Agnes Castle and Egerton Castle

“ The fiddler and Steven stood side by side watching her.
"Well," said the former, after a pause, "are you inclined to go and break bread again in the house whose stones plotted your blood? Or will you take the safe way down the mountain to the cushions of your berlin and cry: 'Drive on, postilion'?"
Steven regarded the speaker a moment or two before replying. It seemed to the young man as if that long, black night had cut him off from his own purblind youth. He felt himself years older, weighted with life.
"I am going back to the castle," he said, and set off climbing. ”

“ A man may play the mediæval avenger overnight, but in the morning he belongs to his own age, and the sense of proportion reaaserts itself. The Burgrave's awakening to sobriety, his realisation of his own deed, were depressing to the direst degree. Paradoxically, no less terrible was the discovery that his suspicions had been unfounded; that his wife was both virtuous and still of the living; that it was an innocent niece and an innocent guest whom he had precipitated to an awful doom. He had almost betrayed himself in his first anguished cry on meeting the Burgravine. ”

“ Steven's reflections, as he waited in the best sheltered corner of the deserted tower, listening to the beat and gurgle of the rain, were of an unsatisfactory description. The folly of weakness is the worst of follies; the realisation of it the most galling. He was about—no use in trying to blink the fact—he was about to ruin his own life; to take upon himself an intolerable burden; to commit, technically at least, a crime against hospitality ”

“ Were he now rolling along the wet Imperial road with the Burgrave's wife, he would have had, doubtless, to clasp her much as he clasped Sidonia. Precarious as it was, his present situation was infinitely preferable. He felt like a father, holding his pretty child, all warm with tenderness; not a dishonest, cold lover with the woman he cannot love. ”

“ The Burgrave was elderly, to have so young a wife; but he was a handsome man, square-built and portly. His manners were very fine—so fine, indeed, as to be confusing to his guest, straight from England and English reticence. The Burgrave smiled frequently, and joked, too, to a vast extent, with his wife and niece; but it was noticeable to Steven that the former seemed ill at ease, and that the latter now and again regarded her relation with an eye in which surprise and contempt were mingled. ”

“ The Burgrave, however, was found dead drunk in his hall, so that I could get little out of him. The lady is convinced that you, comrade, have eloped with her niece by some devious road——"
"Devious enough," said Steven, with a short laugh. But Sidonia had become grave.
"I am glad he was drunk," she said with judicial air.
"I left the Burgravine planning hysterics. But I have given orders, in the household, as if I were lord of it all—there are some half-dozen fellows searching the rocks already. And here, by the way, comes one bright youth. ”

“ Steven was quite pale as he caught her hack against his breast.
"Mercy!" He shivered, thinking of those giddy deeps. She clung to him, her scented head against his shoulders.
"Surely, surely it is not much I ask," she murmured faintly. "See how I trust you, kinsman! Only your protection, your escort back to our own people. It is not much to ask!"
It meant his whole life, and he knew it. But what can a young man do with a woman's arms about him and a woman's whisper pleading in his ears?
"Ha-ha-ha!" came the Burgrave's laugh from below. Countess Betty slid out of "Beau Cousin's" arms. ”

“ Men are scarce in these parts."
The Jäger shrugged his shoulders. "She took the kisses as well," he said cynically. "What will his Lordship have? Women are like that!"
The other flung the coins across the table with an oath. Those were better days, of old, when a man could have his bidding done in his own castle without any such bargainings. But as the servant wheeled and left, the fierce smile of triumph came again to the master's lips: "The entrance of the east tower! You have chosen well, my turtle-doves!"
The Burgrave gradually lost himself in reflection. ”

“ An indignant sob caught her in the throat. "You his guest!" she repeated. "O, whatever he thought of you, he should have remembered that! I can never forgive him."
And the guest who had meditated, however unwillingly, betrayal of his host, blushed painfully under the cloak of blackness. He heard her swallow her tears and knew that she clenched her hands. After a while she went on more quietly—
"How wise it was of Aunt Betty to tell you to go away! And, O, how glad I am that she sent me instead of coming herself to bid you 'Good-bye.'" Steven opened his mouth and then closed it again dumbly. ”

“ Sometimes as drowsiness pressed upon him, he thought himself in a nightmare, from which he must wake to find himself huddled in a corner of his travelling-chaise. But he would have died sooner than disturb the placid being in his embrace.
Then, at the moment when the tension of enforced immobility brought such a feeling of exasperation and oppression upon him that he almost felt as if his wits were leaving him, he turned his head instinctively in the direction of the air current, and relief came. The rain was over. ”

“ There was a certain anxiety under the speaker's mocking air.
"My purpose," began Steven coldly—he was about to add, "concerns you not." But on second thought he wheeled round, and all that had been gathering in his heart this night escaped in words of fire. "Why do you ask?" he cried. "You know! What! are you the man to whom the souls of others lie bare? Are you a man like myself, and do you think I can leave that child now? ”

“ He will not leave a mouse-hole unprodded for your corpses."
"Shall we not bid him get breakfast for us all?" cried Sidonia gaily. "'Tis the least Wellenshausen can do for you this morning, Count Steven." ”

“ A man who has spies all about his place! And now he believes I am hiding something, and he is waiting only to be quite sure. O, sir, you might have known! A man who shuts up his wife for jealousy is not seized with such effusive hospitality towards handsome strangers without a reason of his own. ”

“ Why, so far from striking off Fatima's head, he sends in haste to recall the audacious visitor and craves to be allowed to expend upon him the treasures of an amiable disposition.
"Ah, fiddler, my friend," thought Count Steven sagely, "you and your music have discoursed wild nonsense anent the surprises of life, anent the golden rose of youth ... but the world is a workaday place, drab and dull of hue ”

“ Of course that decided it. "Don't go," said the fiddler. Steven Lee, Count Kilmansegg, if Austrian by name, was half English by blood and more than half by education. And he was twenty-two; combativeness and obstinacy rose in arms. He had not been long his own master. ”

“ You see," she proceeded, with her astounding composure, "through this tower, in former days, was the sallyport—there used to be no other way; and were any one, whose existence interfered with the views of the Lord of Wellenshausen, passing out or in, it was easy to set the machinery in motion, with the result——" she broke off. ”

“ Countess Betty had the megrims and declined to appear at supper. For a sufferer, however, she had a bright eye; and she moved about her room with the alacrity of a busy bird. She was alone, some belated notion of prudence having bade her dismiss her handmaiden during the final preparation. ”

“ The young traveller, who had been looking back on his stolen visit to the castle on the peak, and on his evening with the ladies sheltered behind in forbidding walls, as an adventure of some spice (though, in its integrity, harmless enough) , was seized with disappointment. So much for all latter-day romance; so much for the reputed Bluebeard of Wellenshausen; for the husband so ferociously jealous, report said, that he must shut up his Fatima in a tower as tight as St. ”