best maids, the worthy and skilful Frau Lamperi, though she was reluctant to part with her, had been sent to Prebrunn to serve Barbara as garde-robiere.  The advice that the Emperor’s love should take her own waiting maid also came from her.  She knew the value, amid new circumstances, of a person long known and trusted.  The idea that Barbara would take her own maid with her rested, it is true, on the supposition that so well-dressed a young lady, who belonged to an ancient family, must as surely possess such a person as eyes and hands.

Barbara had just induced Frau Lerch to accompany her to Prebrunn.  The old woman’s opposition had only been intended to extort more favourable terms.  She knew nothing of the regent’s arrangements.

Queen Mary was grateful to Charles for so readily restoring the useful Sir Wolf Hartschwert, and when the latter presented himself he was received even more graciously than usual.

She had some work ready for him.  A letter in relation to the betrothal of her nieces, the daughters of King Ferdinand, was to be sent to the Imperial Councillor Schonberg at Vienna.  It must be written in German, because the receiver understood no other language.

After she had told the knight the purpose of the letter, she left him; the vesper service summoned her, and afterward Barbara detained her as she sang to the Emperor, alone and accompanied by Appenzelder’s boy choir, several songs, and in a manner so thoroughly artistic that the Queen lingered not only in obedience to her brother’s wish, but from pleasure in the magnificent music, until the end of the concert.

Just as Wolf, seated in the writing room, which was always at his disposal, finished the letter, the major-domo, Don Luis Quijada, sought him.

He had already intimated several times that he had something in view for him which promised to give Wolf’s life, in his opinion, a new and favourable turn.  Now he made his proposal.

The duties imposed upon him by the service compelled him to live apart from his beloved, young, and beautiful wife, Dona Magdalena de Ulloa, who had remained at his castle Villagarcia in Spain.  She possessed but one true comforter in her solitude—­music.  But the person who had hitherto instructed her—­the family chaplain—­was dead.  So far as his ability and his taste were concerned, it would have been easy to replace him, but Quijada sought in his successor qualities which rarely adorned a single individual, but which he expected to find united in the knight.

In the first place, the person he desired must be, like the chaplain, of noble birth; for to see his wife closely associated with a man of inferior station was objectionable to the Spanish grandee, who was perhaps the most popular of all the officers in the army, not only on account of his valour in the field, but also for the kindly good will and absolute justice which he bestowed upon even the humblest soldier.