All her womanly dignity was gone. I seemed dealing with a very young girl. “Noble Gräfin,” I said, drawing myself up, “arise. Let us talk calmly. You know what men of my rank mean by ‘honor.’ And has not mine been basely stained? How can I suffer this insult to pass?” “Yes, yes,” she moaned, still at my knees. “I understand. It is ‘honor’ when you, a master swordsman, meet my father. He is old; his hand unsteady. Ten passes and he is dead. And then”--She pressed her hands to her face. “Dear Lady,” I replied, I thought not unkindly, striving to raise her; “then you and yours will be rid of one who has made your life wretched; who has wearied heaven with his deeds.” But now she caught my girdle, and seemed like some wild bird struggling in defence of its young and nest. “Ah! you have said it. Sinful he is, vile, godless. I begged of Aunt Theckla, ‘will his saints’ relics save him? Will he ever join my blessed mother up in heaven?’ And she only looked at me in her unmoved way, and said, ‘It will take vast indulgence and good works, and then I cannot tell.’ She dared not say the devils were waiting for his soul, but I know it. Oh, blessed Christ, but I am so miserable! Hear now, Lord Graf; if kill you must, kill me! I can bear it. I can die, wicked as I am. Even the dreadful quenchless fire will not feel so terrible, when I think ‘I endure this to ransom the soul of my father.’” She had seized the skirt of my cloak, and clung piteously. And I, being neither iron nor adamant, could not hear unmoved. “Dear Lady,” I said very gently now, “if any man in Rome had ever told me I would overlook an insult like that of last night, and not make the doer walk up my rapier, the sayer himself would have eaten his words or died for it; but you fight me with weapons I cannot parry. If any saint can open the gate of heaven for the Graf von Blankenburg, I swear it will be his noble daughter. Go to your brother. He is a man of honor and sense. Tell him I withdraw the challenge; only he must send me some kind of an apology in behalf of his father which I can show to my Regensteiners. And now, gracious Gräfin, this dialogue has been overlong; you would do well to be setting homeward, the more as I cannot wisely escort you far.” She would have kissed my feet had I only suffered it. “I will pray St. Anna, St. Elizabeth, and all the rest to bless you to-night. You are the noblest, most chivalrous ritter in the world. I knew you would be merciful. But this is a dreadful earth we dwell in; Aunt Theckla is right--there is no peace save in the convent, where one can try to please God all day long.” And with these very ill-connected sentences she was gone down into the trees, almost as suddenly as she had come. I stood shrugging my shoulders. I had been mortally insulted, and had suddenly forgiven the insult as meekly as a St. Francis,--and all for the tears of a superstitious, crying, pleading girl, as bereft of true wit and elegance as the pine stumps.