"And does not this parchment give you a claim to your inheritance?" she asked quickly and eagerly.
"Undoubtedly," replied Ferber, "but how can we tell in what that maternal inheritance consisted? The family has died out, the very name of Gnadewitz is extinct. Everything has passed into strange hands; who can tell to what we may lay claim?"
"No, let all that rest," said the forester with decision; "such matters cost money, and in the end we might come into possession of only a few thalers. Oh no! let it go! We have not starved yet."
Elizabeth musingly took up the shoes which her uncle had placed before her. The faded silk of which they were made was torn here and there, and showed perfectly the shape of the foot. They had been much worn, but not apparently upon the soil of the forest; the soles showed no traces of such contact; probably they had covered the restless feet at the time of her imprisonment, "when she fled madly through halls and corridors like some hunted thing."
"Aha! Elsie, now we know where you got your slender waist and those feet that trip over the sward, scarcely bending the blades of grass," said her uncle. "You are just such a forest-butterfly as your ancestress, and would flutter just so against the bars of your cage if you were shut up within locked doors; there is gypsy blood in your veins were you ten times Gold Elsie and though your skin is like a snowdrift. There, put on those things, you will find that you can dance in them easily."
"Oh no, uncle," cried Elizabeth deprecatingly, "they seem to me like sacred relics; I could not put them on without fearing that Jost's fiery black eyes might suddenly glare out at me."
Frau Ferber and Miss Mertens agreed with her, and the former declared that in her opinion the press, with all that it contained, ought to be carefully removed to some quiet, dry place, where it might be preserved untouched as a family relic until it fulfilled its destiny, which was to decay with all else that is mortal.
"Well, with regard to the press, let it be as you say," Reinhard here interposed; "but it seems to me that a different fate should await these articles."
He opened the casket. The sunlight penetrating, its interior came flashing back in a thousand sparkling rays, dazzling the eyes that looked on. Reinhard took out a necklace,—it was very broad, and of admirable design.
"These are brilliants of the purest water," he explained to the rest,—the necklace was set thick with precious stones,—"and these rubies here must have gleamed magnificently from the dark curls of the beautiful gypsy girl," he continued, as he took two pins from their velvet cushion with heads formed like lily-cups of red stones, from which chains, set thick with rubies, fell like a glittering little shower.