A look of deep anger passed over her face. 'The follies of 'Forty-eight have nothing to do with Hohenszalras,' she said, very coldly. 'We hold under charters of our own, by grants and rights which even Rudolf of Habsburg never dared meddle with. I am not called on to explain this to you, but you appear to labour under such strange delusions that it is as well to dispel them.'
He stood silent, his eyes cast downward. His humiliation seemed to him enormously disproportioned to his offending. The hounds menaced him with deep growls and grinning fangs; the jägers held his gun; his wrists were tied behind him. 'Are you indeed a friend of the Kaiser?' she repeated to him.
'I am no friend of his,' he answered bitterly and sullenly. 'I met him a while ago zad-hunting on the Thorstein. His signature is in my pocket; bid your jäger take it out.'
'I will not doubt your word,' she said to him. 'You look a gentleman. If you will give me your promise to shoot no more on these lands I will let them set you free and render you up your rifle.'
'You have the law with you,' said the trespasser moodily. 'Since I can do no less—I promise.'
'You are ungracious, sir,' said Wanda, with a touch of severity and irritation. 'That is neither wise nor grateful, since you are nothing more or better than a poacher on my lands. Nevertheless, I will trust you.'
Then she gave a sign to the jägers and a touch to the hounds: the latter rose and ceased their growling; the former instantly, though very sorrowfully, untied the cord off the wrists of their prisoner, and gave him back his unloaded rifle.
'Follow that path into the ravine; cross that; ascend the opposite hills, and you will find the high road. I advise you to take it, sir. Good-day to you.'
She pointed out the forest path which wound downward under the arolla pines. He hesitated a moment, then bowed very low with much grace, turned his back on her and her foresters and her dogs, and began slowly to descend the moss-grown slope.
He hated her for the indignity she had brought upon him, and the ridicule to which she forced him to submit; yet the beauty of her had startled and dazzled him. He had thought of the great Queen of the Nibelungen-Lied, whose armour lies in the museum of Vienna.