long series of questions with which she assailed her.

Barbara especially desired to hear particulars about the mother of
Margaret of Parma, the wife of Ottavio Farnese, that Johanna Van der
Gheynst who gave this daughter to the Emperor.

Then Barbara learned that she was a Netherland girl of respectable
family, but of scarcely higher rank than her own; only she had been
adopted by Count Bon Haagestraaten before the Emperor made her
acquaintance.

"Was Johanna beautiful?" Barbara eagerly interrupted.

"I think you are far handsomer," was the reply, "though she, too, was a
lovely creature."

Then Barbara wished to learn whether she was fair or dark, lively or
quiet, and, finally, whether she had consented to give up her child; and
Frau Traut answered that Johanna had done this without resistance, and
her daughter was afterward reared first by the Duchess of Savoy, and
later by Queen Mary, the regent of the Netherlands.

"How wisely the young lady acted," Frau Dubois concluded, "you yourself
know. A crown now adorns her child's head for the second time, and you
will soon see how the Emperor Charles bestows honours upon her husband.
His Majesty understood how to provide for his daughter, who is his first
child. Her former marriage, it is true, was short. Alessandro de'
Medici, to whom she was wedded at almost too early an age, was murdered
scarcely a year after their nuptials. Her present husband, the Duke of
Parma, whom you will see, is, on the contrary, younger than she, but