"Now lie and rest," said the lady, "and tell me how this has been. The girl who let you in says, that you were travelling under the guard of some men from the abbey--What abbey did she mean?--that near Ehrenstein?"
"The same," answered Adelaide; but she paused there and hesitated, looking at the maid.
The lady seemed to comprehend her hesitation at once, and said, "Leave us, Biancha;" and when she was gone, she added, "You might trust her, my child. She is faithful and true--ay, and discreet, as she has proved herself through many a year. And so you separated from your guides, and lost your way in the foul day we have had? How did that happen?"
"At the edge of the wood, hard by," answered Adelaide, not anxious to be questioned too closely upon other subjects, "they saw a party of armed men, who seemed about to attack them; and they told me, with the maid, to ride back and wait at a woodman's shed, where we had found shelter some time before from the storm. I rode away in terror, thinking that Bertha followed; but--how or why, I know not--she never came. I fear the men of the abbey were attacked and discomfited, for I heard horses galloping furiously past, as if in flight and pursuit; and soon after they came up towards the place where I was, and I fled amongst the trees, on foot, and watched them from behind the bushes. They did not seek for me far; but took away my horse, which I had left standing, weary, there. Thus it was that I was forced to find my way onward alone, with night coming on."
"And whither were you going, my child?" asked the lady, gazing at her face somewhat earnestly.
Adelaide hesitated, but she could not well evade the question; and she answered at length, in a low tone, "To Heiligenstein, lady."
"And who sent you thither?" was the next question.
"One of the good Fathers of the abbey," replied Adelaide, "who has been very kind to me and mine. His name is Father George."
The lady instantly cast her arms around her, and kissed her tenderly. "You are at Heiligenstein, my child," she whispered; "and it was to me that George of Altenburg sent you. Rest in peace, dear Adelaide; rest in peace. You are with a mother."
Adelaide returned her embrace gratefully; but then raised her eyes, and gazed inquiringly in the lady's face. Strange, mingled emotions thrilled through her bosom, not to be told, not to be separated. She saw a likeness to features that she knew and loved; she saw a likeness in the expression; she saw it in the peculiar light of the eyes: The tones of that lady's voice, too, were like his; and she had said to her, his bride, "You are with a mother." "But yet how could that be?" she asked herself. Ferdinand's mother had been long dead, she had been told; he himself believed that it was so. Even Father George, when revealing to her much of his history (more, indeed, than her lover knew himself), had never mentioned the existence of that parent; and yet there was something which made Adelaide still believe that she was indeed with the mother of him she loved. To hear the lady call Father George by the name which he had long ceased to use, did not surprise her at all; for both from words which he had himself spoken, and from the contemptuous epithet which her father had applied to Ferdinand, she was already aware that the monk was a member of that high house; but all her thoughts turned to the one question, Who was the kind and gentle being that sat beside her?