“Countess!” was Ermine’s cry.
She took Ermine’s hands in hers.
“I may touch you now,” she said. “You will not shrink from me, for I am a Christian. But I have kept my vow. I have never permitted the boy to worship idols. I have kept him, so far as lay in my power, from all contact with those men and things which his father held evil. God bear me witness to you, and God and you to him, that the poor scorned Jewess has fulfilled her oath, and that the boy is unharmed in body and soul!—Rudolph! this is thine Aunt Ermine. Come and show thyself to her.”
“Did I ever shrink from you?” replied Ermine with a sob, as she clasped Countess to her heart. “My friend, my sister! As thou hast dealt with us outcasts, may God reward thee! and as thou has mothered our Rudolph, may He comfort thee!—O my darling, my Gerhardt’s boy!—nay, I could think that Gerhardt himself stood before me. Wilt thou love me a little, my Rudolph?—for I have loved thee long, and have never failed, for one day, to pray God’s blessing on thee if thou wert yet alive.”
“I think I shall not find it hard, Aunt Ermine,” said Rudolph, as he kissed without knowing it that spot on Ermine’s brow where the terrible brand had once been. “I have often longed to find one of my own kindred, for I knew that Mother was not my real mother, good and true as she has been to me.”
Countess brought out from under her cloak a large square parcel, wrapped in a silken kerchief.
“This is Rudolph’s fortune,” she said.
Stephen looked on with some curiosity, fully expecting to see a box of golden ornaments, or perhaps of uncut gems. But when the handkerchief was carefully unfolded, there lay before them an old, worn book, in a carved wooden case.
Stephen—who could not read—was a little disappointed, though the market value of any book was very high. But Ermine recognised the familiar volume with a cry of delight, and took it into her hands, reading half-sentences here and there as she turned over the leaves.
“Oh, how have I wished for this! How I have wondered what became of it! Gerhardt’s dear old Gospel-Book! Countess, how couldst thou get it? It was taken from him when we were arrested.”