Kuno also had seen the face of the lady, and knew that these doleful sounds were uttered by her. Deep compassion filled his heart; he forgot all the unhappiness that this woman had caused him, and, filled only with the thought of helping her, he took a candle in his hand and hastened to clamber up to her.
He found her crouching on the ground, her hands pressed before her eyes.
"What is wrong, gracious lady?" asked Kuno timidly.
"Oh, I am blind! I am blind!" she groaned piteously. "The dwarf blew into my eyes, and my sight left me."
Kuno, full of pity, seized her hand and led her tenderly step by step down the winding stair, and on to her own apartment.
After calling a maid to her assistance, he returned to say good-night to the poor lady. What he had never done in her days of health he did now—he drew her hand to his lips and kissed it fervently. The lady felt a hot tear drop on her hand; silently, but with scarce-concealed emotion, she drew it away. This tear burned like unquenchable fire, not only on her hand, but on her soul.
She spent a long and sleepless night; this unexpected calamity had crushed her hard heart. But though the light was taken from her eyes, a new day dawned within her. Her dislike of Kuno, her hardness and injustice towards the orphan child, all passed through her mind in fiery procession; and when she thought of Kuno's noble conduct, a flood of penitent tears streamed from her sightless eyes.
Eckbert, on hearing of his mother's misfortune, showed himself as heartless as ever. He railed at the dwarf and at Kuno as the real cause of it. But he had not any idea of sitting through the long tedious hours with his poor blind mother—that was Kuno's business, he thought, for he had been the cause of it all. On the contrary, freed from all restraint, Eckbert amused himself more than ever with the chase and with drinking bouts, and tyrannised worse than before over all around him.
Kuno behaved towards the unhappy lady like a loving son. He sat with her and cared for her wants as if she had been his own beloved mother. When the summer came he led her out every day into the garden or to the rock where his mother lay, and tried to amuse her with his childish talk.