Retiring to her little bow-windowed room, she examined her store of clothes.

There, too, lay her royal lover’s gift, the glittering star.

She involuntarily seized it to take the jewel to the Grieb and show it to the old woman; but the next instant, with a strange feeling of dissatisfaction, she flung it back again among the other contents of the chest.

Thus, in her impetuous fashion, she thrust it out of her sight.  Maestro Gombert had pronounced the star extremely valuable, and she desired nothing from the Emperor Charles, nothing from her beloved lord save his love.

She had already reached the outer door, when her two Woller cousins from the Ark greeted her.  They were merry girls, by no means plain, and very fond of her.  The younger, Anne Mirl, was even considered pretty, and had many suitors.  They had learned from their house steward, who had been told by a fellow-countryman in the royal service, that his Majesty had rewarded Barbara for her exquisite singing with a magnificent ornament, and they wanted to see it.

So Barbara was obliged to open the chest again, and when the star flashed upon them the rich girls clapped their hands in admiration, and Anne Mirl did not understand how any one could toss such an exquisite memento into a chest as if it were a worn-out glove.  If the Emperor Charles had honoured her with such a gift, she would never remove it from her neck, but even wear it to bed.

“Everybody to her taste,” replied Barbara curtly, shrugging her shoulders.

Never had her cousins seemed to her so insignificant and commonplace; and, besides, their visit was extremely inopportune.

But the Woller sisters were accustomed to see her in all sorts of moods, and Nandl, the elder, a quiet, thoughtful girl, asked her how she felt.  To possess such heavenly gifts as her voice and her beauty must be the most glorious of all glorious things.

“And the honour, the honour!” cried Anne Mirl.  “Do you know, Wawerl, one might almost want to poison you from sheer envy and jealousy.  Holy Virgin!  To be in your place when you sing to the Emperor Charles again!  And to talk with him as you would to anybody else!”

Barbara assured them that she would tell the whole story at their next meeting, but she had no time to spare now, for she was expected at the rehearsal.

The sisters then bade her good-bye, but asked to see the star again, and Anne Mirl counted the jewels, to be able to describe it to her mother exactly.

At last Barbara was free, but before, still vexed by the detention, she could set out for Fran Lerch’s, she heard loud voices upon the stairs.  It startled her, for if the Emperor sent Don Luis Quijada, or even Baron Malfalconnet, to her wretched lodgings, it would now be even more unpleasant than before.

Barbara was obliged to wait some time in vain.  Her cousins had been stopped below, and were talking there with her father and another man.  At last the captain came stumping up the stairs with his limping steps.  Barbara noticed that he was hurrying, and he reached the top more quickly than usual and opened the door.