with deep emotion as she answered: "How I
objected to my son's marriage with the daughter of a city family! Nay, I
intended to cast all the weight of my maternal influence between Heinz
and the Nuremberg maiden. Yet you did not say too much, my friend, and
what your praise began Eva's own appearance has finished. She will be
welcome to me as a daughter. I have scarcely ever seen anything more
lovely. That she is devout and charitable and, moreover, has a clear
intellect and resolute energy, can be plainly perceived in spite of the
few minutes which she could spare us. If Heaven would really suffer our
Heinz to win the heart of this rare creature----"

"Every fibre of it is his already," interrupted Biberli. "The rub--pardon
me, noble lady!--is somewhere else. Whether he--whether Heinz can be
induced to renounce the thought of the monastery, is the question."

He sighed faintly as he gazed into the still beautiful, strong, and yet
kindly face of the Lady Wendula Schorlin, Sir Heinz's mother, for she was
the older visitor.

"We ought not to doubt that," replied the matron firmly. "As the last of
his ancient race, it is his duty to provide for its continuance, not
solely for his own salvation. He was always a dutiful son."

"Yet," replied Biberli thoughtfully, "'Away with those who gave us life!'
was the exhortation of Father Benedictus in the next room. 'Away with the
service of sovereign and woman!' he cried to our knight. 'Away with
everything that stands in the way of your own salvation!' And," Biberli
added, "St. Francis was not the first to devise that. Our Lord and
Saviour commanded His disciples to leave father and mother and to follow
Him."

"Who will prevent his walking in the paths of Jesus Christ?" replied the
Lady Wendula? "Yet, though he follows His footsteps, he must and can do
so as a scion of a noble race, as a knight and the brave soldier and true
servant of his Emperor, which he is, as a good son and, God willing, as a
husband and father. He is sure of my blessing if he wields his sword as a
champion of his holy faith. When my two daughters took the veil I
submissively yielded. They can pray for heavenly bliss for their brother
and ourselves. My only son, the last Schorlin, I neither can nor will
permit to renounce the world, in which he has tasks to perform which God
Himself assigned him by his birth."

"And how could Heinz part from this angel," cried Maria--to whom, next to
her mother, her brot