Was he inviting the countess to dance again?  No, he turned his back to her and approached Eva, whose lovely, childlike face brightened as if a sun beam had shone upon it.  The possibility of refusing her hand for the ‘Rai’ never entered her head, but he told her voluntarily that he had invited Countess Cordula for the Polish dance solely in consequence of the Burgravine’s command, but now that he was permitted to linger at her side he meant to make up for lost time.

He kept his word, and was by no means content with the ‘Rai’; for, after the young Duchess Agnes had summoned him to a ‘Zauner’, and during its continuance again talked with him far more confidentially than the modest Nuremberg maiden could approve, he persuaded Eva to try the ‘Schwabeln’ with him also; and though she had always disliked such dances she yielded, and her natural grace, as well as her quick ear for time, helped her to catch the unfamiliar steps without difficulty.  While doing so he whispered that even the angels in heaven could have no greater bliss than it afforded him to float thus through the hall, clasping her in his arm, while she glanced up at him with a happy look and bent her little head in assent.  She would gladly have exclaimed warmly:  “Yes, indeed!  Yet the Burgravine says that danger threatens me from you, you dear, kind fellow, and I should do well to avoid you.”

Besides, she felt indebted to him.  What would have befallen her here in his absence!  Moreover, it gave her a strange sense of pleasure to gaze into his eyes, allow herself to be borne through the wide hall by his strong arm, and while pressed closely to his side imagine that his swiftly throbbing heart felt the pulsing of her own.  Instead of injuring her, wishing her evil, and asking her to do anything wrong, he certainly had only good intentions.  He had cared for her as if he occupied the place of her own brother who fell in the battle of Marchfield.  It would have given him most pleasure—­he had said so himself—­to dance everything with her, but decorum and the royal dames who kept him in attendance would not permit it.  However, he came to her in every pause to exchange at least a few brief words and a glance.  During the longest one, which lasted more than an hour and was devoted to the refreshment of the guests, he led her into a side room which had been transformed into a blossoming garden.

Seats were placed behind the green birch trees—­amid whose boughs hung gay lamps—­and the rose bushes which surrounded a fountain of perfumed water, and Eva had already followed the Swiss knight across the threshold when she saw among the branches at the end of the room the Countess Cordula, at whose feet several young nobles knelt or reclined, among them Seitz Siebenburg, the brother-in-law of Wolff Eysvogel, her sister’s betrothed bridegroom.