So Barbara succeeded in taking leave of the duke without giving him offence.

The marquise was waiting for her with ill-repressed indignation.  The weary old woman had wanted to return home long before, but the command of the grand chamberlain compelled her to wait for Barbara and accompany her the short distance to the house.

With an angry glance and a few bitter-sweet words of greeting, the old dame entered the litter.  Barbara preferred to walk beside hers, for clouds had darkened the sky; it had become oppressively sultry, and she felt as if she would stifle in the close, swaying box.

Four torch-bearers accompanied the litters.  She ordered the knight and the two lackeys whom Quijada had commissioned to attend her to remain behind, and also refused the service of the little Maltese, who—­oh, how gladly!—­would have acted as a page and carried her train.

As the shipwrecked man on a plank amid the endless surges longs for land, Barbara longed to get away, far away from the noise of the festival.  Yet she dreaded the solitude which she was approaching, for she now perceived how foolishly she had acted, and with what sinful recklessness she had perhaps forfeited the happiness of her life on this luckless evening.

But need she idly wait for the doom to which she was condemned?  He whose bright eyes could beam on her so radiantly had just wounded her with angry glances, like a foe or a stern judge, and his indignation had not been groundless.

What had life to offer her without his love?  The wantonly bold venture had been baffled.  Yet no!  All was not yet lost!

Suppose she should summon courage to steal back to him and on her knees repentantly beseech him to forgive her?

But she cherished this desire only a few moments.  Then the angry, wronged heart rebelled against such humiliation.  She had not so shame fully offended the Emperor, but the lover, and it was his place to entreat her not to withdraw the love which made him happy.

The young girl raised her head with fresh courage.  What had happened more than she had expected?

Because he loved her, he had become jealous, and made her feel his anger.  But if she should now persistently withdraw from him, and let him realize how deeply he had offended her, she could not fail to win the game.  In spite of all his crowns and kingdoms, he was only a man, and must not she, who in a few brief hours had forced a Maurice of Saxony to sue yearningly for her love, succeed by the might of her art and her beauty in transforming the wrath of the far older man, Charles, into his former passion?

If the Italian novels with which she was familiar did not lie, not only jealousy, but apparent indifference on the part of the beloved object, fanned the heart of man to burst into fresh flames.