"Eliza, I cannot stay. I implore you, let me go out. My honor, my good name, are at stake. You say the peasants have risen in insurrection, my soldiers are locked up, and you think I could be cowardly and miserable enough to conceal myself and surrender my name to well-deserved disgrace? Let me go out, Eliza; have mercy upon me! Do not compel me to remove you forcibly from the door!"
"Ah," cried Eliza, with scornful laughter, "you think I will step back from the door and let you go to kill my father and my brothers? Listen, sir; you said you loved me. Give me a proof of it. Let me go out first, let me speak with my father only three words! Perhaps I may persuade him to release your soldiers and go home with his friends."
"Very well, I will prove to you that I love you. Go down, Eliza, speak with your father. I give you ten minutes' time; that is to say, I sacrifice to you ten minutes of my honor."
Eliza uttered a cry of joy; she encircled Ulrich's neck impetuously with her arms and imprinted a glowing kiss on his forehead.
"Farewell, sir," she whispered, "farewell, and God bless you!"
Then she pushed him back, hastened to the door, threw it open, and sprang out. She closed the door carefully behind her, locked it with a firm and quick hand, drew the key from the lock, and concealed it in her bosom.
"Holy Virgin, I thank Thee!" she exclaimed, joyfully. "He is saved, for the room has no other outlet, and the balcony is too high for him to jump down."
CHAPTER XII.
FAREWELL!
She sped as gracefully and quickly as a gazelle down the corridor. In the large hall into which it led stood Elza, surrounded by more than twenty Tyrolese sharpshooters, with whom she was talking in a loud, animated voice. Her cheeks were very pale, her lips were quivering, but her eyes flashed courageously, and, notwithstanding the paleness of her face, it did not betray the least anxiety or terror.