"Is the matter really so serious? Won't the monster grant you even a good-night kiss?"
"No," he answered firmly. "Your menservants have gone, and before the maid could open——There is the moon rising above the linden already. It won't do. But I'll see you to-morrow and, please God, with a lighter heart. We may have good news this very day."
"Of the wares from Venice and Milan?" asked Els anxiously.
"Yes, sweetheart. Two waggon trains will meet at Verona. The first messenger came from Ingolstadt, the second from Munich, and the one from Landshut has been here since day before yesterday. Another should have arrived this morning, but the intense heat yesterday, or some cause—at any rate there is reason for anxiety. You don't know what is at stake."
"But peace was proclaimed yesterday," said Els, "and if robber knights and bandits should venture——But, no! Surely the waggons have a strong escort."
"The strongest," answered Wolff. "The first wain could not arrive before to-morrow morning."
"You see!" cried the girl gaily. "Just wait patiently. When you are once mine I'll teach you not to look on the dark side. O Wolff, why is everything made so much harder for us than for others? Now this evening, it would have been so pleasant to go to the ball with you."
"Yet, how often, dearest, I have urged you in vain——" he began, but she hastily interrupted "Yes, it was certainly no fault of yours, but one of us must remain with my mother, and Eva——"
"Yesterday she complained to me with tears in her eyes that she would be forced to go to this dance, which she detested."
"That is the very reason she ought to go," explained Els. "She is eighteen years old, and has never yet been induced to enter into any of the pleasures other girls enjoy. When she isn't in the convent she is always at home, or with Aunt Kunigunde or one of the nuns in the woods and fields. If she wants to take the veil later, who can prevent it, but the abbess herself advises that she should have at least a glimpse of the world before leaving it. Few need it more, it seems to me, than our Eva."