‘I will indeed, so help me God, and you shall be my mother,’ he answered.
‘Then you shall be Sigmundskron,’ she said. ‘You are brave—be as brave as old Sigmund. You are true—be as true as he. You are faithful—be faithful to death, as he was, who was the last of Sigmund’s sons.’
The white-haired lady rose as she spoke, and drawing him still nearer to her, kissed his smooth young forehead, with the pale lips that had touched no man’s face since her dead husband had gone from her to his death.
‘Go and tell Hilda that you will be Sigmundskron to her in deed, and in heart, as well as in name,’ she said.
As she left the room, erect and with firm step, he saw the bright tears burst from her eyes, and roll down her pallid cheeks, though she would not bend her head nor heed them.
For many minutes he stood where she had left him, his hand resting upon the edge of the table, his look fixed upon the door, absently and seeing nothing.
‘That is what it is to have a spotless name,’ he said, almost aloud.
He went out softly as though from a hallowed place, and closed the door noiselessly behind him. His small anticipations of what that scene would be like, full of many words and attempts at tactful speech, seemed infinitely pitiful and contemptible now, beside the dignity, the kindness, the noble pride and the grand simplicity of the woman who had given him her name. He walked slowly, and his head was bent in thought as he threaded the well-known passages and stairways to the old rampart where he knew that Hilda was waiting for him.
She was sitting upon one of the stone projections, hatless in the April sun, her beautiful figure thrown into bold lines and curves as she looked down upon the road, sitting, but half turned upon her seat. She heard the crazy door of the turret creak and rattle, and she moved so that she could see Greif.
‘It has not lasted long,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Why do you look so grave?’ she asked quickly as she noticed his face, ‘Has anything happened?’