ude to him, other religious
songs which he had liked to hear echoed from her lips.

The little German ballads which she afterward sang, to the delight of
her boys, deeply moved her husband's heart, and she herself found that
it was no insult to art when, with the voice that she now possessed, she
again devoted herself to the pleasure of singing.

If the codicil brought her son what she desired, she could once more, if
her voice lost the sharpness which still clung to it, serve her beloved
art as a not wholly unworthy priestess, and then, perchance, she would
again possess the right, so long relinquished, of calling herself happy.

She would go the next day to Appenzelder, who always greeted her kindly
when they met in the street, and ask his advice.

If only Wolf had been there!

He understood how to manage women's voices also, and could have given
her the best directions how to deal with the new singing exercises.

It seemed as though in these days not one of her wishes remained
unfulfilled, for the very next afternoon, just as she was dressing to
call upon the leader of the boy choir, the servant announced a stranger.

A glad presentiment hurried her into the vestibule, and there stood
Sir Wolf Hartschwert in person, an aristocratic cavalier in his black
Spanish court costume. He had become a man indeed, and his appearance
did not even lack the "sosiego," the calm dignity of the Castilian
noble, which gave Don Louis Quijada so distinguished an appearance.

True, his greeting was more eager and cordial than the genuine
"sosiego"--which means "repose"--would have permitted. Even the manner
in which Wolf expressed his pleasure in the new melody of Barbara's
voice, and whispered an entreaty to send the children and Frau
Lamperi--who came to greet him--away for a short time, was anything but
patient.

What had he in view?

Yet it must be something good.

When the light shone through her flower-decked window upon his face, she
thought she perceived this by the smile hovering around his lips. She
was not mistaken, nor did she wait long for the joyous tidings she
expected; his desire to tell her what, with the exception of the
regent--to whom his travelling companion, the Grand Prior Don Luis de
Avila, was perhaps just telling it as King Philip's envoy--no human
being in the Netherlands could yet know, was perhaps not much less than
hers to hear it.

Scarcely an hour before he had dismounted in Brussels with the