fore leading her back to the others
contained the promise to make her patron saint, St. Clare, his own.

The Princess of Nassau had invited him for the next dance, but she found
Heinz Schorlin, whom the young Duchess Agnes had just said was merry
enough to bring the dead to life, a very quiet partner; while young Herr
Schurstab, who danced with Eva and, like all the members of the
Honourable Council, knew that she desired to take the veil, afterwards
told his friends that the younger beautiful E would suit a Carthusian
convent, where speech is prohibited, much better than a ballroom.

But after this "Zauner" Heinz Schorlin again loosed her tongue. When he
had told her how he came to the court, and she had learned that he had
joined the Emperor Rudolph at Lausanne just as he took the vow to take
part in the crusade, there was no end to her questions concerning the
reason that the German army had not already marched against the infidels,
and whether he himself did not long to make them feel his sword.

Then she asked still further particulars concerning Brother Benedictus,
the old Minorite whom he had treated so kindly. Heinz told her what he
knew, and when he at last enquired whether she still regretted having met
him whom she feared, she gazed frankly into his eyes and, smiling
faintly, shook her head.

This increased his ardour, and he warmly entreated her to tell him where
he could meet her again, and permit him to call her his lady. But she
hesitated to reply, and ere he could win from her even the faintest
shadow of consent, Ernst Ortlieb, who had been talking with other members
of the council in the room where the wine was served, interrupted him to
take his daughter home.

She went reluctantly. The clasp of the knight's hand was felt all the way
to the house, and it would have been impossible and certainly ungracious
not to return it.

Heinz Schorlin had obtained no assent, yet the last glance from her eyes
had been more eloquent than many a verbal promise, and he gazed after her
enraptured.

It seemed like desecration to give the hand in which hers had rested to
lead any one else to the dance, and when the rotund Duke of Pomerania
invited him to a drinking bout at his quarters at the Green Shield he
accepted; for without Eva the hall seemed deserted, the light robbed of
its brilliancy, and the gay music transformed to a melancholy dirge.

But when at the Green Shield the ducal wine sparkled in the beakers