all replied at once; whereupon Baron
T. begged to be allowed to see it. "I will show it you to-morrow," the
Count said. "No, Papa, now, immediately," the younger lady said
mockingly; "just before the ghostly hour, such a thing creates a much
greater impression."

All who were present, not excepting the boy and his tutor, took a candle
and then they walked as if they had formed a torchlight procession, to
the wing of the house where the hussar's room was. There was a life-size
picture of the _White Lady_ hanging in a Gothic passage near his room,
among other ancestral portraits, and it by no means made a terrible
impression on anyone who looked at it, but rather the contrary. The
ghost, dressed in stiff, gold brocade and purple velvet, and with a hawk
on her wrist, looked like one of those seductive Amazons of the fifteenth
century, who exercised the art of laying men and game at their feet with
equal skill.

"Don't you think that the _White Lady_ is very like mamma?" Countess Ida
said, interrupting the Baron's silent contemplation of the picture.
"There is no doubt of it," the hussar replied, while the Countess smiled
and the tutor turned red, and they were still standing before the
picture, when a strong gust of wind suddenly extinguished all the lights,
and they all uttered a simultaneous cry. The _White Lady_, the little
Count whispered, but she did not come, and as it was luckily a moonlight
night, they soon recovered from their momentary shock. The family retired
to their apartments, while the hussar and the tutor went to their own
rooms, which were situated in the wing of the castle which was haunted by
the _White Lady_; the officer's being scarcely thirty yards from the
portrait, while the tutor's were rather further down the corridor.

The hussar went to bed, and was soon fast asleep, and though he had
rather uneasy dreams nothing further happened. But while they were at
breakfast the next morning, the Count's body-servant told them, with
every appearance of real terror, that as he was crossing the court-yard
at midnight, he had suddenly heard a noise like bats in the open
cloisters, and when he looked he distinctly saw the _White Lady_ gliding
slowly through them; but they merely laughed at the poltroon, and though
our hussar laughed also, he fully made up his mind, without saying a word
about it, to keep a look-out for the ghost that night.

Again they had supper alone, without any company, had some music