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