So she was rewarded, and the sight of the man she loved was the first breath of freedom.
In a great house like the strange abode Lira had selected for the seclusion of his daughter, it constantly occurs that one person is in ignorance of the doings of the others; and so it was natural that when Hedwig heard the clatter of hoofs in the courtyard, and the echoing crash of the great doors as they opened and closed, she should think both her father and Benoni had ridden away, and would be gone for the morning.

She would not look out, lest she should see them and be seen.
I cannot tell you exactly what she felt when she saw Nino from her lofty window, but she was certainly glad with her whole heart.

If she had not known of his coming from my visit the previous evening, she would perhaps have given way to some passionate outburst of happiness; but as it was, the feeling of anticipation, the sweet, false dawn of freedom, together with the fact that she was prepared, took from this first pleasure all that was overwhelming.

She only felt that he had come, and that she would soon be saved from Benoni; she could not tell how, but she knew it, and smiled to herself for the first time in months, as she held a bit of jewelry to her slender throat before the glass, wondering whether she had not grown too thin and pale to please her lover, who had been courted by the beauties of the world since he had left her.
She was ill, perhaps, and tired.

That was why she looked pale; but she knew that the first day of freedom would make her as beautiful as ever.