A captive princess ; a novel

Front matter

R

ICHAR D HENRY SAVAG. E

Fifteenth] Routledge's Railway Library Advertiser.

Book I. "the Castle Dangerous.-"

CHAPTEB PAGB

I. A Woman's Kingdom 5

II. "Will You Keep My Secret?" 19

III. " You are in Itussia Now ! " 35

IV " The Brotherhood of the East ", ... . 51

V- In the Old Chateau De Boris 71

Book II. Weaving Spiders

VI. Max and Arline read the Book of Love 93

VII. Eve and the Serpent 113

VIII. Spreading the Net. . . . MO

IX. The Yacht Club Ball . . . 1G3

X. Adrift on the Wild Baltic 180

Book III. Ransomed By Love

XL A Thwarted Plot. 221

XII- The Hunted Fugitive 239

CONTENTS

CHAPTEB PAGE

XIII. Between Love and Duty 258

XIV Your Hand, or His Life ! 283

XA r " These are the Scars of Shipka ! They

Should not Plead in Vain 1 " 303

A CAPTIVE PRINCESS.

Chapter I

a woman's kingdom.

Countess von Dornberg sighed wearily as she turned her eyes away from the gray waste of waters spread out before her. A treacherous leaden mist was now stealing over from the Esthonian shore, and as yet no gleam of silver sail had rewarded her hour's vigil. The clang of her silver bell then echoed loudly in the great, lonely drawing-room.

The Lady of the Isles gazed inquiringly at old Elia, her butler, whose wrinkled face was as yellow as the buff facings of his faded blue livery.

" You have seen nothing? The mail boat should be even now nearing the island."

" Nothing as yet, Barina," piped the aged servingman. " It is the old thing — the currents, the winds, even the witches and nixies, fight against us here! "

" The young ladies? " calmly continued Marie von Dornberg, ignoring the old Russian's superstitious babble, for, like the brook, Elia went on forever.

" They are out riding," said Elia, approaching the deep-set windows whose double sashes bespoke the inclemency of a Baltic winter.

" There is the boat coming now. It is just passing the island,"

b A CAPTIVE PRINCESS.

His mistress gazed out over her emerald lawns, whose bordering trees were just faintly colored with the first blossoms of early May.

"' Bring me my mantle. I will walk down to the Point," she said, as a new light came into her eyes. " There may be letters from Max."

The stately woman, who was the sovereign ruler of eight hundred simple Esthonian islanders, paused before the portrait of a stalwart, fair-haired man, upon whose breast the artist had proudly depicted the medals and crosses which a crafty Komanoff had once showered upon the dead Adolf von Dornberg.

" Father and son," she murmured. " Max will be the same headlong, obstinate character. ' II ira loin/ " she sighed.

And as she left the room, her lip curled as she noted the perfunctory exhibition of an official loyalty in the superbly framed engravings of the Czar Alexander II., and the aged Czarina, whose heart was already throbbing in a bitfer jealousy of the sweet-faced Dolgorouki. For the deserted Maria of Darmstadt was breaking her heart in the loneliness of the Winter Palace, and murmuring with white lips, " She shines me down."

" They will never make Eussians of us at heart," mused Countess Marie, whose keen glances had fallen scornfully upon the silver icons gleaming in the corners of the luxurious salon. " The old Swedish blood, the stubborn Lutheran faith, are still proof against Muscovite bureaucracy and official orthodoxy! "

With a conscious pride, the Lady of the Manor passed the old stone walls behind which, in the days gone by, Esthonian, Dane, Swede, and Pole had rallied in turn to stem the tide of the invaders bearing the blue and white St. Andrew's cross.

It was a woman's kingdom, this little island of Worms, with its forty square miles of wooded hills, of bleak promontories, and wind and wave swept shores.

Cut off from the Esthonian shores by dangerous channels, and fenced with blinding fogs and violent currents, the lonely island seldom was trodden by a stranger's foot.

Marie von Dornberg sought out her favorite seat, in an old ruined watch-station. To the west, the sun was still gilding the waves, and a far-off smoke marked the slow passage of a Riga-bound steamer.

The lonely woman's heart leaped up as her eyes fell upon the kindred shores of Dago to the south; with faraway Oesel (her birthplace) a blue distant vision, its peaks flecked with glints of the sunset gold.

