"It is natural that husband and wife should become alike," Lady Adelaide answered the last remark of Father Christopher's with an air of the greatest wisdom; "that is, if they are at all in accord. He hath waked her, and she hath toned him down, and it is an improvement on both sides. I must say that taking into account the magnificence of the _Morgengabe_, I do not see that the countess could possibly have done better. The baron was always delightful, but thou must remember that he was as wild as a hawk when he came to Rittenberg."

"He has certainly changed much, and that for the better," answered her companion.

The priest was thinking of how he had stopped a moment to chat with Rupert, the huntsman, as he crossed the courtyard that morning, and how Rupert had praised the kindness of the baron to the dogs, telling how in the boar-hunt yesterday Baron Albrecht had been as tender with Gelert, the hound that was so badly hurt, as could have been Rupert's own wife, who was used to tending and nursing hurt dogs. Father Christopher remembered how in the early days of his coming to the castle Albrecht had laughed at the bare idea of one's caring for the suffering of an animal, and that even when his man-at-arms had been ill he had shown not the slightest comprehension of any reason why one should be affected by the pain of another.

The priest stood by the window in the hall where he had been talking with Lady Adelaide for a long time after she had gone, thinking of the problems which her words suggested. It was too evident that Erna and Albrecht had greatly influenced each other for even the most careless observer to overlook it, and no one could tell where this change of character would end. Out in the courtyard he could see the workmen who were finishing the preparations for a show of the mummers which was to take place that morning. Directly after the wedding day Herr von Zimmern had announced his intention of going to visit his family, and since then they had had no word from him directly. He had however given them proof that he did not forget his former lord, since from time to time troupes of dancers, jugglers, or of mummers arrived at Rittenberg, sent by the cripple or directed by some hint which had evidently come from him.

Father Christopher was secretly troubled by these evidences of the continued remembrance of Herr Frederich. The priest had distrusted him from the first, and since he had been acquainted with Herr von Zimmern's history he had dreaded him, feeling sure that the time would come when he would seek revenge for his long captivity and the cruel maiming inflicted upon him by the kobold king.

Erna welcomed these wandering bands of players with more and more eagerness, while the priest was confident that in Albrecht he perceived signs of a growing weariness of their dances, their tricks, and their clumsy mumming. The present troupe was more numerous than any of its predecessors, and the preparations were of far more than usual elaborateness. As the priest looked down into the courtyard the last touches were being put to the stage; and presently the players, already in their dresses, began to appear from the quarters which had been a.s.signed to them upon the side of the court opposite to that from which the windows of the great hall looked. The household was gathering, and the Lady Adelaide, with Elsa behind her chair, had taken her seat, although those of the lord and lady of the castle were still vacant.

Divided in his mind whether to go down and join the company of spectators or not, the priest was standing irresolutely at the cas.e.m.e.nt when Albrecht and Erna came together into the hall.

"Come, Father," the countess said gayly, "they say these are the best mummers that have ever been seen in all the Schwarzwald. They are to give a wonderful play of the life of Helen of Troy, and after that there are to be dances."

She was as joyous as a child, her cheeks flushed with eagerness and her lips parted with laughter. She was a being as far removed as could well be imagined from the serene, pensive maiden who had watched the Baron von Waldstein ride out of the pine forest below the castle slope so few short weeks ago. Her mouth had shaped itself to a new seductiveness, her eyes had kindled with a new and less heavenly l.u.s.tre, and her bosom had swelled into a new fulness. She was more beautiful, and yet the priest could not repress a sigh as he looked at her, so far from her old state of innocence and of spirituality did she seem in her rich beauty.

Before the priest had time to answer her invitation to the mummers'

show, the countess's woman, Fastrade, appeared and came down the hall toward the group.

"I beg pardon, gracious lady," she said, with a little hesitation, "but the charcoal-burner is below."

"Well?" demanded Erna, a shadow flitting across her bright face.

"He says," Fastrade continued with evident unwillingness, "that his little daughter is dying, and that she prays the gracious countess to come with the priest to see her before she dies."

There was a moment's silence in the hall. Both Albrecht and the priest looked at Erna in evident solicitude in regard to her answer. She herself seemed to feel their looks as a sort of challenge, and she threw back her head with an almost defiant gesture as she replied:

"Father Christopher will go, of course, but I could do no good, and just now I am engaged."

