"She will not be moved.
Methinks some heedless knight hath stolen her heart, for she hath grown
pale and drooping as a gathered blossom."

Richard raised his visor.

"Knowest thou me, sir knight?" he said.

"Thou art--the knight of the tourney," cried Philip in amaze.

"The same," answered Richard, smiling. "And I am the knight who has
won thy fair sister's heart. We plighted our troth after the tourney of
Cologne. State affairs of the gravest import have kept me from her
side, where I would fain have been these six months past. Take this
token"--drawing from his breast the glove Guta had given him--"and tell
her that a poor knight in Richard's train sends her this."

In a little while Philip returned with his sister. The maiden looked
pale and agitated, but when she beheld Richard she rushed to him and was
clasped in his arms.

"My own Guta," he whispered fondly. "And wouldst thou refuse an emperor
to marry me?"

"Yea, truly," answered the maid, "a hundred emperors. I feared thou
hadst forsaken me altogether," she added naively.

Richard laughed.

"Would I be a worthy Emperor an I did not keep my troth with such as
thou?" he asked.

"The Emperor--thou?" cried Guta, starting back.

"Yea, the Emperor, and none other," said her brother reverently. And
once more Guta hid her face on Richard's breast.

Within a week they were married, and Guta accompanied her husband to the
court as Empress of Germany.

To the castle where his bride had passed her maidenhood Richard gave the
name of Gutenfels--'Rock of Guta'--which name it has retained to this
day.

The Story of Schoenburg

The castle of Schoenburg, not far from the town of Bacharach, is now in
ruins, but was once a place of extraordinary fame, for here dwelt at
one time seven sisters of transcendent beauty, who were courted the more
assiduously because their father, the Graf von Schoenburg, was reputed a
man of great wealth. This wealth was no myth, but an actuality, and in
truth it had been mainly acquired in predatory forays; but the nobles of
Rhineland recked little of this, and scores of them flitted around and
pressed their suit on the young ladies. None of these, however, felt
inclined toward marriage just yet, each vowing its yoke too galling; and
so the gallants came in vain to the castle, their respective addresses
being invariably dallied with and then dismissed. Suitor after suitor
retired in despair, pondering on the strange ways of womanki