Utter silence again, save for the mutter of the departing wind and the patter of the ceasing rain.
“She is ill,” muttered Madame von Arlestein, and hobbled to the door.
She clapped her hands and cried out for help in a feeble voice that fell uselessly, unheard, into the dark passages of Schloss Ahlden.
Then came a sound that silenced her, the clock striking two.
“Ach, Gott in Himmel!” she muttered, cold with fright. “I heard that oven door closing again—”
She hurried back to her mistress, the clear clang of iron still in her ears.
Sophia Dorothea lay back in her chair; her face was tilted upwards; she looked as fresh, as beautiful, as young as on that night thirty-two years ago. There seemed no white in her hair and her limbs filled triumphantly the rich brocade.
“I am getting blind,” said Annette von Arlestein, “and this cursed firelight–but you look as you looked then—” She peered closer and gave a cracked scream.
It was a corpse she stared at; Sophia Dorothea had gone.