"But where is Grete?" said Hermann, in a bewildered way, to the English
Mary who sate beside him in the second carriage.  "She not here?  She
know I come; she is not at the door of the inn——"

"Who is Grete?" said Mary, who had made great friends with the big
keeper in England.

"Why, Grete is—you know, Grete."

At that moment Margarethe Halm was in the courtyard of the Count’s
house, whither she had stolen away from her father’s house, with her
heart beating, and her ears listening for the sound of the
carriage-wheels.  A young, swarthy, handsome girl, with an innocent,
dumb, animal-like fondness and honesty in her big, soft, black eyes, she
stood there in her very best clothes—her Sunday head-dress of black
velvet and gold beads; her short petticoats and dress; her elaborately
embroidered boddice; her puffed white sleeves, coming down to the elbow,
and there exposing her round, fat, sunburnt arms.  She it was with whom
Hermann had sung, on the night before he left for England, the old
ballad in which the wanderer bids farewell to his native vale; and ever
since, when she heard the pitiful words—

    "Muss aus dem Thal jetzt scheiden,
      Wo alles Lust und Klang;
    Das ist mein herbstes Leiden
      Mein letzter Gang.
    Dich, mein stilles Thal, grüss ich tausend Mal!
      Das ist mein herbstes Leiden,
    Mein letzter Gang!"

—the big black eyes were wont to overflow, and her round brown cheeks
grew wet with tears.  She was always very silent, this Grete Halm, and
you might have thought her dull; but she was so extraordinarily
sensitive to emotional impressions, and there was such a mute, appealing
look in her eyes for kindness and affection, that half the young men in
the neighbourhood would have given their ears to be permitted to walk
about with Grete, and go to church with her, and sing with her in the
evening. There was the young schoolmaster, for example—everybody knew
how he came to have that ugly mark on his nose the last time he came
home from Göttingen, to undertake the tuition of his neighbours’
children.  It was at a beer-drinking bout, and a few got tipsy; and one
especially, Friedrich Schefer, disliking young Gersbach, came round to
him, and said—

"I see you have Margarethe Halm written on one of your books.  If that
is the name of your sweetheart, my friend Seidl says she is a rogue, and
not to be trusted."

"I challenge you," says Gersbach, calmly, but blinking fiercely through
his spectacles.

"Further, muthiger Herr Gersbach, my friend Seidl says your Margarethe
Halm has half-a-dozen sweethearts, and that you give her money to buy
presents for them."

"You are a liar, Friedrich Schefer!" shouts Gersbach, starting to his
feet; "and I challenge you, ’_ohne, ohne,_’"¹

    ¹ The extended phrase is, "Ich fordere Ihnen auf, _ohne Mützen, ohne
      Secundanten_"—"I challenge you, _without either masks or
      seconds_."  Such a challenge being given (and it is only given in
      cases of extreme provocation), the duellists fight without
      cessation until one of them is put _hors de combat_.

So the next morning the meeting took place; and the unfortunate
Gersbach, who had had little practice, and was slow of eye, suddenly
received a blow which divided the under part of his nose from the upper.
The wound was sewn up again on the spot; but when Gersbach came home he
looked a hideous spectacle, and though he never spoke of it, it leaked
out that the wound had been got in fighting about Margarethe Halm.
Gersbach was a great friend of Hans Halm’s, and spent every evening in
the inn chatting with the keepers, or reading Greek, and drinking white
wine and water; but Grete showed him no particular favour, and he seemed
rather sad.

"Ach, Gott," said Margarethe to herself, as she stood in the stone
courtyard; "if they should not come—and if my father should see me——"

The next moment she caught sight of the two carriages coming along
through the village; and her heart waxed a little faint as she saw that
Hermann was sitting with a rosy young English girl by his side.

"He never wrote to me anything about her," she thought, in those
scrawled letters which always ended, "_Denke an mich, Gretchen; und mit
herzlichsten Grüssen_," &c., &c.

It seemed part of the tall head-forester’s pride that he would not
permit himself to show any joyful surprise on finding that Grete was in
the courtyard. On the contrary, with a curt "_’n Abend, Grete_," he
passed her, and busied himself in seeing that the Count and his guests
were being properly attended to by the servants, and that the luggage
was being straightway carried in.

Margarethe Halm, with her heart beating worse than ever, came timidly
forward, then hung about a little, and at last ventured to say, with a
little quivering of the mouth:

"Thou hast never even shaken hands with me, Hermann."

"But thou seest that I am busy, Grete, and—_Donnerwetter_, idiot, look
what you do with the lady’s box!—and thou shouldst not have come at such
a time, when the Herr Graff and his visitors have just arrived, and
expect——"

He proceeded to give some more orders; for the head-forester was an
important man in Schönstein, and looked upon the Count’s domestics as he
looked upon his own keepers.  But happening to turn, he caught a glimpse
of what suddenly smote down his gruff pride—Margarethe Halm was standing
by, with her soft black eyes brimming over with tears.  Of course his
stalwart arms were round her shoulders in a moment, and he was talking
pettingly and caressingly to her, as if she were an infant, with ever so
many _du’s_, and _klein’s_, and _chen’s_.

The Count’s big mansion, though it looked like a whitewashed
cotton-factory outside, was inside very prettily furnished; and the
long, low-roofed rooms, with their polished wooden floors and
gaily-decorated walls, were very cool and pleasant.  There was little
garden about the house; the ground behind was laid out in formal walks
between avenues of acacias and limes; there was a little pond with a
plaster-boy in the centre, who spouted a thin jet of water through a
pipe; and there was, at the further end of the trees, an artificial ruin
which the previous proprietor had failed to complete when the Count took
possession of the place.

"How lovely the village looks in that red light!" said Annie Brunel, as
they all went out on the balcony of the room in which dinner had been
laid for them.

"But the glory of Schönstein," said the Count, slapping Will on the
shoulder—"I say, the glory of Schönstein, my boy, lies in those miles
and miles of trees—the deer, my lad, the deer!  Ah, Miss Brunel, when I
see you take a gun upon your shoulder, and march into the forest with
us—like Diana, you know——"

He looked at her with the admiring smile of an elderly Adonis.  Had he
not the right, now that she had seen his splendour and his wealth?
Could he doubt any longer about his chance of winning that white little
hand?

"You are too kind, Count," she said, laughingly. "Lady Jane will tell
you that the very name of Diana has been always hateful to me."

"It’s Diana Vernon she means," said Mrs. Christmas, with a pretty little
laugh; "that she used to play before she became a grand lady.  And play
it she did, Count, take my word for it, as well as ever you could think
of: and as for me, I never _could_ understand how she so hated the part,
which is a a very good part for a young miss that can sing.  I declare
the dialogue is quite beautiful."

Here she gave, with great feeling and correct, impassioned emphasis,
some passages in which the Diana and Francis of that ridiculous drama
talk bombastic sentiment to each other, causing Miss Brunel to laugh
until the tears ran down her cheeks.

"You may laugh as you like, Miss Annie, but it’s a beautiful piece; and
how many years is it since you played it for my benefit?"

"You’re making me quite old, Lady Jane," protested the young actress.

"People have only to look at you, my dear," continued the bright little
old woman, "and they won’t make a mistake.  That was the very last time
I went on the stage, Count; and do you know what I played?—why, ’Miami’
in the ’Green Bushes.’  And Miss Annie, here, just to please me,
consented to play ’Nelly O’Neil,’ and, will you believe me, Mr. Anerley,
I stood in the wings and cried—me, an old woman, who had heard it all a
thousand times—when she began to sing the ’Green Bushes.’  Have you
heard it, Count?—don’t you know the words of it?

    "’As I was a-walking one morning in May,
    To hear the birds singing, and see lambkins play,
    I espied a young damsel, so sweetly sung she,
    Down by the Green Bushes, where she chanced to meet me."

There was Polly Hastings—she played ’Geraldine’ then—came to me after
that last night, and said, solemnly, that she would give herself over to
the devil if he would only make her able to sing the ballad as Miss
Annie sung it that night.  The people in the pit——"

"Mrs. Christmas will go on romancing all the evening, Mr. Anerley, if
you don’t stop her," said Miss Brunel.

"And poor Tom Mulloney—he played ’Wild Murtogh’ for me—do you remember,
Miss Annie, that morning at rehearsal when they came and told him that
his wife and the little boy were drowned? He didn’t speak a word—not a
word; he only shook a little, and was like to fall; then he walked out,
and he was never on the boards of a theatre again. He took to drinking
as if he was mad; and he was put in an asylum at last; and they say he
used to sing all his old songs at the amateur concerts in the place, you
know, better nor ever he had sung them in the theatre—that was ’The
Dance on the Flure,’ and ’The Jug o’ Punch,’ and ’Savourneen Deelish,’
and ’The Coulin’——"

"The Coulin!" said Will, with a sort of chill at the heart; he had
forgotten all about Dove, and St. Mary-Kirby; and the remembrance of
them, at that moment, seemed to reproach him somehow.

