My lady took a turn to the window, looked out, and came back. When she spoke at last, I could not tell whether the harshness in her voice was real or assumed.
'I see how it is,' she said, 'very clearly, Count Leuchtenstein. I have confessed, and I have been punished; but I am not forgiven. I must do something more, it seems. Wait!'
He was going to protest, to remonstrate, to deny; but she was gone, out through the door, to return on the instant with something in her arms. She took it to the Count and held it out to him.
'See!' she said, her voice broken by sobs; 'it is your child. God has given it back again. God has given it to you, because you trusted in Him. It is your child.'
He stood as if turned to stone. 'Is it?' he said at last, in a low, strained voice. 'Is it? Then thank God for His mercy to my house. But how--shall I know it?'
'The girl knows it. Marie knows it,' my lady cried; 'and the child knows her. And Martin--Martin will tell you how it was found--how the Waldgrave found it.'
'The Waldgrave?' the Count cried.
'Yes, the Waldgrave,' she answered; 'and he sent it to me to give to you.'
Then I went to him and told him all I knew; and Marie, who, like my lady, was laughing through her tears, took the child, and showed him how it knew her, and remembered my name and my lady's, and had this mark and that mark, and so forth, until he was convinced; and while in that hour all Nuremberg outside our house mourned and lamented, within, I think, there were as thankful hearts as anywhere in the world, so that even Steve, when he came peeping through the door to see what was the matter, went blubbering down again.
Presently Count Leuchtenstein said something handsome to Marie about her care of the child, and slipping off a gold chain that he was wearing, threw it round her neck, with a pleasant word to me. Marie, covered with blushes, took this as a signal to go, and would have left the child with his father; but the boy objected strongly, and the Count, with a laugh, bade her take him.