Her husband laid his hand lightly upon her arm, and bent toward her beseechingly.

"But surely," he said, "since the little maid is dying, thou wilt go.

The mummers can wait. There is time for that afterward, and for this it would be too late."

The priest did not speak, but he waited with the deepest anxiety for her answer, since it seemed to him that it would be so significant of whatever change might really have taken place in her who once would have let nothing stand between her and a call of mercy. He saw her lips harden, and a cold light come into her eyes.

"What is the charcoal-burner's daughter," she asked slowly, "that I should give up my pleasure for her whim, even if she be dying?"

The waiting-woman stared at the countess in amazement, the priest regarded her with a look of deep sorrow, but in the eyes of Albrecht Father Christopher saw an expression in which were both remorse and terror.

XV

HOW COUNT STEPHEN RETURNED.

The bright-hued harvest-crocus had faded in the meadows, and over the blackly green pine forests had come a colder hue; the ferns in the beech wood were beginning to look wan and yellow, as if the thought that autumn was at hand had already dismayed them. The heather was tinged with russet, and all the skies upon which Erna looked, as one morning she gazed discontentedly from the cas.e.m.e.nt of her chamber, were filmed with soft hazes whose faint purple was as intangible as the first shadow of coming twilight, which one feels rather than sees.

Erna sighed as she leaned half over the stone ledge upon which the sun lay warmly. The doves were preening themselves almost within reach of her touch, and she waved her hand impatiently to frighten them away, since in her untoward mood their soft reiterated coo vexed her ears. She had learned in these days, during which she had been seeking pleasure as she had never sought it before, the meaning of ennui. She was restless with the awakened stir of a hundred desires which demanded continual gratification. She longed for excitement, for the movement of crowds, for the delights of the eye and the l.u.s.ts of the flesh which once would not have awakened in her heart a throb of interest. She wanted continually fresh diversions, new sports, strange revels, rich viands, all the alluring joys of the senses to which she had of old in her innocence and ignorance been so indifferent.

This morning she had been urging her husband to take her to court.

Charlemagne was at Mayence, and there were echoes of the gay doings there forward which reached even as far as Rittenberg. The countess longed to see the brave shows, the rich pageants, the gorgeous raiment; to sit at the banquets, and to dazzle the eyes of the gallants with her beauty and her jewels, finer than the queen's own. She had urged upon Albrecht the propriety of paying his respects in person to his sovereign; but her entreaties, her arguments, and her protestations had been alike unavailing. Albrecht was kind in the manner of his refusal, but he was still persistent in it, and in the end Erna had found herself utterly powerless to change his determination not to leave Rittenberg.

"They tell strange tales of the court," he said in reply to her pleading. "There is more license there than it becomes a modest woman to see, and over-much worldliness as well. Surely it were not well to put one's self in a place like this needlessly, beloved."

Erna had answered nothing, but she had left him with a feeling almost like anger in her heart. She knew why he wished to stay at Rittenberg.

It was that he might go on with his tiresome studies with Father Christopher, to which Albrecht gave more and more time every day. As for the wickedness of the court, she was a married woman, and with a husband to protect her, and one moreover of a bearing so knightly as that of Von Waldstein, it was not to be supposed that she could come to any harm.

She sighed with fresh impatience as she reflected how deeply immersed in the study of spiritual things her husband had become since their marriage. She was not, she a.s.sured herself, less fond of him than of old, but it was to the last degree provoking that just as she had learned to appreciate the delight of life, Albrecht should devote so much thought to things which she had laid aside as dull.

As she mused in this fashion, looking out of the window as she had looked when Albrecht rode gallantly out of the pine forest at the foot of the castle hill on that day when Erna first saw him, once more she heard the note of a bugle-horn in the valley, and once more a knight rode out of the covert into sight, followed by his men-at-arms. With eager curiosity Erna peered out at the new-comer, and almost instantly her eye caught sight of the pennon of the Von Rittenbergs of Schaffhausen, and understood that the visitor was her cousin, Count Stephen, who was probably on his return from Strasburg, and who had accepted her invitation to repeat his visit to Rittenberg.

