oncerning his own future and that of his family.

When he finally reported that he himself and the ladies must leave the
house and the city, Countess Rotterbach, with a scornful glance at her
deeply humiliated son-in-law, exclaimed, "This is what comes of throwing
one's self away!" The unfortunate man, already shaken to the inmost
depths of his being, sank on his knees.

Conrad Teufel had instantly placed him in bed and sent for the leech;
but even after they had bathed his head with cold water and bled him he
did not regain consciousness. His left side seemed completely paralysed,
and his tongue could barely lisp a few unintelligible words.

At the leech's desire a Sister of Charity had been sent for. Isabella
Siebenburg, the sufferer's daughter, had already gone with her twin
sons, in obedience to her husband's wish, to Heideck Castle.

She had departed in anger, because she had vainly endeavoured to induce
her mother and grandmother, who opposed her, to speak more kindly of her
husband. When they disparaged the absent man with cruel harshness, she
felt--she had told her cousin so--as if the infants could understand the
insult offered to their father, and, to protect the children even more
than herself, from her husband's feminine foes, she left the falling
house, in spite of the entreaties and burning tears with which, in the
hour of parting, her mother strove to detain her.

Ere her departure she gave her jewels and the silver which her
grandfather had bequeathed to her to Conrad Teufel, to satisfy the most
urgent demands of her husband's creditors. Her father and she had parted
kindly, and he made no attempt to oppose her.

No one except the Sister of Charity was now in attendance upon the old
gentleman; for his wife wept and wailed without finding strength to do
anything, and even reproached her own mother, whom she accused of having
plunged them all into misfortune, and caused the stroke of paralysis
from which her husband was suffering.

The grey-haired countess, the cousin went on, had passed from one attack
of convulsions into another, and when he approached her had shrieked
the words "ingratitude" and "base reward" so shrilly at him, in various
tones, that they were still ringing in his ears.

Everything in the luckless household was out of gear, and its noble
guest, the Duke von Gulich, would feel the consequences, for the
servants had lost their wits too. Spite of the countless men and maids,
he had