“Oh, Seitz, Seitz!” interrupted Isabella, in a tone of urgent entreaty.  She had risen from her cushions, and was hurrying towards him.  “Do not go!  You must not go so!”

Her tall figure nestled closely against him as she spoke, and she threw her arms around his neck; but he kissed her brow and eyes, saying, with a gentleness which surprised even her:  “You are very kind, but I cannot, must not remain here.”

“The children, the little boys!” she exclaimed again, gazing up at him with love-beaming eyes.  Then his tortured heart seemed to shrink, and, pressing his hand on his brow, he paused some time ere he answered gloomily:  “It is for them that I go.  Words have been spoken which appeal to me, and to you, too, Isabella:  ’See that the innocent little creatures are reared to be unlike their unhappy father.’  And the person who uttered them——­”

“A sage, a great sage,” giggled the countess, unable to control her bitter wrath against the man whom she hated; but Siebenburg fiercely retorted: 

“Although no sage, at least no monster spitting venom.”

“And you permit this insult to be offered to your grandmother?” Frau Rosalinde Eysvogel wailed to her daughter as piteously as if the injury had been inflicted on herself.  But Isabella only clung more closely to her husband, heeding neither her mother’s appeal nor her father’s warning not to be deluded by Siebenburg’s empty promises.

While the old countess vainly struggled for words, Rosalinde Eysvogel stood beside the lofty mantelpiece, weeping softly.  Before Siebenburg appeared, spite of the early hour and the agitating news which she had just received, she had used her leisure for an elaborate toilette.  A long trailing robe of costly brocade, blue on the left side and yellow on the right, now floated around her tall figure.  When the knight returned she had looked radiant in her gold and gems, like a princess.  Now, crushed and feeble, she presented a pitiable image of powerless yet offensively hollow splendour.  It would have required too much exertion to assail her son-in-law with invectives, like her energetic mother; but when she saw her daughter, to whom she had already appealed several times in a tone of anguished entreaty, rest her proud head so tenderly on her husband’s broad breast, as she had done during the first weeks of their marriage, but never since, the unhappy woman clearly perceived that the knight’s incredible demand was meant seriously.  What she had believed an idle boast he actually requested.  Yonder hated intruder expected her to part with her only daughter, who was far more to her than her unloved husband, her exacting mother, or the son who restricted her wishes, whom she had never understood, and against whom her heart had long been hardened.  But it could not be and, losing all self-control and dignity, she shrieked aloud, tore the blue headband from her hair and, repeating the “never” constantly as if she had gone out of her senses, gasped:  “Never, never, never, so long as I live!”