Altrosen nodded assent, adding eagerly, as if some memory rose vividly before him:  “She often looked distressed by these horrors, but usually—­how shall I express it?—­usually calm and content.”

“Content,” repeated the magistrate thoughtfully.  Then, suddenly straightening his short, broad figure, he thrust his little fat hand into a fold of the knight’s doublet, exclaiming:  “Boemund, do you want to know the most difficult riddle that the Lord gives to us men to solve?  It is—­take heed—­a woman’s soul.”

“Yes,” replied Altrosen curtly; the word sounded like a sigh.

While speaking, his dark eye was bent on Cordula, whose head still rested on Frau Christine’s breast.

Then, adjusting the bandage which since the fire had been wound around his forehead and his dark hair, he continued in a tone of explanation:  “Count von Montfort sent me, when it grew dark, to accompany his daughter home.  From your little castle I was directed to the hospital, where I found her amongst the horrible women.  She had struggled faithfully against her loathing and disgust, but when I arrived her power of resistance was already beginning to fail.  Fortunately the sedan-chair was there, for she felt that her feet would scarcely carry her back.  I ordered one to be prepared for Jungfrau Ortlieb, though I remembered the dying woman who kept her.  As if the matter were some easy task, she begged the countess to excuse her, and remained beside the wretched straw pallet.”

The deeply agitated girl had just released herself from the matron’s embrace, and begged the knight to have her Roland saddled; but Frau Christine stopped him, and entreated Cordula, for her sake, to use her sedan-chair instead of the horse.

“If it will gratify you,” replied the countess smiling; “but I should reach home safely on the piebald.”

“Who doubts it?” asked the matron.  “Give her your arm, husband.  The bearers are ready, and you will soon overtake them on your horse, Boemund.”

“The walk through the warm June night will do me good,” the latter protested.

Soon after the sedan-chair which conveyed Cordula, lighted by several torch-bearers on foot and on horseback, began to move towards the city.

At St. Linhard, Boemund Altrosen, who walked beside it, asked the question, “Then I may hope, Countess?  I really may?”

She nodded affectionately, and answered under her breath:  “You may; but we must first try whether the flower of love which blossomed for you out of my weakness is the real one.  I believe it will be.”

He joyously raised her hand to his lips, but a torch-bearer’s shout—­” Count von Montfort and his train!”—­urged him back from the sedan chair.  A few seconds after Cordula welcomed her father, who had anxiously ridden forth to meet his jewel.

CHAPTER XIV.

“I can hardly do more, and yet I must,” groaned Frau Christine, as she gazed after the torch-bearers who preceded Cordula.  Her husband, however, tried to detain her, offering to go to their young guest in her place.