ernly rebuked her, and took his
leave. He was accompanied by his wife, disguised as his page, according
to some versions of the legend.--TRANSLATOR.]

He came in to supper where he found himself for the first time in company
with all the members of the family, just in the frame of mind that was
suitable for ghosts, and was not a little surprised when his host told
him, half smiling and half seriously, that the "White Lady" was
disturbing the castle again, and that she had latterly been seen very
often. "Yes, indeed," Countess Ida exclaimed; "You must take care, Baron,
for she haunts the very wing where your room is." The hussar was just in
the frame of mind to take the matter seriously, but, on the other hand,
when he saw the dark, ardent eyes of the Countess, and then the merry
blue eyes of her daughter fixed on him, any real fear of ghosts was quite
out of the question with him. For Baron T. feared nothing in this world,
but he possessed a very lively imagination, which could conjure up
threatening forms from another world so plainly that sometimes he felt
very uncomfortable at his own fancies. But on the present occasion that
malicious apparition had no power over him; the ladies took care of that,
for both of them were beautiful and amiable.

The Countess was a mature Venus of thirty-six, of middle height, and with
the voluptuous figure of a true Viennese, with bright eyes, thick dark
hair, and beautiful white teeth, while her daughter Ida, who was
seventeen, had light hair and the pert little nose of the china figures
of shepherdesses in the dress of the period of Louis XIV., and was short,
slim, and full of French grace. Besides them and the Count, a son of
twelve and his tutor were present at supper. It struck the hussar as
strange that the tutor, who was a strongly-built young man, with a
winning face and those refined manners which the greatest plebeian
quickly acquires when brought into close and constant contact with the
aristocracy, was treated with great consideration by all the family
except the Countess, who treated him very haughtily. She assumed a
particularly imperious manner towards her son's tutor, and she either
found fault with, or made fun of, everything that he did, while he put
up with it all with smiling humility.

Before supper was over their conversation again turned on to the ghost,
and Baron T. asked whether they did not possess a picture of the _White
Lady_. "Of course we have one," they