His heart throbbed high as, animated by fresh hope, he entered the corridor from which opened the rooms which he occupied with her.  But his wish to find her alone was not to be fulfilled; several voices reached him.

What was the meaning of the scene?

Isabella, her face deadly pale, and her tall figure drawn up to its full height, stood before the door of the nursery with a stern, cold expression on her lovely lips, like a princess pronouncing sentence upon a criminal.  She was panting for breath, and before her, her mother, and her grandmother, Countess Cordula’s pretty page, whom Siebenburg knew only too well, was moving to and fro with eager gestures.  He held in his hand the bunch of roses which Seitz had sent to his newly-won wife and darling as a token of reconciliation, and Siebenburg heard his clear, boyish tones urge:  “I have already said so and, noble lady, you may believe me, this bouquet, which the woman brought us, was intended for my gracious mistress, Countess von Montfort.  It was meant to give her a fair morning greeting, and—­Do not let this vex you, for it was done only in the joyous game of love, as custom dictated.  Ever since we came here your lord has daily honoured my countess with the loveliest flowers whose buds unfold in the region near the Rhine.  But my gracious mistress, as you have already heard, believes that you, noble lady, have a better right to these unusually beautiful children of the spring than she who last evening bade your lord behold in you, not in her, fair lady, the most fitting object of his homage.  So she sent me hither, most gracious madam, to lay what is yours at your feet.”

As he spoke, the agile boy, with a graceful bow, tried to place the flowers in Isabella’s hand, but she would not receive the bouquet, and the abrupt gesture with which she pushed them back flung the nosegay on the floor.  Paying no further heed to it, she answered in a cold, haughty tone:  “Thank your mistress, and tell her that I appreciated her kind intention, but the roses which she sent me were too full of thorns.”  Then, turning her back on the page, she advanced with majestic pride to the door of the nursery.

Her mother and grandmother tried to follow, but Siebenburg pressed between them and his wife, and his voice thrilled with the anguish of a soul overwhelmed by despair as he cried imploringly:  “Hear me, Isabella!  There is a most unhappy misunderstanding here.  By all that is sacred to me, by our love, by our children, I swear those roses were intended for you, my heart’s treasure, and for you alone.”

But Countess Rotterbach cut him short by exclaiming with a loud chuckle:  “The unripe early pears will probably come from the fruit market to the housewife’s hands later; the roses found their way to Countess von Montfort more quickly.”

The malicious words were followed like an echo by Frau Rosalinde’s tearful “It is only too true.  This also!”