A noble and stately figure was Marie von Dornberg as her eyes sought the " bluest of the isles " whence Count Adolf von Dornberg had borne away his girlish bride, the last of the von Ehrensteins.

In this year of trouble and unrest, eighteen hundred and seventy-nine, the vague political commotion which agitated all Eussia had stirred up even the sluggish Finland and the quiet Baltic Provinces.

And now, all Courland, Livonia, Esthonia, and old Ingria were trembling under the quest which the fierce-hearted Tolstoy had instituted years before. It was true that the drag-net of " seventy-five," yielding nearly two hundred " suspect " victims, had spared these Baltic Provinces.

But a woman whose ancestors had fought in the knightly ring of the Yellow Brigade around Gustavus Adolphus at Lutzen — an heiress born to all the proud traditions of the von Ehrensteins — had brought away from her native Arensburg all the stern pride of the unconquered Livonian nobility. She reigned untrammelled.

The very winds of heaven chanted freedom around her, and her girlish mind had been fascinated with the legends of those brave Esthonian islanders who died around their idols.

Since the year twelve hundred, the gleaming waters spread out below her had borne the war flags of Dane, German, the lion-hearted Swede, and the all-conquering Eussian, that victorious Slav-Cain who had slain his Polish brother Abel.

Eurik, the Varangian, with his " Euotsen " had given an alien name to the mighty composite nation which found its foreign chief among the hardy " rowers " of the icy north, the fierce men who tamed the bold Normans, bearded the hardy Dane, overran merry England, and burst the seal of silent ages, crossing the trackless Atlantic to far Vineland, in Saint Brendan's shadowy pathway.

8 A CAPTIVE PEIN0ES9.

And now, mistress for life of her little island kingdom, Marie von Dornberg waited for her only son, Max, to come back to his birthplace and view the " pent-up Ithaca " of the diminished holdings of the von Dornbergs and von Ehrensteins. It was the only independent holding left on the conquered Baltic shores!

Around her all was storm and sunshine mingled, for a gray fog in the east was driven onward by rising gales and a fierce slanting rain. Before its fitful impulse the mail boat was driving swiftly on toward the little landing below her.

" It is the icy breath of Russia," she murmured, her heart stirred with the local pride of birth which mingled the gallant traditions of Pole, Dane, German, and Swede, who had stoutly held these dangerous marches of the frontier land until Peter the lee King at last dragged down the fiery Charles XII. at fatal Pultowa.

Marie von Dornberg forgot her long years of widowhood in her lonely vigil here on the Esthonian shore as she turned her eyes away to the south and west. Her mind reverted once more to her winter home at sunny Cap St. Martin, and her son's long world-wanderings of the last three years came back to her. A dangerous exile!

" I was foolish to bid him come back here now. It is a time of storm and stress. Perhaps he will linger at Paris. His letters may tell me of some new whim. A boy's will is as the wind's will."

Shading her eyes with her white hand, she gazed down over the wooded slopes in search of the truant riders, and saw where the still far-off boat was struggling now against the adverse shore currents.

" It may be hours yet," she murmured, as she gazed out to the west in the golden glory of the dying day. " He must come here and learn to know his people.

" There is Nadine, too, waiting, as fond women wait, and even Zenaide wonders what manner of man the last of the von Dornbergs may be! He must learn to be a man among men. The nobles of the Baltic Provinces all •yearn to see his father's son. And — the outcome of it all?"

She leaned her head upon her jewelled hand and marked the silent surf rolling on the western beach be-

A CAPTIVB PRINCESS. g

low, the blue expanse of ocean beyond tinted with, golden gleams.

She was still a beautiful woman at forty-three, this daughter of an old Swedish warrior line. Tall and stately, with steady blue eyes and tawny hair, her suzerainty had given her a majestic mien.

As she gazed out into the west there came back to her those happy days of life's spring, when, a bride at seventeen, she had landed upon the island, where the sturdy Swedish colonists had welcomed her as a goldenhaired Aslauga.

For her, the chivalrous Adolf von Dornberg had builded the wonder of those days, the great, irregular modern chateau lying below her there on the knoll where the Esthonian idolators had made their last desperate stand.

Her island kingdom had seen the fairy creations of Aladdin's lamp under the touch of love.

The golden sun-lances splintered upon the western windows of the massive two-story stone edifice, with its rugged outlines bravely suggesting a defiance to the death.

