merrily, though with well-feigned contrition. While listening
to her with one ear, he was straining the other to catch what Sir Seitz
Siebenburg was saying to his father-in-law, Casper Eysvogel.

He gathered from Countess Cordula's account that she had succeeded in
playing some bold prank in connection with Els and the Swiss knight
Heinz Schorlin, and the words "the Mustache" was whispering to his
father-in-law-the direction of his glance betrayed it--also referred to
Els and the Swiss. But the less Herr Ernst heard of this conversation
the more painfully it excited his already perturbed spirit.

Suddenly his pleasant features, which, on account of the lady at his
side, he had hitherto forced to wear a gracious aspect, assumed an
expression which filled the reckless countess with grave anxiety, and
urged the terrified Els, who had not turned her eyes from him, to a
hasty resolution. That was her father's look when on the point of an
outbreak of fury, and at this hour, surrounded by these people, he must
not allow himself to yield to rage; he must maintain a tolerable degree
of composure.

Without heeding the young Burgrave Eitelfritz or Sir Boemund Altrosen,
who were just approaching her, she forced her way nearer to her father,
He still maintained his self-control, but already the veins on his brow
had swollen and his short figure was rigidly erect. The cause of
his excitement--she had noticed it--was some word uttered by Seitz
Siebenburg. Her father was the only person who had understood it, but
she was not mistaken in the conjecture that it referred to her and the
Swiss knight, and she believed it to be base and spiteful.

In fact, after his father-in-law had told h