e
favour to trust yourself to my guidance in the next dance."

"Impossible," answered Barbara firmly. "If I were really cruel, I would
yield to your skill in tempting, and render you the base betrayer of the
greatest and noblest of masters."

"Does not every one who gazes at your beauty or listens to your song
become such a monster, at least in thought?" asked the baron gaily. "Are
you really so inexorable about the dance?"

"As this statue," Barbara answered with mirthful resolution, pointing to
a plaster figure which was intended to represent the goddess Flora or the
month of May. "But let us stay here a few minutes longer, though only as
spectators."

Barbara expressed this wish because a group of young gentlemen, who had
always been among those who sought her most eagerly for a partner at the
dances in the New Scales, had attracted her attention. They were engaged
in an animated discussion, which from their glances and gestures
evidently concerned Barbara.

Bernhard Trainer, the tall son of an old and wealthy family, who loved
Martina Hiltner, and had been incensed by Barbara's treatment of her,
seemed to gain his point, and when the city pipers began to play again,
all of them--probably a dozen in number--passed by her arm-in-arm in
couples, with their eyes studiously fixed upon the opposite side of the
dancing floor.

Barbara could entertain no doubt that this insulting act was intended to
wound her. The "little castle," as it was called in Prebrunn, owned by
Bernhard Trainer's family, was near the bishop's house which she
occupied. Therefore the Trainers had probably heard more than others
about the visits she received. Or did the gentlemen consider that she
deserved punishment for not treating Martina more kindly?

Whatever might have caused the unseemly act, in Barbara's eyes it was a
base trick, which filled her with furious rage against the instigators.
Had she shared the Emperor's power, it would have been a delight to her
in this hour to repay the malignant insult in the same or far heavier
coin. But, on Malfalconnet's account, she must submit in silence to what
had been inflicted upon her.

So, in a muffled tone, she requested the baron to take her back to the
tent, but while fulfilling her wish he wondered at the long strides of
the capricious young lady at his side, and the mortifying inattention
with which she received his questions.

Meanwhile the Emperor had returned to the throne, and Maur