In this belief I was more than confirmed when he came forward and greeted me pleasantly, vowing that he remembered me well. His voice and laugh seemed to fill the room; the very ring of his spurs on the stones gave assurance of power. I saw my lady look at him with an air of affectionate pride--she had seen him more lately than I had--as if his youth, and strength, and beauty already belonged to her. As for his smile, it was infectious. We grew in a moment brighter, younger, and more cheerful. The house which yesterday had seemed quiet and lonesome--we were a small family for so great a dwelling--took on a new air. The servants went about their tasks more quickly, the maids laughed behind doors. The place seemed in an hour transformed, as I have seen a valley in the mountains changed on a sudden by the rising of the sun.

As a fact, when I had been in his presence five minutes, the Burgomaster and the Minister upstairs seemed as common and mean and insignificant a pair of fellows as any in Germany. I wondered that I could ever have feared them. The Countess had told him the story, and he asked me one or two questions about them, his tone high, and his head in the air. I answered him, and was for accompanying him upstairs, when he went to see them, with my lady by his side, and his whip slapping his great thigh boots until the staircase rang again. But my lady had an errand and sent me on it, and so I was not present at the end of this interview which I had myself brought about.

But I suppose that the scolding my lady had given them was no more than a flea-bite beside the rating the young Waldgrave inflicted! It was notorious for a score of leagues round, and he told them so in good round terms, that the Heritzburg land had been spared by friend and foe for Count Tilly's sake; for his sake and his alone--a Papist. How, then, he asked them, had they the face to do this dirty trick, and threaten my lady besides? With much more of the same kind, and hard words, not to say menaces; sparing neither Mayor nor Minister, so that they went off at last like whipped dogs or thieves that have seen the gallows.

Afterwards something was said; but at the time no one missed them. Except by myself, scarce a thought was given to them after they went out of the door. The house was all agog about the new-comer; the still-room full of work and the chimneys smoking. The young lord was everywhere, and the maids were mad about him. I had my hands full, and every one in the house seemed to be in the same case. No one had time to look abroad.

Except Fraulein Anna Max, my lady's 

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