“When I bade you farewell,” he said softly, “I said that if I returned, I would ask you a momentous question.  Do you know what it was?”

She shrank and a burning blush crimsoned her cheeks, but she did not venture to reply, only gazed breathlessly at him with fixed eyes.

He bent close to her and, smiling, whispered: 

“Leonore, will you be my wife?”

With a cry of joy she sprang into his arms, laughing and weeping in her ecstasy.

Kolbielsky pressed her closely to his heart and laid his hand upon her head as if in benediction.

“You have atoned,” he said solemnly.  “You shall be forgiven, for you have suffered heavily!  You have come to me homeless.  Henceforth my heart shall be your home.  You have cast aside your name—­I offer you mine in exchange.  Will you be my wife?”

She whispered a low, happy “yes.”

An hour later an officer of justice arrived to announce to Kolbielsky his change of sentence to perpetual imprisonment and inform him that the carriage was waiting to convey him to Leopoldstadt.

Kolbielsky now desired to see the priest whose ministration he had formerly refused, and when, half an hour later, he entered the carriage, Leonore was his wife.  She accompanied him, disguised as his servant, for the permission to attend the prisoner to Leopoldstadt was given in that name.  But the priest promised to go to the emperor himself and obtain for the wife the favor which had been granted to the servant.

He kept his word, and, a few weeks later, the governor of Leopoldstadt received the imperial command to allow the wife of the imprisoned Baron von Kolbielsky to share his captivity.

But Kolbielsky’s hope of a speedy release was not to be fulfilled.  Napoleon had become the emperor of Austria’s son-in-law, and thereby Kolbielsky’s position was aggravated.  He knew too many of the Emperor Francis’ secrets, could betray too much concerning the emperor’s hate, and secret intrigues of which Francis himself had been aware.  He was dangerous and therefore must be kept in captivity.

In his wrath he wrote vehement, insulting letters to the Emperor Francis, made himself guilty of high-treason.  So they were well satisfied to find him worthy of punishment, and render the troublesome fault-finder forever harmless.

So he remained a prisoner long after Napoleon had been overthrown.  His wife died many years before him, leaving one daughter, who, when a girl of eighteen, married a distinguished Austrian officer.  Her entreaties and her husband’s influence finally succeeded in securing Kolbielsky’s liberation.  In the year 1829 he was permitted to leave Leopoldstadt, to live with his daughter at Ofen, where he died in 1831.

THE END.

NEELY’S PRISMATIC LIBRARY.

GILT TOP, 75 CENTS.

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