In truth, the half-story buttresses below, the overhanging bay-windows above, the watch towers on the corners, the massive gateways and high loopholed encircling walls, gave to Chateau Dornberg the air of a proud old feudal stronghold.

The modern environment of the ancient Esthonian castle had left all the earlier buildings intact, and a cosmopolitan Eussian luxury had gilded the bower where the three crowns and falcon of the von Dornbergs now fluttered from the tall flagstaff of the brave old vantage-place.

It had been a lonely kingdom — this patrimonial island — and yet, the steadfast woman loved the sea-girt realm; for the blue waves barred off the Eussian " tchinovik."

The Viking's daughter had long ruled the simple islanders in her own grand fashion. She knew the stubborn pride of the rugged peasantry who toilsomely reaped the harvest of the sea and dressed their sandy fields in peace. The warring winds and fanged rocks, the defiant currents and clouding fogs, guarded lonely

Worms from the swarm of Eussian officials now "nationalizing " the whole Baltic Provinces and carrying out the will of the Slavophil schemer Samarin.

True, the untiring Muscovite propagandist, at last worn out, slept in alien soil at Berlin, but his cult had lived on after him. It was Kismet! The haughty Finlanders had conserved the autonomy even in the wreck of the great Guerre du Nord, and the adroit Peter, greater than even his flatterers dared to proclaim, trusted to time and Eussian seduction to overcome the social aversion of the stern Finland nobles.

But, to-day, Marie von Dornberg knew that the whole Baltic provinces were gradually coming under the yoke. Yet Arensburg, Eiga, Dorpat, Wenden, and Bevel still boasted the privileges of the Tete-Xoires, and the descendants of the Porte Glaives and Teutonic Knights held socially aloof from the hated Euss.

For all the resistant pride of the banded nobles of Poland's old sea frontier, her eyes to-day saw only the blue and white cross on sloop and shallop, near the strand, and on the steamers and warships far out to the west.

"Every wind that blows bears the Eussian banner on," she murmured, and her pride of birth sadly called back the hopeless struggles on these Baltic shores since that proud mitred warrior, Albert of Eiga, founded the Porte Glaives of Wenden, and so, paved the way for the stately Teutonic Knights.

Since the year twelve hundred the simple Letts and Esthonians had been lashed into a submissive Christianity by Pole and German, Dane and Swede, fanatic Hungarian, and even Henry IV of England, at the head of three hundred mailed knights, had couched his murderous lance, in the name of the peaceful Christ, here on these sandy, pine-fringed shores.

She dreamed over the splendid days of the warriorpriests who had tamed the marches and held their fantastic revels in their fortressed castles of Eevel, Eiga, Arensburg, Hapsal, and Dorpat, and had even ruled the whole of Ingria. A mighty clan of soldier-monks!

But, when that military madman, Charles XII., threw away the great holdings of Sweden on the Eastern Baltic — the hard-won crown jewels of great Gustavus—

A CAPTIVE rRINCESS. 11

there rose up the baleful star of the North, gleaming high in the ice-chilled blue heavens, and, before Peter the Great, all else went down!

Too well the Lady of the Isles knew that Eussia's iron grip never loosens, and, the lonely daughter of a Swedish royal strain, she knew that her son would find no life career under the banner of the pitiless Bomanoffs. He was an alien by blood, education, and social antipathy to the Russ.

For the blood of the von Dornbergs and the von Ehrensteins was but a hallowed proscription.

There remained now nothing of the glorious fabric of the conquering Swedes but the racial loyalty of her Lutheran Swedish colonists and the grudgingly given privileges of the blue-blooded nobles of the Baltic shores. The mailed hand of Kussia had swept away all but the romance of the old.

The only thing free around her was the tameless ocean, thrc-Dbing in its restless runes at the sea-gates of that island kingdom whence Love had fled away, chilled by Time and man's varying moods.

" If Russia were to grasp Norway and Sweden, as it surely will some day, then Max, Count von Dornberg, might have a career," she sighed; " for the mantle of an olden greatness wraps him in shrouding folds! Ah, the will of Peter, and Catherine's dreams of the future only need time to work out all their craftily plotted scheme of empire! It will be too late for Max! "

Her eyes rested upon the gleaming marble tomb rising under the gloomy, sighing pines, where Adolf von Dornberg had found the peaceful rest which he never knew in life.

