Ursel closed her eyes for a while and twirled the thumb of the hand she could use around the other for some time; but at last she gently nodded the little head framed in her big cap, and said carelessly: 

“So you would like to seek a wife, child?  Well, well!  It comes once to every one.  And you are thinking of Wawerl?  It would certainly be fortunate for the girl.  Marriages are made in heaven, and God’s mills grind slowly.  If the result is not what you expect, you must not murmur, and, above all things, don’t act rashly.  But now I can use my heavy tongue no longer.  Remember Dr. Hiltner.  When duty will permit, you’ll find time for another little chat with old Ursel.”

Casting a loving farewell glance at Wolf as she spoke, she turned over on the other side.

As his footsteps receded from her bedside, she pressed her lips more firmly together, thinking:  “Why should I spoil his beautiful dream of happiness?  What Wawerl offers to the eyes and ears of men is certainly most beautiful.  But her heart!  It is lacking!  Unselfish love would be precisely what the early orphaned youth needs, and that Wawerl will never give him.  Yet I wish no heavier anxieties oppressed me!  One thing is certain—­the husband of the girl upstairs must wear a different look from my darling, with his modest worth.  The Danube will flow uphill before she goes to the altar with him!  So, thank Heaven, I can console myself with that!”

But, soon after, she remembered many things which she had formerly believed impossible, yet which, through unexpected influence, had happened.

Then torturing uneasiness seized her.  She anxiously clasped her emaciated hands, and from her troubled bosom rose the prayer that the Lord would preserve her darling from the fulfilment of the most ardent desire of his heart.

CHAPTER VIII.

Wolf’s first walk took him to the Golden Cross, the lodgings of the Emperor Charles and his court.  The sky had clouded again, and a keen northwest wind was blowing across the Haidplatz and waving the banner on the lofty square battlemented tower at the right of the stately old edifice.

It had originally belonged to the Weltenburg family as a strong offensive and defensive building, then frequently changed hands.

The double escutcheon on the bow-window was that of the Thun and Fugger von Reh families, who had owned it in Wolf’s childhood.

Now he glanced up to see whether young Herr Crafft, to whom the building now belonged, had not also added an ornament to it.  But when Wolf’s gaze wandered so intently from the tower to the bow-window, and from the bow-window to the great entrance door, it was by no means from pleasure or interest in the exterior of the Golden Cross, but because Barbara had confessed that the nineteen-year-old owner of the edifice, who was still a minor, was also wooing her.