'Perhaps not worse off than we are now,' she snapped. 'However, keep your eyes shut, if it pleases you.'
My raised voice had reached the Countess's chamber, and as Fraulein Max, giggling spitefully, went out through one door the other opened and stood open. My anger melted away. I stood trembling, and looking, and waiting.
They came in together, my lady with her arm round Marie, the two women I loved best in the world. I have heard it said that evil runs to evil as drops of water to one another. But the saying is equally true of good. Little had I thought, a few weeks back, that my lady would come to treat the outcast girl from Klink's as a friend; nor I believe were there ever two people less alike, and yet both good, than these two. But that one quality--which is so quick to see its face mirrored in another's heart--had brought them close together, and made each to recognise the other; so that, as they came in to me, there was not a line of my lady's figure, not a curve of her head, not a glance of her proud eyes, that was not in sympathy with the girl who clung to her--Romanist stranger, low born as she was. I looked and worshipped, and would have changed nothing. I found the dignity of the one as beautiful as the dependence of the other.
Not a word was spoken. I had wondered what they would say to me--and they said nothing. But my lady put her into my arms, and she clung to me, hiding her face.
The Countess laughed, yet there were tears in her voice. 'Be happy,' she said. 'Child, from the day you were lost he never forgave me. Martin, see where the rope has cut her wrist. She did it to save you.'
'And myself!' Marie whispered on my breast.
'No!' my lady said. 'I will not have it so! You will spoil both him and my love-story. Per tecta, per terram, you have sought one another. You have gone down sub orco. You have bought one another back from death, as Alcestis bought her husband Admetus. At the first it was a gold chain that linked you together, soon----'
I felt Marie start in my arms. She freed herself gently, and looked at my lady with trouble in her eyes. 'Oh,' she said, 'I had forgotten!'
'What?' the Countess said. 'What have you forgotten?'
'The child!' Marie replied, clasping her hands. 'I should have told you before!'