moment to look at a sick horse, and I to give an order. When we reached the terrace court a few minutes later, we found my lady walking up and down alone in the sunshine.

'Why, where is the learned Anna?' the Waldgrave said.

'She is gone to amuse herself,' my lady answered, laughing. 'Voetius is put aside for the moment in favour of Master Dietz!'

'No?' the young lord exclaimed, in a tone of surprise. 'That yellow-faced atomy? She is not in love with him?'

'No, sir, certainly not.'

'Then what is it?'

'Well, I think she is a little jealous,' my lady answered with a smile. 'We have been so long colloguing with a papist, Anna thinks some amends are due to the Church. And she is gone to make them. At any rate, she asked me a few minutes ago if she might pay a visit to Dietz. "For what purpose?" I said. "To discuss a point with him," she answered. So I told her to go, if she liked, and by this time I don't doubt that they are hard at it.'

'Over Voetius?'

'No, sir,' my lady answered gaily. 'Beza more probably, or Calvin. You know little of either, I expect. I do not wonder that Anna is driven to seek more improving company.'

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VIII.

 A CATASTROPHE.

 

All that day the town remained quiet, and all day the Waldgrave and my lady walked to and fro in the sunshine; or my lady sat working on one of the stone seats, while he built castles in the air, which she knocked down with a sly word or a merry glance. Fraulein Anna, always with the big book, flitted from door to door, like an unquiet spirit. The sentries dozed at their posts, old Jacob in his chair in the guard-room, the cannons under their breech-clouts. If this could be said to be a state of siege, it was the most 

 Prev. P 67/318 next