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“You were there waiting when she brought me into the square and that was her cue to disappear?”

“I was there. My intention was to take you to the lodge and to stay there with you until such a time as one of us should wish to leave. I even had plans for keeping you there altogether. That was really how I hoped it would turn out. “

“But it was different.”

“Yes, it was different. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. As soon as I saw you again I knew how different. I didn’`t care for anything. I knew that whatever happened afterwards we were meant for each other and that I would face anything rather than lose you.

There would be immense difficulties, I knew, because of my position but I didn’`t care. I could think of only one thing that mattered to me. I was going to make you my wife. “

“And you did! It’s true that you did. They lied to me-Ilse, Ernst and the doctor. They said oh, it was shameful that I was carried off into the forest by a criminal and that I returned to the house in such a state that they had to put me under sedation to save my reason.”

“But they knew what had happened.”

Then why . oh, why . “

“Because they feared the consequences of what I had done. But how could they? Like the rest of my staff, they believed that our marriage was no true marriage. They did not believe it possibly could be. How could I, my father’s heir, marry except for state reasons? But I could, Lenchen, and I did, because I loved you so much that I could contemplate no thing else. I could not deceive you, my darling. How could I deceive my own true love? I knew and they knew that my cousin had on one occasion deluded a girl into thinking that he was marrying her and that the man who performed the ceremony was no true priest, thus making that ceremony with out meaning. A mock marriage.

That was what they thought ours was. But I loved you, Lenchen. I couldn’'t do that. “

“I’m so happy,” I cried.

“So happy!” Then: “Why didn’`t you tell me who you were?”

“I had to keep it secret, even from you, until I had made my arrangements. I alone must explain this to my father, for I knew that there were going to be all kinds of difficulties. He had been urging me to marry for some time for state reasons. It was not the moment to tell him that I had married without his consent and that of his council. There was too much trouble in the dukedom. My Uncle Ludwig was seeking an opportunity to overthrow my father and could well seize on what he would call a mesalliance as a reason for deposing him and setting up my cousin as heir. I could not tell my father then . < s and when I could have done so, I believed you to be dead.”

“I must tell you what happened, because I can see that you have no idea. Ilse and Ernst came and took me away from the lodge after you had gone.”

“And told me that you were there when the place was blown up.”

“We must follow it bit by bit as it happened, for it all seems so incredible. After you went. Ilse and Ernst took me back to the house they had rented in the town. The next morning I awoke in a dazed condition and they told me I had been unconscious for six days after I had been criminally assaulted in the forest.”

“Impossible!”

“This is what they told me. They had a doctor there. He said he had kept me under sedation to save my reason, and that the days which I believed I had spent with you had actually been passed in my bed.”

“But how could they hope that you would believe that?”

“I didn’`t, but they had the doctor there. And when I went back to the lodge it was gone.”

“The lodge was blown up on the day I left. Hildegarde and Hans had gone into the town for provisions. It happened while they were away. I believed it was a plot to kill me. There have been such plots before and my Uncle Ludwig was at the bottom of them. It is not the first time that I and members of my family have escaped death by a very small margin. Ernst came to tell me that the lodge had been blown up and you were in it at the time.”

I went there to look for it,” I said, ‘and found it was a shell. So it had only just been demolished. Oh you see how I have been deceived.”

“Poor, poor Lenchen. How you must have suffered! How we both have!

There must have been times when you wished we had never met in the forest that day. “

“Oh no, no,” I said fiercely.

“I never felt that not even in the most wretched and desperate moments.”

He took my hands and kissed them.

I went on: “So I stayed with them and they looked after me and when the child was born.

“The child!” he cried.

“Oh yes, we had a child. She died at birth. I think I was never so unhappy as when they told me. At least, I thought, I shall have her, and I thought I would take a post at the Damenstift and I planned our future together . hers and mine. “

“So we had a child,” he repeated.

“Oh Lenchen, my poor sweet Lenchen.

And Ilse and Ernst . why did they do this? Why should they have done this? I must discover what this means. “

“Where are they now?”

“Ernst is dead. He was ill, you know very ill. Ilse went back to Klarenbock. I heard she married again. But why should they tell me you were dead? What motive was there in this? I shall find Ilse. I must have the truth from her. I will send someone to Klarenbock to bring her here. I want to know from her what this means.”

“She must have had a reason.”

“We’ll find it,” he said.

Then he turned once more to me; he touched my hair and my face as though trying to convince himself that I was really there.

I was so happy to be with him, I could think of nothing beyond the glorious fact that we were together. I was bewildered still groping in the dark, but Maximilian was with me and that for the moment was enough. And I had learned the truth of what happened on the Night of the Seventh Moon; I had taken back those six days of my life; they belonged to me and I had been wantonly deceived.

What could have been the motive of Ilse, Ernst and the doctor? Why should they have deceived me so utterly that they had almost made me doubt my own reason in order that events might appear in the light they wished them to.

Why?

But Maximilian was there, and as happened long ago, I could think of nothing else. So while the moon shone its light into the turret-room I was happy as I had not been since the days of my honeymoon.

There was a light tap on the door and Frau Graben came in carrying -a tray on which was a squat lighted candle, wine and glasses, with a dish of her favourite spiced cakes.

She said, her eyes gleaming with delight: “I’ve brought you these. I thought you’d be hungry. Well, Master Lightning,” she went on.

“You can’t say you’re not old Graben’s favourite now, can you?”

“I never did,” he replied.

She set the tray on the table. She said: “Oh, Miss Trant, I knew how he was ” fretting for you. I could tell. He was never the same again.

He used to be so gay . he was the gay one . always up to tricks, laughing, joking . and then suddenly he changes. It’s a woman, I said. Then poor old Hildegarde Lichen told me. She turned to me. We’d worked at the schloss together in the nursery. She was my under-nurse.

She thought the world of the boys and in particular Lightning here.

And she told me all-about how the little English girl came to the lodge one night and how he was never the same since. It was such a romantic story and how they blew up the lodge so that it would look as though she had died there. “

“Hildegarde told you that?” cried Maximilian.

“Why didn’`t you tell me?

Why didn’`t you? “

“It was a secret, Hildegarde insisted. She told me With her dying breath. And she said, ” Tell no one unless it’s necessary to his happiness, for it is better that he should think her gone. “