Adventure stories; Love -- Fiction; Princesses -- Fiction; Short stories
The woman's answer came no more in words, but in deep low passionate
sobs which struck their ears like the distant cry of some brute creature
in pain that it cannot understand. Yet Osra's face was stern and cold,
and her lips curled scornfully when she saw the Bishop's look of pity.
"Come, let us end it," said she, and with a firm step she began to mount
the stairs that lay between them and the door.
Yet once again they paused outside the door, for it seemed as though the
Princess could not choose but listen to the passionate words of love
that pierced her ears like knives; yet they were all sad, speaking of
renunciation, not of happiness.
But at last she heard her own name; then with a sudden start she caught
the Bishop's hand, for she could not listen longer. She staggered and
reeled as she whispered to him:
"The door, the door, open the door!"
The Bishop, his right hand being across his body and resting on the hilt
of his sword, laid his left upon the handle of the door, and turned it.
Then he flung the door open wide; at that instant Osra sprang past him,
her eyes gleaming like flames from her dead white face. And she stood
rigid on the threshold of the room, with the Bishop by her side.
In the middle of the room stood the Prince of Glottenberg; strained in a
close embrace, clinging to him, supported by his arms, with head buried
in his breast, was a girl of slight and slender figure, graceful though
not tall; her body was still shaken by continual struggling sobs. The
Prince held her there as though against the world, but raised his head
and looked at the intruders with a grave sad air. There was no shame on
his face, and hardly surprise. Presently he took one arm from about the
lady, and, raising it, motioned to them to be still. Osra took one step
forward towards where the pair stood; the Bishop caught her sleeve, but
she shook him off. The lady looked up into the Prince's face; with a
sudden startled cry she clutched him closer, and turned a terrified face
over her shoulder. Then she moaned in great fear, and, reeling, fell
against the Prince; she would have sunk to the ground if he had not
upheld her, and her eyes closed and her lip dropped, as she swooned
away. But the Princess smiled, and, drawing herself to her full height,
stood watching while Ludwig bore the lady to a couch and laid her there.
Then, when he came back and faced her, she asked coldly and slowly:
"Who is this woman, sir? Or is she one of those who have no names?"
The Prince sprang forward, a sudden anger in his eyes; he raised his
hand as if he would have pressed it across her scornful mouth and kept
back her bitter words. But she did not flinch; pointing at him with her
finger, she cried to the Bishop in a ringing voice:
"Kill him, my lord, kill him."
And the sword of the Bishop of Modenstein was half way out of the
scabbard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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