My Lady Rotha: A Romance

That was a night that saw few in Nuremberg sleep soundly. Under the moon the great city lay waiting; watching and fasting through the short summer night. Hour by hour the solemn...

I never knew where the Waldgrave spent that night, but I think it must have been with the fairies. For when he showed himself early next morning, before my lady appeared, I noti...

What my lady's thoughts were during her long ride back to the camp, I do not know. But I have heard her say that when she rode into the village, a day and a half in advance of t...

The night was still young, and when I had seen my mistress and her women comfortably settled, I sauntered back towards the middle of the camp. The three fires stood here, and th...

He was as good as his word. Before the sun had been up an hour six of the mutineers, chosen by lot from a hundred of the more guilty, dangled from a great tree which overhung th...

Late as it was when I fell asleep--for these thoughts long kept me waking--I was up and on my way to Count Leuchtenstein's before the bells rang seven. It was the 17th of August...

After this it fared with us as it fares at last with the driftwood that chance or the woodman's axe has given to a forest stream in Heritzburg. After rippling over the shallows...

He had a light in his hand, and he held it up to my face. 'So?' he said. 'Is that what you would be at? But you go fast. It takes two to that, Master Steward.'

I suppose it was not love only that enabled the Waldgrave to carry himself so prudently at this time; but with it a sense of the peril in which we all stood. He was so far from...

If it had been our fate after that to continue our flight in the same weary fashion we had before devised, lying in woods by day, and all night riding jaded horses, until we pas...

One of the men--it was I--muttered something to Marie, and she snuffed the wick, and blew up the light. In a moment it filled the room, disclosing a strange medley of levelled w...

I laughed at my own fears when the morning came, and showed no change except that cheerful one, which our guest's presence had worked inside the castle. Below, today was as yest...

My Lady Rotha, Countess of Heritzburg in her own right, was at this time twenty-five years old and unmarried. Her maiden state, which seems to call for explanation, I attribute...

All that day the town remained quiet, and all day the Waldgrave and my lady walked to and fro in the sunshine; or my lady sat working on one of the stone seats, while he built c...

I have known a man very strong and very confident, whom the muzzle of a loaded pistol, set fairly against his head, has reduced to reason marvellously. So it fared with Heritzbu...

At this time I had never seen a camp, nor viewed any large number of armed men together, and my curiosity, as we dropped gently down the hill, while the sun set and the shadows...

The dawn came slowly. Night, loth to unveil what the valley had to show, hung there long after the wooded knobs that rose along the ridge had begun to appear, looking like grey...

Two of these men sat facing one another at a great table covered with papers. As I entered they turned their faces to me, and on the instant one sprang to his feet with an excla...

But I am not going to relate the talk we had on that, Fraulein Anna and I. I learned one thing, and one only, and that I can put very shortly. I saw my face as it were in a glas...

The Waldgrave's return to his old self, and to the frankness and gaiety that, when we first knew him at Heritzburg, had surrounded him with a halo of youth, was perhaps the most...

'Chut, man!' he said, with a sneer of contempt; 'you know him; I see you do. And knew him all along. Well, if fools will poke their noses into things that do not concern them, i...

There never was one of my forefathers could read, or knew so much as a horn-book when he saw it; and therefore I, though a clerk, have a brain pan that will stand as much as any...

As it turned out, the other party took the burden of decision from my shoulders. When I came out of chapel next morning, I found Hofman on the terrace waiting for me, and with h...

Night is like a lady's riding-mask, which gives to the most familiar features a strange and uncanny aspect. When to night are added silence and alarm, and that worst burden of a...

Ludwig was found dead in the hall, slain on the spot by the explosion of the petard which had driven in the door. His two comrades, less fortunate, were taken alive, and, with t...

When a man lies fettered at the bottom of a jolting waggon, and, unable to help himself, is made a pillow for wounded wretches, whose feverish struggles go near to stifling him;...

That was a dreary procession that a little before noon on the 25th of August wound its way back into Nuremberg. The King, repulsed but not defeated, remained in his camp beyond...

And she stood with clasped hands and blushing cheeks, as if she were the culprit. Her eyes looked anywhere to avoid mine. Her voice trembled, and she seemed ready to sink into t...

I did not after that suffer the grass to grow under my feet. I went out, and with my own eyes searched the fields at the back, and every ditch and water-hole. I had the loss cri...

I had slept scantily the night before, and the excitement of the last twenty-four hours had worn me out. I was grieved for the gallant life so swiftly ebbing, and miserable on m...

As the stranger made his announcement, I chanced to turn my eyes on the Waldgrave's face; and if there was one thing more noteworthy at the moment than the speaker's air of perf...

I never saw anything more remarkable than the change which the death of my lady's uncle, Count Tilly, in the spring of 1632, worked at Heritzburg. Until the day when that news r...

We lay in the osier bed two whole days and a night, during which time two at least of us were not unhappy, in spite of peril and hardship. We left it at last, only because our m...

I fell to wondering, as we rode home, whether we should find all safe; for we had left Marie Wort and my lady's woman to keep house with two only of the men. From that, again, I...

The heat which Count Leuchtenstein had thrown into the matter surprised me somewhat when I came to think of it, but I was soon to be more surprised. I did not go to my lady at o...

For a little while after the Waldgrave had retired, Count Leuchtenstein stood turning my lady's letter over in his hands, his thoughts apparently busy. I had leisure during this...

For five minutes we all sat silent, sucking our lips. Then Klink rose again with a knowing look, and crossed the kitchen on tiptoe with the same parade of caution as before. Ban...

It was my ill luck, on that day which began so inauspiciously, to see two shadows: one on a man's face, the Waldgrave's, and of that I need say no more; the other, the shadow of...