"Do you know ’The Coulin’?" asked Miss Brunel, wondering at his sudden
gravity.

"Yes," said he, with an affectation of carelessness. "It is one of
Dove’s favourite airs.  But she won’t accept the modern words as
representing the song; she will have it that the melody describes the
parting of two friends——"

"Come, then," said the Count, briskly, "dinner is ready.  Miss Brunel,
you shall play us the—the what, did you say?—to-morrow, after the man
has come from Donaueschingen to tune the piano.  Not a bad piano,
either, as you’ll see; and now I don’t grudge having bought it along
with the rest of the furniture, when I find that _you_ will charm us
with an occasional song.  Four hundred florins, I think it was; but I
don’t know."

As they retired into the long dining-saloon, where a sufficiently good
dinner was placed on the table, Hermann came out into the courtyard,
surrounded by a lot of yelping little beagles, with short stumpy legs,
long ears, long noses, and sagacious eyes. Further, there was a huge
brown mastiff, with long lithe limbs, and tremendous jaws, at sight of
which Grete shrank back, for the brute was the terror of the village.

"Go down, then, thou stupid dog, thou worthless follow! seest thou not
the young lady is afraid? Ah, du guter Hund, du Rudolph, and so thou
knowest me again?  Come along, Grete, he won’t touch you; and we’ll go
to see your father."

"You won’t tell him I was waiting for you, Hermann?" said the girl,
shyly.

Hans Halm stood at the door of his _châlet_-looking hostelry, in a thin
white coat and a broad straw hat, with a complacent, benevolent smile on
his stout visage and shrewd blue eyes.  Sometimes he looked up and down
the road, wondering what had become of Grete, who, Frau Halm being dead,
had taken her mother’s place in the management of the inn. Perhaps Hans
suspected where his tender-hearted, black-eyed daughter had gone; at
least, he was in nowise surprised to see her coming back with Hermann,
Rudolph joyously barking by their side.  The two men shook hands
heartily, and kissed each other; for had they not, some years before,
pledged themselves solemnly to call each other "du," and sworn eternal
friendship, and drank a prodigious quantity of Affenthaler over that
ceremony?

"Gretchen, get you indoors; the house is quite full, and you can’t
expect your grandmother to do everything."

Hermann looked into the passage.  On the pegs along the wall were hung a
number of guns—nearly all of them double-barrelled breechloaders; with
white barrels, and broad green straps for the slinging of them over the
shoulder.

"My men are within, _nicht wahr_?" he said.

"Listen, and you will hear," said Hans Halm.

From the door by which Grete had disappeared, there issued a faint
murmur of voices and a strong odour of tobacco-smoke.  Hermann went
forward and opened this door, meeting there a picture with which he was
quite familiar, but which it is wholly impossible to describe.  The
chief room of the inn, monopolising all the ground-floor, and lighted by
ten or twelve small windows, was almost filled with a cloud of pale-blue
smoke, in which picturesque groups of men were seen seated round the
long narrow tables.  Brown-faced, bearded men, they wore the foresters’
dress of green and grey, with a tall beaver hat in which were stuck some
capercailzie feathers, with a large cartridge-pouch of roe-skin slung
over their shoulder by a green strap, with a horn slung round their neck
by means of a twisted green cord with tattered tassels, and with a long
killing-knife lying on the table before them, with which they from time
to time cut a lump off the brown loaf.  All round the low-roofed room,
forming a sort of cornice, ran a row of deers’ horns, tastefully
mounted, each marked with the date on which the animal had been shot.
These were, for the most part, the product of Hans Halm’s personal
skill; though the finest pair had been presented to him by Hermann.
Besides the under-keepers, there were one or two villagers, and in a
corner sat young Gersbach, his spectacles firmly fixed on the book
before him, except when Margarethe Halm happened to pass before him, as
she brought in fresh chopins of white wine to the swarthy, sinewy,
picturesque foresters.

Of course Hermann’s entrance was the signal for a general uproar, all
the keepers starting from the benches and crowding round him to bid him
welcome.  At last he managed to get clear of them, and then he sat down
on one of the benches.

"Listen, friends!" he said, in a loud voice, bringing down his hand with
a bang on the table.

There was instant silence.

"The Herr Graf and his friend go shooting to-morrow morning.  Every man
will be here by four o’clock—four o’clock, do you understand?  In
placing the guns, you will take care that the Herr Graf, and the other
Englander, have the _Haupt-platz_² alternately.  Four o’clock, every one
of you, remember. And now, in God’s name, Hans Halm, let us have some of
your white wine, that I haven’t tasted for many a day!"

    ² The Haupt-platz is the point at which the deer are most likely to
      break cover, and therefore the best position for the sportsman.
      There are generally one or two of those good places, which are
      invariably given, as a compliment, to strangers.

There was a new life in the big forester, now that he had sniffed the
resinous odour of his native woods, and was once more among his own
people.  He languished in the dull solitude of Kent; here he knew his
business, he was respected of men, and he speedily showed that there was
none of the old swing and vigour gone out of him.

He had scarcely spoken of the wine, when Grete came up with it in a tall
white measure, a modest and pleased smile on her face.

"She does not smile like that to the young Mr. Schoolmaster," whispered
one keeper to another. "Our Gretchen has her favourites."

"God give her courage if she marries Hermann!" said the other.  "He will
drive her as we drive the roe."

"Nonsense!  Hermann Löwe is an infant with women.  You should see how
his sister-in-law in Donaueschingen manages him."

At this moment the schoolmaster, whom nobody had noticed, came forward
and said to his rival—

"How do you find yourself, Hermann Löwe?"

"Ah, right well, Herr Schulmeister," replied the other, giving him a
hearty grasp of the hand.  "And I’ll tell you what I’ve got for you in
my box.  I looked for all the beetles, and creeping things, and
butterflies I could in England, and all the strange ones I have brought
for you, with a fine big pin run through their body."

"You are very kind, Hermann Löwe."

"No, I’m not.  You did a good turn to my sister-in-law’s child when he
was nearly dead with eating those berries—that’s all.  And do you still
read as much, and gather beetles yourself?  Now, look here—I must have
all the lads in the neighbourhood to drive for me in the morning, and
they’ll have to work hard, for the Herr Graf is not a patient man, and
he gets angry if there are not plenty of bucks; and so, if the boys are
too tired to go to the evening school—you understand?"

Gersbach nodded.

"And the Herr Graf will be pleased if you come with us yourself,
Gersbach," added Hermann.

Later in the evening the Count’s party came round to visit the inn.  By
this time Hermann had gone; but there still remained a few of the
keepers, who, on seeing the Count, politely rose from their seats.

"Nein," said the Count, in a lordly way, "eh—ah—sitzen sie, gute
freundin—eh, freunde—und wie sind Sie, Herr Halm und sein Tochter?"

Halm, with admirable gravity, replied to the Count as if his highness’s
manner and grammar had quite impressed the poor innkeeper.

"Very well indeed, Herr Graf; and Grete, she will be here this moment.
I understand you are going to shoot to-morrow morning, Herr Graf; I hope
you will have much sport."

"He says the deer are very plentiful," observed the Count, oracularly,
to Annie Brunel.  "So you really must come with us to-morrow and see our
luck."

"Are these roe-deers’ horns?" the young lady asked.  "Pray ask him how
he came to have so many.  Did he shoot them all himself?"

The Count turned, with rather an uncomfortable expression, towards the
innkeeper, and said (in German)—

"The lady loves to know if—you have—everything shot."

Halm looked aghast.  Was the Count going to impeach him with having
thinned the neighbouring woods during the owner’s absence?  He
immediately broke into a long explanation and description of all the
drives they had had that season, and told how the deer were so plentiful
that the people were complaining bitterly of having their fields and
gardens eaten up, and so forth, and so forth.  But the embarrassment of
the Count’s face only deepened, and still further deepened, until, in a
querulous tone, he cried out—

"I say, Anerley, I think you’d better come and listen to what he says
about the sport you’re likely to get to-morrow, rather than waste time
in showing Mrs. Christmas things she doesn’t care about!"—this with a
hot face and an excited air.

"If you listen, isn’t that enough?" said Anerley.

"But, damme, I can’t understand a word he says—he talks like an engine,
and all in that horrid _patois_—Herr Halm, I comprehend; but do you
know, the lady loves to drink your white wine."  (This in German.)