For an instant her cheek flushed with vexation, her old dislike of the count reawakening, but instantly her changed taste a.s.serted itself, and she smiled. She watched the train as it rode up to the gate, and then she turned back into her chamber with joyous haste. It came into her mind that she could make an impression upon her guest, and she began straightway to consider how she should array herself to go to meet him.

She chose from her jewel-case a string of rubies, and quickly bound it upon her head like a fillet; and as she did so her woman, Fastrade, came to announce to her the arrival of Count von Rittenberg.

The Lady Adelaide reached the great hall before her, and Count Stephen was speaking with the old dame with his back to the stairway by which Erna descended. The countess was already close to him before he perceived her. Then he wheeled suddenly, almost turning his back upon Lady Adelaide in his astonishment at the beauty of the woman before him.

Erna did not lose one shade of the look of amazement and admiration which came into his face as he looked at her.

"G.o.d's blood!" he cried. "What has come to thee, Cousin? Indeed, this marriage of which they told me at Mayence has made a new creature of thee. I greet thy ladyship, and that I did not send congratulations on thy marriage is no fault of mine, since it was all over before I knew of it."

"It is no matter," replied Erna, giving him her hand and smiling upon him with a pleased sense of companionship which she had never experienced in his presence before; "since thou hast come in person to bring them, we consent to overlook the fact that thou art somewhat tardy. But hast thou been at Mayence as well as to Strasburg? I did not know that was in thy mind."

"It was not when I left here," he answered, regarding her with so undisguised a look of admiration that she blushed under it and turned aside her eyes; "but being in the way of travelling I pushed on to Mayence, and there I saw the court, and there I heard of thy marriage."

"Fain would we hear of the court," Lady Adelaide said, leading the way to a seat in the broad recess of a window. "Sit thee down here, and tell us what thou canst of the doings and the braveries there, while the page brings thee a cup of wine. I hope too, on my soul, that thou hast more wit in speech of woman's apparel than have most of the knights I have known, for we would know of the raiment of the queen and her damsels, and in good sooth it is seldom that a knight is cunning enough to tell anything of that sort rightly, albeit so simple is it that the most foolish kitchen wench that had but seen the royal train ride past could describe it all."

"And therein is it to be seen that a knight's head is not like that of a foolish kitchen wench," laughed Count Stephen, seating himself comfortably among the cushions beside the two ladies.

"But tell me," Erna said, "from whom didst thou hear of the marriage? It is not likely that it is a topic which is greatly discussed at court."

"The court concerns itself with many a matter that is of less moment,"

replied he, gallantly; "but it was from a certain Herr von Zimmern that I had the tidings. He was at an inn where I lodged, and when he heard my name he made bold to speak to me. He is an ill-favored knave enough, but a shrewd and a witty."

"I like him not," Erna answered.

A brief silence followed this remark. Erna was confused by the fact that the count, whom she had found so little to her taste before, should now seem to her so agreeable. It was impossible for her not to see from his admiring looks that he was pursuing a somewhat similar train of thought in regard to her, and at the reflection she blushed faintly once more, with a thrill of gratified vanity.

"But where," Count Stephen broke the silence to ask, "is the Baron von Waldstein? I am anxious to meet my new relative, and," he added, with a look into the face of Erna, "my successful rival."

"My husband," she replied, vainly trying to appear as if she had not heard the latter part of his remark, "is with Father Christopher. They study together sometimes."

"G.o.d's blood!" cried Von Rittenberg, with a burst of laughter, "hast thou then married a clerk, Cousin? Fain would I see this new master of Rittenberg that studies with a priest. If the Huns come, thou mayst have to call upon the younger branch of the family to defend thee," he added, turning to the Lady Adelaide. "At least we can bear swords if we be only the 'Schaffleute.' We are not to be looked for in the cells of priests."

"Body of Saint Fridolin!" cried Lady Adelaide, in angry return. "It is not to outsiders that we have been forced to look for defence in the past, and it were well that thou seest the new lord before thou speakest scorn of him so lightly. Belike it were not so well were he to hear thee!"

"My husband is here to speak for himself," Erna interposed, rising with great dignity as Albrecht, summoned by a page, came into the hall.