Albrecht. Bates Arlo
as this, so different was it from all that she had ever been before. He seemed minded to speak, and then, as if reflecting that her words did not after all contain aught which he was called upon to regard with severity, and perhaps that in any case what he might wish to say to her would be delivered better privately, he sighed deeply, and moved away without further speech. Erna looked after him as he slowly passed down the hall, the edge of his robe here and there catching upon one of the rushes with which the floor was strewn.
"Poor Father Christopher!" she said with a low, sweet laugh, "I have grieved him. It is a pity to make him unhappy. I never used to do that."
She regarded her gay-colored embroidery a moment absently, as if she did not see it; then suddenly she dropped the hand which held her needle and leaned toward her companion.
"What hast thou done to me?" she demanded. "Hast thou bewitched me, that all the things that I loved have become dull to me, and all the things which I wished not for are now in my thoughts with longing?"
A roaring blast shook the castle windows, and it was as if the spirits of the storm, sweeping up from the bosom of the wild and mighty Schwarzwald, shouted in mocking laughter outside; but neither Erna nor Albrecht regarded.
"I have done nothing to thee," the knight answered, in his turn bending forward; "but what hast thou done to me, that I linger here day after day, and that I consider now the pain of the beast that dies by my spear, or of the bird that my falcon strikes?"
"Nothing have I done to thee," Erna answered; but her voice faltered, and her glance fell.
Albrecht reached out his big brown hand, and took her milk-white fingers in his.
"Only," he said, "I love thee."
Erna rose to her feet, and cast a swift glance around the hall, as if she were minded to escape; then she turned toward him, and he sprang to her to clasp her in his arms. The knight kissed her glowingly upon her red lips.
"Now thou art mine," he said, "and all the world shall not wrest thee from me."
He had scarcely spoken when in the darkening afternoon a mighty blast seemed to throw itself against the tower; a yell of elfin laughter resounded in the hollow chimney, and the hound which had lain at Erna's feet crouched flat on the rushes, whining with deadly fear. Frighted, yet too full of her love to heed the cry of wild sprite or the fierceness of the tempest, Erna clung closely to the knight, and thus together did the Lady Adelaide, coming unexpectedly into the hall, surprise them.
"Body of Saint Fridolin!" she cried.
The lovers started, but although they released each other from the embrace in which they had been wound, they still stood together, and the arm of the knight was about Erna's waist. She clung to his hand in maidenly agitation, not wholly unmixed with the fear which the sudden vehemence of the tempest had aroused, yet she smiled bravely upon her aunt, with eyes which shone with the firmness and the joy of the troth she had just plighted.
The Lady Adelaide, whose nerves were already upset by the storm and by the weird sounds which were heard about the castle, was doubly overwhelmed with emotion by the sight before her. It was a shock from which it was not easy for her to recover, to see her niece in the arms of any man. She had so long looked upon Countess Erna as cold and devoid of all warm human passion, that she could scarcely believe the evidence of her own senses now that she beheld the countess with her lips pressed to those of a lover. She had so long cherished, moreover, the hope that by a marriage with Count Stephen Erna might still bear the Von Rittenberg name, that it could not but be with a keen pang of disappointment that she saw all these schemes swept away.
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