"Some white wine, Herr Graf?"

"Yes.  Not many.  We wish to drink all—four glasses, you understand."

"It is so difficult," continued the Count, addressing Miss Brunel, "to
get these people to understand German, if you don’t speak their
barbarous form of it.  However, I have told him we all wished to taste
the white wine they drink here—not a bad wine, and remarkably cheap."

"Let me introduce you, Miss Brunel," said Will, "to Miss Grete Halm, who
says she speaks French, and will be delighted to escort you to-morrow at
any time you may wish to join us.  Grete says she once shot a deer
herself; but I suspect somebody else pulled the trigger while she held
the gun."

Gretchen came forward with a warm blush on her brown cheek; and then it
was arranged (she speaking French fluently enough, but with a
Schwarzwald accent) that she and Annie Brunel would seek out the
shooting party towards the forenoon of the following day.

                             CHAPTER XVII.

                    THE COUNT DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF.

In the dusk of the early morning the keepers, drivers, and dogs had
assembled in the large room of Hans Halm’s inn.  Hermann was there too,
with the great-jawed Rudolph; and Margarethe, with a shadowy
reminiscence of recent dreams in her soft black eyes, stood quietly on
one side, or brought some beer to this or that gruff forester, who had
perhaps walked a dozen miles that morning to the place of rendezvous.
The dogs lay under the chairs, the guns and deerskin pouches of the men
were on the table before them, by the side of their tall feathered
beavers; and if the whole scene did not look as if it had been cut out
of an opera, it was because the picturesque trappings of the keepers had
been sobered in colour by the rain and sun of many years, and because
there dwelt over the party an austere silence.  The excitement of the
day had not commenced.

When the Count and Will arrived at the place of meeting, a faint flush
of rose-colour was beginning to steal along the dark violet of the dawn;
and as the whole party set out, in straggling twos and threes along the
grey road, daylight began to show itself over the fields and the
mist-covered woods.

Hermann, who led the way, was accompanied by a little old man with a
prodigious black moustache, twinkling eyes, and comical gravity of face,
who was captain over the drivers, and named Spiegelmann. The venerable
Spiegelmann, with his tall hat and slung horn, was a man of importance;
and he had already, with much seriousness, pronounced his opinion on the
direction of the wind, and on the necessity for beginning the driving
some considerable distance further on.

Then came Will Anerley, who had made friends with the young
schoolmaster, Gersbach, and was very anxious to know how life was to be
made tolerable if one lived at Schönstein all the year round.  Indeed,
Anerley’s having travelled so much, and among so many different people,
combined with a certain natural breadth of sympathy, gave him a peculiar
interest in trying to imagine himself in the position of almost every
man whom he met.  How did those men regard the rest of the world?  What
had they to look forward to?  What was their immediate aim—their
immediate pleasure?  Anerley would take as much interest in the affairs
of an applewoman, and talk as gravely and freely to her about them, as
he would in the more ambitious projects of an artist or a man of
letters.  The gratifying of this merely intellectual curiosity was a
constant habit and source of satisfaction to him; and while it offended
some people by the frankness of speech, and charmed others by the
immediate generosity and self-denial which were its natural results, it
promised to leave him, sooner or later, in the attitude of negative
criticism and social isolation which his father exhibited.  Fortunately,
he had inherited from his mother a certain warmth of heart and impulse,
which corrected his transmitted tendency to theorize: it was this side
of his temperament which had brought upon him his present misfortune,
while he had been engaged, out of pure curiosity, in studying Annie
Brunel’s character, and endeavouring to enter into her views of the
people and things around her.  In fact, the pursuit of which I speak,
though extremely enticing and pleasant, should never be attempted by an
unmarried man who has not passed his fortieth year.

In the present case the young Herr Schulmeister took an instant liking
for the grave, cheerful, plain-spoken man beside him, who seemed to
concern himself about other people, and was so ready with excuses for
them.

"I should not take you to be an Englishman," said Gersbach.

"Why?"

"You have none of the English character.  Count Schönstein is an
Englishman—a typical Englishman—conceited, bigoted in his own opinions,
generous when it is permitted to him to be ostentatious, dull and
stupid, and jealous of people who are not so——"

"My friend," said Will, "why didn’t you leave your dolls behind you in
the nursery?  Or is this typical Englishman one of your university
puppets? You know there is no such thing as a typical Englishman, or
typical Frenchman, or typical German; and I have almost come to believe
that there is no such thing as national character.  The most reckless
prodigals I have met have been Scotchmen; the keenest business-men I
have met have been Irishmen; the dullest and most melancholy,
Frenchmen——"

"And the Germans?" asked Gersbach, with a laugh.

"The Germans are like anybody else, so far as disposition goes, although
they happen to be educationally and intellectually a little ahead of
other nations.  And as for the poor Graf, I don’t think you, for
example, would make half as good a man as he is if you were in his
position."

"Perhaps not; but why?"

"I can’t exactly explain it to you in German; but doctrinairism is not
the first requisite in a landlord; and if you were the Graf, you would
be for coercing the people under you and about you, into being logical,
and you would withdraw yourself from people who opposed you, and you
would gradually weaken your influence and destroy your chances of doing
good.  Why are our Tory country gentlemen always better liked by the
people than the Radical proprietors? Why are Tories, as a rule,
pleasanter companions than Radicals?  I am a Radical; but I always
prefer dining with a Tory?"

"Is the Count a Tory?" asked the Schulmeister.

"Yes.  Men who have been in business and earned, or gained, a lot of
money, almost invariably become fierce Tories.  It is their first
passport to respectability; and there is no step one can take so cheaply
as that of changing one’s political theories."

"What a singular social life you have in England!" cried Gersbach,
blinking with a curious sort of humour behind his big spectacles.
"There is the demi-monde, for example.  Why, you talk of that, and your
writers speak of it, as if there was an acknowledged rivalry openly
carried on between the members of it and your married women."

"But our married women," said Will, "are going to form a trades-union
among themselves in order to crush that institution."

At which Franz Gersbach looked puzzled: these English were capable of
trying any mad expedient; and somehow their devices always worked well,
except in such matters as popular education, military efficiency, music,
scholarship, and so forth.  As for a trades-union of any kind, it was
sure to flourish in England.

They had now reached the edge of the forest, and here Hermann called the
party around him, and gave his orders in a loud peremptory tone, which
had the effect of considerably frightening his master; the Count hoped
that he would do nothing inaccurate.

"You, Herr Schulmeister, will accompany the drivers, and Spiegelmann
will give you one of the return-posts.  Falz, you will go down to the
new-cut road—Greef on your right, Beigel further along. Spiegelmann will
sound his horn when you are all posted, and the second horn when the
drive commences.  Forward, then, in God’s name, all of us!"

And away trooped the lads under the surveillance of the venerable
Spiegelmann, who had a couple of brace of leashed beagles pulling and
straining and whining to get free into the brushwood.  Hermann, Will,
and the Count at once dived into the twilight of the tall pines, that
almost shut out the red flames of the morning over their peaks.  The
soft, succulent yellow moss was heavy with dew, and so were the ferns
and the stoneberry bushes.  A dense carpet of this low brushwood
deadened the sound of their progress; and they advanced, silent as
phantoms, into the dim recesses of the wood.  Here and there occurred an
opening or clearance, with a few felled trees lying about; then they
struggled through a wilderness of younger fir and oak, and finally came
into a tract of the forest where nothing was to be seen, as far as the
eye could reach, but innumerable tall trunks, coated with the yellow and
grey lichens of many years, branchless almost to their summit, and
rising from a level plain of damp green moss. There was not even the
sound of a bird, or of a falling leaf, to break the intense silence of
the place; nor was there the shadow of any living thing to be seen down
those long narrow avenues between the closely-growing stems of the
trees.

"Count Schönstein," said Will, in a whisper, as they drew near the
Haupt-platz, "what gun is that you have with you?"

"My ordinary breech-loader."

"Carries far?"

"I should think so.  Shoots hard and close as a rifle."

"Will it kill at fifty yards?"

"It might."

"Hermann," said Will, turning to the head-keeper, "I insist on being
posted eighty yards distant from the Count."

"You think that is a joke," said the Count peevishly.

"I don’t think it a joke at all," said Will. "Breech-loaders have a
wonderful faculty of going off when nobody expects them; and though you
may explain the thing satisfactorily afterwards, that won’t remove a few
buck-shot out of your leg."

