The expressions on the three startled countenances brought a sudden fear
to Ludwig's heart.

"Is any one ill here?" he asked.

The vice-palatine and the doctor looked at each other, but did not
speak; the surveyor began to stammer:

"I say--I say that--"

"Is Marie ill?" interrupted Vavel, excitedly.

Herr Bernat silently nodded assent, and pointed toward the door leading
into the next room.

Vavel did not stop to inquire further, but strode into the adjoining
chamber.

What a familiar little room it was, another fairy-like retreat like that
of the Nameless Castle! Here were Marie's toys, her furniture; the four
cats were purring in the window-seat, and the two pugs lay dozing on the
sofa.

A canopy-bed stood in the alcove, and among the pillows lay Marie.
Katharina was sitting by the bedside.

"Oh, God!" cried Vavel, in a tone so full of anguish that every one who
heard it, man, woman, and child, burst into tears. The invalid among the
pillows alone laughed--laughed aloud for joy.

And had she not cause to rejoice? Ludwig--_her_ Ludwig--did not hasten
first to embrace and kiss his betrothed wife. No, _she_, his little
Marie, was the first!

He flung himself on his knees by the bed and covered the pale face with
kisses and tears.

"Oh, my dearest! My adored saint! My idol!" he sobbed, while Marie's
face glowed with the purest earthly happiness.

She pressed Ludwig's head to her breast and whispered soothingly:

"Don't grieve, Ludwig; I am not going to die. I have not got that horrid
influenza poor papa Cambray brought with him from Paris. I took a little
cold the night we ran away from the bombs; but I shall soon be well
again, now that you are come. I want to live, Ludwig, and you, who
rescued me from death once before, will know how to do it again."

Katharina laid her hand tenderly on the maid's head, and said gently:

"Don't talk any more now, dearest; you know you must not excite
yourself."

Marie grasped the white hand and drew it down to Ludwig's lips.

"Kiss it, Liadwig; kiss this dear, good hand. Oh, she has been a good
little mother to me! She has wept so much because of me. If only you
knew what she had planned to do when they were going to tear me away
from her! But that danger is past, and now that you are come everything
will be well. We have been reading about you, Ludwig. What a hero you
are--our knight, St. George! I have n't been really ill, you know,
Ludwig; it was only anxiety about you. I shall soon be well again.
Please tell the doctor I don't need any more medicine. I want to get
up--I feel strong already. I want to put on my gown; then I will take
your arm and Katharina's, and we three will promenade to the window. I
want to see the evening star. Please send Frau Satan to me; she can lift
me more easily than Katharina, for I am very heavy. Ludwig, take
Katharina into the next room while I am dressing. I know you have much
to say to each other."

Frau Satan now entered in answer to the summons. The doctor had ordered
that the invalid's wishes must be obeyed.

Ludwig and Katharina went into the next room. They looked long into each
other's eyes, and in the gaze lay many of the thoughts which, if they
cannot be told to the one person on earth, are never heard by any one
else. Suddenly Katharina, without word of warning, dropped on her knees
at her lover's feet, seized his hand, and laid her face against it.

"You are my guardian angel," she whispered (the invalid in the next room
must not be disturbed by the sound of voices); "you have rescued that
saint from her enemies and saved me from perdition. Oh, Ludwig, if only
you knew what I have suffered! Marie's every sigh, the feverish words
uttered in her delirium, have been so many accusations oppressing my
heart. These have been terrible days! To be compelled hourly to dread
either of two horrible blows, and to have to pray to God that, if both
could not be averted, to let the milder one fall! Death would have been
welcome, indeed, compared to the other one. To listen tremblingly, hour
after hour, for the knock at the door which would announce the messenger
sent to bear Marie to Paris, or death with his scythe to bear her to the
grave! And then to have to look on her sufferings, and hear her pray for
her betrayer! Oh, it was terrible, terrible! Ludwig, you are just--as
God is just. I have suffered as any woman in the Bible suffered. You
have taken my load of sorrow from me, have released my heart from the
tortures of perdition. All the evil I have done, you have made good.
Therefore, do you pronounce judgment on me. Condemn me or forgive me. I
deserve both; I will accept either at your hands."

Without a word Ludwig Vavel raised the woman to her feet, clasped her in
his arms, and pressed his lips to hers in a long, long kiss. In it were
forgiveness, love, union.

*       *       *       *       *

From the adjoining room came the sounds of a piano. Some one was playing
the hymn of the Hungarian militia.

Ludwig and Katharina hurried into the room. Marie was seated at the
piano, arrayed in her favorite blue gown. Her transparent hands hovered
over the ivory keys, and lured from them the melancholy air, to which
she sang, in a voice that seemed to come from the distant clouds:

"Was kleinliche Bosheit ausgedacht,
Hat unserer Liebe ein Ende gemacht."

At the last word her arms sank to her sides; the exertion had completely
exhausted her. But she struggled bravely to overcome her weakness. She
smiled brightly at Ludwig and Katharina, and said:

"This melancholy song was not intended for you two. It was only to show
Ludwig how I have improved. You two will love each other very dearly,
won't you? And you will go far, far away from here, and leave 'Marie'
buried in her tomb. I don't mean myself; I mean the troublesome girl who
has made so much ill feeling in the world, because of whom so many
people have suffered; the girl whose ashes rest there in the steel
casket, and whose life was so sad that she had no desire to live longer.
But 'Sophie' is going with you out into the world. She will see how
happy you two can be. And now, help me to the window; I want to look at
the evening star,"

They rolled her arm-chair to the window, and Vavel opened the sash to
admit the fresh air from the garden.

