In the castle at Nemesdomb the moon was shining brightly through the windows. It fell on the family portraits, one after another, and they seemed to step from their frames like pale ghosts. Brightest and clearest among them all was the likeness of the man with the heart of stone. Back and forth glided a woman's form clad in white. One might have thought a marble statue from the family vault had left its pedestal to join the weird assembly in the portrait gallery. The stillness of the night was broken from time to time by a sigh or a groan or a stifled cry of pain. What ghostly voices were those that disturbed the quiet of that moonlit scene? The whole Baradlay castle had been turned into a hospital by its mistress and opened to the warriors wounded in the struggle for freedom; and it was these poor soldiers whose cries of pain now broke the stillness of the night. Two physicians were in attendance; the library was turned into a pharmacy and the great hall into a surgeon's operating-room, while the baroness and her women spent their days picking lint and preparing compresses. Standing in the moonlight before her dead husband's portrait, the widow spoke with him. "No," said she firmly, "you shall not frighten me away. I will meet you face to face. You say to me: 'All this is your work!' I do not deny it. These groans and sighs allow neither you nor me to sleep. But you know well enough that bloodshed and suffering were inevitable; that this cup of bitterness was, sooner or later, to be drained to the bottom; that whoever would enjoy eternal life must first suffer death. You ask me what I have done with your sons. The exact contrary to what you bade me do. Two of them are fighting for their country; one of the two is wounded, and I may hear of his death any day. But I repent not of what I have done. I await what destiny has in store for us, and if I am to lose all my sons, so be it! It is better to suffer defeat in a righteous cause than to triumph in an unrighteous one." She left the portrait and sought her own apartment, and the moonlight crept on and left the haughty face on the wall in darkness. CHAPTER XXII. A WOMAN'S HATRED. In the Plankenhorst house another of those confidential interviews was being held in which Sister Remigia and her pupil were wont to take part. Prince Windischgrätz's latest despatches had brought news of a decisive engagement in the Royal Forest near Isaszeg. At seven o'clock in the evening the ban[5] had been on the point of dealing the Hungarians a final crushing blow, and the commander-in-chief had been assured he might go to sleep with no anxiety as to the issue. It was not until seven in the morning that he was awakened by the ban himself with the announcement that he had abandoned the field to the enemy. Despatches to that effect were immediately sent to Vienna. [Footnote 5: The victory of Croatia.]