"I am not in the habit of letting my gun go off accidentally," said the
Count, grandly.  "Indeed, I flatter myself that few men better
understand the use of——"

"The _Haupt-platz_, Herr," said Hermann, unceremoniously breaking in
upon his master.  "The Herr Graf will be stationed farther down this
path; you must not shoot in that direction.  You may shoot in front as
the deer comes to you, or after them when they have passed; not along
this line, only."

"Danke schön, Hermann, and tell the same thing to the Count."

He now found himself opposite a tall tree, which had a cross in red
paint traced upon the trunk.  The Count and Hermann passed on, and when
the three were posted, each held out his arm, and signalled that he
understood his immediate neighbour’s position, and would remember it.

Scarcely had they done so when a long and loud _tantara!_ from
Spiegelmann’s horn told them that the drivers were ready.  A faint echo
now came from the other side of the strip of forest, showing that there
the keepers were posted; and finally a return-blast from Hermann’s horn
proclaimed that all were waiting.

Once more a brilliant trill from Spiegelmann—this time an audacious and
elaborate effort, full of noisy anticipation—came through the wood; and
then were heard the faint and far-off sounds of yelping dogs, and
shouting men, and sticks being beaten against the stumps of the trees.
The drive had commenced.  Count Schönstein began to tremble; his heart
went faster and faster, as his excited brain peopled all the dim vistas
of the trees with living forms.  He could scarcely breathe with absolute
fear.  Again and again he looked at his triggers, and the hammers, and
the little spikes of brass which he hoped would strike death into the
ribs of some splendid buck.  He began to assure himself that he _could
not_ tell a buck from a doe if the animal ran quickly; that he _must_
shoot at once, and trust to Providence keeping the tender feminine
members of the herd out of the way.  Indeed, he had already framed an
excuse for having shot a doe, and he was busily picturing his assumed
regret, and his inner delight at being able to shoot anything, when——

By this time a dead silence had intervened.  The first joyous yelping of
the dogs had quite died down; and now the broad-footed, stump-legged,
big-headed little animals were wiring themselves through the brushwood,
and jumping over the soft moss, with an occasional toss of their long
ears or a slight whine. The only sound to be heard was the occasional
rattling of sticks by the beaters, accompanied by their peculiar
guttural cry.

Suddenly—and the whole empty space of the wood seemed to quiver for a
moment with this instantaneous throb of life—Will caught a glimpse of a
light shimmer of brown away at the end of one of the long avenues.  For
a moment the apparition was lost; when it reappeared, it was evident
that the deer was bearing down upon Count Schönstein’s position.  The
next second, a fine lithe, thin-limbed, supple, and handsome buck came
along in a light easy canter into the grey light of the opener space. He
had no thought of danger before him; he only thought of that behind; and
for a brief space he stood right in front of the Count, apparently
listening intently for the strange sounds from which he fled.

In despair, and rage, and amazement, Will saw him pause there, out of
the range of _his_ shot, and yet without an effort being made to secure
the fine pair of horns which graced the animal’s head.  Will now saw
that the Count’s gun was levelled, and that he was apparently pulling at
the trigger, but no puff of smoke came out of the barrel.  Almost at the
same moment the deer must have seen the Count; for all at once he shrank
back on his limbs, as if he had been struck, shivered lightly through
his entire frame, and then, with a sudden leap, he was off and away out
of sight, in the direction of Hermann!

In that brief moment of time the Count had taken down his gun, looked at
the hammers, found they were on half-cock, cocked them, and put up his
gun again; and then, as the deer was just vanishing, bang! bang! went
both the barrels.  Of course the buck was quite untouched; but the next
moment Will heard the sharp crack of a gun in the neighbourhood of
Hermann’s post; and he knew what _that_ meant.

Even at that distance he could hear the Count breathing out
incomprehensible curses at his own stupidity, as he put another couple
of cartridges into the barrels.  Doubtless, in his excitement, he had
been trying so often whether the hammers were on full-cock—pulling at
them, letting them down, and so forth—that accidentally they remained at
half-cock, and so spoiled for him the easiest shot he was likely to get
that day.

The silence which had been broken by the report of the guns now fell
again over the forest.  The sun came out, too; and soon there were
straggling lanes of gold running down into the blue twilight of the
distance; while the heat seemed to have suddenly awakened a drowsy
humming of insect life.  Now and then a brightly-plumaged jay would
flash through the trees, screaming hoarsely; and then again the same
dead, hot stillness prevailed.  It was in this perfect silence that a
living thing stole out of some short bushes, and softly made its way
over the golden and green moss until it caught sight of Will.  Then it
cocked up its head, and calmly regarded him with a cold, glassy, curious
stare.  The moment it lifted its head he saw that it was a fox, not
reddish-brown, but blackish-grey, with extraordinarily bright eyes; and
as they had been specially invited to shoot foxes—which are of no use
for hunting purposes, and do much damage, in the Black Forest—he
instinctively put up his gun.  As instinctively, he put it down again.

"My old prejudices are too strong," he said; wherewith he contented
himself with lifting a lump of dried wood and hurling it at the small
animal, which now slunk away in another direction.

Then burst out the joyous howl of the beagles—here and there, as if
every one of them had started his own particular game; the yelping bark
rising at times sharp and clear as if in the immediate neighbourhood, at
other times fading away into the distance.  The fun had commenced.
First there came trotting along a long-necked, thin-legged doe, with a
little fawn by her side; and these, catching sight of Will, made a sharp
turn to the right and bore down upon the Count.  The latter, either too
frightened or too savage to care for distinctions of sex or age, again
blazed both barrels into the air, with what effect Will was too much
occupied to see.

For at the same moment there came down the line, transversely, crossing
in front of the Count, a fine buck which Hermann had taken a long shot
at and missed.  The deer was going at full speed, careless of anything
in front, his whole energy bent on speeding from the danger behind, and
every thew and muscle of his body straining its utmost.  As he passed,
Will fired his right barrel into the flashing streak of brown—not a hair
was touched!  The next moment the buck, seeing that no further enemy
stood in front, wheeled round and made off to cross the path on which
Will stood, at some distance farther down.  Just as the shoulder of the
animal appeared before the lane of trees, the other barrel was sent
after him; there was a shrill scream, the buck leapt a dozen feet into
the air and fell, without a parting groan in him, head-foremost on the
soft moss.

"There is one pair of horns, at least, for Miss Brunel," thought Will,
hastily pushing in two more cartridges.

The Count had certainly plenty of good fortune, so far as the deer were
concerned.  One particularly handsome buck which had been running
straight at him, without seeing him, he received with a hurriedly-aimed
shot which did no damage.  The animal, however, got such a fright that
it turned and galloped right back and through the ring of the beaters,
escaping a parting shot which old Spiegelmann aimed at him.  Here and
there a shot had been heard round the sides of the drive; but as yet no
one knew what the other had done.  In a few minutes, however, the dogs
and then the boys began to show themselves, approaching through the
trees.  That particular drive was over.

Will hastened up to the Count.

"What have you shot?"

"Nothing."

The Count looked very much vexed; and Will attributed it, of course, to
his having missed so many shots.

"Why didn’t you shoot sooner at the deer that came up and looked at
you?"

"Why?" re-echoed the Count, with a savage laugh.  "Why?  Because these
—— barrels were both on half-cock, and I pulled like to break my fingers
over the —— things.  What did you shoot?"

"I believe I’ve left a buck lying down there."

"Why don’t you go and look after him, and get somebody to carry him
home, instead of waiting here?"

The Count was evidently very uncomfortable.  He bit his lip, he worked
with the trigger of his gun; and finally he walked abruptly away from
Will, and addressed, in a whisper, the first of the boys who came up:

"Kommen Sie hier."

The boy stared in amazement at being called "Sie."  Of course he dared
not think that the Count was joking.

"Ich habe geschossen—wissen Sie——?"

"Ja, Herr," said the boy, vaguely, though he did not understand what the
Count meant.

"Ein kleines—ein gar kleines—d—n it, look here!"

He caught the boy by the shoulder, as if he meant to kick him, and
dragged him a few yards farther on, and pointed to the ground.  The boy
opened his eyes: if he had seen the corpse of his first-cousin lying
there, he could not have been more astonished.

"Sie sehen es," remarked the Count, hurriedly, with a fine red flush
burning in his stout face.

"Ja, Herr."

There lay there a tiny, soft, pretty little animal, scarcely bigger than
a King Charles’ spaniel, with a glossy light-brown coat, and large meek
eyes, now glazed and dull.  Blood was trickling from the little thing’s
mouth, and also from its shoulder: the fact being that the Count, on
seeing the doe and her fawn coming up, had fired both his barrels at
them on chance, and had managed to destroy the helpless youngling.