Marie clasped Ludwig's and Katharina's hands in both her own, and
whispered in a faint voice:

"You will forget the past, will you not? or think of it only as a
dream--a disagreeable dream. And don't go back to the Nameless Castle.
The veiled woman, the locked doors, the silent man, the telescope, the
lonely promenades in the garden--all, all were dreams. Don't think of
them! Forget them all! The clanking swords, the thunder of cannons--all
these were not. We only dreamed it. We never lived under the shadow of a
throne. Who was Marie? A sovereign of cats, and crown princess in the
realm of little dogs and birds--a nursery tale to tell naughty little
children who will not go to sleep! But Sophie Botta will be here
to-morrow, and the next day, and always; she will be with you, the
silly, stupid little maid, who can do nothing but obey those whom she
loves with all her heart."

Vavel with difficulty refrained from giving voice to his overwhelming
grief.

"Just see," Marie continued in a gay tone, "how much better I am!
Heretofore, when the hour came for the evening star to appear, the fever
would come too, and to-day it has failed to come with the star. Joy has
cured me. Don't take your hands away from me, Ludwig--Katharina. They
will--hold me--hold me--fast."

But they did not "hold her fast."

And why should such a being remain on this earth--a being that could do
naught else but love and renounce, adoring her nation even when it
persecuted her?

*       *       *       *       *

A dark thunder-cloud rose above the horizon out over the Hansag. The sky
looked like a vaulted ceiling hung with mourning draperies. From time
to time a distant flash of lightning illumined the cloud-curtain, then
would be heard the rumbling of thunder, like the deep tones of a distant
organ.

Under the threatening sky lay the glittering lake. Its surface of
quicksilver was streaked here and there with black shadows--the track of
the wind-gusts racing across it. The trees were rustling in the wind,
making a sound like a distant choral.

On the shore of Lake Neusiedl stood the Volons in rank and file. They
were waiting for something that was coming from the farther shore of the
little cove.

Presently the glistening surface of the water was ruffled by a black
object that pushed out from the shore. It was a boat. Six men were
rowing, a seventh held the rudder. There was a coffin in the boat,
covered with a simple pall. No ostentatious trappings ornamented the
coffin; only a myrtle wreath lay on it. A woman, sat at the head of it,
another at the foot--the former a lady, the latter a peasant wife.

The six men, with even and powerful strokes, sent the craft through the
ripples which occasionally leaped into the boat, as if they would salute
her who had so often toyed with them.

At the moment the boat touched the shore the storm burst. Vivid
lightning illumined the heavy downpour of rain, and it seemed as if the
black-robed forms bore the coffin to its grave amid a flood of
harpstrings that reached from heaven to earth.

The two weeping women followed the coffin; at a little distance they
seemed two shadows. The helmsmen of the funeral boat now stepped to the
head of the grave and opened his lips to speak, but a heavy peal of
thunder drowned his voice. When it had ceased he said:

"My brave comrades, you are here to pay a last honor to your patroness.
There is nothing left for us to fight for. Peace has been proclaimed.
The conqueror takes from you a plot of ground twenty-four hundred square
miles in extent. The one lying here takes from you only six feet of
earth. To you remain your tattered flag and your wounds. Return to your
homes. My sword has finished its work, and will accompany the saint for
whom it was drawn!"

As he spoke he broke the keen blade in twain and cast the pieces into
the grave, adding impressively, "May God give us forgetfulness, and may
we be forgotten!"

The Volons fired three salvos over the grave, the reverberating thunder
and the flashing lightning mingling with the noise of the muskets.

When the storm had passed the moon rose in a cloudless sky. Only the
waves, which had been stirred by the tempest, continued to murmur to
their favorite who was sleeping peacefully in her grave on the shore.

Marie had asked to be buried on the grassy slope by the side of her old
friend the Marquis d'Avoncourt, and that no other monument should mark
her resting-place save the imperishable tree which turns to stone after
it dies.

And what could have been graven on her tomb? A name that was not hers? A
history that was not true?

Or would it have been well to carve on the marble her true life-history,
that those who would not believe it might wage a lawsuit against an
epitaph?

No; it was better so. No one would ever learn what had become of her.

Vavel had prayed for forgetfulness--that he might be forgotten.

His prayer was granted.

For a few years afterward tales were repeated about Sophie Botta, and
some of her kinsfolk came from a distance to claim the sum of money
Vavel had placed in the hands of the authorities for the young girl's
heirs. But none of the claimants could produce satisfactory proofs of
kinship, and after a while Sophie Botta was forgotten by all the world,
as were Count Vavel and Katharina.

The Nameless Castle as well vanished from the face of the earth, as have
entire villages which once stood on the treacherous shores of Lake
Neusiedl.

Gradually, imperceptibly, the castle disappeared; gradually,
imperceptibly, bastion after bastion vanished, until not even the stone
hand which held aloft the sword in the noble escutcheon, or the towering
weathervane, could be seen above the placid waters of the lake.