"Mamma stayed behind. I could hardly make her consent to my coming. She only yielded when she saw there was no possibility of keeping me away, I came by myself, with only our old servant as escort."
Raven followed her words with breathless eagerness. A dim presentiment of boundless, inexpressible happiness stole over him; but at the same moment the old shadow crept between them.
"And Winterfeld?" he asked, in a keen, incisive tone.
Gabrielle's eyes fell, and her voice trembled as she answered:
"I have been forced to give him great pain, to cut him to the heart," she answered; "but it was right he should learn the truth before I left to come to you. George knows it all now; he knows to whom my love, my whole love, is given. He has released me--I am free----"
She could not finish. Arno had drawn her close, close to his breast. She felt his arms round her, felt the pressure of his lips on hers, and everything else, even to the remembrance of George's pain, melted away, drowned in the exceeding sweetness of that moment. At length Raven raised his head, and, still holding her to him, said:
"But what brought you to me at this precise time? Why did you hasten? You do not, cannot know what has happened."
Smiling through her tears, Gabrielle looked up at him.
"I only heard that fresh trouble was menacing, and I wanted to be with you."
"I wanted to be with you!" the words were simply, naturally spoken, but Raven understood the entire, the infinite devotion they expressed. He gazed down in silence on the young creature, whom but a short time before he had so bitterly accused, whom he had denounced as fickle and unstable of purpose, but who now resolutely tore asunder all restraining ties, to hasten to his side and share his fate. Through the deep night which encompassed him, irradiating all the gloom, came a flash of ineffable joy and triumph at finding himself so loved.