r she should make use of the
invitation. What she had expected for herself and her child from
Charles's abdication had been mere chimeras of the brain, and what could
this spectacle offer her? She would only behold with her eyes what she
had often enough imagined with the utmost distinctness--the great monarch
divested of his grandeur and all his dignities.

But Granvelle's message that she was one cf those who stood nearest to
the abdicating sovereign constantly echoed in her ears, and her absence
from this ceremony would have seemed to her unnatural--nay, an offence
against something necessary.

Her husband was pleased with the great minister's kindness to his wife.
He had nothing to do in the palace, but he intended to look for the
children, who had gone there before noon with Frau Lamperi, that they
might get the best possible view of the approach of the princes and
dignitaries.

Barbara herself was to use a litter. The ex-'garde-robiere' had helped
her put on her gala attire, and Pyramus assured his wife that every one
would consider her the handsomest and most elegant lady in the galleries.
She knew that he was right, and listened with pleasure, deeply as
resentment and disappointment burdened her soul.

Then the knocker on the door rapped. The litter-bearers had probably
come. But no! The Flemish maid, who had opened the door, announced that a
messenger was waiting outside with a letter which he could deliver only
to the master or the mistress.

Pyramus went into the entry, and his long absence was already making
Barbara uneasy, when he returned with bowed head and, after many words of
preparation, informed her that her father was very ill and, finally, that
apoplexy had put a swift and easy end to his life.

Then a great and genuine grief seized upon her with all its power.
Everything that the simple-hearted, lovable man, who had guarded her
child hood so tenderly and her girlhood with such solicitude and
devotion, had been to her, returned to her memory in all its vividness.
In him she had lost the last person whose right to judge her conduct she
acknowledged, the only one whom she had good reason to be sure cared for
her welfare as much as, nay, perhaps more than, his own.

The litter, Granvelle's message, the Emperor's abdication ceremony,
everything that had just wounded, angered, and disturbed her, was
forgotten.

She gently refused the consolation of her husband, who in the captain had
lost a dea