"His connection is hardly near enough to count in this matter," Erna answered. "Dear Aunt," she continued, coming closer to the other, and laying a caressing hand lightly upon the old woman's arm, "I am sorry that thou shouldst be disappointed. I did what I could to fulfil thy wish when I bade thee have Count Stephen come here, although what we had heard of him was so little of the sort to make me long for such a guest, because I knew that more than for aught else in the world thou didst long for the perpetuation of the Von Rittenberg name by my becoming his wife. I shrank from the knight from the first moment I saw him, and never could it be that I should be brought to look upon him with favor. Happily he feels the same repugnance to me, so that I am spared the pain of telling him nay; but I cannot fail to be glad at his departure." The old dame, who was so small and so old that she seemed to have shrivelled away in long centuries, overlooked and forgotten by the Angel of Death, was evidently moved by the caressing air of the countess; but her grievance was too deep and of too long standing to be so lightly passed over, and she could not restrain herself from the further venting of her displeasure. "Why does he feel cold toward thee?" she demanded. "Hast thou been other than an ice-hill to him since he entered the castle? I sent for Count Stephen to come here to pay his respects to me because he is the only man alive who bears our name; and whatever thou mayst say, he bears it like a brave knight. Thou hast met him as if thou wouldst remind him that while he hath no great possessions thou art chatelaine of the richest domain in the Ober-Schwarzwald." "Aunt Adelaide!" interrupted Erna, a flush of indignation rising in her clear cheek, "not even thou hast a right to charge me with insulting my guests." "God's blood!" the other returned. "There spoke thy father, Heaven rest his soul! But thou knowest," she continued, softening her tone, "that I cannot live forever to have care for thee, and that I cannot die easy till thou art well wed. There are strange rumors in the air, too, and who knoweth what the music from the forest that has been heard of late may betoken? And Elsa tells me that there hath been about the place a weird creature in the guise of a man who walketh limpingly. It all bodes some wonderful thing that is to hap, and I would to the saints that Rittenberg had a man to defend it, whatever may befall." The entrance of a servant who announced that the Count von Rittenberg was now in truth waiting to take leave, interrupted Lady Adelaide, and brought her at once to a request which had been in her shrewd mind ever since she learned that the guest was likely to set off without having made that proffer for the hand of Erna to secure which she had invited him to the castle. "At least this thou canst do to please me," she said; "thou canst invite him to rest here on his way back from Strasburg, whither he is journeying."