During this period of quiet reflection many sounds and shouts which she had not heard before reached her room.

As they grew louder and more frequent, Barbara rose to approach the open window, but ere she reached it Frau Taut returned.

The visitor whom she had received was Adrian, her husband.  He had come up the Trausnitz to make all sorts of arrangements, for something unusual was to happen which would bring even his Majesty the Emperor here.

These tidings startled Barbara.

Suppose that Charles was now coming to influence her by the heavy weight of his personality; suppose he——­

But Frau Traut gave her no time to yield to these and other fears and hopes; she added, in a quiet tone, that his Majesty merely intended to invest his son-in-law, Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma, with the Order of the Golden Fleece in the Trausnitz courtyard.  It would be a magnificent spectacle, and Barbara could witness it if she desired.  One of the rooms in the second story of the ladies’ wing where she lodged was still untenanted, and her husband would be responsible if she occupied it, only Barbara must promise not to attract attention to herself by any sound or gesture.

She yielded to this demand with eager zeal, and when Frau Traut perceived the girl’s pale cheeks again flushed she wondered at the rapid excitability of this singular creature, and willingly answered the long series of questions with which she assailed her.

Barbara especially desired to hear particulars about the mother of Margaret of Parma, the wife of Ottavio Farnese, that Johanna Van der Gheynst who gave this daughter to the Emperor.

Then Barbara learned that she was a Netherland girl of respectable family, but of scarcely higher rank than her own; only she had been adopted by Count Bon Haagestraaten before the Emperor made her acquaintance.

“Was Johanna beautiful?” Barbara eagerly interrupted.

“I think you are far handsomer,” was the reply, “though she, too, was a lovely creature.”

Then Barbara wished to learn whether she was fair or dark, lively or quiet, and, finally, whether she had consented to give up her child; and Frau Traut answered that Johanna had done this without resistance, and her daughter was afterward reared first by the Duchess of Savoy, and later by Queen Mary, the regent of the Netherlands.

“How wisely the young lady acted,” Frau Dubois concluded, “you yourself know.  A crown now adorns her child’s head for the second time, and you will soon see how the Emperor Charles bestows honours upon her husband.  His Majesty understood how to provide for his daughter, who is his first child.  Her former marriage, it is true, was short.  Alessandro de’ Medici, to whom she was wedded at almost too early an age, was murdered scarcely a year after their nuptials.  Her present husband, the Duke of Parma, whom you will see, is, on the contrary, younger than she, but