At this moment a carriage was heard to enter the courtyard. "It is he! It is Rodolph!" exclaimed Sarah. Thomas Seyton drew a curtain hastily aside, and replied, "Yes, it is the prince; he is just alighting from the carriage." "Leave me! This is the decisive moment!" said Sarah, with unshaken coolness; for a monstrous ambition, a pitiless selfishness, had always been and still was the only moving spring of this woman. Even in the almost miraculous reappearance of her daughter, she only saw a means of at last arriving at the one end and aim of her whole existence. Seyton said to her, "I will tell the prince how your daughter, believed dead, was saved. This conversation would be too dangerous for you,--a too violent emotion would kill you; and after so long a separation, the sight of the prince, the recollection of bygone times--" "Your hand, brother!" replied Sarah. Then, placing on her impassive heart Tom Seyton's hand, she added, with an icy smile, "Am I excited?" "No, no; not even a hurried pulsation," said Seyton, amazed. "I know not what control you have over yourself; but at such a moment, when it is for a crown or a coffin you play, your calmness amazes me!" "And wherefore, brother? Till now, you know, nothing has made my heart beat hastily; and it will only throb when I feel the sovereign crown upon my brow. I hear Rodolph--leave me!" When Rodolph entered the apartment, his look expressed pity; but, seeing Sarah seated in her armchair, and, as it were, full dressed, he recoiled in surprise, and his features became gloomy and mistrustful. The countess, guessing his thoughts, said to him, in a low and faint voice, "You thought to find me dying! You came to receive my last adieu!" "I have always considered the last wishes of the dead as sacred, but it appears now as if there were some sacrilegious deceit--" "Be assured," said Sarah, interrupting Rodolph, "be assured that I have not deceived you! I believe that I have but very few hours to live. Pardon me a last display of coquetry! I wished to spare you the gloomy symptoms that usually attend the dying hour, and to die attired as I was the first time I saw you. Alas, after ten years of separation, I see you once again! Thanks, oh, thanks! But in your turn give thanks to God for having inspired you with the thought of hearing my last prayer! If you had refused me, I should have carried my secret with me to the grave, which will now cause the joy, the happiness of your life,--joy, mingled with some sadness, happiness, mingled with some tears, like all human felicity; but this felicity you would yet purchase at the price of half the remainder of your existence!" "What do you mean?" asked the prince, with great amazement.