who certain to insure not only her safety in the thronged streets of the town, but to exact from those whose faculties were beginning to yield to the excesses of the occasion the testimonials of respect that were due to her station.  It was under these circumstances, then, that the more honored, and, to the eyes of the uninstructed, the happier of these maidens, approached the other, when curiosity was so far appeased as to have left the family of Balthazar nearly alone in the centre of the square.

“Is there no friendly roof near, to which thou canst withdraw?” asked the heiress of Willading of the mother of the pallid and scarcely conscious Christine; “thou wouldst do better to seek some shelter and privacy for thy unoffending and much injured child.  If any that belong to me can be of service, I pray that thou wilt command as freely as if they were followers of thine own.”

Marguerite had never before spoken with a female of a rank superior to the ordinary classes.  The ample means of both her father’s and her husband’s family had furnished all that was necessary to the improvement of the mind of one in her station, and perhaps she had been the gainer, in mere deportment, by having been greatly excluded, by their prejudices, from association with females of her own condition.  As is often seen among those who have the thoughts without the conventional usages of a better caste in life, she was slightly tinctured with an exhibition of what might be termed an exaggerated manner, while at the same time it was perfectly free from vulgarity or coarseness.  The gentle accents of Adelheid fell on her ear soothingly, and she gazed long and earnestly at the beautiful speaker without a reply.

“Who and what art thou that canst think a headman’s child may receive an insult that is unmerited, and who offerest the service of thy menials, as if the very vassal would not refuse his master’s bidding in our behalf!”

“I am Adelheid de Willading, the daughter of the baron of that name, and one much disposed to temper this cruel blow to the feelings of poor Christine.  Suffer that my people seek the means to convey thy child to some other place!”

Marguerite folded her daughter still closer to her bosom, passing a hand across her brow, as if to recall some half-obscured idea.

“I have heard of thee, lady.—­’Tis said that thou art kind to the wronged, and of excellent dispositions towards the unhappy—­that thy father’s castle is an honored and hospitable abode, which those who enter rarely love to quit.  But hast thou well weighed the consequences of this liberality towards a race, that is and has been proscribed of men, from generation to generation—­from him who first lent himself to his bloody office, with a cruel heart and a greedy desire for gold, to him whose courage is scarcely equal to the disgusting duty?  Hast thou bethought thee of this, or hast thou yielded, heedlessly, to a sudden and youthful impulse?”