nds there--smiling . . . But the Duke grows weary of this pause
before Fra Pandolf's piece. It is a wonder; but he has other wonders.
Moreover, the due hint has been given, and no doubt, though necessarily
in silence, taken: the next Duchess will be instructed beforehand in
the proper way to "thank men." He intimates his will to move away:

"Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then."

The envoy rises, but not shakes off that horror of repulsion. Somewhere,
as he stands up and steps aside, a voice seems prating of "the Count his
master's known munificence," of "just pretence to dowry," of the "fair
daughter's self" being nevertheless the object. . . . But in a hot
resistless impulse, he turns off; one must remove one's self from such
proximity. Same air shall not be breathed, nor same ground trod. . . .
Still the voice pursues him, sharply a little now for his lack of the
due deference:

". . . Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir,"

--and slowly (since a rupture must not be brought about by _him_) the
envoy acquiesces. They begin to descend the staircase. But the visitor
has no eyes for "wonders" now--he has seen the wonder, has heard the
horror. . . . His host is all unwitting. Strange, that the guest can
pass these glories, but everybody is not a connoisseur. One of them,
however, must be pointed out:

". . . Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me."

. . . Something else getting "stopped"! The envoy looks.

+ + + + +

But lo, she is alive again! This time she is in distant Northern lands,
or _was_, for now (and, strangely, we thank Heaven for it) we know not
where she is. Wherever it is, she is happy. She has been saved, as by
flame; has been snatched from _her_ Duke, and borne away to joy and
love--by an old gipsy-woman! No lover came for her: it was Love that
came, and because she knew Love at first sight and sound, she saved
herself.

The old huntsman of her husband's Court tells the story to a traveller
whom he calls his friend.

"What a thing friendship is, world without end!"

It happened thirty years ago; the huntsman and the Duke and the Duchess
all were young--if the Duke was ever young! He had not been brought up
at the Northern castle, for his father, the rough hardy warrior, had
been summoned to the Kaiser