"It is none at all, if I read right your person," answered the boy pertly, mustering Otmar from top to toe. "Are you not he who was last night in the primate's garden? The description answers that of him I was bid to seek." "I was in the primate's garden last night, of a truth," said the young noble: "but"---- "Then follow me," continued the boy, with a nod of the head. "Whither?" "Where a lady calls you," laughed the page, with an impudent swagger. "A young fellow of our age and blood needs no other bidding, methinks." "What lady?" once more asked Otmar. But the boy only winked him to follow, as a reply; and turning into a side-door, beckoned to him once more; and then, seeing that the summons was obeyed, proceeded on, through several passages and corridors, until, reaching a door, he pushed it open. Within stood a female; and Otmar's heart, which had beat high with vague expectations of what he himself scarce dared to divine, was suddenly chilled, when he saw before him an elderly lady, altogether unknown to him. But as she came forward to ask the boy whether it was the person he was charged to seek, he became aware that it was not she into whose presence he was to be introduced. The lady, in turn, signed to him to follow; and after tapping gently upon an inner-door, and waiting for a reply, opened it, and bade him enter. The apartment into which the young noble had been thus ushered, seemed to have been hastily fitted up with such resources of a lady's chamber as the cumbrous and incommodious fashion of the day offered. At the upper end, in a large high-backed chair, sat a female figure, behind whom a tirewoman appeared in waiting. Those hopes and expectations which, once or twice, Otmar had permitted to float over his mind, as he had followed the page through the passages of the castle, and had then dismissed from it as fantastic and improbable, and yet again, in spite of his better reasonings, indulged, were now confirmed, and still, to his dazzled sight, appeared impossible. It was indeed Maria Theresa who sat before him. The mantle had been disengaged from the shoulders, the cimeter ungirded from her side, and the crown removed from her head: but she still wore the rich dark dress, incrusted with gems, that proclaimed her royalty, but which she needed not to stamp her "every inch" a queen. Her hair had been, apparently, loosened by the removal of the diadem from her brow; and powdered as it was, it fell in luxuriant ringlets over her neck and shoulders. The glow of her recent emotion still remained upon her face, and added to the natural grace of her beauty: and her lustrous dark-grey eyes were still moist with her late tears. No wonder that Otmar stood before her, doubly dazzled with her beauty as a woman, and her majesty as a queen--bewildered that she, whom he had presumed to love, and for whom, in spite of himself, his heart yet beat wildly, should be his sovereign, and that he should stand thus in her presence.