d and voice of mountain
torrents, at their hand: and far below them, green melting into sapphire
on the plains.

They walked at first in silence; for Otto's mind was full of the delight
of liberty and nature, and still, betweenwhiles, he was preparing his
interview with Gondremark. But when the first rough promontory of the
rock was turned, and the Felsenburg concealed behind its bulk, the lady
paused.

'Here,' she said, 'I will dismount poor Karl, and you and I must ply our
spurs. I love a wild ride with a good companion.'

As she spoke, a carriage came into sight round the corner next below them
in the order of the road. It came heavily creaking, and a little ahead
of it a traveller was soberly walking, note-book in hand.

'It is Sir John,' cried Otto, and he hailed him.

The Baronet pocketed his note-book, stared through an eye-glass, and then
waved his stick; and he on his side, and the Countess and the Prince on
theirs, advanced with somewhat quicker steps. They met at the re-entrant
angle, where a thin stream sprayed across a boulder and was scattered in
rain among the brush; and the Baronet saluted the Prince with much
punctilio. To the Countess, on the other hand, he bowed with a kind of
sneering wonder.

'Is it possible, madam, that you have not heard the news?' he asked.

'What news?' she cried.

'News of the first order,' returned Sir John: 'a revolution in the State,
a Republic declared, the palace burned to the ground, the Princess in
flight, Gondremark wounded--'

'Heinrich wounded?' she screamed.

'Wounded and suffering acutely,' said Sir John. 'His groans--'

There fell from the lady's lips an oath so potent that, in smoother
hours, it would have made her hearers jump. She ran to her horse,
scrambled to the saddle, and, yet half seated, dashed down the road at
full gallop. The groom, after a pause of wonder, followed her. The rush
of her impetuous passage almost scared the carriage horses over the verge
of the steep hill; and still she clattered further, and the crags echoed
to her flight, and still the groom flogged vainly in pursuit of her. At
the fourth corner, a woman trailing slowly up leaped back with a cry and
escaped death by a hand's-breadth. But the Countess wasted neither
glance nor thought upon the incident. Out and in, about the bluffs of
the mountain wall, she fled, loose-reined, and still the groom toiled in
her pursuit.

'A most impulsive lady!' said Sir John.