Yet still--was it not the king?
"God help us!" she muttered in fear and bewilderment.
"He helps us, never fear," said Rudolf Rassendyll. "Where is
Count Rupert?"
The girl had caught alarm from her mother's agitation. "He's
upstairs in the attic at the top of the house, sir," she
whispered in frightened tones, with a glance that fled from her
mother's terrified face to Rudolf's set eyes and steady smile.
What she said was enough for him. He slipped by the old woman and
began to mount the stairs.
The two watched him, Mother Holf as though fascinated, the girl
alarmed but still triumphant: she had done what the king bade
her. Rudolf turned the corner of the first landing and
disappeared from their sight. The old woman, swearing and
muttering, stumbled back into her kitchen, set her stew on the
fire, and began to stir it, her eyes set on the flames and
careless of the pot. The girl watched her mother for a moment,
wondering how she could think of the stew, not guessing that she
turned the spoon without a thought of what she did; then she
began to crawl, quickly but noiselessly, up the staircase in the
track of Rudolf Rassendyll. She looked back once: the old woman
stirred with a monotonous circular movement of her fat arm.
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