“Do me the favour to lend your ear—­what a well-formed little thing it is!—­a short time longer, to confide to the elderly man who feels a father’s affection for you whether you would be wholly reluctant to attempt the reformation of the daring evil-doer yourself were he to offer, not only his heart, but the little ring with—­I will guarantee it—­his honourable, knightly hand?”

“Oh, your Majesty!” cried Eva, gazing at the gracious sovereign with an expression of such imploring entreaty in her large, tearful blue eyes that, as if regretting his hasty question, he added soothingly: 

“Well, well, we will reach the goal, I think, at a slower pace.  Such a confession will probably flow more easily from the lips when sought by the person for whom it means happiness or despair, than when a stranger—­even one as old and friendly as I—­seeks to draw it from a modest maiden.”

Here he paused; he had just recognised Lady Wendula Schorlin.  Waving his hand to her in joyous greeting, he ordered a page to conduct her to him and, again turning to Eva, said:  “Look yonder, my beautiful child:  there is someone in whom you would confide more willingly than in me.  I think Sir Heinz’s mother, who is worthy of all reverence and love—­”

Here surprise and joy forced from Eva’s lips the question, “His mother?” and there was such amazement in the tone that, as the Lady Wendula, bowing low, approached the Emperor, after exchanging the first greetings which pass between old friends who have been long separated, he asked how it happened that though Eva seemed to have already met the matron, she heard with such surprise that she was the mother of his brave favourite.

Lady Wendula then confessed the name she had given herself, that she might study the young girl without being known; and again that peculiar smile flitted across the Emperor Rudolph’s beardless face, and lingered there, as he asked the widow of his dead companion in arms whether, after such an examination, she believed she had found the right wife for her son; and she replied that a long life would not give her time enough to thank Heaven sufficiently for such a daughter.

The maiden who was the subject of this whispering, whose purport only a loving glance from the Lady Wendula revealed, pressed her hand upon her heart, whose impetuous throbbing stifled her breath.  Oh, how gladly she would have hastened to the mother of the man she loved and his young sister, who stood at a modest distance, to clasp them in her arms, and confide to them what seemed too great, too much, too beautiful for herself alone, yet which might crumble at a single word from her lover’s lips like an undermined tower swept away by the wind!  But she was forced to have patience, and submit to whatever might yet be allotted to her.