"If it will gratify you," replied the countess smiling; "but I should reach home safely on the piebald."
"Who doubts it?" asked the matron. "Give her your arm, husband. The bearers are ready, and you will soon overtake them on your horse, Boemund."
"The walk through the warm June night will do me good," the latter protested.
Soon after the sedan-chair which conveyed Cordula, lighted by several torch-bearers on foot and on horseback, began to move towards the city.
At St. Linhard, Boemund Altrosen, who walked beside it, asked the question, "Then I may hope, Countess? I really may?"
She nodded affectionately, and answered under her breath: "You may; but we must first try whether the flower of love which blossomed for you out of my weakness is the real one. I believe it will be."
He joyously raised her hand to his lips, but a torch-bearer's shout—"
Count von Montfort and his train!"—urged him back from the sedan chair.
A few seconds after Cordula welcomed her father, who had anxiously ridden
forth to meet his jewel.
CHAPTER XIV.
"I can hardly do more, and yet I must," groaned Frau Christine, as she gazed after the torch-bearers who preceded Cordula. Her husband, however, tried to detain her, offering to go to their young guest in her place.
But the effort was vain. The motherless child, whom the captive father probably believed to be in safety with her sensible sister, was at a post of danger, and only a woman's eye could judge whether it would do to yield to Eva's wish, which the housekeeper had just told her mistress, and allow her—it was already past midnight-to remain longer at the hospital.