"With a little boy?--quite right, Signora. She is a good way before you; you must drive sharply if you would overtake her," said the elder of the two men while stepping nearer, somewhat alarmed, as the lady looked as if about to sink down at the news; but at the same moment her companion threw his arm round her, and supported her.
"Courage, Eleonore! We are near the crisis; now we must act."
He lifted her into the carriage, and sprang in after her. The few words which he addressed to the driver must have contained some unusual promise, as the latter swung his whip sharply across the horses, and away they went after the object of their pursuit.
The latter had indeed gained a considerable advantage, and their carriage was also driven at a rapid pace. Beatrice was alone in it with little Reinhold, who, tired with crying and the restless, fatiguing journey, had fallen asleep. The fair, curly little head was pressed deeply into the cushions; his hands were twined instinctively around the side rests, as if they sought a support against the incessant jolting and shaking of the uneven road. The child slept soundly and deeply, but Beatrice hardly noticed it just now. She was in that state of supreme mental irritation which even puts a limit to the wildest passion. She was as if in a heavy, stupid trance, from which only one object stands out with fearful distinctness--the recollection of that hour when Rinaldo cast himself free from her, when he called her the curse and misfortune of his life, and acknowledged to her with proud defiance that his love belonged to his wife alone. These words pierced the Italian's heart ever again as if with a burning thorn. Whatever she had done, however she may have sinned, she had loved this one man with all the ardour of her soul--to this one she had been unfailingly true; she had considered his love as her right, of which no power on earth could deprive her, and now she lost it through the woman whom she feared the last of all others--through his wife. His wife and his child! They had ever been the dark shadow which menaced this happiness, and which now, coming forward out of the gloomy past, took form and life in order to destroy it.
Beatrice had hated both, even before she knew them. Did she not know best what place they still maintained in Reinhold's remembrance? Had she not often enough tried in vain to tear him away from it? There must surely be something in the once despised power of sacred wedlock; it was victorious at last against the beautiful, charming Biancona--against the admired actress; and now made her taste the whole agony of being forsaken, to which she had once so indifferently condemned another, without asking if that other's heart broke under this unmerited fate. The fetters, apparently dissolved, had never quite loosed the fugitive; now they encircled him again, and Beatrice felt, with desperate certainty, that she had never possessed the place in his heart which once more his wife occupied.
CHAPTER VIII.
The passionate woman did indeed not act upon any plan or calculation when she seized upon this last extreme means of cooling her revenge. Her appearance in the Erlau's garden entirely concerned her hated rival. She did not find Ella, but instead found the boy alone, without supervision; and the idea, as well as the execution of his abduction, were the work of a moment. At first the child willingly followed the beautiful stranger, who drew it caressingly towards her, and when he commenced to become frightened, and asked to be taken back to his mother, it was already too late. Beatrice never thought of the possible consequences of her step when she carried her prey away triumphantly; she only felt that no stroke from a dagger could hit Ella's heart so deeply and certainly as the loss of her child, and that this loss would raise an everlasting barrier between the parents. It was this which she had wished. But now she must see how to ensure the booty. Gianelli must give his hand to aid the flight so hastily undertaken.
Now more than a day's journey lay already between the child and its parents; but they must make a halt some time; some time this aimless, planless flight must come to an end.
The vengeance had succeeded beyond expectation--what now?
Little Reinhold still slept. Had he only borne his father's features, perhaps that had preserved him from all ill; but this golden fair hair, this rosy countenance, and those deep blue eyes--just now closed, to be sure--all belonged to the mother--the woman whom Beatrice hated as she had never yet hated anything in the world, and this likeness was ominous to the sleeping child. The burning eyes of his companion rested for some minutes fixedly on his face; then she suddenly started as if frightened at her own thoughts, tore her gaze away from the boy, and turned aside.