Erna regarded him with a look in which amazement struggled with disapprobation. She could not comprehend his strange indifference at being discovered. "And hast thou no shame," she demanded, "to be seen trifling with the girl?" "Shame?" he echoed. "Why should I have?" "Nor any fear of my displeasure?" "Thy displeasure?" he repeated. "Why shouldst thou be displeased?" She regarded him in silence a moment; and as she did not speak, he continued: "Surely thou canst not be jealous of a serving-wench?" She drew herself up proudly, all the blood of her ancestors aflame in her clear pale cheek. "The Von Rittenbergs are jealous neither of serving-wenches nor on account of strangers," she returned haughtily. Albrecht looked at her in a perplexity that it was impossible not to believe genuine. "Then what is my offence?" he asked. "I did but kiss the maid. I meant her no harm. Why should not one kiss a smooth cheek if it likes him?" He spoke humbly, yet with no air either of bravado or of conscious guilt. She felt that his ignorance was not feigned, yet could hardly bring herself to believe that he did not understand what her feeling must be at discovering him in the act she had seen. Moreover, she found herself strangely at a loss how to reply to his question, if it were in reality serious. If he did not perceive the impropriety of his conduct, it was not easy for her to explain it to him. She stood a moment in silence, regarding him with a penetrating glance under which he showed no sign of wavering, and then instead of turning away to leave him as had at first been her intention, she smiled faintly, and with an expression of doubt still in her eyes. "One would think, Sir Knight," she said, "that thy father's house must needs be a rude place if it is there held proper to kiss the damsels that please one, without hindrance." "In thy father's castle," he answered slowly, "we have perhaps lived in a fashion that would seem to thee rude, for that my mother died at my birth, and there has been no one but men to make the rules of the house; but why it is wrong to kiss a comely woman if she please thee, is one of the things that I have never been told there or here." Erna's tender heart was at once touched by the thought of her companion's orphanage, her own motherless childhood being still too fresh in her mind not to render her susceptible to this plea. She took up her whip from the bench, and turned quickly, that he might not see the tears that sprang to her eyes whenever one mentioned the loss of a mother. "Well," she said, "I will leave it to Father Christopher to deal with thy transgression." The change in her tone did not escape his quick ears, and he hastened to follow her to the courtyard, where the horses were waiting.