If you had told the Count then, that before evening every man, woman,
and child in Schönstein would have heard of what he had done, that the
keepers would be sneering at him and the neighbours laughing at him, he
would probably have put another cartridge into his gun and shot himself
(if he were able) on the spot.  His present anxiety was to get this
little lad to take away the fawn under his blouse and bury it somewhere;
but all he could do failed to impress the incorrigible young
Schwarzwalder with his meaning.

"Verstehen Sie mir nicht?"

"Ja, Herr."

It was always "Ja, Herr;" and here were the people coming up.
Fortunately, Hermann, having sent a long blast of his horn to recall any
straggling beater or keeper, had walked down to the place where Will’s
slain buck was lying, accompanied by the rest of the keepers, who, as
they came up, gravely shook hands with Will, according to custom, and
wished him many more such shots.  Then Spiegelmann, selecting a
peculiarly-shaped branch of young fir, stuck it into Will’s hat; by
which all and sundry—particularly they of the village—as the
shooting-party returned at night, might know that he had brought down a
buck.

At this moment two of the lads dragged up the deer which Hermann had
shot; and one of the keepers, with his long killing-knife in hand,
proceeded to disembowel the animals, previous to their being carried
home.  The rest of the party seated themselves on the driest spot they
could find, and somebody produced a couple of chopins of white wine,
which were forthwith handed round.

But what of the Count?  They had all been so eager to compliment Will on
his good fortune, that no one had noticed the Graf’s uneasy loitering
about the fatal spot where his murdered victim lay.

Presently up came the boy.

"Hermann Löwe, the Herr Graf wants to see you. He has shot a little
fawn; but he won’t let me bring it."

Hermann rose up, with a flush of vexation over his face.  He did not
look at his companions, but he knew that they were smiling.

"Young idiot!" he said, when they were out of earshot, "why didst thou
come and say so before all the people?"

"The Herr Graf——"

"Der Teufel!  Hast thou no head on thy shoulders?"

The Count was mortally frightened to meet Hermann.  He did not know in
what manner to conduct himself: whether he should carelessly joke away
the matter, or overawe his forester by the grandeur of his demeanour.

"I see," said Hermann, when he came up; "the Herr Graf will not believe
me that there is always time to look—that when there is no time to look,
one need not waste powder."

"Bah! stuff! nonsense!  I tell you, when they are running like infernal
hares, how am I to look at their size to a nicety?"

"The fawns don’t run so quickly," said Hermann, respectfully, but
firmly.

"Hermann Löwe," said the Count, hotly, "I suppose you’re my servant?"

"I have that honour, Herr Graf."

"Then you’ll please to shut up, that’s all, and get that wretched little
animal out of the road.  Not run quickly!  D—n his impudence!  I’ll have
to teach these German thieves some better manners."

With which, and many more muttered grumblings, the Count walked off,
leaving Hermann to cover up the dead body of the fawn, and mark the
place, so that it could be afterwards taken away and securely buried.

When the Count came up to the rest of the party, he was smiling
urbanely.

"Stolen a march upon me, eh?" he said to Will. "On my own ground, too.
’Gad, I’ll show you something before we’ve done.  I hadn’t the ghost of
a chance either time I shot; and it was lucky I missed the second time,
because I saw immediately afterwards that it was a doe."

"She had a fawn with her, hadn’t she?" said Will.

"Yes," replied the Count, with a sharp glance all round the circle of
faces.

Hermann now came up, and chose two of the strongest lads to carry home
the two deer.  Each lad had one of the animals slung round his
shoulders, while he grasped two of its thin legs in either hand, and
allowed the neck, head, and horns of the buck to hang down in a
picturesque fashion behind him. Will went privately up to one of the
boys:

"You know Grete Halm?"

"Yes."

"When you go down to the village, tell Grete to ask the English lady to
come back with you; because, if she remains till midday, we may be gone
too far from Schönstein.  You understand?"

"Yes."

"And you may go up to the Herr Graf’s house, and tell any one you may
see to send up luncheon an hour earlier than was arranged.  You
understand?"

"Ja, Herr."

And so the two lads went on their way; and Hermann began to sketch out
to his keepers the plan of the next drive.

                             CHAPTER XVIII.

                         ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE.

It was, however, midday before Grete Halm and Annie Brunel arrived; and
as they entered the forest at the point where the shooting-party was now
stationed, they found that the drive had already commenced.  Will
happening to be at the corner post, it devolved upon him to enjoin
strict silence upon the newcomers—a command which Miss Brunel obeyed by
sitting down on the trunk of a felled tree, and beginning to ask Will a
series of questions about his morning’s adventures.

They were now in a clearance in the forest some forty yards broad, and
on the other side of this strip of open ground ran a long dense mass of
brushwood, lying still and silent in the luminous quivering heat. Will,
Grete, and Annie Brunel were in the shadow of a patch of young firs, and
between them and the dense brushwood extended the forty yards of
clearance, with the strong sunlight beating down on the crimson and
golden moss, and on the yellow stumps of the felled trees.  The air was
hot and moist, filled with the pungent resinous odour of the pine—a
languid, delicious scented atmosphere, which made one prone to
day-dreaming or sleep.

Suddenly, without the rustle of a leaf, and long before any of the dogs
had given tongue, there leapt out from the close brushwood into the open
sunlight a fine young buck, with his head and horns high in air.  The
warm light fell on his ruddy light-brown coat, and showed his shapely
throat, his sinewy form, and tall thin legs, as he stood irresolute and
afraid, sniffing the air with his black nostrils, and watching with his
full large eyes.  He saw nothing, however, of the people before him in
the shadow of the firs; and for several seconds he remained motionless,
apparently the only living thing in the dead silence of the place.  Then
the bark of a dog was heard behind him; he cantered a few steps farther
on, caught sight of the little party as he passed, and then, doubly
nerved, was off like a bolt into the heart of the forest.

"But, really——" said Will.

"Now, don’t make me angry with you," said Annie, releasing his right
arm, which she had tightly held for three minutes.  "I should never have
forgiven you if you had shot that poor creature, who looked so timid and
handsome——"

"I should have given him the chance of running."

"But you would have killed him.  Didn’t I see the two you sent home, and
their pitiful glazed eyes?"

"Then you have come out to stop our shooting altogether, I suppose?"
said Will, with a laugh, though he was much more vexed than he chose to
show.

But he had his revenge.  He had scarcely spoken when a buck, followed by
two does, came out of the brushwood some distance farther down, the buck
springing lightly and buoyantly over the soft moss, the does running
more warily in his wake.  Before Annie Brunel could do anything beyond
utter a short cry, the contents of Will’s right barrel had caught the
buck on his shoulder.  He rolled over, struggled to his feet again, and
then, with a last effort, made a few stumbling steps, and sank unseen
among the ferns.  Will turned, with a smile, to Miss Brunel.  She had
covered her face with her hands. Grete, on the other hand, was in a
wonderful state of delight.

"You killed him, Herr, I know you did.  I saw him fall; and how handsome
he was—and his horns, too, they are large; how pleased you will be to
have them!  My father will get them mounted for you, if you like; and if
you would have the deer’s feet for pegs, that can be done.  Oh, I wish
the drive was over, that I might go to see him!"

The drive was very nearly over, for the dogs were heard in the immediate
neighbourhood—particularly the low sonorous baying of Rudolph, who had
escaped from the leash, and was tearing backwards and forwards through
the wood, with foam-flakes lying along his glistening brown coat.  But
all at once the baying of Rudolph was turned into a terrific yell,
subsiding into a howl; and at the same moment the report of a gun was
heard at some distance farther along.  Immediately afterwards Will
caught sight of a doe disappearing through the trees behind him, and
from the way it ran he judged that it had a broken leg; while down in
front of them came Rudolph, going at full speed, with his tail between
his legs, and the front of his mouth covered with blood.  The next thing
seen was Count Schönstein, who came running to Will in a wonderful state
of excitement.

"I’ve shot him!—I’ve shot him!" he cried, "but we must go after him!"

"Is it Rudolph you mean?" said Will.

"A buck—a splendid buck——"

"Well, don’t point your gun in my face."

"It’s on half-cock."

"It isn’t; and I don’t like the muzzle of a gun staring at me."

"Will that do?" cried the Count, in vexation, dropping the gun on the
ferns.  "_Do_ come and help me to catch him——"

"Catch a deer!  Listen, Miss Brunel——"

But the Count was off in the direction the wounded doe had taken.

The beaters now made their appearance through the brushwood, and
Hermann’s horn soon brought the keepers to the rendezvous.  Will
explained to Hermann that the Graf had gone in pursuit of a doe with a
broken leg.

"Has he Rudolph with him?"

