"An important post was confided to Prince Baratowski, with strict orders not to stir from it. He and his troops covered his uncle's rear. Prince Baratowski was absent from his post when the night attack was made--successfully. The leader was absent, and those who remained behind showed themselves unequal to their task. Taken by surprise, they offered but a weak resistance, totally without plan or method. A terrible slaughter followed. About twenty men took refuge on this territory, and fell into the hands of our patrols. Three of the fugitives lie, grievously wounded, over at the manor-farm. From their mouths I learned what had happened. All the rest are dispersed or destroyed."
"And my brother?" asked the Princess, calm, to all appearance, but with an awful, unnatural calm. "And the Morynski corps? What has become of them?"
"I do not know," replied Waldemar. "It is said that the victors advanced on W----. No news has reached us of what has taken place there."
He was silent. There was a pause of terrible stillness. Leo had hidden his face in his hands; a deep groan escaped his breast. The Princess stood erect, her eyes steadily fixed on him. She panted for breath.
"Leave us, Waldemar," said she at last.
He hesitated. His mother had always shown herself cold, often enough hostile to him. Here, on this very spot, she had confronted him as a bitter enemy at the time when the contest for supremacy at Wilicza had brought about an open rupture; but he had never yet seen her as she appeared at this moment, and he, this hard, relentless Nordeck, was seized with a feeling akin to anxiety and compassion, as he read his brother's doom in her face.
"Mother!" he said, in a low tone.
"Go," she repeated. "I have to talk with Prince Baratowski. No third person can come between us. Leave us alone."
Waldemar obeyed and left the room, but his heart swelled within him as he went. He was banished in order that the mother might talk to her son. If she were now about to let that son feel her anger, as she had so often testified to him her affection, he, the elder, was still a stranger, as he had ever been. He was told to go; he could not 'come between' his mother and brother, whether they met in love or hate. A great bitterness took possession of Nordeck's soul, and yet he felt that in this hour he was avenged--that his mother, who had ever denied to him her love, was punished now in her tenderest point, punished through her darling, the child she had idolised.
Waldemar closed the curtains behind him. He remained in the next room, so as to guard the entrance, come what might, for he was fully sensible of the danger to which Leo was exposed. Prince Baratowski had taken too open and decided a part in the insurrection not to be placed under a ban, even on this side the frontier; even here condemnation and imprisonment awaited him. He had imprudently come up to the Castle in broad daylight. The troop, which had escorted the wounded men, was still in the village, and at any moment a detachment, convoying the other fugitives to L----, might pass through Wilicza. It was necessary to take some precautionary measures.