om. About her refuge the wild
flowers grew in plenty--primrose and blue gentian, yellow cinquefoil
and pink geranium, and forget-me-nots, and many more, and these looked
up at her with the happy faces of little children who were innocent and
knew no care; and over whole acres lay the bloom of the ling, and
nothing more lovely grows on earthly hills. Through breaks in the
woodland she saw afar the Alpine heights, and the bright visionary
peaks of snow floating in the blue air like glimpses of heaven.

But it was a bitter life in the winter-tide, when the forest fretted
and moaned, and snow drifted about the shelter, and the rocks were
jagged with icicles, and the stones of the brook were glazed with cold,
and the dark came soon and lasted long. She had no fire, but, by God's
good providence, in this cruel season the great stag came to her at
dusk, and couched in the hollow of the rock beside her, and the lights
on his antlers lit up the poor house, and the glow of his body and his
pleasant breath gave her warmth.

Here, then, dead to the world, dead to all she loved most dearly, Itha
consecrated herself body and soul to God for the rest of her earthly
years. If she suffered as the wild children of nature suffer, she was
free at least from the cares and sorrows with which men embitter each
other's existence. Here she would willingly live so long as God
willed; here she would gladly surrender her soul when He was pleased to
call it home.

The days of her exile were many. For seventeen years she dwelt thus in
her hermitage in the forest, alone and forgotten.

Forgotten, did I say? Not wholly. The Count never forgot her. Stung
by remorse (for in his heart of hearts he could not but believe her
true and innocent), haunted by the recollection of the happiness he had
flung from him, wifeless, childless, friendless, he could find no rest
or forgetfulness except in the excitement and peril of the
battle-field. But the slaughter of men and the glory of victory were
as dust and ashes in his mouth. He had lost the joy of life, the pride
of race, the exultation of power. For one look from those sweet eyes,
over which, doubtless, the hands of some grateful peasant had laid the
earth, he would have joyfully exchanged renown and lordship, and even
life itself.

At length in the fulness of God's good time, it chanced that the Count
was hunting in a distant part of the forest, when he started from its
covert a splend