She had not in the least expected this answer, and regarded him for a second with a cold, angry expression. Then suddenly she burst out weeping, and sank against the trunk of a tree for support, with her thin hands before her face.
At the same moment the report of a gun was heard in the distance, the echo of which slowly rolled through the woodlands.
Helene gave a frightened cry, and, throwing up her hands, sobbed out--
"Now they have shot him for certain, because you, inhuman monster, have commanded it! Oh dear! have you no mercy?"
Listening in the direction from which the gunshot had come, he did his best to soothe her.
That the shot had anything to do with Felix Merckel was, of course, out of the question.
It had undoubtedly been fired in the wood, on the farther side of the Castle, probably by a poacher on the track of a wild red deer.
But she sobbed more violently than ever--
"It's all very well ... but you ... you ... intend dragging him out to his death--you know you do."
Her increasing agitation began to bewilder Boleslav. He assured her he would do everything in his power to ameliorate Felix's sentence. He himself would testify to his being hopelessly intoxicated at the time. His old rancour against himself, his wounded vanity, all should be cited in extenuation of his offence, and might influence his judges to mildness.