"No; I believe he shot Rudolph at the same time that he broke the
hind-leg of the doe."

"Shot Rudolph!" said Hermann, and then he turned to the keepers: "Where
is Rudolph?  Who has seen Rudolph?  Who allowed Rudolph to escape?"

The only answer he could get was from a messenger, who came up to say
that luncheon had arrived, and wished to know where the Herr Graf wanted
it placed.  This messenger gave Hermann a graphic description of his
having seen Rudolph flying in the direction of Schönstein in a state of
utter demoralization.  Wherewith Hermann sat himself down on the stump
of a tree, and said resignedly—

"Spiegelmann, take one of the dogs after the wounded doe, and send back
the Herr Graf.  As for you, Fritz, ask the lady where luncheon is to be
placed."

By the time Count Schönstein and Spiegelmann returned, the latter
carrying on his shoulder the doe that the Count had shot, luncheon had
been laid out by the servants; and round the large white cloth were
placed a series of travelling rugs and other appliances for smoothing
down the roughnesses of fern, and stoneberry, and moss.  The keepers,
Hermann, and the young schoolmaster were seated some little distance
off, in picturesque groups, surrounding the dead game, which consisted
of two bucks, the Count’s doe, a fox shot by Gersbach, and a hare shot
by some one else.  The men had also their luncheon with them—apples,
brown bread, a piece of smoked ham, and a bottle or two of white wine.
All the incidents of the drive had now to be recapitulated; and there
ensued a perfect Babel of guttural Schwarzwald German.

The Count had ordered out a very nice luncheon indeed; and so pleased
was he with his success in having shot something, that he called one of
the boys and gave him two bottles of champagne, a drinking-cup, and a
lump of ice to take over to the keepers.  Indeed, he would have given
Hermann and the schoolmaster an invitation to sit down at the white
cloth, only he wished to postpone that explanation about Rudolph until
Annie Brunel and Will were out of the way.  As for Grete Halm, she
equally dreaded the thought of sitting with the Count’s party, and of
having to go alone among the men and boys opposite; and it was only by
much coaxing and ordering that she was made to sit down by Miss Brunel,
and submit to have the Count himself carve for her, and offer her wine
in a beautiful little silver cup.

"Süsse an die Süssen," said he, gallantly, as he poured out the
champagne; and Grete’s soft black eyes looked puzzled.

"Look at the boy in the red blouse," said Annie Brunel, "lying beside
the two deer.  I believe the Count has got the whole scene made up in
imitation of a hunting-picture, and that the boy knows well enough how
fine his brown face and red smock-frock are in the sunlight.  Then see
how that deer’s head lies back, precisely as if it were in a lithograph;
and the streaks of sunlight falling across the green dress of the
keepers and the stretched-out dogs—and Hermann, there, cutting an apple
with a dagger, his hair all matted with perspiration—the schoolmaster
sitting on the trunk of the tree, looking vaguely at the fox before
him——"

"Wondering," observed Will, "what sort of chemical change has occurred
within the last half-hour, or why life should go out of an organism when
lead goes in."

"That is a German picture, and here are we making a French picture—only
that Grete is such a thorough Black Forester, with her bodice, and white
sleeves, and head-dress."

The Count was intensely flattered and pleased by her admiration of the
impromptu pictures.  He had been striving hard to interest and amuse
her—most of all had he tried to charm her with the delights which he
held at his own command; and here were the very sunlight, and the
colours of the forest, and the shape of deers’ necks aiding him!

"You don’t see the like of that in England, do you?" he said, with his
mouth full of cold chicken. "I hope, Miss Brunel, you and Mrs. Christmas
will make your stay with us as long as ever you can."

"I should be very glad," she said; "but I must see what Lady Jane says
in a day or two—whether she finds herself getting better.  If she should
prefer the cooler air of mountain scenery, we may go on to Switzerland."

"But don’t you dread the idea of travelling alone—looking after your own
luggage, and what not?" asked the Count, with his mouth this time full
of some other animal’s tongue.

"It was not entirely on a pleasure excursion we came," she said,
quietly.

"And then," said Will, "you can get plenty of cool mountain air in the
Black Forest.  You can go and live comfortably on the top of the
Feldberg, about 5000 feet high, with a dozen mountains all round you
over 4000 feet.  In the meantime, don’t trouble yourself with thoughts
of change; but let me give you some of this jelly.  You are very fond of
sweets, I know."

"I am.  You have been watching me."

He had been watching her too much, he thought. The intense curiosity
with which he had regarded the singular change in the girl’s nature so
soon as she left the stage, with the study of her pretty superficial
carelessness, her frank audacious manner, and her quaint, maternal,
matter-of-fact attitude towards himself, had wrought its inevitable
work; and at the very moment when she was thinking that Mr. Anerley took
a friendly pleasure in her society, he was longing to get away from it
as from a torture too heavy to be borne—longing to get away, and unable
to go.  He might easily have avoided her on this very day, for example,
by pleading business occupations; instead, he had looked with impatience
for her arrival all the morning and forenoon.

And if he had any intellectual pleasure in studying the curious shades
of the young actress’s character, it was well that he improved his time;
for this was the last day on which she should ever appear to him that
enigmatical compound of a childlike gaiety and mimicry, with a matronly
air which was quite as amusingly unnatural.  From this period
henceforth, the reader who takes the trouble to follow Annie Brunel’s
history will find her a changed woman—drawing nearer to that beautiful
ideal which one who knew her mother would have expected to find in Annie
Napier’s only child.

At present she was chiefly concerned with the various sweets which Count
Schönstein’s cook had sent, and also in trying the effect of squeezing
the juice of different kinds of fruit into the iced champagne which she
sipped from time to time.  She came to the conclusion that sliced apple
added to champagne and iced water greatly improved its flavour; and she
appealed to Grete Halm, who had tried all her different specifics, the
two drinking out of the same glass.  Grete began to fancy that English
ladies, though they were very beautiful and had magnificent hair, were
little better than children, to amuse themselves with such nonsense.

"I see that Hermann is getting dreadfully impatient," said Miss Brunel,
at last; "let us go."

"Pardon, mademoiselle," said Will.  "Let us have an understanding
first."

She laughed a bright and merry laugh that puzzled the Count extremely.

"Was gibt’s, Grete?" said he.

Grete began to explain, with a demure smile, how the Fräulein had held
the Herr’s arm when a buck was going past; but the Count soon lost the
thread of the story, and had to beg Will for a translation.

"I really can’t bear to see any one else shoot when I am looking on,"
said Miss Brunel.  "But if I were myself shooting, I dare say I
shouldn’t care."

"Come, then," said Will, "will you take my gun during the next drive?  I
will teach you how to hold it and fire——"

"I know that already," she said.  It was not the first time she had
fired a gun—on the stage.

"And I will fix the gun so that you need have no trouble."

"Agreed," she said; while Grete, who was about to remain behind to
assist in packing up the luncheon things, assured her that the holding
of the gun was quite easy, and that she would be sure to kill a splendid
deer.

They had to walk nearly half a mile before they came to the next beat;
and by that time they had arrived at a sort of broad ravine or hollow,
the hill leading down to which was covered with tall, branchless pines.
Down in the valley commenced a tract of young trees and brushwood, which
was supposed to be full of deer.  While the beaters were drawing a
circle round this tract of brushwood, Hermann posted the guns and
courteously gave Will the Hauptplatz, understanding that the young lady
was about to try her luck.  At this point there was a mass of earth and
roots which had been torn up by the falling of a pine—a little
embankment some five feet high, over which one could easily command the
whole line of brushwood lying in front.  This was the spot where Will
posted Annie Brunel.  He placed the barrel of the gun on the edge of
this natural rampart, and then showed her how, whenever she saw a deer
spring out into the sunlight down below in the valley, she was
noiselessly to point the gun, keep the stock well against her shoulder,
and fire.

"Only take care," said he, "that it isn’t a clog or a boy that comes out
of the bushes."

"What if I shoot you?" she said.

"You can’t shoot me, any more than you can shoot yourself.  I shall go
up the hill a bit to overlook you, and if it should be a dog, I’ll shout
out before you murder him."

Here the long, low, steady call of Spiegelmann’s horn was heard, with
Hermann’s reply.

"When the next horn calls, you may begin to look out.  Hold out your
hand."

She held out her right hand, wonderingly, and showed him the small white
fingers.

"It is quite steady; but your heart beats."

"It generally does," she said, with a smile.  "It is a weakness, I know,
but——"

Here the fine anticipatory flourish of the keeper’s bugle again came
echoing through the trees.  Will gave over the gun to her, told her to
take time and not be afraid, and then retired somewhat farther up the
hill.  He ensconced himself behind a tall grey pine, whence, without
being seen, he could command a view of the entire length of brushwood,
and of Miss Brunel in her place of concealment.

