nces, of a person long known and trusted. The
idea that Barbara would take her own maid with her rested, it is true, on
the supposition that so well-dressed a young lady, who belonged to an
ancient family, must as surely possess such a person as eyes and hands.

Barbara had just induced Frau Lerch to accompany her to Prebrunn. The old
woman's opposition had only been intended to extort more favourable
terms. She knew nothing of the regent's arrangements.

Queen Mary was grateful to Charles for so readily restoring the useful
Sir Wolf Hartschwert, and when the latter presented himself he was
received even more graciously than usual.

She had some work ready for him. A letter in relation to the betrothal of
her nieces, the daughters of King Ferdinand, was to be sent to the
Imperial Councillor Schonberg at Vienna. It must be written in German,
because the receiver understood no other language.

After she had told the knight the purpose of the letter, she left him;
the vesper service summoned her, and afterward Barbara detained her as
she sang to the Emperor, alone and accompanied by Appenzelder's boy
choir, several songs, and in a manner so thoroughly artistic that the
Queen lingered not only in obedience to her brother's wish, but from
pleasure in the magnificent music, until the end of the concert.

Just as Wolf, seated in the writing room, which was always at his
disposal, finished the letter, the major-domo, Don Luis Quijada, sought
him.

He had already intimated several times that he had something in view for
him which promised to give Wolf's life, in his opinion, a new and
favourable turn. Now he made his proposal.

The duties imposed upon him by the service compelled him to live apart
from his beloved, young, and beautiful wife, Dona Magdalena de Ulloa, who
had remained at his castle Villagarcia in Spain. She possessed but one
true comforter in her solitude--music. But the person who had hitherto
instructed her--the family chaplain--was dead. So far as his ability and
his taste were concerned, it would have been easy to replace him, but
Quijada sought in his successor qualities which rarely adorned a single
individual, but which he expected to find united in the knight.

In the first place, the person he desired must be, like the chaplain, of
noble birth; for to see his wife closely associated with a man of
inferior station was objectionable to the Spanish grandee, who was
perhaps the most popular of all the