Nigel and Elspeth Reinheit were far in front, for they were lighter of foot, and both eager, though from different causes. He was desirous to surrender his charge, pretty and young as she was, into safe keeping, for Nigel had never played philanderer. He was also involuntarily full of the tumult, at once a wonder to himself and a pleasure, that came over him at the thought of Ottilie von Thüringen.
Elspeth in her ingenuous way was only too glad to leave the soldiers in the rear, in order to savour the unspoken delight she felt at being alone in the forest with her deliverer, at whose noble and martial aspect she kept taking little fleeting but soul-satisfying looks. She longed with all her maidenliness, and she was as sweet and chaste as the brook that gurgled by them, to throw her arms about him and tell him that she could love him to eternity. The affection of a thousand affectionate German girls, rippling over with endearing phrases of their love-making mother tongue, welled up to her lips, but did not pass them. Only by an effort of will did she convert them to little outbursts of thankfulness that gushed out at intervals, and after short spaces of silence, renewed themselves in other words. Even Nigel could scarcely fail to be aware of the state of her feelings, for the tenderness of her tones filled out what might be lacking in her actual declarations. Her beautiful golden hair had been gathered by her deft fingers into a coil, and surmounted rather than covered by a dainty coif; and with her clear blue eyes and pink cheeks, her supple figure, rather tall than otherwise, she was a feast for the eyes that some of the heroes of the Nibelungen Lied might well have coveted.
One question bubbled to the surface of her mingled reverie and talk.
"Noble captain, have you ever seen the Lady Ottilie since we parted at Erfurt?"
Nigel was too busy with the puzzling thoughts that the question called up to apprehend any subtlety in the question. So he said—
"Once I fancied so! But it was not near enough to speak, and it was night."
"Do you long very much to see her again?" came the next question.
"I? Little one! I scarcely know! She is a mystery to me!"
"Perhaps that is why you would like to see her!" she conjectured. "Now when you have brought me to a safe place I shall never cease to wish to see you again."
Nigel smiled as he answered—