"Must I repeat to you, then, what I said to you yesterday when you spoke of your mother?--'I, too, can follow him whom I love even into misery and disgrace,--ay, even to ruin.'"
He clasped her in his arms, and she rested there as she had done before on the Eagle ridge, behind which there was a dark crimson glow,--a flaming herald of the morning as it mounted aloft. The snowy summits began to blush with rosy tints, and the clouds still lying on the horizon were all 'in crimson liveries dight.'
"The day is breaking," said Michael, pressing his lips again and again upon the 'red fairy gold' of the head resting on his breast. "As soon as you are able we will set out upon our homeward way. I will take you to your mother to-day."
"My mother!" exclaimed Hertha, regretfully. "Oh, how could I so far forget her! God grant I have been nearer death than she! My mother would give ear to my entreaties, I know, but she submits blindly in everything to my uncle Michael, and there will be a severe struggle with him."
"Leave him to me," Michael interposed. "Immediately upon my return I will inform the general that you wish to annul your contract with Raoul, that----"
"No, no!" she remonstrated. "I must bear the first brunt of his anger. You do not know my guardian."
"I know him better than you think; this will not be our first encounter. If any one can measure himself against the general it is I,--his near of kin."
Hertha looked at him in bewilderment. "What do you mean? I do not understand."
He released her from his clasping arms, and, gazing into her eyes, said, "I have intentionally delayed a disclosure that must be made to you, dearest. I could not make it until I was sure that you were mine, even although you saw in me only the son of a homeless adventurer. I am no alien to you or to your people, nor was my father. Did you never hear of the general's other child, his daughter?"
"Certainly,--Louise Steinrück. She was once, I think, on the eve of betrothal to my father; but she died very young,--scarcely eighteen."