“My dear child! do you know the story of the Liebenstein?”

“The story of the Liebenstein,” she answered, “I got by heart, when I was a little child.”

And here her large, dark, passionate eyes looked into Flemming’s, and he doubted not, that she had learned the story far too soon, and far too well.  That story he longed to hear, as if it were unknown to him; for he knew that the girl, who had got it by heart when a child, would tell it as it should be told.  So he begged her to repeat the story, which she was but too glad to do; for she loved and believed it, as if it had all been written in the Bible.  But before she began, she rested a moment on her oars, and taking the crucifix, which hung suspended from her neck, kissed it, and then let it sink down into her bosom, as if it were an anchor she was letting down into her heart.  Meanwhile her moist, dark eyes were turned to heaven.  Perhaps her soul was walking with the souls of Cunizza, and Rahab, and Mary Magdalen.  Or perhaps she was thinking of that Nun, of whom St. Gregory says, in his Dialogues, that, having greedily eaten a lettuce in a garden, without making the sign of the cross, she found herself soon after possessed with a devil.

The probability, however, is, that she was looking up to the ruined castles only, and not to heaven, for she soon began her story, and told Flemming how, a great, great many years ago, an old man lived in the Liebenstein with his two sons; and how both the young men loved the Lady Geraldine, an orphan, under their father’s care; and how the elder brother went away in despair, and the younger was betrothed to the Lady Geraldine; and how they were as happy as Aschenputtel and the Prince.  And then the holy Saint Bernard came and carried away all the young men to the war, just as Napoleon did afterwards; and the young lord went to the Holy Land, and the Lady Geraldine sat in her tower and wept, and waited for her lover’s return, while the old father built the Sternenfels for them to live in when they were married.  And when it was finished, the old man died; and the elder brother came back and lived in the Liebenstein, and took care of the gentle Lady.  Ere long there came news from the Holy Land, that the war was over; and the heart of the gentle Lady beat with joy, till she heard that her faithless lover was coming back with a Greek wife,—­the wicked man! and then she went into a convent and became a holy nun.  So the young lord of Sternenfels came home, and lived in his castle in great splendor with the Greek woman, who was a wicked woman, and did what she ought not to do.  But the elder brother was angry for the wrong done the gentle Lady, and challenged the lord of Sternenfels to single combat.  And, while they were fighting with their great swords in the valley of Bornhofen behind the castle, the convent bells began to ring, and the Lady Geraldine came forth with a train of nuns alldressed in white, and made the brothers friends again, and told them she was the bride of Heaven, and happier in her convent than she could have been in the Liebenstein or the Sternenfels.  And when the brothers returned, they found that the false Greek wife had gone away with another knight.  So they lived together in peace, and were never married.  And when they died—­”