" His father's son must some day know all — but, not yet!" she sadly murmured.

It was a strange and tragic story — the storm-tossed life of Count Adolf.

With an impatient glance at the forest road hiding her truant riders, and a survey of the distant struggling boat, she rose — her feet following loving memories of a happier past — and went down to the western shore of a little indented bay.

By a great rock, where Count Adolf had often led her in their days of young love, she gazed out upon all

A CAI'TIVK 1'JllNCKaS.

the splendid panorama of the sun now sinking in the golden, gleaming sea.

The live months of fierce-hearted summer were coming on, when reluctant day lingered till midnight on these silent shores, awakened to a throbbing life by the kisses of the goddess, with glowing bosom — the Summer Queen.

There came back to her, now, Heine's exquisite lines,

Her bosom heaved with a storm of reawakened love as she lived over the last hour when Adolf had led her to this lonely spot to tell her of a foreign mission of distinction conferred upon him by the Czar. It had been a last characteristic touch of Muscovite duplicity — " The Greeks bearing gifts."

For the separatist policy of Alexander II. had artfully given an honorable exile to Count Adolf von Dornberg, then hailed in the flush of his manhood as the political leader of the banded alien nobility of the Baltic Provinces. And, all organized resistance had died out with his departure.

It had led on to his death. There was a sad story, an untold tale, of which her foreign-bred son was even now ignorant. The wine of Life stirred in Adolf's bosom. In the wild abandon of the life of the lower Danube, he had been adroitly " exploited " by the wily Russian secret agents.

There were women there with hearts of fire and eyes of flame — the reckless daughters of the beautiful blue Danube. The pace had been a hot one.

The influence of the stately Aslauga ruling on the misty Baltic had soon weakened.

There was a social imbroglio, an intrigue, a quarrel in the bowers of the rosy Mamads, the inevitable duel,

" A distant and a lonely shore Hid Leyden's cold remains."

A crimson flush dyed the fair woman's cheeks as she called back, with a gasp of outraged pride, how one high in Russian authority had dared to bring to her feet the offer of his pent-up passion.

She knew from him all the dark secret of that honorable exile. For Mario von Dornberg, high-souled and fearless, had been her headlong husband's good angel. A rosy bribe of protected court preferment, with the sweets of a secret reign over him who ruled the frontier, had been offered her, but it was a poisoned cup!

In return for her secret adherence to the governmental policy, the Lady of the Isles was to see her son rapidly advanced in the honorable gilded captivity of the Guards, and, later, to shine as the " very rose and expectancy of the fair state" on these historic shores.

Her answer had been one which sent the tempter away, black-browed and scowling, yet humbled and tongue-tied! Her son — the Lord of the Isles — in faraway Heidelberg had finished his education, freed from Russian influences, and her own winters had been passed in the International Paradise of the Riviera. She had fled temptation and so, foiled her enemies.

But the ruler of the woman's kingdom was now unhappy at heart.

" Her son! " Almost a stranger to her, he had spent the last three years in world-wandering, and his ample paternal fortune, with his noble status, made him an easy target for the adventuress, a possible victim of Russian seduction, and perhaps, the wild Berserker blood of th? father might bring a second tragedy into the dark family annals.

" It is a hard world," she sighed. " Anything but St. Petersburg," was her inward prayer; for too well she knew the wiles of the white-bosomed phalanx of the Russian throne.

Only the serpentine Polish woman, with her soft, swelling throat and ophidian eyes, can meet and vanquish the hot-hearted Muscovite dames who do battle " for the Czar behind their silken armor. A rosy and a reckless band!

Marie von Dornberg trembled as she felt in her heart that the home-coming son was almost a stranger to her! And all her woman heart then rose up in one last proud resolve: " I will fence him in with the one pure love of this world — a mother's! I will watch him — fight for him! He shall learn to rule these isles in loyalty to his creed— his ancestry, and all the memories of a glorious past! Let him come! It is best! "

And yet, seated there alone, she wondered if she had been wise to rear her son out of the Eussian dominions. It came to her suddenly that she knew nothing of his Parisian life, of his associates, of his real inner nature.

Free at twenty-one, Count Max von Dornberg had enjoyed his own fortune, and, at twenty-four, he was now as headlong as the father who had succumbed to the fascinations of the Delilahs of the Dobrudsha.

