een promised to my
desolate life, and because you are that consolation which God at last
grants to my solitary and gloomy existence. Consuelo! If you leave me,
my life is at an end, and I will never return to earth again!" Saying
this he fell at her feet in a swoon; and the two girls, terrified,
called the servants to carry him to his room and restore him to
consciousness. But hardly had Albert been left alone before his
apartment was empty, and he had disappeared.

Days passed, and the anxiety at the castle remained unrelieved. It was
not the first time Albert had disappeared, but now his absence was
longer than usual. Consuelo found out the secret of his hiding-place--a
vaulted hall at the end of a long gallery in a cave in the forest was
Albert's hermitage, and a secret passage from the moat of the castle
enabled him to pass unseen to his solitude. She traced him to the
chamber in the recesses of the cavern.

Already Consuelo had discovered the two natures in Albert--the one wise,
the other mad; the one polished, tender, merciful; the other strange,
untamed and violent She saw that sympathy and firmness were both needed
in dealing with this lonely and unfortunate man--sympathy with his
religious mysticism, and firmness in urging him not to yield to the
images of his mind.

That Albert was in love with her, Consuelo understood; but to his
pleadings she had but one answer:

"Do not speak of love, do not speak of marriage. My past life, my
recollections, make the first impossible. The difference in our
conditions would render the second humiliating and insupportable to me.
Let it be enough that I will be your friend and your consoler, whenever
you are disposed to open your heart to me."

And with this Albert, for a time, professed to be content. So determined
was he, however, to win Consuelo's heart, that he readily obeyed her
advice, and even promised never to return to his hermitage without first
asking her to accompany him.

Gentle old Count Christian himself came later to plead his son's cause
with Consuelo. Amelia and her father had left the Castle of the Giants,
and Christian realised how much Consuelo had already done for the
restoration of his son's health.

"You were afraid of me, dear Consuelo," said the old man. "You thought
that the old Rudolstadt, with his aristocratic prejudices, would be
ashamed to owe his son to you. But you are mistaken, and I go to bring
my son to your feet, that together we m