"My story, Florinda, opens upon one of those soft summer twilights
which hang over this incomparable valley to-day, as they did
centuries gone by. Two figures rested near a soft bed of flowers in
the broad grounds of Botztez Castle. The luxuriant, curling hair of
delicate auburn that strayed so freely over the neck and shoulders
of the female figure, betrayed her to be the lovely daughter of Herr
Karl Etzwell; while the reader would have recognized at once in the
person by her side, the fine athletic figure of Egbert. They sat in
tender proximity to each other, and Bettina was listening to
Egbert's eloquent story of the olden times, and of the many
chivalric deeds for which the neighborhood of this spot was
celebrated. He told her, too, of legends connected with the very
towers and battlements that now surrounded them, until at last the
lateness of the hour warned them that they must part; and the
gallant Egbert, pressing her hand tenderly to his lips, bade her a
brief farewell as he said, and would meet her there again with the
twilight hour on the following day.

"Scarcely had he left her side when a decrepit figure, dressed in as
shabby garb as ever clothed a beggar woman, tottled towards her, and
in saddest tones besought the fair girl to come a few steps from the
castle walls to aid her in carrying her sick infant, who she feared
was dying. The chords of tender sympathy were at once touched and
Bettina followed the old woman outside the walls, and beyond an
angle of the ruins a few rods, when the person who had so excited
her commiseration suddenly stopped, and tossing off the wretched
rags he wore, he stood before her the athletic leader of banditti,
Petard!"