In consequence of the arrival of a large number of fresh guests, the hotel was brilliantly lighted, all the doors were open, and Erika went up the staircase to her room without attracting special notice.
"Perhaps," she thought, "my grandmother has not yet returned: I may be able to recover my letter before she has read it." She went instantly to her bedroom. Light issued from the chink of the door: she was too late. She opened the door. There, beside her bed, sat her grandmother in an arm-chair, erect and stiff, her eyes looking unnaturally large in her ashy-pale face, where the last few hours had graven deeper furrows than had been made by all the other experiences of her seventy years.
A strange cry escaped the old Countess's lips when she perceived the wan, sad apparition in the door-way. Half rising from her seat, her hands grasping the arms of the chair, she gazed at the girl as if she had been a corpse newly risen from the tomb. Trembling in every limb, "Erika!" she stammered. She tried to walk towards her grandchild, and could not. Erika's strength barely sufficed to carry her to the bedside, where she sank at her grandmother's feet and laid her head in her lap.
Neither could speak for a while. The old lady only stroked the girl's hair with her delicate hand, which grew warmer every minute. The girl sobbed. After some minutes the grandmother bent over her and murmured, "Erika, tell me how you have been rescued at the eleventh hour. Where have you been?"
Erika lifted her head, and in a faint voice told all that had occurred until the moment when she had gone down into the garden to take leave of Lozoncyi. There she hesitated.
Her grandmother listened breathlessly, and in an instant the girl began afresh: "I had forgotten myself. I would have done more for him than was ever done for man before; I would have borne him aloft to the stars. And he--the way was too hard; he had no heart for it; he would have dragged me down into the mire from which I would fain have rescued him. And when at last I understood, I fled----" A fit of convulsive sobbing interrupted her: she could not go on.
Her grandmother understood it all. She said not a word, only gently stroked the poor head in her lap. After a while she persuaded Erika to lie down, helped her to undress, and smoothed the pillow in which the poor child hid her tear-stained face.
She sat at the bedside until the dull weariness sure to follow upon intense nervous agitation produced its effect and the girl slept. The grandmother still sat there, motionless, until far into the morning.
About nine o'clock Marianne softly opened the door of the room. Erika awoke. She had forgotten everything,--when her glance fell upon a small black travelling-bag in the maid's hand.
"Please, your Excellency, a gondolier has just brought this bag," Marianne explained. "He says the Countess Erika left it in the gondola yesterday after the accident,--after the fright, I mean: he told me all about it. Poor Countess Erika! what a terrible thing for her! But it was fortunate, too, because she was able to save the poor woman. The gondolier has come for the hundred lire which the Countess promised him for getting the woman out of the water."