For half an hour the young man paced the greensward scarcely
conscious whither he went, until he found that his steps had again led him
beneath the window of the knights' hall. Glancing an eye upward, he saw
Adelheid still seated at the balcony, and apparently yet alone. He thought
she had been weeping, and he cursed the weakness which had kept him from
effecting the often-renewed resolution to remove himself, and his cruel
fortunes, for ever from before her mind. A second look, however, showed
him that he was again beckoned to ascend! The revolutions in the purposes
of lovers are sudden and easily effected; and Sigismund, through whose
mind a dozen ill-digested plans of placing the sea between himself and her
he loved had just been floating, was now hurriedly retracing his steps to
her presence.
Adelheid had necessarily been educated under the influence of the
prejudices of the age and of the country in which she lived. The existence
of the office of headsman in Berne, and the nature of its hereditary
duties, were well known to her: and, though superior to the inimical
feeling which had so lately been exhibited against the luckless Balthazar,
she had certainly never anticipated a shock so cruel as was now produced,
by abruptly learning that this despised and persecuted being was the
father of the youth to whom she had yielded her virgin affections.
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