And yet Eugénie's look was strangely thoughtful. There was a tension of pain in her face, as if for her there lay some secret torture in all this surrounding beauty. She should have breathed freely now, remembering the promised liberty which would be hers before the earth had been greeted by another spring.
Why could she feel no relief? Why, at this thought, did a sensation nearly akin to pain dart through her soul? Was the memory of that troubled hour still so potent within her, of that hour when, for the first time, the word of separation had been spoken and accepted? She longed so ardently for this separation, to be free to go back to her own people; she suffered so cruelly from her chains, she felt as if she could hardly bear them any longer; since their conversation up here it had become impossible for her to bear them.
Up to then she had been firm and steadfast in her self-sacrifice for her father's sake, in her resignation to the lot forced upon her and in her hatred to those who had so forced it, but, from that hour, all her feelings seemed to have undergone a change. From that hour dated the secret contest within her, the struggle against something which lay obscure and unexpressed down in the farthest depths of her soul, and which, she was determined, should never gain dominion over her.
Yet it was this indefinite something that had driven her out this morning and dragged her almost against her will up to this spot; it alone was to blame for the fact that Baron Windeg's daughter had so far lost sight of all etiquette as to leave behind the groom who always attended her on her expeditions.
She neither could nor would have any observant eyes upon her to-day, and it was well that she had none, for, as she halted there alone upon the heights, there came over her, in the midst of all this bright spring sunshine, a sort of vague longing for the mysterious charm of that hour when clouds and fog encircled her, when the pine crests rustled above them and the storm raged in the ravines and valleys below, when those great brown eyes, unveiling themselves for the first time, awakened within her a dim intuitive consciousness that of the man before her much, nay almost anything, might perhaps have been made, if only--before his own father's hand had drawn him down into that vortex where so many a life is wrecked--if only he could have loved and been loved in return.
And, with the remembrance of this, there welled up within her a feeling which Eugénie Windeg had never known, which it was reserved for Arthur Berkow's wife to experience, a sorrow far quieter, but also far deeper, than any she had yet endured. She laid her hand over her eyes, as a torrent of hot tears burst irrepressibly from them.
"My lady!"
Eugénie started, and, at the same moment, Afra, taking fright at the sound of a strange voice, sprang violently to one side. In an instant a powerful hand had seized her bridle, forcing the animal to be still. Ulric Hartmann stood close by its side.
"I did not know the horse was so easily scared, but I caught hold of the bridle at once," said he apologetically, casting a look half anxious, half admiring, at the young rider who had kept her seat so steadily in spite of the surprise.
Eugénie brushed her hand quickly across her face, trying to wipe away all trace of tears, but it was too late, her fit of weeping must already have been observed, and the thought of this drove a deep crimson to her cheeks and lent a tone of vexation to her voice, as she said quickly and rather imperiously: