, and the consciousness
weighed heavily upon her by no means unduly sensitive conscience.

Wolf, who was already unhappy on her account, had fared the same. When
her father told her that the knight was to accompany him, she had
felt as if an incident of her childhood, which had often disturbed her
dreams, was repeated.

She had been swinging with boyish recklessness in the Woller garden.
Suddenly one of the ropes broke, and the board which supported her feet
turned over out of her reach. For a time, clinging with her hands to the
uninjured rope, she swayed between heaven and earth. No one was near,
and, though she soon stood once more on the firm ground unhurt, the
moment when her feet, during the ascent, lost their support, was
associated with feelings of so much terror that she--who at that time
was considered the bravest of her playfellows--had never forgotten it.

Now she felt as though something similar had befallen her.

She had seen the props on which she might depend removed from under
her feet. If her father and Wolf left her, she would look in vain for
counsel and support.

That her lover was the most powerful sovereign on earth, and she could
appeal to him if she needed help, did not enter her mind. Nay, a vague
foreboding told her that he and what was associated with him formed the
power against which she must struggle.

The sham affection of the aristocratic lady who was to be her chaperon;
the Queen, who last evening had catechised her as if she were a child,
and whom she distrusted; the servile flatterer, Malfalconnet, in whose
mirthful manner that day for the first time she thought she had detected
dislike and slight sarcasm; the imperial love messenger, Don Luis
Quijada, who with icy, dutiful coldness scarcely vouchsafed a word to
her; and, lastly, the confessor Pedro de Soto, who treated her like a
person who needed pity, and probably only awaited a fitting time to hurl
an anathema into her face--passed before her memory, and in all these
persons, so far above her in birth and rank, she believed that she saw
foes.

But how was it with the man who could trample them all in the dust like
worms--with her imperial lover?

Until now he had been observant of her every sign, but yesterday night
the lion had raised his paw against her.

A slight pain had again made itself felt in his foot. She had eagerly
lamented it, and in doing so deplored the fact that she would never be
permitted to share the p