Morning was approaching, and the tempest was subsiding; it no longer raged with savage fury, and the heavens were gradually clearing; the clouds slowly dispersed, and about the mountain-tops the first gray glimmer of dawn appeared.
Michael made a halt as they issued from the rocky gorge. The mountain chapel was almost a mile away, and his exhausted companion was obliged to rest. All peril was past; there was no difficulty about the rest of the way if it were traversed by daylight. He found a shelter for Hertha beneath a protecting rock, where she sat shielded from the wind, while he stood beside her. The young Countess's attire had suffered sadly: her dark wrap was torn and muddy, she had lost her hat, her heavy braids hung loose about her shoulders, as, pale and weary, she leaned her head back against the wall of rock. And yet Michael thought he never had seen her look half so lovely as at this moment,--his love, whom he had battled for and won through storm and tempest.
They had scarcely spoken on the way hither, each step was taken at the risk of life, and now they were still silent, gazing upward at the Eagle ridge, where the gray dawn was beginning to yield to a crimson tint that deepened every moment. At last Michael bent over her and said, gently, "Hertha!"
She looked up at him, and suddenly held out to him both her hands. "Michael, how did you ever find me in those abysses? You could have had no clue to guide you."
He smiled and carried her hands to his lips. "No; but I divined where my Hertha was,--where she must be. And you, too, dearest, knew that I should come to you: you called me before you heard my voice. Now I no longer dread that harsh refusal which fell from your lips yesterday. I have no fear of the promise given by you to one whom you do not love. I have won you from the Eagle ridge, and I shall surely triumph over Raoul Steinrück."
"I can never be his wife!" exclaimed Hertha. "I know now that it is impossible! But do not quarrel with him again, Michael, I implore you. If it is possible----"
"But it is not possible!" Michael gravely interrupted her. "Do not deceive yourself, Hertha; there must come a struggle, probably a break with your entire family, who never will forgive you for dissolving a tie so desired by all of them,--for sacrificing a Count Steinrück to a bourgeois officer. And there is something beside with which they will taunt both you and me,--I told you of it yesterday in the church,--the blot upon my life."
"Your father's memory," she said, softly.
"Yes; they will never cease to remind you that you are giving yourself to the son of an adventurer, whose name is not without stain. I thought to terrify you with this yesterday, but, God bless you! you thought only of my suffering. Nevertheless, shall you be able to endure the shadow upon your life when that name shall be your own?"
His eyes sought hers with a look in them of the old mistrust of the former Countess Steinrück with her haughty self-consciousness. But the delusive gleam had vanished from the eyes which the boy had pronounced 'beautiful evil eyes,'--they were shining with the clear sunshine of love and happiness.