Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/512

508 her – that she would have liked to resist, but could not, feeling as though his eyes made it impossible for her to disobey.

After the first two steps she staggered, and her nerve seemed all at once to give way. Climbing the rock with her back to the danger had been a very different thing from this sickening descent. She stood clinging to a ledge, not daring to move another step, not daring to look either up or down.

Before the dizziness was passed, she heard Dr Komers's voice close beside her.

"Give me your hand," he said, in a tone of cold command, and she gave it to him.

"Lean on my shoulder."

She obeyed, wondering at her own docility, and seeing not a step of the perilous descent before her.

Without a word, Vincenz lifted her off her feet, and in the next minute she was standing at the bottom, released from his arm, but still trembling, and grown suddenly pale and breathless.

István had watched the scene from above, glaring down at the two figures, but offering no assistance. He descended the rock leisurely now, and came up to Dr Komers.

"You need not have disturbed yourself," he began, in a tone of artificial politeness. "I also have got brains in my head; I also have got eyes and arms, and Fräulein Mohr's safety is as much my care as yours."

"It scarcely appeared so," said Vincenz, icily.

István's eyes flashed fire.

"Do you dare to doubt?" he broke out in a higher and more offensive tone; but the lawyer stopped him –

"If you wish to quarrel with me, you must find a better place and opportunity: it cannot be here."

"Perhaps you prefer not to quarrel," muttered the Hungarian, with a glance of deadly hatred.

He had been flushed a minute ago, but he was paler now than Vincenz himself. It was a terrible revelation which had opened before his eyes. For the first time he had felt that this man was to be feared; and István Tolnay could not fear a man without hating him. It was an alarming revelation, a rude shock to his passion, a mortal wound to his vanity.

"Certainly I prefer not to quarrel," – and Vincenz turned his pale proud face to his rival; then, with recovered calmness, he moved away towards the others.

The Bohemian was kindling fresh torches to light their passage out; and the half-burnt pieces of fir-wood had been stuck about into convenient cracks of the rock. High up, on the ledge where Gretchen had stood with Tolnay, there was a torch burning its last, for she had left it in the niche. It crackled and flared, dyeing the white stone all around with changeful tints, and shooting arrows of brilliant light into dimly seen, ghostly-grey hollows.

While the party still stood in a group, watching the impromptu illumination, Princess Tryphosa was observed to turn pale; very gradually of course – no change in her ever was sudden.

In a sort of shapeless alarm, the others glanced around them. The place was not soothing to human nerves; and every one was conscious of feeling a little on the strain. Had the Princess heard any noise? seen any danger threatening?

Oh no; the cause of Tryphosa's change of colour dated further back than that. She had only now dis-