her mother now; there was a flush on her cheek, there was light again in the eyes, which, since the day when they fell upon the walls of Draskócs, had seemed to have grown dim for ever. What had brought this change? What had worked this instantaneous transformation? Gretchen was soon to know.
Ascelinde did not say much; but what she said was enough for Gretchen. Flinging her massive arms around her daughter's neck, she murmured in her ear –
"I could not believe it till now; it was too good to be true. I thought that Fate had nothing but disappointments in store for us. Oh, my daughter!" and her voice swelled to exultation, "Draskócs will be Draskócs after all, for you will rebuild the house of my ancestors!"
Majestically she swept from the spot, and went to dream of the real stone walls that were to rise, and the real white swans that were to swim round the real Draskócs of the future. Hitherto Baron Tolnay's suit had been to her a dim and far-off thing – a sort of distantly twinkling star too shapeless to penetrate the profundity of that grief, the fondling and fostering and petting of which now formed her sole interest in life. It was only to-day, during Adalbert's pointed remarks to his daughter, that, roused from her apathy, there had flashed across her mind the grand inspiration to which she had just given utterance. She was almost as happy, while she built her Draskócs in the air, while she furnished the rooms, laid the pavement and peopled the stables, as she had been in the far-off, dream-beguiled, deceptive ante-Draskócs days.
And Gretchen stood where her mother had left her, and gazed round her in the empty passage, with the stare of an animal at bay.
A cold dread was creeping over her, a nameless panic was shaking her.
She was chained and prisoned; but the chains were of her own forging, the prison of her own building; what right had she to complain? Golden chains! A golden prison-wall! But ah, how heavy, how oppressive! Turn which way she might, the passage was barred. On all sides the same assurance, the same smiles, the same unhesitating confidence that her lot was cast.
"And it is cast!" thought Gretchen. "I have cast it myself."
She herself had composed the recipe for her happiness; there was no ingredient awanting – neither the silver florins, nor the golden ducats, nor the coronet. How was it, then, that the result tasted so much more bitter than sweet? so much more like misery than happiness?
In common logic and in common justice she had no right now to reverse her fate, and she had no idea of reversing it. A desperate quiet, a numb feeling of resignation began to steal over her. She was conscious only of a helpless shrinking from the moment of the crisis. Yesterday it had been all but completed; next time it would be completed. It was impossible to meet Baron Tolnay again as a mere acquaintance. To-morrow they were to be on the mountains again, and to-morrow her fate would be clenched. Oh, rather to-morrow than to-day! rather next hour than this hour! rather even next minute than this minute!
Respite was what she asked for, and in the meantime peace. Surely now, at last, she could reach her
