The general went to his writing-table and took up a pen; his hand trembled and almost refused to perform its duty, but he controlled the weakness and wrote a few lines, which he handed to the captain.
"I trust everything to you, Michael. Go! Perhaps you will succeed in saving me from the worst. If I hear nothing from you in the course of the next twenty-four hours I must speak, and must declare the last Steinrück----"
He could not finish the sentence; his voice broke, but he grasped Michael's hand in a convulsive clasp. The repudiated son of the outcast daughter was to be the saviour of the honour of the family; he was the old Count's last, sole hope, and the young man answered the clasp of his hand,--
"Rely upon me, grandfather! Have you not said that I can do all that can be done? You shall hear from me at your head-quarters. Farewell!"
The confusion and bustle reigning in the South-German railway-station at E---- had increased incredibly, for the comparatively insignificant little town was the point of meeting of three railway lines, and lay in the direct road to the Rhine. Trains for the transportation of troops were running day and night, and the town itself was crowded with soldiers.
Some hundred paces from the station there was a third-rate inn, usually frequented by peasants only, and certainly no fit stopping-place for the strangers who had reached it an hour previously,--a young lady, apparently of high rank, accompanied by an elderly priest and a servant. The apartment to which they had been shown was neither comfortable nor clean, and yet it was the only shelter that they could find.
The lady, who sat at a table leaning her head upon her hand, was in mourning, and looked very grave and pale, although this in no wise detracted from the beauty of the face beneath her crape veil. The priest was seated opposite her at the table, and had just said, "I am afraid we must stay here for a while; your servant has searched the entire town: all the hotels are overcrowded, and various private mansions are occupied by strangers. You might perhaps endure this house for a night, but any longer stay would be impossible for you, Countess Hertha."
"But why?" asked Hertha, calmly. "We shall have no choice to-morrow either, and at a time like the present we must yield to necessity."
The priest of St. Michael, for it was he, looked in amazement at the petted young Countess, now so ready to content herself with accommodations that would under other circumstances have been indignantly rejected by her.