The guest who had meditated, however unwillingly, the betrayal of his host, blushed painfully under the cloak of blackness. He heard her swallow her tears and knew that she clenched her hands. After a while she went on more quietly:
"How wise it was of Aunt Betty to tell you to go away! And, oh, how glad I am that she sent me instead of coming herself to bid you 'Good-bye.'"
Steven opened his mouth, and then closed it again dumbly.
"You would both have been killed," she went on, sinking her voice. "Uncle Ludovic must be mad—mad with his ridiculous jealousy ... and he's been drinking overmuch. Ah, dear Lord! If I had not been with you——"
She gave a shudder. He, on his side, had no words. He was silent in shame before the exquisite innocence; silent in admiration before the self-forgetting courage of this slip of a creature, who thought nothing of her own danger. "Here, indeed, is good blood—here is the spirit of race!" he thought, touched in his most sensitive chord.
Presently, however, the humour of the grim situation struck him, and he laughed. There was Thistledown Betty, incapable even of acting up to her own unfaithfulness, snug in her bower, doubtless; and there was the outraged husband, gloating over his mediæval vengeance: Steven wished he could be present at their next conjugal meeting! Sidonia, childlike, echoed his laugh softly beside him in the dark. It struck him serious on the instant. The morrow seemed a terribly long way off.
"And now," said he, "what are we to do?"
"Hey, good sir!" said she, "nothing but wait. We shall not die this time, Herr von Kielmansegg; for my poor uncle"—she laughed in scorn and triumph—"he does not know, I warrant, that there is a way out of this old death-trap, since there is a way in. A way other than by the hidden lake and the barque of ancient Charon. But, till the daylight comes, sir——"
"Daylight!" he exclaimed, and knew not whether he were glad or sorry at the whole night's prospect.
"Till daylight comes, we must take patience here. For one false step would send our bodies to join the bones of the forgotten enemies of Wellenshausen."