She suddenly found herself face to face with Freyer.]
"Oh, Countess," he answered with untroubled truthfulness, "I did it for the sake of my friend Ludwig--he insisted upon it."
"So it was only on his friend's account," thought the countess, standing with bowed head before him.
He was now the king--and she, the queen of her brilliant sphere, was nothing save a poor, hoping, fearing woman!
At this moment all the vanity of her worldly splendor fell from her--for the first time in her life she stood in the presence of a man where she was the supplicant, he the benefactor. What a feeling! At once humiliating and blissful, confusing and enthralling! She had recognized by that one sentence the real state of the case--what to this man was the halo surrounding the Reichscountess von Wildenau with her coronet and her millions? Joseph Freyer knew but one aristocracy--that of the saints in whose sphere he was accustomed to move--and if he left it for the sake of an earthly woman, he would stoop to her, no matter how far, according to worldly ideals, she might stand above him!
Yet poor and insignificant as she felt in his presence--while the lustre of her coronet and the glitter of her gold paled and vanished in the misty distance--one thing remained on which she could rely, her womanly charm, and this must wield its influence were she a queen or the child of a wood-cutter! "Then, for the earthly crown you have torn from my head, proud man, you shall give me your crown of thorns, and I will still be queen!" she thought, as the spirit of Mother Eve stirred within her and an intoxicating breeze blew from the Garden of Paradise. Not for the sake of a base emotion of vanity and covetousness, nay, she wished to be loved, in order to bless. It is the nature of a noble woman to seek to use her power not to receive, but to give, to give without stint or measure. The brain thinks quickly--but the heart is swifter still! Ere the mind has time to grasp the thought, the heart has seized it. The countess had experienced all this in the brief space during which Freyer's eyes rested on her. Suddenly he lowered his lashes and said in a whisper: "I think we have met before, countess."
"On my arrival Friday evening. You were standing on the top of the mountain while I was driving at the foot. Was it not so?"
"Yes," he murmured almost inaudibly, and there was something like an understanding, a sweet familiarity in the soft assent. She felt it, and her hand clasped his more firmly with a gentle pressure.
He again raised his lashes, gazing at her with an earnest, questioning glance, and it seemed as if she felt a pulse throbbing in the part of the hand which bore the mark of the wound--the warning did not fail to produce its effect.