“Your sister?” asked Barbara abashed, holding out her hand again; but he pretended not to notice it, and merely explained curtly that she had come to the Netherlands with her husband.  This enterprising man, like himself, was a native of the principality of Grubenhagen in the Hartz Mountains.  At sixteen the wild fellow went out into the world to seek his fortune, and had found it as a daring sailor.  He returned a rich man to seek a wife in his old home.  Now he had gone on a voyage to the Indies, and while his wife awaited his return she had gladly received her brother’s old comrade.  Nursing him would afford her a welcome occupation during her loneliness.  Her house lacked nothing, and Barbara might comfort herself with the knowledge that the captain would have the best possible care.

With these words he seemed about to leave her; but she stopped him with the question, “And when the service summoned you away from him, had he heard what his daughter——­”

Here, flushing deeply, she paused with downcast eyes.  Pyramus feasted a short time on the spectacle of her humbled pride, but soon he could no longer bear to see her endure such bitter suffering, and therefore answered hastily, “If you mean what is said about you and his Majesty the Emperor, he was told of it by an old comrade from this neighbourhood.”

“And he?” she asked anxiously.

“He wrathfully ordered him out of the door,” replied the officer, and he saw how her eyes filled with tears.

Then feeling how soft his own heart was also growing, he hurriedly said farewell.  Again she gratefully extended her hand, and he clasped it and allowed himself the pleasure of holding it in his a short time.  Then bowing hastily, he left her.

She had been the Emperor’s toy, her voice had lost its melting melody, and yet he thought there was no woman more to be desired, far as his profession of recruiting had led him through all lands.  This iron no longer needed bending; but how fiercely the flames of suffering which melted her obstinate nature must have burned!  Surely he had not seen her for the last time, and perhaps Fate would now help him to perform the vow that he had made before her door in the dark entry of the house in Ratisbon.

While Sir Pyramus was leaving her Barbara had heard a man’s voice in Frau Traut’s room, but she scarcely noticed it.  What she had learned weighed heavily upon her soul.

Her father would not believe what was, nevertheless, the full, undeniable truth.  How would he deal with the certainty that he had showed his old comrade the door unjustly when he at last came home and she confessed all, all that she had sinned and suffered?  She was sure of one thing only—­he, too, would not permit her child to be taken from her; and she cherished a single hope—­the blow which Fate had dealt by destroying her tuneful voice would force him to pity, and perhaps induce him to forgive her.  Oh, if she could only have conjured him here, opened her heart fully, freely to him, and learned from his own lips that he approved of her resistance!