"Sometimes it happened that in the midst of my dancing about her, I would interrupt my mother's walk, and she would stop, and seeing me at her feet, bend down and kiss me on the forehead with a far-off smile; then she would resume her interrupted walk. Since then, when I have wished to search my memory for remembrances of those early days, this tall, pale woman has appeared before me like the image of melancholy itself. There she is," she exclaimed, pointing to a picture on the wall; "not such as illness made her, as my father believed, but that terrible and fatal secret. Look!"
I turned, and my glance falling suddenly upon the portrait which the young girl indicated, I shuddered. It was a long, thin, pale face, stamped with the cold rigidity of death, and with dark hollows under the eyes, which looked at you with a fixed, burning gaze of terrible intensity. There was a moment's silence.
"How she must have suffered!" I exclaimed, with a sinking of the heart.
"I know not how my mother made this frightful discovery," continued Odile; "but she knew of the mysterious attraction of the Black Plague, and of their meetings in Hugh's Tower,—all, in short,—but she never suspected my father. No! only she slowly pined away, as I am doing now."
I hid my face in my hands, and the tears started involuntarily.
"One winter night," she went on, "when I was only ten years old, my mother, whose energy alone sustained her,—for she was in the last stages of a decline,—came to my room. I was sleeping, when suddenly a cold, nervous hand seized my wrist. I opened my eyes, and opposite me stood a woman; with one hand she held a torch, and with the other she held my arm, which felt as if clasped in a chill vise. Her dress was covered with snow, a convulsive trembling agitated her limbs, and her eyes burned with a dark fire through the white, disordered locks that hung about her face. It was my mother.
"'Odile, my child, rise and come with me! You must know everything!' she said.
"I dressed myself tremblingly, and leading me along the lonely corridors to Hugh's Tower, she showed me the staircase that led down to the chasm.
"'Your father will come out this way,' she said, pointing to the tower; 'he will come out with the she-wolf. Fear nothing! He cannot see you.'
"Hardly had she finished speaking, when my father appeared with the old woman, carrying his funereal burden. Taking me in her arms, my mother followed them, and I witnessed the scene on the Altenberg.