"If she only remains cool," he thought, "she is certain to be
successful."

Once only she looked round and up the hill towards him, and there was a
sort of constrained smile about her lips.

"I am afraid she is getting frightened," he thought now.

The intense sultry silence of the place certainly heightened her nervous
expectation, for she could distinctly hear her heart thumping against
her side. Expectancy became a positive pain—an agony that seemed to be
choking her; but never for a moment did she think of abandoning her
post.

Meanwhile Will’s experienced eye failed to detect the least motion among
the bushes, nor could he hear the faintest noise from the dogs.  Yet
Hermann had told him that this was one of the best beats in the
neighbourhood; and so he patiently waited, knowing that it was only a
matter of time.

At length one of the dogs was heard to bellow forth his joyous
discovery.  Will’s breath began to come and go more quickly, in his
intense anxiety that his pupil should distinguish herself at the
approaching crisis.  Then it seemed to him that at some distance off he
saw one or two of the young firs tremble, when there was not a breath of
wind to stir them.

He watched these trees and the bushes adjoining intently, but they were
again quite motionless; the dog, too, only barked at intervals.  All at
once, however, he saw, coming down a lane in the brushwood, two branched
yellow tips, which paused and remained stationary, with only a single
bush between them and the open space fronting Miss Brunel.  They were
the horns of a deer which now stood there, uncertain by which way to fly
from the dogs behind him.

"If she could only catch sight of these horns," he said to himself, "and
understand to fire through the bush, she would kill him to a certainty."

Evidently, however, she did not see the horns; perhaps her position
prevented her.  So, with his own heart beating rapidly now, Will waited
for the moment when the dogs would drive the deer out into the clear
sunlight, immediately underneath the muzzle of her gun.

A sharp bark from one of the beagles did it.  Will saw the light spring
of the deer out into the open, and the same glance told him that Annie
Brunel had shrunk back with a light cry, and that the gun, balanced for
a moment on the edge of the mass of roots, was about to fall on the
ground.

At the same moment he received an astounding blow on the side that
nearly knocked him over; and his first instinct was that of an
Englishman—to utter an oath, clench his fist, and turn round to find a
face to strike at.  But before the instinct had shaped itself into
either thought or action, the sudden spasm passed into a sort of
giddiness; he fancied the pine-tree before him wavered, put out his hand
to guard himself, and then fell, with a loud noise in his ears.

When Miss Brunel saw the gun tumble on the ground and heard the report,
she clasped her hands over her eyes in a vague instantaneous horror of
any possible result.  The next moment she looked up, and there was a
black mass lying on the ground behind the tall tree.  Her only thought
was that he lay dead there as she ran to him, and knelt down by him, and
caught him round the neck.  White-lipped, trembling in every limb, and
quite unconscious of what she did, she put her head down to his, and
spoke to him. There were three words that she uttered in that moment of
delirious pity, and self-reproach, and agony, which it was as well he
did not hear; but uttered they were, never to be recalled.

When he came to himself, he saw a white face bending over him, and had
but a confused notion of what had occurred.  With a vigorous effort,
however, mental and physical, he pulled himself together and got into a
sitting posture.

"I must have given you such a fright through my stupidity," he said; but
all the time he wondered to see a strange look in her eyes—a look he had
never seen there before _off the stage_—as she knelt by him and held his
hand in hers.  She did not speak; she only looked at him, with a vague
absent delight, as if she were listening to music.

"Poor creature!" he thought, "she does not know how to say that she is
sorry for having hurt me."

So he managed to get up a quite confident smile, and struggled to his
feet, giving her his hand to raise her also.

"I suppose you thought you had killed me," he said, with a laugh, "but
it was only the fright knocked me over.  I am not hurt at all.  Look
here, the charge has lodged in the tree."

He showed her a splinter or two knocked off the bark of the tree, and a
few round holes where the buck-shot had lodged; but at the same time he
was conscious of a warm and moist sensation creeping down his side, and
down his arm likewise.  Further, he pretended not to see that there was
a line of red blood trickling gently over his hand, and that her dress
had already caught a couple of stains from the same source.

"What’s that?" she said, with a terrified look, looking from her own
hand, which was likewise stained, to his.  "It is blood—you have been
hurt, and you won’t tell me.  Don’t be so cruel," she added, piteously;
"but tell me what I am to do, for I know you are hurt.  What shall I do?
Shall I run to Hermann?  Shall I go for the Count?  There is no water
about here——"

"Sit down on those ferns—that’s what you must do," said Will, "and don’t
distress yourself.  I suppose one of the spent shot has scratched me, or
something like that; but it is of no importance, and you mustn’t say
anything about it.  When the drive is over, I shall walk home.  If I had
only a little—a little——"

By this time he had sate down, and as he uttered the words, another
giddiness came over him, and ha would have fallen back had she not
hastily caught him and supported him.

"It is the blood," he said, angrily; "one would think I couldn’t afford
to lose as much as the scratch of a penknife would let.  Will you allow
me to take off my coat?—and if you could tie a handkerchief tightly
round my arm——"

"Oh, why did you not ask me to do so before?" she said, as she helped to
uncover the limb that was by this time drenched in blood.

"Think of what the deer would have suffered, if you had hit him instead
of me," said Will, with a ghastly smile.  "He was a dozen yards nearer
you. You seem to like long shots."

But there was a mute pleading look in her eyes that seemed to appeal
against his banter.  She seemed to say to him by that dumb expression,
"You wrong me.  You try to make us strangers by that assumed fun.  You
do it to cheer me; but you make me a stranger to you, for you are not
honest with me."

And somehow he read the meaning of her face; and said to her, in a low
voice—

"Shall I be frank with you?  This accident is likely to make us too
close friends; and it is better I should return to England, if you
remain here."

For a moment their eyes met—on his side revealing a secret which she
inwardly shuddered to read there—on hers repeating only that mystic,
unfathomable expression which he remembered to have seen when he
awakened out of his dream.

That was all of explanation that passed between them.  She knew now his
secret, and by the sudden light of the revelation she looked swiftly
back over some recent occurrences, and saw the purport of them written
in words of fire.  Her eyes fell; her own secret was safe; but this new
burden of consciousness was almost as difficult to bear.

At this moment the Count and Hermann came up, followed by the nearest
keepers and beaters.

"There has been a slight accident," said Will, briefly.  "Get some one
to carry my gun; and I’ll walk back to Schönstein."

"If you would like to ride," said Hermann—who, with the others, was
quite deceived by Will’s manner—"you can get Hans Halm’s _wagen_, that
was waiting for the baskets and things.  Spiegelmann will show you the
way.  You are not badly hurt?"

"Not at all; not at all.  Miss Brunel, will you continue with the
party?"

"No," she said, firmly; "I am going back to Schönstein."

"And I," said the Count.  "I can’t allow you to go unattended.  I don’t
care about any more shooting——"

"Nonsense," said Will (with an inward conviction that two minutes’ more
talking would find him stretched on the ground); "go on with your sport;
and I’ll come out to meet you in the evening."

Fortunately, when they reached the shaky old travelling-carriage outside
the forest, they found some wine, a good draught of which somewhat
revived the wounded man.  The hampers and other things were speedily
thrown out, and, Spiegelmann having returned to the shooting-party, Will
and Miss Brunel got into the vehicle and were driven homewards.

Neither spoke a single word all the way.  Once, and quite inadvertently,
her hand touched his; and she drew it away.  The next moment she looked
into his face, and perhaps saw some slight shade of vexation there, for
she immediately covered his stained fingers with her own.  It was as
though she said, "I know your sad secret, but we may at least continue
friends."

                              CHAPTER XIX.

                                FLIGHT.

It was a change indeed!  Life all at once became solemn and full of
mystery to her—full of trouble, too, and perplexity.  So soon as a
messenger had been despatched to Donaueschingen, for a surgeon who was
skilled in the extraction of buck-shot, Annie Brunel went up to her own
room, and sat down there alone.  And she felt as if the air had grown
thick around her, and was pressing on her; she felt that the old
audacious cheerfulness had gone from her; and that the passion, and
glow, and terrible earnestness of her stage-life were invading this
other life, which used to be full of a frivolous, careless happiness.

