was not unmixed. I felt a degree of strangeness myself. The place seemed changed, the men, moving stiffly, had an unfamiliar air. I missed the respect I had enjoyed in the house. For the moment I was nobody; a prisoner, an alien person admitted grudgingly, and on sufferance.

I comforted myself with the reflection that all would be well when I reached the presence. But I was mistaken. I saw indeed my lady's colour come and go when I entered, and her eyes fell. But she kept her seat, she looked no more at me than at my companions, she uttered no greeting or word of acknowledgment. It was the Waldgrave who spoke--the Waldgrave who acted. In a second there came over me a bitter feeling that all was changed; that the old state of things at Heritzburg was past, and a rule to which I was a stranger set in its place.

Three or four of my lady's women were grouped behind her, while Franz and Ernst stood like statues at the farther door. Fraulein Anna sat on a stool in the window-bay, and my lady's own presence was, as at all times, marked by a stateliness and dignity which seemed to render it impossible that she should pass for second in any company. But for all that the Waldgrave, standing up straight and tall behind her, with his comeliness, his youth, and his manhood and the red light from the coat of arms in the stained window just touching his fair hair, did seem to me to efface her. It was he who stood there to pardon or punish, praise or blame, and not my lady. And I resented it.

Not that his first words to me were not words of kindness.

'Ha, Martin,' he cried, his face lighting up, 'I hear you fought like an ancient Trojan, and broke as many heads as Hector. And that your own proved too hard for them! Welcome back. In a moment I may want a word with you; but you must wait.'

I stood aside, obeying his gesture; and he apologised, but with a very stern aspect, to Hofman and his companions for addressing me first.

'The Countess Rotha, however, Master Burgomaster,' he continued, with grim suavity, 'much as she desires to treat your office with respect, cannot but discern between the innocent and the guilty.'

'The guilty, my lord?' Hofman cried, in such a hurry and trepidation, I could have laughed. 'I trust that there are none here.'

'At any rate you represent them,' the Waldgrave retorted.

'I, my lord?' The Mayor's hair 

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