with impatience the rather ceremonious parting, she hastened to the door of the sitting-room to welcome the travellers as they came upstairs.
"My darling, who do you think was listening and looking from the window next ours?" she breathlessly inquired, when she had embraced her recovered treasure for the secret of the adjoining room was too great to keep. "You can't guess? I'm surprised at that, since you are not ignorant of a certain person's nearness. Why, who but the Emperor himself?"
"Then he must have an astral body – a Doppelgänger," said Sylvia, "since he has been with me all day, and that was he to whom you offered your purse."
The Grand Duchess sat down; not so much because she desired to assume the sitting position as because she experienced a sudden weakening of the knees. For a moment she was unable to speculate: but a poignant thought passed through her brain. "Heavens! what have I done? And it may be that one day he will become my son-in-law."
Meanwhile, Frau Johann – a strangely subdued Frau Johann – had droopingly followed the chamois-hunter into the house.
"My friend, you must learn not to lose your head," said he, when she had timidly joined him in the otherwise deserted hall.
"Oh, but Your Majesty – "
"How many times must I remind you that His Majesty remains in Salzbrück or some other of his residences when I am at Heiligengelt? If you cannot remember, I must look for chamois elsewhere than on the Weisshorn."
"I will not forget again, Your – I mean, I will do my best. Yet never before have I been so tried. To see your noble and high-born shoulders loaded down as if – as if you had been but a common Gepäckträger instead of – "
"A chamois-hunter? Don't distress yourself my friend. I have had a very good day's sport."
"It has given me a weakness of the heart, Your – sir. How can I again order myself civilly to those ladies, who – "
"Who have afforded peasant Max a few amusing hours. Be more civil than ever, for my sake, friend. And, by the way, do you happen to know the names of the ladies? That one of them is Miss Collison, I have heard; but the others – "
"They are mother and daughter, sir. The elder, who spoke, in her ignorance, such treasonable things from the window, is called by the Miss Collinson 'Lady de Courcy'. The younger – the beautiful one – is also a miss; and I think her name is Mary. They talk together in English, and though I know few words of that language, I have heard 'London' mentioned not once, but many times between them. Besides, it is painted in big black letters on their boxes."
"You did not expect them here?"
"Oh, no, sir. Had any one written at this season, when I am honoured by your presence, I should have answered that we were full, or the house closed – or any excuse which occurred to me. But no strangers have ever remained in Heiligengelt, or arrived, so late; and I was taken unawares when my son Alois drove them up last night. They are here but for a few days, on their way to Salzbrück, and so home, the pretty Miss de Courcy said; and I thought – "
"You did quite right, Frau Johann. Has my messenger come with letters?"
"Yes, Your – yes, sir; just now also a telegram was brought up by another messenger, who came in a great hurry, and has but lately gone." The chamois-hunter shrugged his shoulders and gave vent to an impatient sigh. "It is too much to expect that I should be left in peace for a single day, even here," he muttered as he moved toward the stairs.
To reach Frau Johann's best sitting-room (selfishly occupied, according to one opinion, by the gentlemen absent all day upon the mountains) he was obliged to pass a door through which issued unusual sounds. Involuntary he paused. Some one was striking the preliminary chords of a volkslied on his favourite instrument, a Rhaetian improvement upon the zither. As he lingered, listening, a voice began to sing – such a voice! Softly seductive as the purling of a brook through a meadow; rich as the deepest notes of a nightingale in its first passion for the moon.
The song was the heartbroken cry of an old Rhaetian peasant, who, lying near death in a strange land, longs for the sunrise light on the mountain-tops at home, more earnestly than for heaven.
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