r mood. Why I did not take my usual place at the pianoforte I
cannot explain, even to myself, nor why I sat down beside the Baroness
on the sofa. Her question, "And what were you doing then to get into
danger?" was an indication of our tacit agreement that conversation,
not music, was to engage our attention for that evening. After I had
narrated my adventure in the wood, and mentioned the warm interest
which the Baron had taken in it, delicately hinting that I had not
thought him capable of so much feeling, the Baroness began in a tender
and almost melancholy tone, "Oh! how violent and rude you must think
the Baron; but I assure you it is only whilst we are living within
these gloomy, ghostly walls, and during the time there is hunting going
on in the dismal fir-forests, that his character completely changes, at
least his outward behaviour does. What principally disquiets him in
this unpleasant way is the thought, which constantly haunts him, that
something terrible will happen here. And that undoubtedly accounts for
the fact of his being so greatly agitated by your adventure, which
fortunately has had no ill consequences. He won't have the meanest of
his servants exposed to danger, if he knows it, still less a new-won
friend whom he has come to like; and I am perfectly certain that
Gottlieb, whom he blames for having left you in the lurch, will be
punished; even if he escapes being locked up in a dungeon, he will yet
have to suffer the punishment, so mortifying to a hunter, of going out
the next time there is a hunt with only a club in his hand instead of a
rifle. The circumstance that hunts like those which are held here are
always attended with danger, and the fact that the Baron, though always
fearing some sad accident, is yet so fond of hunting that he cannot
desist from provoking the demon of mischief, make his existence here a
kind of conflict, the ill effects of which I also have to feel. Many
queer stories are current about his ancestor who established the
entail; and I know myself that there is some dark family secret locked
within these walls like a horrible ghost which drives away the
owners, and makes it impossible for them to bear with it longer than a
few weeks at a time--and that only amid a tumult of jovial guests. But
I--Oh! how lonely I am in the midst of this noisy, merry company! And
how the ghostly influences which breathe upon me from the walls stir
and excite my very heart! You, my dear friend, ha