The talk at the table was so animated and full of frank gayety that they lingered by common though unspoken consent far beyond the usual time. The baron had throughout addressed himself to the whole company, seldom speaking directly to Erna, although he now and then appealed to the Lady Adelaide or to Father Christopher; and yet the countess was subtly conscious that in all he said there was a secret intention of interesting herself. She blushed as this thought came to her after she had retired to her chamber and sat over her embroidery, while the priest and the knight were left to entertain each other. So unsophisticated was she that this thought seemed almost unmaidenly, and she contradicted it as soon as it showed itself in her mind. She was a maid with soul as white as the unspotted ermine. She had been bred under the eye of Father Christopher,--a priest who was also a man, and one of rare insight. She was as ignorant of evil as one must be who had lived ever in seclusion, and her temperament naturally inclined toward piety. Something of an education she had received from the priest. She could read; and there were in the castle several pious books, most of them, it is to be feared, looted by the late Count von Rittenberg on the day of some victory of the Great Emperor in the south at which he had assisted. Over these parchments, mostly religious works, although a wicked volume of the heathen poet Ovid had somehow chanced among them, Erna passed much time. The brilliant scroll of Ovid, with its profane pictures, at which she had never looked more than in a single glance that showed her what they were like, she had hidden away after a consultation with Father Christopher whether it should not be destroyed despite its value. The colored threads of her embroidery that afternoon were scarcely more bright than the thoughts which floated through Erna's brain as she sat among her maidens, directing their work; and yet in her mind was no thought which was consciously different from those of the day before or of all the days that had preceded; only that now suddenly all those days appeared, as she looked back, somehow colorless and dull. She did not say to herself that the coming of the stranger knight had suddenly put new meaning into life, but her secret heart knew it, albeit she had yet to understand what her heart felt. When that night she came into the great hall for supper, a lily-white maid in soul as well as robe, the eyes of the baron glowed as he looked at her. There was in his glance an adoration such as a noble dog might give to his mistress, a tender appeal as of one who beseeches a higher being to take pity upon him; and Father Christopher, who observed closely whatever concerned the countess, sighed as he looked, and secretly shook his head. The talk at supper touched upon hunting, and the eyes of the baron sparkled as he said: