"All in good time, mother!" replies he good-naturedly; "the Count is gone shooting to the Waldenberg. The carriages have but just driven by; did you not see them as you came here?"
"And the Count, is he not riding, as is his custom? will he not pass by here as he gallops on to overtake them? Has my boy learned to forget the saddle, and to neglect the good horse that his father's son should love?"
"Not to-day, mother," answered the hussar. "All the carriages are gone to-day, and the Count sits in the first with a bright, beautiful lady, ah, brighter even than our Countess, and more beautiful, with her red lips and her sunny hair."
All hussars are connoisseurs in beauty.
"My boy, my boy," mutters the old woman; and the hussar, seeing how ill she looks, produces a flask of his favourite remedy, and insists on her partaking of its contents. It brings the colour back to her cheek, and the blood to her heart.
"And they are gone to the Waldenberg! and I ought to reach it by the mountain-path before them even now. Oh, for one hour of my girlhood! one hour of the speed I once thought so little of! I would give all the rest of my days for that hour now. To the Waldenberg!"
"To the Waldenberg!" answered the hussar, taking the flask (empty) from his lips; but even while he spoke she was gone.
As she followed the path towards the mountain, a large raven flew out of the copse-wood on her left, and hopped along the track in front of her. Then the gipsy's lips turned ashy-white once more, for she knew she was too late.
CHAPTER XLV
RETRIBUTION