'Bring him?' she echoed, 'your child?'
'My husband.'
'You will do that?—ah! mercy is ever blessed; the grace of Heaven will be with you!'
She sighed as she raised her head.
'Who can tell? Perhaps my harshness will make heaven harsh to me.'
When she came forth again from her own rooms she was clothed in a fur-lined riding-habit.
'Bid them saddle a horse used to the hills,' she said, 'and let Otto and two other men be ready to go with me.'
'It is a fearful night,' Greswold ventured to suggest. 'It will be as bad a dawn. It snows even here. We met the keeper almost midway up the Adler Spitze, yet it took us four hours to make the descent.'
She did not even seem to hear him.
'May I follow?' he asked her humbly. She gave a sign of assent, and stood motionless and mute; her thoughts were far away.