'What a profane, almost sacrilegious answer!' said the Princess. 'I never should have imagined that you would have jested on sacred themes.'

'I did not intend a jest. I was never more serious. A life like our old Professor's is a perpetual prayer.'

'Your great-aunt Walburga belonged to the Perpetual Adoration,' rejoined the Princess, who only heard the last word but one. 'The order was very severe. I always think it too great a strain on finite human powers. She was betrothed to the Margraf Paul, but he was killed at Austerlitz, and she took refuge in a life of devotion. I always used to think that you would change Hohenszalras into a sacred foundation; but now I am afraid. You are a deeply religious woman, Wanda—at least I have always thought so—but you read too much German and French philosophy, and I fear it takes something from your fervour, from your entirety of devotion. You have a certain liberty of expression that alarms me at times.'

'I think it is a poor faith that dares not examine its adversaries' charges,' said her niece, quietly. 'You would have faith blindfolded. They call me a bigot at the Court, however. So you see it is hard to please all.'

'Bigot is not a word for a Christian and Catholic sovereign to employ,' said the Princess, severely. 'Her Majesty must know that there can never be too great an excess in faith and service.'

On the eleventh day Greswold returned over the hills and was admitted to immediate audience with his ladies.

'Herr von Sabran is well enough for me to leave him,' he said, after his first very humble salutations. 'But if your excellencies permit it would be desirable for me to return there in a day or two. Yes, my ladies, he is lying at Steiner's Inn in Pregratten, a poor place enough, but your goodness supplied much that was lacking in comfort. He can be moved before long. There was never any great danger, but it was a very bad accident. He is a good mountaineer it seems, and he had been climbing a vast deal in the Venediger group; that morning he meant to cross the Umbal glacier to the Ahrenthal, and he refused to take a guide, so Isaiah Steiner tells me.'

'But I thought he left here to go to Paris?'

'He did so, my Countess,' answered the doctor. 'But it seems he loves the mountains, and their spell fell on him. When he sent back your postillions he went on foot to Matrey, and there he remained; he thought the weather advanced enough to make climbing safe; but it is a dangerous pastime so early in summer, though Christ from Matrey, who came over to see him, tells me he is of the first form as a mountaineer. He reached the Clarahutte safely, and broke his fast there; crossing the Umbal the ice gave way, and he fell into a deep crevasse. He would be a dead man if a hunter on the Welitz side had not seen him disappear and given the alarm at the hut. With ropes and men enough they contrived to haul him up, after some hours, from a great depth. These accidents are very common, and he has to thank his own folly in going out on to the glacier unaccompanied. Of course he was insensible, contused, and in high fever when I reached there: the surgeon they had called from Lienz was an ignorant, who would soon have sent him for ever to as great a deep as the crevasse. He is very grateful to you both, my ladies, and would be more so were he not so angry with himself that it makes him sullen with the world. Men of his kind bear isolation and confinement ill. Steiner's is a dull place: there is nothing to hear but the tolling of the church bell and the fret of the Isel waters.'

'That means, my friend, that you want him moved as soon as he can bear it?' said Wanda. 'I think he cannot very well come here. We know nothing of him. But there is no reason why you should not bring him to the Lake Monastery. There is a good guest-chamber (the Archbishop stayed there once), and he could have your constant care there, and from here every comfort.'