"My daughter! my Bertha!" exclaimed a female voice from within; "and do you yet live! and are you again restored to me!"
The Knight entered, and found the maiden in the embrace of her mother.
"That I still live," said Bertha, "I owe it to this brave and courtly knight. But for his generous daring, your daughter would have found strange burial in the ravenous maw of a wolf."
The mother turned round to Clelland, and grasped his mailed hand in both hers.
"The saints be your blessing and reward!" she exclaimed; "for I cannot repay you. God himself be your reward!—for earth bears no price adequate to the benefit. You have restored to the lonely and the broken in spirit her only stay and comfort."
"Nay, madam," said Clelland, "I would have done as much for the meanest serf; for Bertha de Longoville I could have laid down my life."
The mother again grasped his hand. She was a tall and a still beautiful woman, though considerably turned of forty, and though she yet bore impressed on her countenance no unequivocal traces of the distress of the night. She told them of her sufferings; and was made acquainted in turn with the frightful adventure in the hermitage, and, more startling still, with the resolution of her husband to confront his calumniators at the court of France.
"We must set out instantly on our journey to Paris, Bertha," said the matron; "your father, in his imminent peril, must not lack some one, at least to comfort, if not to assist him."
"Nay," said Clelland, "ere your setting out, you must first take rest enough, to recover the fatigues and watching of the night. And, besides, how could two unprotected females travel through such a country as this? Hear me, lady: I was hastening to Paris in advance of my party; but now that I have missed my way and lost my good steed, they will be all there before me. It matters but little. My kinsman can well afford wanting a herald. I shall cast myself on your hospitality for the day; and, to-morrow, should you feel yourself fully recovered, you shall set out for Paris, under such convoy as I can afford you."
Both ladies expressed their warmest gratitude for the kind and generous offer; and there was that in the thanks of the younger which Clelland would have deemed price sufficient for a service much less redolent of pleasure than that he had just tendered. She was in truth one of the loveliest women he had ever seen; tall and graceful, and with a countenance exquisite in form and colour. But, with all of the bodily and the material that constitutes beauty, it was mainly to expression, that index of the soul, that she owed her power. There was a steady light in the dark hazel eye, joined to an air of quiet, unobtrusive self-possession, which seemed to sit on the polished and finely formed forehead, that gave evidence of a strong and equable mind; while the sweet smile that seemed to lurk about the mouth, and the air of softness spread over the lower part of the face, shewed that there mingled with the stronger traits of her character the feminine gentleness and sweetness of disposition, so fascinating in the sex. A little girl from one of the distant cottages entered the building with a milking pail in her hands.