nvented to amuse the
multitude. Dismissing her attendants, with an order to remain at hand,
however, the heiress of Willading soon found means to enter the humble
abode in which the proscribed family had taken refuge, and, as she was
expected, she was soon introduced into the chamber where Christine and her
mother had taken refuge.

The sympathy of the young and tender Adelheid was precious to one of the
character of Christine. They wept together, for the weakness of her sex
prevailed over the pride of the former, when she found herself
unrestrained by the observation of the world, and she gave way to the
torrent of feeling that broke through its bounds, in spite of her
endeavors to control it. Marguerite was the only spectator of this silent
but intelligible communion between these two young and pure spirits, and
her soul was shaken by the unlooked-for commiseration of one so honored,
and who was usually esteemed so happy.

"Thou hast the consciousness of our wrongs," she said, when the first
burst of emotion had a little subsided. "Thou canst then believe that a
headsman's child is like the offspring of another and is not to be hunted
of men like the young of a wolf."

"Mother, this is the Baron de Willading's heiress," said Christine: "would
she come here, did she not pity us?"

"Yes, she can pity us--and yet I find it hard even to be pitied! Sigismund
has told us of her goodness, and she may, in truth, feel for the
wretched!"

The allusion to her son caused the temples of Adelheid to burn like fire,
while there was a chill, resembling that of death, at her heart. The first
arose from the quick and uncontrollable alarm of female sensitiveness; the
last was owing to the shock inseparable from being presented with this
vivid, palpable picture of Sigismund's close affinity with the family of
an executioner. She could have better borne it, had Marguerite spoken of
her son less familiarly, or with more of that feigned ignorance of each
other, which, without stopping to scan its fitness, she had been led to
think existed between the young man and his family.

"Mother!" exclaimed Christine reproachfully, and in surprise, as if a
great indiscretion had been thoughtlessly committed.

"It matters not, child; it matters not. I saw by the kindling eye of
Sigismund to-day, that our secret will not much longer be kept. The noble
boy must show more energy than those who have gone before him; he must
quit for ever a country