whatever Charles's terrible irritability inflicted upon her. But he must
have noticed what was passing in her mind, for he suddenly paused in his
walk, and, abruptly standing before her, gazed full into her face,
exclaiming: "It is not you who are offended, but I, the sovereign whom
you say you love. Day before yesterday I forbade you to go to the
musician in Red Cock Street, yet you were with him to-day. I asked you
just now whether you had obeyed me and, with smiling lips, you assented."

Barbara was already prepared with an answer in harmony with the sharpness
of the attack, yet her lover's reproof was well founded.

When he had left the room shortly before he must have been informed that,
in defiance of his explicit command, she had gone to the knight's house
that morning.

But no one had ever charged her with lack of courage. Why had she not
dared to confess the fault which, from a good and certainly pardonable
impulse, she had committed?

Was she not free, or when had she placed herself under obligation to
render blind obedience to her lover?

But the falsehood!

How severely she must perhaps atone for it this time!

Yet the esteem, the love of the man to whom her heart clung, whom she
worshipped with all the fervour of her passionate soul, might be at
stake, and when he now seized his hat to withdraw she barred his way.