“Oh, my dear Countess,” Heinz interrupted, and his words bore so distinctly the stamp of truth and actual experience that even Sir Seitz Siebenburg was puzzled, “though I am always disposed to be grateful to you, I cannot feel a sense of obligation for this lady’s reception of me, even to the most gracious benefactress.  For, by my patron saint, she forbade me the house as if I were a thief and a burglar.”

“And she was right!” exclaimed the countess.  “I would have treated you still more harshly.  Only you would have spared yourself many a sharp word had you confessed at once that it was I who summoned you here.  I’ll talk with you tomorrow, and am I not right, Jungfrau Elsyou won’t make him suffer for losing the wager, but exercise your domestic authority after a more gentle fashion?”

While speaking, she looked at Els with a glance so full of meaning that the young girl’s cheeks crimsoned, and the longing to put an end to this deceitful game became almost uncontrollable.  The thought of Eva alone sealed her lips.

IN THE FIRE OF THE FORGE

A ROMANCE OF OLD NUREMBERG

By Georg Ebers

Volume 3.

CHAPTER X.

One person only besides Sir Seitz Siebenburg had not been deceived—­the young knight Boemund Altrosen, whose love for Cordula was genuine, and who, by its unerring instinct, felt that she had invented her tale and for a purpose which did honour to her kindness of heart.  So his calm black eyes rested upon the woman he loved with proud delight, while Seitz Siebenburg twisted his mustache fiercely.  Not a look or movement of either of the two girls had escaped his notice, and Cordula’s bold interference in behalf of the reckless Swiss knight, who now seemed to have ensnared his future sister-in-law also, increased the envy and jealousy which tortured him until he was forced to exert the utmost self-restraint in order not to tell the countess to her face that he, at least, was far from being deceived by such a fable.  Yet he succeeded in controlling himself.  But as he forced his lips to silence he gazed with the most open scorn at the bales of merchandise heaped around him.  He would show the others that, though the husband of a merchant’s daughter, he retained the prejudices of his knightly rank.

But no one heeded the disagreeable fellow, who had no intimate friends in the group.  Most of the company were pressing round Heinz Schorlin with jests and questions, but bluff Count von Montfort warmly clasped Els’s hand, while he apologised for the bold jest of his young daughter who, in spite of her recklessness, meant kindly.

Nothing could have been more unwelcome to a girl in so unpleasant a situation than this delay.  She longed most ardently to get away but, ere she succeeded in escaping from the friendly old noble, two gentlemen hastily entered the brightly lighted entry, at sight of whom her heart seemed to stop beating.