asked. Coming from the brilliantly lit rooms and the
stir and noise of the ball, this sudden interlude in the still, moonlit
garden, with the strange, sinister, black-robed figure, seemed to her
like a dream.

'I am sent by one you have ruined, in the name of the many you have
injured! and yet, in mercy, I bid you fly while there is time!' the
stranger answered.

'Ah! Mercy? This is some absurd fiction; no one has mercy upon me,' she
said bitterly.

'Yes, I have. I came to deliver my message, and yesterday I saw your
entry into Ludwigsburg. I saw the peasants cruelly driven back by the
soldiers' swords. I saw the great monument you have raised here to your
shame, this mad, mock court of yours, and I hated you! but then I saw
your youth, your beauty, and I vowed I would warn you, that you might
carry this, your true wealth, to some atonement for your sins. I bid you
fly; the Duke has information against you which must spell ruin for
you--ruin and death.'

'You are mad,' she said quietly.

'No; I am not mad, unless compassion is madness.'

She drew off her mask, and, in the clear white moonlight, turned her face
upon him--that strange, haunting face of hers, which Eberhard Ludwig said
no man could forget.

'And so you had compassion because you saw me?' she laughed. 'Your
mission is absurd, but I forgive you because some generous thought was
yours even for the Graevenitzin.' She was all woman at that moment; the
hard, cruel oppressor, the ruling Landhofmeisterin, was banished from her
being, she was fascination incarnate.

'How beautiful you are--how beautiful----!' the black mask whispered.

'Tell me who you are,' she said, and smiled at him.

'An enemy who would turn friend, and more--if he looked too long at you,'
he answered slowly.

'Tell me your name,' she asked once more.

'No; my name you will never know, only I have warned you.'

'I thank you,' she said gravely, and gave him her hand. He bent and
kissed it, and vanished into the shadow of the garden. She stood a moment
looking after her unknown visitor. Ruin and death, he had said. She
pondered on why this stranger should have warned her. Evidently an enemy
with an evil plan against her, turned aside by some man's whim, some
sudden mood caused by the sight of her beauty. Flight, he counselled,
flight for her! No! she would battle to the last, but she would not
neglect the unknown's warning. In a flash it came to her that this man
was connected wi