She had
never had aught to regret; it was not possible that she could realize
what regret was.
Hence men called and found her very cold; yet those of her own kin
whom she loved knew that the heart of a summer rose was not warmer, nor
sweeter, nor richer than hers. And first among these was her brother--at
once her guardian and her slave--who thought her perfect, and would
no more have crossed her will than he would have set his foot on her
beautiful, imperial head. Corona d'Amague had been his friend; the only
one for whom he had ever sought to break her unvarying indifference to
her lovers, but for whom even he had pleaded vainly until one autumn
season, when they had stayed together at a great archducal castle in
South Austria. In one of the forest-glades, awaiting the fanfare of the
hunt, she rejected, for the third time, the passionate supplication of
the superb noble who ranked with the D'Ossuna and the Medina-Sidonia. He
rode from her in great bitterness, in grief that no way moved her--she
was importuned with these entreaties to weariness. An hour after he was
brought past her, wounded and senseless; he had saved her brother from
imminent death at his own cost, and the tusks of the mighty Styrian boar
had plunged through and through his frame, as they had met in the narrow
woodland glade.
"He will be a cripple--a paralyzed cripple--for life!" said the one
whose life had been saved by his devotion to her that night; and his
lips shook a little under his golden beard as he spoke.
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