"Who turned into a black cat?" asked her father. "The knight did," sobbed Eileen. And then the poor old father went out of the room, thinking that his daughter was going mad. "She is quite beside herself; she says that you are not a man, but a cat," he said sorrowfully to the young knight, whom he met standing outside his daughter's room. "What in the world could have put such thoughts into her head? Not a thing will she talk about but black cats." "Let me see her; I will bring her to her right mind," said the knight. "I doubt it very much," replied the chief; but as he did not know what else to do, he let him go into the room, and the knight went in softly and closed the door, and went up to the couch on which Eileen lay. She lay with her eyes closed, and with all her gold chains still upon her neck and arms; and the knight, because he trod softly, had come quite up to her side before she knew that he was there. But the moment she opened her eyes and saw him, she gave such a scream that it quite made him leap; and if he had not bolted the door every creature in the castle would have rushed into the room at the sound of it. Fortunately for him, however, he had bolted the door; and as it was a very stout door, made of strong oak, Eileen might have screamed for an hour before anybody could have burst it open. As soon, therefore, as the knight had recovered from the start she gave him, he quietly took a chair and sat down by her side. "Eileen," he said, beginning to speak at once--for probably he felt that the matter he had come to mention was rather a painful and a delicate one, and the more quickly he could get over what he had to say the better--"Eileen, you have unhappily to-day seen me under--ahem!--under an unaccustomed shape----" He had only got so far as this, when Eileen gave another shriek and covered her face with her hands. "I say," repeated the knight, in a tone of some annoyance, and raising his voice, for Eileen was making such a noise that it was really necessary to speak pretty loudly--"I say you have unfortunately seen me to-day under a shape that you were not prepared for; but I have come, my love, to assure you that the--transformation--was purely accidental--a mere blunder of a moment--an occurrence that shall never be repeated in your sight. Look up to me again, Eileen, and do not let this eve of our marriage-day----" But what the knight had got to say about the eve of their marriage-day Eileen never heard, for as soon as he had reached these words she gave another shriek so loud that he jumped upon his seat. "Do you think that I will ever marry a black cat?" cried Eileen, fixing her eyes with a look of horror on his face. "Eileen, take care!" exclaimed the knight sternly. "Take care how you anger me, or it will be the worse for you."