" He must take up his own life now," sighed Countess Marie. " The battle is on, and soldiers are only made by lighting."

Madame von Dornbe-rg despaired of handing over her hard-won experience to the brilliant Heidelberg student.

" Life can not be lived at second hand," she mused. " I dare not tell him all his father's weaknesses, and there are chapters of my own lonely history which he must not know." She was now a steeled woman of the world. She had long watched the winter Passion Play of the Eiviera, and, strong and silent, had avoided all the snares which had been adroitly set for her.

" Chateau qui parte ,se rend tou jours," had been her proverbial guide. Her motto, " Loyal toujours," held her still faithful to the memory of the man whom she had loved in the springtime of her life.

For Adolf von Dornberg had never fallen away from her side. It was only in absence that he fell. The old sorrow was buried in her heart, for the glamour of the happy days was upon her now.

She was living in the happy past, her unravished treasure of the years of love, as she saw once more her gallant husband at her side.

It was here that they had tasted of the sweetest cup of Life, Love's elixir, held in Youth's outstretched, eager hands.

" Far, far away the ocean shone

As the last sunbeams fleeted ; Beside the fisher's cabin lone,

Alone, we two were seated."

The words of the mocking German genius died upon her lips, for, at the crest of the hill, two glowing amazons merrily hailed her as their captive.

"There is Nadine and Princess Aida! Max will a CAruvE rniNCESS. 15

surely find my island kingdom brightened by them. And he shall so be fairy guided to Hapsal's happy shores." She sprang up and soon joined them.

The groom led away Nadine Valdor's gallant gray and Zenaide's coal-black Orloff with the silver star, while the companions threaded the garden's mazes, bringing home the Lady of the Isles.

The silver gong was already sounding for dinner, and old Elia's solemn face gleamed yellow behind the mistress's chair, before Nadine, Baroness Valdor, and her alter ego, Princess Zenaide, could judge of the contents of the first letter opened with trembling hands by the Countess when the mail-bag was deposited upon Madame von Dornberg's escritoire.

"Is it good news, Maman?" eagerly cried her ward, Nadine. There was a sober seriousness in Marie von Dornberg's measured reply.

" Max comes back on the e Constantine's ' next trip. And brings a guest with him. The Eitter Karl von Geist! A German scholar deeply interested in our border lore."

A feeling of sadness and unrest had crept into the mother's heart. " He brings a stranger home to us," she murmured.

" Zenaide, you are a witch! " gayly cried JSTadine. " Your fortune-telling is coming true."

The fair Circassian girl bowed her head in a pretended day-dream.

" The stranger will come, and he will stay," she slowly replied. " The stars tell me their secrets, and I can see him now. He has been here before — no stranger to this land."

It had been a strange fortune which had led a girl born under the tents of Schamyl to the splendors of the Catherine Institute — a little captive Princess, whose childish ears had listened in wonder to the thunder of the Russian cannon echoing around Aul Gounib. A weird mystery wrapped the personality of Princess Zenaide, whose proud family name was lost in the dispersion of Scbamyl's bleeding and dying followers.

A fair-haired beauty of twenty, the disdainful young eaglet chafed under the gilded chains of a Russian pension and the future glittering career of a maid of honor of a future Czarina. <:

Homeless, save for the Czar's splendid bounty, the graceful mountaineer had quickly enslaved Nadine Valdor, her junior by two years.

They were both orphans, for, beyond General Dragonoff, the co-trustee with the Lady of the Isles, Nadine Valdor was alone in the world. The heiress to an enormous estate was in the first year of her twelve years' sojourn at the old Smolnyi Monastyr when the Turcoman sabres had ended General Valdor's life. And here she had found a shelter.

Love had led her into Marie von Dornberg's arms, for the chivalric Baron Valdor had never forgotten the love which he had secretly cherished for the beauty of Arensburg.

And so, he had named the woman whose rank had held her far above him in youth, to be the guardian of his motherless daughter. It was a sweet legacy — this orphan's stainless youth!

So Nadine's vacation visits brought happy laughter into the silent halls of Chateau Dornberg, for already Max had departed for the German training preparatory to his Heidelberg days, when she began to grow up into "womanhood.

" Child — child no more," was the comment of the Lady of the Isles, as she gazed upon the White Bose of Hapsal, for so the graceful girl was already known.

