The mantle had been disengaged from the shoulders, the cimeter ungirded from her side, and the crown removed from her head: but she still wore the rich dark dress, incrusted with gems, that proclaimed her royalty, but which she needed not to stamp her "every inch" a queen. Her hair had been, apparently, loosened by the removal of the diadem from her brow; and powdered as it was, it fell in luxuriant ringlets over her neck and shoulders. The glow of her recent emotion still remained upon her face, and added to the natural grace of her beauty: and her lustrous dark-grey eyes were still moist with her late tears.
No wonder that Otmar stood before her, doubly dazzled with her beauty as a woman, and her majesty as a queen—bewildered that she, whom he had presumed to love, and for whom, in spite of himself, his heart yet beat wildly, should be his sovereign, and that he should stand thus in her presence.
"Ah! is it you, sir—you, doubly my rescuer from evil!" said Maria Theresa, rising from her chair, and advancing a few steps towards him. "Welcome, to accept your Monarch's inmost thanks!" And she stretched out her hand, which, although totally unpractised in the etiquette of courts, Otmar, by an instinctive impulse, knelt down to kiss.
"Rise, sir!" she continued. "Were my gratitude alone to speak, it were for me, your Queen, to kneel and kiss the hand that a second time has, through God's providence, been the instrument of my deliverance from peril."
Otmar rose from his knees, a deep blush overspreading his handsome countenance. The young Queen seemed to gaze upon him for a moment with satisfaction; and then, waving her hand to her female attendant to retire, she again addressed him.
"What can I do to serve you, sir?" she said—"you, who have thus twice served me at the peril of your life. I am but a poor and a powerless Queen," she continued, with a faint smile: "but a grateful heart may still find means to recompense"——
"To live and die in your majesty's defence, is all your poor servant, who has but done his duty to his Queen, although unknowingly, has to desire," was the young noble's reply.
"Nay, sir, we have too many obligations towards you," said the Queen, "to allow ourselves to be quit thus. Can I do naught to serve you in return?" she pursued, with a less dignified and more familiar tone. "You must not allow so great a weight of thanks to lie upon my heart. Take pity on me!"
Otmar could with difficulty find words to speak. The tumult of his feelings almost overpowered him, as he began to forget the queen in the beautiful and loved woman before him. But he struggled with the impetuous dictates of his heart.
"Madam!" he said, commanding himself, "I am a poor noble, left alone in this wide world, almost without a friend, since my poor father's death, which left me with involved fortunes, and without a prospect for the future; and I was careless of life, until—until I had seen—your majesty," he continued with emotion, whilst the blush upon the cheek of the young Queen showed her perception that the homage paid was as much to the woman as the monarch. "And now my only wish, as I have said, is to die in your service and defence."