He had just seen the Countess Hertha in all the pride of triumphant beauty, and his artist eye had revelled in the sight. Here he saw only a delicate, child-like creature, who could not possibly be compared with that other, and whose soft brown eyes gazed up into his own half shyly, half confidingly. Nevertheless, little Dornröschen looked to him unutterably lovely to-night in her ball-dress of some airy, pale pink material, relieved by bunches of wild roses and floating cloud-like about the graceful figure. There was in her air and carriage something of the dewy freshness of a rose-bud just opening to the light. "And how are you pleased here?" Hans asked, when the young girl paused. "Is there not something intoxicating, bewildering, in the life of a great city for one who mingles in it for the first time?" Gerlinda shook her head and looked down. "I do not like it," she declared. "I would rather be at home with papa and my Muckerl. I feel so lonely and forsaken among all these strange people; they do not understand me, and I do not understand them." "Oh, you will soon learn to understand them," Hans said, consolingly. But she still shook her head; the poor child had a vague idea of what was ridiculous about her, and she went on in a pathetic little voice: "They seem to care so little here about their pedigrees! No one knows that we date from the tenth century, and that our family is the very oldest. If I begin to tell of it, Hertha says, 'Gerlinda, stop; you are making yourself ridiculous,' and my godmother says, 'My child, that is out of place here,' and Count Raoul smiles so disagreeably. I know now that he laughs at me. Herr von Wehlau Wehlenberg, you do not think it ridiculous, do you? Your aristocratic self-consciousness is so admirably developed, my papa says." The knight of the Forschungstein felt extremely uncomfortable at this appeal to his aristocratic self-consciousness. It suddenly occurred to him that his sin had found him out, for as soon as Gerlinda returned to the drawing-room and heard his name, all would be explained. There was only one thing to be done,--make confession himself upon the spot. "We searched through all the books of heraldry, and at last we found your family," the young girl continued, with an air of importance; and then, falling into what might be called her heraldic style, she began to repeat what had been found in the books: "The lords of Wehlenberg, an ancient imperial race, settled in the Margraviate since sixteen hundred and forty-three, owning estates of value in the various provinces, the head of the family being Baron Friedrich von Wehlenberg of Bernewitz----" Here she broke off to say, with some regret, "We could not find the Forschungstein." "No, you could not find it, for there is no such place," said Hans, whose resolution was formed. "You and your father have fallen into an error for which I am accountable. I told you, however, at our first interview that I was an artist."