Hitherto she had silently permitted him to speak, but now her cheeks suddenly flamed with a deep flush, and she warmly interrupted:  “You deserve to be happy, Wolf, and I could desire nothing more ardently than to see you glad and content; but you would never become so through me.  How pale you grow!  For my sake, do not take it so much to heart; it grieves me to see you suffer.  Only believe that.  It cuts me to the heart to inflict such great sorrow upon one so loyal, good, and dear, who values me so much more than I deserve.”

Here Wolf, deeply agitated, wildly called her name, and besought her not to cast aside so harshly the wealth of love and fidelity which he offered.

His own anguish of soul, and the pain inflicted by the cruel blow which crushed his dearest hopes, robbed him of fortitude and calmness.  With tears in his eyes, he threw himself on his knees before her and gazed into her face with anxious entreaty, exclaiming brokenly:  “Do not—­do not inflict this suffering upon me, Wawerl!  Rob me of everything except hope.  Defer your acceptance until I can offer you a still fairer future, only be merciful and leave me hope!”

Tears now began to glitter in Barbara’s eyes also, and Wolf, noticing it, hastened with reviving courage to assure her how little it would cost him to reject, once for all, to please her, the tempting position offered to him here.  He could soon obtain a good office elsewhere, since their Majesties were not only favourably disposed toward him, but now toward her also.  True, to him even the most brilliant external gifts of life would be valueless and charmless without her love.

But here Barbara imperatively commanded him to rise, and not make his own heart and hers still heavier without avail.

Wolf pressed his hands upon his temples as violently as if he feared losing his senses; but the young girl voluntarily put her arm around his shoulders, and said with sincere emotion:  “Poor Wolf!  I know how thoroughly in earnest you are, but I dare not even leave you hope—­I neither can nor ought.  Yet you may hear this:  From my childhood you have been dearer to me than any one else, and never shall I forget how firmly you cling to me, how hard it is for you to give me up.”

Then Sir Wolf vehemently asked to know what stood between them; and Barbara, after a brief pause for reflection, answered, “Love for another.”

The confession pierced him like a dagger thrust, and he passionately entreated her to tell him the name of the man who had defrauded him of the happiness to which he possessed an older and better right than any one else.

He paced the room with long strides as he spoke, gazing around him as if he imagined that she had his rival concealed somewhere.

In doing so his glance fell upon Herr Schlumperger’s bouquet, and he wildly cried:  “He?  So, after all, wealth——­”

But this was too much for Barbara, and she stopped him with the exclamation:  “Fool that you are!  As if You did not know that I am not to be bought for the paltry florins of a Ratisbon moneybag!”