She was as joyous as a child, her cheeks flushed with eagerness and her lips parted with laughter. She was a being as far removed as could well be imagined from the serene, pensive maiden who had watched the Baron von Waldstein ride out of the pine forest below the castle slope so few short weeks ago. Her mouth had shaped itself to a new seductiveness, her eyes had kindled with a new and less heavenly lustre, and her bosom had swelled into a new fulness. She was more beautiful, and yet the priest could not repress a sigh as he looked at her, so far from her old state of innocence and of spirituality did she seem in her rich beauty. Before the priest had time to answer her invitation to the mummers' show, the countess's woman, Fastrade, appeared and came down the hall toward the group. "I beg pardon, gracious lady," she said, with a little hesitation, "but the charcoal-burner is below." "Well?" demanded Erna, a shadow flitting across her bright face. "He says," Fastrade continued with evident unwillingness, "that his little daughter is dying, and that she prays the gracious countess to come with the priest to see her before she dies." There was a moment's silence in the hall. Both Albrecht and the priest looked at Erna in evident solicitude in regard to her answer. She herself seemed to feel their looks as a sort of challenge, and she threw back her head with an almost defiant gesture as she replied: "Father Christopher will go, of course, but I could do no good, and just now I am engaged." Her husband laid his hand lightly upon her arm, and bent toward her beseechingly. "But surely," he said, "since the little maid is dying, thou wilt go. The mummers can wait. There is time for that afterward, and for this it would be too late." The priest did not speak, but he waited with the deepest anxiety for her answer, since it seemed to him that it would be so significant of whatever change might really have taken place in her who once would have let nothing stand between her and a call of mercy. He saw her lips harden, and a cold light come into her eyes. "What is the charcoal-burner's daughter," she asked slowly, "that I should give up my pleasure for her whim, even if she be dying?" The waiting-woman stared at the countess in amazement, the priest regarded her with a look of deep sorrow, but in the eyes of Albrecht Father Christopher saw an expression in which were both remorse and terror. XV HOW COUNT STEPHEN RETURNED.