Charles kept her aloof as if she were plague-stricken.  Perhaps it was because he feared that if he saw her once he might desire a second and a third meeting.  But no matter.  She would accept no aid at the cost of so severe an offence to her pride, least of all when it came from the man who had already wounded her soul often and painfully enough.

The startled physician perceived what was passing in her mind, and when, not passionately as in her youth, but with cool composure, she requested Dr. Mathys to tell his master that it would be as impossible for her to accept a gift for which she could not express her thanks as to give alms without wishing well to the recipient, the leech eagerly endeavoured to persuade her to use the sum bestowed according to the donor’s wish.  But Barbara firmly persisted in her refusal, and when she parted from the old man he could not be angry with her, for, as in the garden of the little Prebrunn castle, he could not help saying to himself that the wrong was not wholly on the side of the independent young woman.

The result in this case was the usual one when the weaker party succeeds in maintaining itself against the superior power of the stronger.  Barbara set out on her way home with her head proudly erect, but she soon asked herself whether this victory was not too dearly purchased.  In a few months John was to meet his father, and then might there not be cause to fear that the opposition which she, his mother, had offered to the Emperor, in order to escape an offence to her own pride, would prove an injury to the son?  She stopped, hesitating; but after a brief period of reflection, she continued her walk.  What she had done might vex the monarch, but it must rather enhance than lower her value in his eyes, and everything depended upon that.  Charles would open the path to high honours and royal splendour to the son of a haughty mother rather than to the child of a narrow-minded woman, who would receive a gift without being suffered to express her thanks.

She had done right, and rejoiced that this time she had obeyed the voice of her imperious soul.  She no longer desired to meet again the man whom she loved.  Her wish to look into his eyes once more before his death or hers was fulfilled, and his glance, which had certainly been the last that he could give her, had expressed the kind feeling and forgiveness for which she had secretly yearned.  So what he had done was surely not intended to wound her.  She understood his desire to obtain peace of mind and his fear of entering into communication with her again, and from this time it once more became a necessity to her to include him in her prayers.

She left her home with a lighter heart, better satisfied with herself than she had been for years.  The Emperor Charles could not help thinking of her now as she desired.  The love which she had never wholly withdrawn was again his, and the feeling of belonging to him exalted her pride and brightened her clouded soul.