enjoy something of the world
without, and above all to devote her loving heart entirely to her
father. But he persisted that the honour of his house allowed of no
other arrangement than the present, and after every conversation on the
subject--as though stung by some secret vexation--he would abruptly
take leave of his lovely child, who on such occasions sat in the turret
of the convent-garden wall, lost in thought, and gazing on the road her
father had taken.

Thus year after year passed by: the Count's daughter had long out-grown
childhood, and the good nuns, reluctant as they might have been to part
with their charge, yet began to wonder that nothing was said about
marrying her. For they had no idea that Count Hugo, shrinking from
confessing to a son-in-law that he was a beggar, spoke as little about
his daughter as though she had been changed in her cradle, and a fairy
bantling placed there in her stead.

Now it happened that early one morning, when no one was expecting
him at his own castle, the Count returned quite alone on his roan mare,
and gave a faint knock as a man mortally sick might give at a
hospital-gate. The porter, growling over the untimely guest who roused
him from his morning sleep, looked through the grating in the iron
court-door, and was so startled by what he saw, that his trembling
hands could scarcely draw the heavy bolt in order to admit of his
master's entrance. For the face of the Count was pale as that of the
dead, and his eyes hollow, fixed, and expressionless, as if, instead of
having returned from a merry-making at the castle of his rich
neighbour, the Count Pierre of Gaillac, he might have been emerging
from the cave of St. Patrick, or from a still more terrible place where
he had spent the night with spectres. He threw the bridle of his horse
(the animal was covered with foam, and greedily drank the rain-water on
the ground,) to the alarmed domestic, and uttered one word only,
"Geoffroy." Then he ascended the winding-stair to his lonely room,
shaking his head when the servant enquired whether the Count would have
any refreshments, and whether he should wake up the other retainers.

The porter, who had never seen his master in such a plight, would have
been slow to recover from the shock he had received, had not the horse,
with a shrill neigh of distress, sunk on the ground. With some
difficulty he got it to its feet again, and led the utterly exhausted
animal to the stable, where he