aming.

This time she found her husband in the house. At the first glance Pyramus
saw that something unusual had happened; but she gave him no time to
question her, only glanced around to see if they were alone, and then
cried, as if frantic: "I will bear it no longer. You must know it too.
But it is a great secret." Then she made him swear that he, too, would
keep it strictly, and in great anxiety he obeyed.

He, like Barbara's father, had supposed that the Emperor's son had
entered the world only to leave it again. Barbara's "I no longer have a
child; it was taken from me," he had interpreted in the same way as the
old captain, and, from delicacy of feeling, had never again mentioned the
subject in her presence.

While taking the oath, he had been prepared for the worst; but when his
wife, in passionate excitement, speaking so fast that the words fair
tumbled over one another, told him how she had been robbed of her boy;
how his imperial father had treated him; how she had longed for him; what
prayers she had uttered in his behalf; how miserable she had been in her
anxiety about this child; and, now, that Dona Magdalena's letter
permitted her to cherish the highest and greatest hopes for the boy, the
tall, strong man stood before her with downcast eyes, like a detected
criminal, his hand gripping the edge of the top of the table which
separated her from him.

Barbara saw his broad, arched chest rise and fall, and wondered why his
manly features were quivering; but ere she had time to utter a single
soothing word, he burst forth: "I made the vow and will be silent; but
to-morrow, or in a year or two, it will be in everybody's mouth, and
then, then My good name! Honour!"

Fierce indignation overwhelmed Barbara, and, no longer able to control
herself, she exclaimed: "What did it matter whether Death or his father
snatched the child from me? The question is, whether you knew that I am
his mother, and it was not concealed from you. Nevertheless, you came and
sought me for your wife! That is what happened! And--you know this--you
are as much or little dishonoured by me, the mother of the living child,
as of the dead one. Out upon the honour which is harmed by gossip! What
slanderous tongues say of me as a disgrace I deem the highest honour; but
if you are of a different opinion, and held it when you wooed me, you
would be wiser to prate less loudly of the proud word 'honour,' and we
will separate."

Pyramus had liste