on, as I afterward
learned.

She was a rigid Roman Catholic, and at sixteen had been married for _les
convenances_ to her cousin, Count Bruno von Rothenfels, a man a good
deal older than herself, though not preposterously so, and whose ample
possessions and old name gave social position of the highest kind. But
he was a Protestant by education, a thinker by nature, a rationalist by
conviction.

That was one bitter grief. Another was her childlessness. She had been
married twenty-four years; no child had sprung from the union. This was
a continual grief which imbittered her whole existence.

Since then I have seen a portrait of her at twenty--a splendid
brunette, with high spirit and resolute will and noble beauty in every
line. Ah, me! What wretches we become! Sadness and bitterness, proud
aloofness and a yearning wistfulness were subtly mingled in the demeanor
of Graefin von Rothenfels.

She bowed to us, as Frau Mittendorf introduced us. She did not bestow a
second glance upon Stella; but bent a long look, a second, a third
scrutinizing gaze upon me. I--I am not ashamed to own it--quivered
somewhat under her searching glance. She impressed and fascinated me.

She seated herself, and slightly apologizing to us for intruding
domestic affairs, began to speak with Frau Mittendorf of some case of
village distress in which they were both interested. Then she turned
again to us, speaking in excellent English, and asked us whether we were
staying there, after which she invited us to dine at her house the
following day with Frau Mittendorf. After the invitation had been
accepted with sufficient reverence by that lady, the countess rose as if
to go, and turning again to me with still that pensive, half-wistful,
half-mistrustful gaze, she said:

"I have my carriage here. Would you like to come with me to see our
woods and house? They are sometimes interesting to strangers."

"Oh, very much!" I said, eagerly.

"Then come," said she. "I will see that you are escorted back when you
are tired. It is arranged that you remain until you feel _gene, nicht
wahr?_"

"Oh, thank you!" said I, again, hastening to make myself ready, and
parenthetically hoping, as I ran upstairs, that Frau Mittendorf's eyes
might not start quite out of her head with pride at the honor conferred
upon her house and visitors.

Very soon I was seated beside the Graefin in the dark-green clarence,
with the grand coachman and the lady's own jaeger beside