When day at last dawned in mist and clouds, struggle and agony were at an end, and it was Benno Reinsfeld's hand that closed the dying man's eyes. Then he gently raised from her knees Alice, who was sobbing beside her father's body, and led her away. He spoke no word of love or hope to her,--it would have seemed like desecration to him in such a moment,--but the way in which he put his arm around her and supported her showed plainly that he now claimed his right, and that nothing could part them more. He never could have been a son to the man who had so wronged his father, but that would now be spared him if Alice should become his wife; the wealth also which had been the fruit of treachery had mainly vanished. All barriers between the lovers had fallen.
Erna also, when all was over, retired to her room. Alice did not need her: she had a better comforter beside her.
The girl sat pale and worn at the window, looking out into the gray, misty morning. Alien as her uncle had seemed to her, harshly as she had often judged him, the suffering of his last hours had obliterated every thought of him in her mind save that it was her mother's brother who lay dying.
Her thoughts now, however, were not with the dead, but with the living, with him who was perhaps standing in the dim dawn beside the ruins of his work. She knew what it had been to him, and felt the blow with him. Erna would have given her life to be able to stand beside him now with words of consolation and encouragement, and instead she must know him alone in his despair. She paid no heed to Griff, who had crept up to her and laid his head in her lap with sorrowful sympathy in his brown eyes; she gazed out fixedly into the rolling mist.
The door opened softly; Waltenberg entered and slowly approached his betrothed, who, sunk in a revery, did not perceive him until he stood beside her and uttered her name.
When Waltenberg thus addressed her she started with an involuntary expression of terror and dislike, which did not escape him; his smile was bitterly sad.
"Are you so afraid of me? You must endure the intrusion, however, for I have something to say to you."
"Now? at this moment, when death has just crossed our threshold?"
"Precisely now; if I wait I may--lose courage to speak."
The words sounded so strange that Erna looked up, surprised. Her eyes encountered his, but did not find there the gleam which had so terrified her of late. In his dark look there glowed somewhat which was neither all love nor all hatred,--perhaps a combination of both,--she could not tell.