s could not approve; for Altrosen, who leaned
silently against the wall beside the countess, ever and anon pushing back
the coal-black hair from his pale face, had been mentioned by her
godfather as the noblest of the younger knights gathered in Nuremberg. A
voice in her own heart, too, cried out that this was no fitting place for
her.

If Els had been with her, Eva said to herself, she certainly would not
have permitted her to enter this room, where such careless mirth
prevailed, alone with a knight, and the thought roused her for a short
time from the joyous intoxication in which she had hitherto revelled, and
awakened a suspicion that there might be peril in trusting herself to
Heinz Schorlin without reserve.

"Not here," she entreated, and he instantly obeyed her wish, though the
Countess Cordula, as if he were alone, instead of with a lady, loudly and
gaily bade him stay where pleasure had built a hut under roses.

Eva was pleased that her new friend did not even vouchsafe the young
countess an answer. His obedience led her also to believe that her
anxiety had been in vain. Yet she imposed greater reserve of manner upon
herself so rigidly that Heinz noticed it, and asked what cloud had dimmed
the pure radiance of her gracious sunshine.

Eva lowered her eyes and answered gently: "You ought not to have taken me
where the diffidence due to modesty is forgotten." Heinz Schorlin
understood her and rejoiced to hear the answer. In his eyes, also,
Countess Cordula this evening had exceeded the limits even of the liberty
which by common consent she was permitted above others. He believed that
he had found in Eva the embodiment of pure and beautiful womanhood.

He had given her his heart from the first moment that their eyes met. To
find her in every respect exactly what he had imagined, ere he heard a
single word from her lips, enhanced the pleasure he felt to the deepest
happiness which he had ever experienced.

He had already been fired with a fleeting fancy for many a maiden, but
not one had appeared to him, even in a remote degree, so lovable as this
graceful young creature who trusted him with such childlike confidence,
and whose innocent security by the side of the dreaded heart-breaker
touched him.

Never before had it entered his mind concerning any girl to ask himself
the question how she would please his mother at home. The thought that
she whom he so deeply honoured might possess a magic mirror which showe