Shortly afterward the old attendant entered, bearing profuse apologies from his master, and begging that the knight would continue to accept his hospitality.  Guntram followed the old man to his chamber.  As they passed through the adjoining apartment he stopped before the veiled portrait.

“Tell me,” he said, “why is so lovely a picture hidden?”

“Then you have seen it?” asked the old keeper.  “That is my master’s daughter.  When she was alive she was even more beautiful than her portrait, but she was a very capricious maid, and demanded that her lovers should perform well-nigh impossible feats.  At last only one of these lovers remained, and of him she asked that he should descend into the family vault and bring her a golden crown from the head of one of her ancestors.  He did as he was bidden, but his profanation was punished with death.  A stone fell from the roof and killed him.  The young man’s mother died soon after, cursing the foolish maid, who herself died in the following year.  But ere she was buried she disappeared from her coffin and was seen no more.”

When the story was ended they had arrived at the door of the knight’s chamber, and in bidding him good night the attendant counselled him to say his paternoster should anything untoward happen.

Guntram wondered at his words, but at length fell asleep.  Some hours later he was awakened suddenly by the rustling of a woman’s gown and the soft strains of a harp, which seemed to come from the adjoining room.  The knight rose quietly and looked through a chink in the door, when he beheld a lady dressed in white and bending over a harp of gold.  He recognized in her the original of the veiled portrait, and saw that even the lovely picture had done her less than justice.  For a moment he stood with hands clasped in silent admiration.  Then with a low sound, half cry, half sob, she cast the harp from her and sank down in an attitude of utter despondency.  The knight could bear it no longer and (quite forgetting his paternoster) he flung open the door and knelt at her feet, raising her hand to his lips.  Gradually she became composed.  “Do you love me, knight?” she said.  Guntram swore that he did, with many passionate avowals, and the lady slipped a ring on his finger.  Even as he embraced her the cry of a screech-owl rang through the night air, and the maiden became a corpse in his arms.  Overcome with terror, he staggered through the darkness to his room, where he sank down unconscious.

On coming to himself again, he thought for a moment that the experience must have been a dream, but the ring on his hand assured him that the vision was a ghastly reality.  He attempted to remove the gruesome token, but he found to his horror that it seemed to have grown to his finger.

In the morning he related his experience to the attendant.  “Alas, alas!” said the old man, “in three times nine days you must die.”