As his footsteps receded from her bedside, she pressed her lips more
firmly together, thinking: "Why should I spoil his beautiful dream of
happiness? What Wawerl offers to the eyes and ears of men is certainly
most beautiful. But her heart! It is lacking! Unselfish love would be
precisely what the early orphaned youth needs, and that Wawerl will never
give him. Yet I wish no heavier anxieties oppressed me! One thing is
certain--the husband of the girl upstairs must wear a different look from
my darling, with his modest worth. The Danube will flow uphill before she
goes to the altar with him! So, thank Heaven, I can console myself with
that!"

But, soon after, she remembered many things which she had formerly
believed impossible, yet which, through unexpected influence, had
happened.

Then torturing uneasiness seized her. She anxiously clasped her emaciated
hands, and from her troubled bosom rose the prayer that the Lord would
preserve her darling from the fulfilment of the most ardent desire of his
heart.

CHAPTER VIII.

Wolf's first walk took him to the Golden Cross, the lodgings of the
Emperor Charles and his court. The sky had clouded again, and a keen
northwest wind was blowing across the Haidplatz and waving the banner on
the lofty square battlemented tower at the right of the stately old
edifice.

It had originally belonged to the Weltenburg family as a strong offensive
and defensive building, then frequently changed hands.

The double escutcheon on the bow-window was that of the Thun and Fugger
von Reh families, who had owned it in Wolf's childhood.

Now he glanced up to see whether young Herr Crafft, to whom the building
now belonged, had not also added an ornament to it. But when Wolf's gaze
wandered so intently from the tower to the bow-window, and from the
bow-window to the great entrance door, it was by no means from pleasure
or interest in the exterior of the Golden Cross, but because Barbara had
confessed that the nineteen-year-old owner of the edifice, who was still
a minor, was also wooing her.

What was the probable value of this stately structure, this aristocratic
imperial abode? How rich its owner was! yet she, the brilliant young
beauty who had grown up in poverty, disdained young Crafft because her
heart did not attract her to him.

So, in this case, faithful Ursel must deceive herself and misjudge the
girl, for the old woman's strangely evasive words had revealed plainly
enough