The girl looked at her young mistress in surprise.  She had been prepared for a sharp rebuke, and had yielded to her lover’s entreaties to under take this service amid tears, and with great anxiety; for if her act should be betrayed, she would lose, amid bitter reproaches, the place she so greatly prized.  Yet Biberli’s power over her and her faith in him were so great that she would have followed him into a lion’s den; and it had scarcely seemed a more desirable venture to carry a love-greeting to the pious maiden who held men in such disfavour, and could burst into passionate anger as suddenly as her father.

And now?

Eva had expected such a message.  It seemed like a miracle to Katterle.

With a sigh of relief, and a hasty thanksgiving to her patron saint, she at once began to praise the virtue and piety of the servant as well as his lord; but Eva again interrupted, and asked what Sir Heinz Schorlin desired.

Katterle, with new-born confidence, repeated, as if it were some trivial request, the words Biberli had impressed upon her mind.

“By virtue of the right of every good and devout knight to ask his lady for her colour, Sir Heinz Schorlin, with all due reverence, humbly prays you to name yours; for how could he hold up his head before you and all the knights if he were denied the privilege of wearing it in your honour, in war as well as in peace?”

Here her mistress again interrupted with a positive “I know,” and, still more emboldened, Katterle continued the ex-schoolmaster’s lesson to the end: 

“His lord, my lover says, will wait here beneath the window, in all reverence, though it should be till morning, until you show him your sweet face.  No, don’t interrupt me yet, Mistress Eva, for you must know that Sir Heinz’s lady mother committed her dear son to my Biberli’s care, that he might guard him from injury and illness.  But since his master met you, he has been tottering about as though he had received a spear-thrust, and as the knight confessed to his faithful servitor that no leech could help him until you permitted him to open his heart to you and show you with what humble devotion——­”

But here the maid was interrupted in a manner very different from her expectations, for Eva had raised herself on her pillows and, almost unable to control her voice in the excess of her wrath, exclaimed: 

“The master who presumes to seek through his servant——­And by what right does the knight dare thus insolently——­But no!  Who knows what modest wish was transformed in your mouth to so unprecedented a demand?  He desired to see my face?  He wanted to speak to me in person, to confess I know not what?  From you—­you, Katterle, the maid—­the knight expects——­”

Here she struck her little hand angrily against the wood of the bedstead and, panting for breath, continued: 

“I’ll show him!——­Yet no!  What I have to answer no one else——­From me, from me alone, he shall learn without delay.  There is paper in yonder chest, on the very top; bring it to me, with pen and ink.”