rd his Majesty
remark that, if the marquise's companion was not to become the toy
of her caprices, she must be enabled to obtain what she desired
independently of the old lady. He was anxious to make Barbara's life in
Prebrunn a pleasant one.

The latter, with downcast eyes, thanked Master Adrian and turned away;
but he detained her with the inquiry whether he should probably find Sir
Wolf Hartschwert at home, and received the answer that he had gone to
Syndic Hiltner's.

The valet then hastily took his leave, because just at that time his
royal master needed him. Any one else could summon the knight to the
regent in his place.

In the corridor of the Golden Cross he met Brother Cassian, the body
servant of the Confessor de Soto, a middle-aged Swabian, who had
formerly as a lay brother worked as a bookbinder in the Dominican
monastery at Cologne. He was clad in a half-secular, half-priestly
garb, and was an humble, extremely devout man, whose yielding nature had
rendered him popular among the servants at the court. His bullet-shaped
head was unusually large, and his face, with its narrow brow and small,
lustreless eyes, showed that he was not prone to thinking. Yet he
fulfilled every order precisely according to directions, and possessed
his full share of the cunning which is often a characteristic of narrow
minds.

He willingly undertook to summon Sir Wolf Hartschwert, whom he knew, to
the presence of the Queen of Hungary. No special haste was needful, and,
as he loved good wine and did not lack gifts from those who desired an
audience with his master, he went first to the English Greeting, where
the travelling clergy lodged and often deigned to accost him.

Barbara had returned home with bowed head, and threw herself into her
father's arm-chair in his workshop. She gazed into vacancy with a sore
and anxious heart, and, as an insane violinist lures the same tone from
the instrument again and again, she constantly returned to the same
thought, "Lost! lost!--too late! too late!"

Barbara gave herself up to this mood for several minutes, but at last
she remembered her lover's summons for that evening.

He longed to hear her voice, Master Adrian had said.

Surely, surely he himself had clothed the expression in a totally
different, a hundred times warmer form. How bewitchingly he, the great
Emperor, understood how to flatter, and, with the memory of the charm
of his manner, the thought of the blissful hours which