3. III.
How slowly passed the hours to the maiden,
while she waited for the coming of the youth.
From the lattice, long and anxiously had she
looked forth, listening for the dear accents of his
whispering voice; and when the clock tolled forth
the full hour of midnight, impatient to behold him,
she stole hurriedly down into the garden, treading
its flowery mazes, but seeking him every where in
vain. Her heart already began to fill with those
thousand mysterious fears, and apprehensive forebodings,
which are natural enough to a German
maiden, when she fancied she heard a sigh. She
followed the sound, and something seemed to float
in the air before her. A gentle breath moved the
leaves overhead, though elsewhere a universal
stillness prevailed. The sigh was repeated — the
breathing zephyr still guided her from above, and
when it ceased to move, the lifeless body of her
lover lay at her feet. With a single shriek,
scarcely less lifeless than himself, she sank down
beside him, and was only aroused to the consciousness
of a greater misery by a terrible voice which
sounded in her ears.
“Away with her!” cried the furious father, —
“take her home — remove her from my sight.”
She clung to the inanimate form, which could
no longer return her fond caresses.
“You shall not — no! no! I will not leave him.
I will cling to him to the last.”
But what could her strength avail against that
of the brutal retainers, assisted by the bloody Wallenberg.
They tore her from the corpse with
unmeasured violence.
“He is yet warm!” shrieked the maiden — “he
is not dead — I may yet save him — he will hear
my voice. Oh! leave me — leave me with him, I
implore you.”
“Home with her, I say,” were the words of the
implacable father, which silenced her entreaties.
She shuddered to behold the malignant and savage
exultation which were impressed upon his features
as he spoke. With the sight, a fearful fancy
gathered in her brain. She suspected him — her
own father — of the cruel crime, and this suspicion
increased her misery. The true assassin,
looking on the while, remained unknown. Inquiry
in a little time, having labored without success
to find the criminal, forbore its task; and if,
at any moment, public suspicion rested any where
in particular, the object was one quite too high
for the arm of public justice.
