"Are you sure that it is Otho of Arneck she marries?" asked she in a strange tone, gazing fixedly upon Hans Barthing. "In any event, the bride will be brave in this glistening chain. Ah! if it were I—if I were rich and possessed castles, and were a countess—think you that I would not be beautiful with these green flashings and diamonds in my hair and about my neck?"
Mina, speaking thus with a bitter laugh and vacant stare, twined the chain around her neck and through her wavy tresses, and, in doing so, her little fingers moved so fast that none could see how they trembled.
But suddenly her words ceased, her eyes closed, her hands fell by her side, and with a feeble cry she fell upon the chair.
"My daughter! O my daughter! What aileth thee?" cried old Sebald, running to her.
"'Tis naught; a weakness; nothing more." said the goldsmith. "The heat of to-day was, indeed, enough to make a young girl faint. Quick, Bertha! Jeanne! bring hither the Queen of Hungary's water and open the windows."
"It is doubtless the influence of the stones that hath made poor Mina ill." murmured one of the jeweller's daughters, who seemed to stand terror-stricken. "Thou knowest, father, that the sapphire brings happy dreams, the opal misfortune on its possessor, and the beryl can cause faintings. It is then perhaps, the emeralds which cause Mina's illness. She is not accustomed to gaze upon them, and they glitter so—the shining stones!"
"Yes, it is certainly the jewels and their light and the heat," stammered Johann, who, on his knees, was holding the fainting girl's hands within his own, and trying to restore their warmth. "But Demoiselle Mina recovers not. Think you not, Master Sebald, that it would be well to take a litter and return to your dwelling?"
"Assuredly," replied Master Koerner, surprised and anxious at his daughter's swoon.