Her voice sounded very dull and hopeless; it melted the heart of the peasant who loved her.
'Well, well, you have had your will and your vanity, and have paid for them both!' she said, less harshly. 'Poor little fool! It is your mother's light blood working in you, I suppose; you're not to blame. They are to blame who bred you. I have watched for you ever since I gave him his supper. He asked where you were. I said you were asleep. He has had a good deal of brandy. If you get in by the scullery door, and take your shoes off, and go softly up the stairs, he will not hear, and nobody knows you have been away save Raphael and myself. That is why I waited outside, to stop and tell you that you might creep in unseen.'
Damaris stooped her tall head and kissed the woman's withered cheek:
'That was like you, dear Catherine!'
'More fool I, perhaps. I will punish you come morning, never fear. But I should be loath for you to see Bérarde to-night. Get in.'
Seeing that Damaris did not move, she pushed her by the shoulder.
But the words which Othmar had spoken were echoing in the ear, and sounding at the conscience, of the girl, bearing a harvest which he had never dreamed of when he had uttered them. There was that in them which had aroused all the courage and exaggerated sentiment of her mind and character.
The instincts of heroism, always strong in her, and that instinct to martyrdom ever dear to anything of womanhood, rose in her with irresistible force.
'If Count Othmar ever heard that I did not tell, he would think it so mean and so false,' she pondered, while the eager grip of the woman's fingers closed on her and tried to pull her to the open side-entrance of the house.
She resisted.