e must have burned! Surely he had not seen her
for the last time, and perhaps Fate would now help him to perform the
vow that he had made before her door in the dark entry of the house in
Ratisbon.

While Sir Pyramus was leaving her Barbara had heard a man's voice in
Frau Traut's room, but she scarcely noticed it. What she had learned
weighed heavily upon her soul.

Her father would not believe what was, nevertheless, the full,
undeniable truth. How would he deal with the certainty that he had
showed his old comrade the door unjustly when he at last came home and
she confessed all, all that she had sinned and suffered? She was sure
of one thing only--he, too, would not permit her child to be taken from
her; and she cherished a single hope--the blow which Fate had dealt by
destroying her tuneful voice would force him to pity, and perhaps induce
him to forgive her. Oh, if she could only have conjured him here, opened
her heart fully, freely to him, and learned from his own lips that he
approved of her resistance!

During this period of quiet reflection many sounds and shouts which she
had not heard before reached her room.

As they grew louder and more frequent, Barbara rose to approach the open
window, but ere she reached it Frau Taut returned.

The visitor whom she had received was Adrian, her husband. He had
come up the Trausnitz to make all sorts of arrangements, for something
unusual was to happen which would bring even his Majesty the Emperor
here.

These tidings startled Barbara.

Suppose that Charles was now coming to influence her by the heavy weight
of his personality; suppose he----

But Frau Traut gave her no time to yield to these and other fears and
hopes; she added, in a quiet tone, that his Majesty merely intended to
invest his son-in-law, Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma, with the Order of
the Golden Fleece in the Trausnitz courtyard. It would be a magnificent
spectacle, and Barbara could witness it if she desired. One of the
rooms in the second story of the ladies' wing where she lodged was still
untenanted, and her husband would be responsible if she occupied it,
only Barbara must promise not to attract attention to herself by any
sound or gesture.

She yielded to this demand with eager zeal, and when Frau Traut
perceived the girl's pale cheeks again flushed she wondered at the rapid
excitability of this singular creature, and willingly answered the long
series of questions with which she assa