There had been a community of feeling between the two orphans from their first meeting on the Perspective de Liteiny, and the daring Circassian captive proudly defended her brown-eyed darling from the audacious young Eussian tyrants of the haute noblesse.

Never a Narychkine or Soltykoff of them all, who dared to brave the imperious captive Princess. The last taunt of her nameless rank fell upon deaf ears, as Zenaide threw down the gauntlet for " la petite Valdor."

The ceremonial dinner was over, and Princess Aida was gazing out upon the lights of a passing ship far out on the Baltic, as Nadine Valdor listened to the letter in which her long-expected Prince Charming announced his return.

But even her guileless heart knew that some shadow of disappointment already clouded the heir's return.

She was a vision of delight, this bright-faced girl with the tender brown eyes, as she leaned her graceful head upon a blue-veined hand.

Her brown hair was clustered over an exquisite face whose blushes were of Life's ambrosial spring.

Noble, serene, and tender, her voice thrilling low and sweet as the forest winds, Nadine Valdor's eyes glistened with a happy light as she listened to the reading of the unsatisfactory letter which had so strangely disturbed the Lady of the Isles.

There was a ringing laugh when Countess Marie read the few lines in which the last of the von Dornbergs referred to the pale-faced child whom he had seen but once in his ante-Heidelberg days.

" And, Nadine's school-days being over, I presume there will soon be sighing gallants crossing your misty waters. I can hardly fancy the result of the Catherine Institute's social drill upon the little one, all knees and elbows, whom I can scarcely remember/*

"Aida! You have forgotten your own letter! It is from Alixe Bellegarde," cried Nadine, as her cheeks crimsoned under Countess Marie's searching glances. The crest of the Lords of Hapsal were the sure indication of the weekly budget of gossip from the queen of the Esthonian rosebuds.

" There will be cavaliers in plenty soon, Mignonne," carelessly answered the Circassian, when her rapidly darted glances had devoured the four crossed pages.

" And you will soon see your future Czar, for the Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovitch will now bring the beautiful Dagmar and her children to Hapsal! There is a Grand Comite d'Honneur already named.

" You will surely see your bold admirer, Fedor Lazareff, again, for, as Marechal de Noblesse, he will be the ' Arbiter elegantiarum.' "

" And, of course, the Bellcgardes will give the culminatiriEr Fete d'Ete; there will be the Grand Yacht Club hall in August! So you will see the mighty Czarevitch at last! You are a loyal Bussian, and you will be happy! "

The Circassian's eyes were flashing in a haughty scorn. The Countess gazed upon her in surprise. " He is your sovereign's son, Zenaide," she gravely commented.

" I am only a prisoner, a despoiled orphan! " cried Aida. " There is no man to whom I bend the knee. My fathers died, sword in hand, under the shadows of Kasbeck! The Bussians are dogs, and onr horses' hoofs have been wet with their heart's blood!

" Beautiful Dagmar, I will kiss her gentle hand! But I must once breathe the air of Circassia's glorious mountains and drink in the elixir of freedom! I will never begin to live till these golden shackles are broken! "

Marie von Dornberg and Nadine silently watched her as she swiftly strode away, with all the savage grace of her wild blood, and, as they talked in low tones of the home-coming, from a distant music-room the chords of a piano breathed out the fitful gusts of the stormy passions of the dauntless social rebel.

A sense of impending trouble weighed down the heart of the chatelaine, who was chilled by the untimely visit of this unknown social quantity, Karl von Geist.

It was the hour of ten when black-browed Olga Luboff silently seated herself before the samovar. A cloud seemed to have drifted over the social horizon of Chateau Dornberg, and Fedor LazarefF s name had called up memories of an already boldly impertinent suitor for the heiress of the gallant Valdor.

" Princess Zenaide," gravely demanded the Lady of the Isles.

" She has gone to the Tower, Madame la Comtesse, and begs your kind indulgence," replied the stubbornlooking Eussian demoiselle de compagnie of the absent daughter of the unconquered Tcherkess.

" All must be bright for Max's home-coming, Duischka! " fondly said the mother, as she kissed her nestling a fond good-night. " You will both go over and receive him. The Intendant will accompany you."

Left alone, the Countess pondered long upon her son's letter, with its reserved sections. " It looks like a shield 'twixt him and me — the advent of this stranger, Von Geist. A German noble — a man of the world — perhaps an intrigant! "