dressing to
call upon the leader of the boy choir, the servant announced a stranger.

A glad presentiment hurried her into the vestibule, and there stood Sir
Wolf Hartschwert in person, an aristocratic cavalier in his black Spanish
court costume. He had become a man indeed, and his appearance did not
even lack the "sosiego," the calm dignity of the Castilian noble, which
gave Don Louis Quijada so distinguished an appearance.

True, his greeting was more eager and cordial than the genuine
"sosiego"--which means "repose"--would have permitted. Even the manner in
which Wolf expressed his pleasure in the new melody of Barbara's voice,
and whispered an entreaty to send the children and Frau Lamperi--who came
to greet him--away for a short time, was anything but patient.

What had he in view?

Yet it must be something good.

When the light shone through her flower-decked window upon his face, she
thought she perceived this by the smile hovering around his lips. She was
not mistaken, nor did she wait long for the joyous tidings she expected;
his desire to tell her what, with the exception of the regent--to whom
his travelling companion, the Grand Prior Don Luis de Avila, was perhaps
just telling it as King Philip's envoy--no human being in the Netherlands
could yet know, was perhaps not much less than hers to hear it.

Scarcely an hour before he had dismounted in Brussels with the nobleman,
and his first visit was to her, whom his news must render happy, even
happier than it did him and the woman in the house near the palace, whose
heart cherished the Emperor's son scarcely less warmly than his own
mother's.

On the long journey hither he had constantly anticipated the pleasure of
telling every incident in succession, just as it had happened; but
Barbara interrupted his first sentence with an inquiry how her John was
faring.

"He is so well that scarcely ever has any boy in the happiest time of his
life fared better," was the reply; and its purport, as well as the tone
in which it was uttered, entered Barbara's heart like angels' greetings
from the wide-open heavens. But Wolf went on with his report, and when,
in spite of hundreds of questions, he at last completed the main points,
his listener staggered, as if overcome by wine, to the image of the
Virgin on the pilaster, and with uplifted hands threw herself on her
knees before it.

Wolf, unobserved, silently stole away.

CHAPTER XVII.

The following afte