Do the other animals become frightened and nervous when the love-making
season comes suddenly upon them?  Does the lark, when her lover comes
down from the sky and sings, "My dear soft-breasted little thing, will
you be my wife; will you come and build a nest with me, and let me bring
you scraps of food when you are tired?"—does she get into a state of
great tremor, and fancy that the world has suddenly shifted its axis?
We know how the least impressionable of men are overawed by this strange
natural phenomenon.  The old ridiculousness of love—its silliness and
comic aspects—are immediately blotted out from their mind by the
contemplation of the awful truth—the awful change that lies before them.
They shrink from physiology as a species of blasphemy.  They will not
accept scientific explanation of their idealisms; nor will they believe
that any man has ever experienced the sensation they now experience.

But the ordinary awakening of a man or woman to the consciousness of
being in love was a very different thing from the sudden revelation
which confronted the young actress, as she sat there and pondered, in a
bewildered way, over the events of the past hour.  To love this man was
a crime—and its fatal consequences seemed to stretch on and on, and
interweave themselves with her whole future life. How had she fallen
into the snare?  And he was equally guilty; for his eyes, more fully
than his words, had in that supreme moment told her his tragic story.

She thought of the violet-eyed Dove down in that Kentish vale.  She
thought of her, and mentally prayed for forgiveness.

She had but one sad consolation in the matter—her secret was her own.
There now remained for her but to leave Schönstein at once, and the
morning’s events had paved the way for her decision. So she sent for
Mrs. Christmas, and said to her—

"Don’t you think a cooler air than what we have here would suit you
better?"

The old woman scrutinized her face curiously.

"What’s the matter with you, Miss Annie?  You look as if you had just
come off the stage, and were half-bewildered by the part you had been
playing!"

"I want an answer, Mrs. Christmas.  But I may tell you that I ask
because I wish to leave this place at once.  You needn’t ask why; but if
it will not incommode you to travel, I should like to go away now.
There is Switzerland, not a day’s journey from here; and there are some
mountainous districts in this neighbourhood—you may choose which you
please——"

"Only I must choose to go," said the old woman, patting her cheek.
"That’s yourself all over as you used to be in the days when you
tyrannized over me, and would always have your own way about arranging
your parts.  Well, Miss Annie, I’m ready to go now, if you like—only
Hermann promised to give me two of the most beautiful deer-skins to be
got in the Black Forest——"

"They can be sent after us."

The evening was drawing towards dusk when the Count returned.  He was
greatly shocked on discovering that the accident Will had met with was
much more serious than had been fancied, and that the surgeon only
stared in astonishment when asked if his patient could come downstairs
to dinner.

"A man who has lost so much blood," said he, significantly, and speaking
slowly, that the Count might understand him, "and who suffers from four
or five gunshot wounds, is not likely to sit at table for a day or two."

Annie Brunel did not hear this conversation, and as she still believed
that Will had only been slightly hurt, and would be able to go about as
usual, she informed the Count at dinner of her intended departure.  The
Herr Graf looked from one to the other of his guests, without being able
to utter a syllable.  He had been congratulating himself on the
brilliant success of this excursion—on the evident gratification
experienced by Miss Brunel, on her expressed admiration for Schönstein
and all its surroundings.  This decision of hers quashed his dearest
hopes.

"You surely do not intend to leave us so soon?" he said.  "Mrs.
Christmas, are you the traitor in the camp?"

Mrs. Christmas prudently forbore to reply.

"Think of leaving Mr. Anerley, after having knocked him over in that
sportsmanlike fashion!" exclaimed the Count.  "He will think it very
ungenerous of you."

"I am extremely sorry," she said, with a look of pained embarrassment on
her dark beautiful face; "but I hope he will forgive our going."

"He may, but I shan’t," said the Count.  "However, if you will, you
will.  In any case, I hope I may be allowed to escort you towards your
new resting-place."

"We should be more cruel still," said the young girl, "if we took you
away from your friend. Believe me, we shall want no assistance."

The tone with which she uttered the words was decisive.  It said, "You
are very kind; but we mean to go alone."

The Count did not enjoy his dinner that evening. He fancied there was
something wrong in the arrangement of things—something incomprehensible,
provoking, beyond the reach of his alteration. When he persuaded Annie
Brunel and her guardian to accept his escort as far as Schönstein, he
fancied his skilful calculations had delivered her into his hand.  Was
there a creature on earth—especially a woman—who could fail to be
smitten with a covetous desire for the possession of Schönstein?  During
that moody meal, while he sate almost angrily silent, two suggestions
occurred to him.

Could she have failed to perceive that she might be mistress of
Schönstein if she liked?  The Count confessed that he had not made any
demonstration of affection to her, simply because he wished the natural
effect of living at Schönstein to influence her first, and predispose
her towards accepting his more openly-avowed attentions.

Or was it possible that she had discovered her true position, and
learned for herself the wealth and rank to which she was entitled?  But
if she had made this discovery, he argued with himself, she would not
have allowed herself to be the guest of a parvenu Count; while he knew
that she had received no letters since his arrival.

Seizing the more probable alternative, he bitterly regretted his not
having made it more clear to her that a handsome fortune awaited her
acceptance. In the meantime these regrets had the effect of making the
dinner a somewhat dull affair; and it was rather gruffly that he
consented, after dinner, to go round to the inn in order to inquire of
Hans Halm the various routes to Switzerland.

As they were going out, she said—

"Will you send word to Mr. Anerley that we shall only be absent for a
short time, and that I hope he may be able to come down and see us when
we return?"

"The surgeon is still with him," said the Count. "I shall go up and see
him myself when we come back."

It was a clear starlight night; the waning moon had not yet risen.  As
they neared the few houses of Schönstein, and saw the orange lights
gleaming through the dusk, Mrs. Christmas caught her companion’s arm.

They were by the side of the garden adjoining the inn, and from a
summer-house which was half hid among apple and plum trees, there came
the sweet and tender singing of two young girls—a clear and high but
somewhat undeveloped soprano, and a rich, full, mellow contralto.  The
three stood for a moment to listen, and the singers in the darkness
proceeded to another song—the old _Volksweise_ that Grete and Hermann
had been wont to sing:

      "Im sohönsten Wiesen-grunde
        Ist meiner Heimath Haus,
      Da zog ich manche Stunde,
        In’s Thal hinaus:
    Dich, mein stilles Thal, grüss ich tausend Mal!
    Da zog ich manche Stunde, in’s Thal hinaus."

"It is Grete who sings, and I want to see her," said Annie Brunel,
stepping softly into the garden, and advancing to the summer-house.

Grete was quite alone with her companion—a young girl who, Miss Brunel
could see even in that partial darkness, was very pretty, and of a type
much more common in the north of Baden and Bavaria than in the
Schwarzwald.  She was not over twelve years of age; but she had the soft
grave eyes, the high forehead, the flaxen hair, and general calm of
demeanour which characterize the intellectual South German.  She was
Grete’s confidante and companion; and together, whenever they got a
chance, they were accustomed to steal away to this summer-house, and
sing those concerted melodies which the children of the Black Forest
drink in with their mothers’ milk.

Grete gave a little cry of surprise when she saw the dark form of the
young English lady appear; and then her thought was that something had
gone wrong with the gentleman who was wounded.

"I want you, Grete, for a moment," said Annie Brunel in French to her.

"Ah, mademoiselle," she said, dislocating her French in sudden
compassion; "ce n’est pas que Monsieur Anerley se sent encore malade?
L’homme qui mon père envoyait chercher le médecin me dit qu’il ya
meilleur——"

"Don’t disquiet yourself, Grete," said Miss Brunel. "Mr. Anerley is not
severely hurt.  I wanted to ask you if you would come with me to
Switzerland——

"To Switzerland!" said Grete; and her companion’s soft eyes looked up
with a mystic wonder in them.

"Would you like to go?"

"Yes, mademoiselle, very much; but I have promised to go to see my
cousin Aenchen Baumer, at the Feldberg, in a day or two."

"Come indoors, and let us hear what your father says.  Your friend will
forgive me for a few minutes."

They all then left the garden and went round to the front of the inn.
They found the Count and Mrs. Christmas standing outside, and listening
to the prodigious singing-bout which was being held within by the
keepers and the beaters; the chorus following each verse of the various
hunting-songs being accompanied by the measured beating of hands and
feet on the tables and wooden floor.

"If mademoiselle goes forward to the window," said the little grave
German girl with the yellow hair, "she will hear better, and Herr
Spiegelmann is about to sing ’Der Weisse Hirsch.’"

They all went forward to one of the many small windows, and looked in.
The men were sitting in a picturesque undress round the table, their
long-bowled china pipes in their fingers or mouth, and chopins of
pale-yellow wine before them.  Grete’s father was standing by, laughing
and joking with them; the old grandmother from time to time replenishing
the tall transparent bottles.  They had all been singing the elaborate
chorus to the hunting-song, "Im Wald und auf der Haide"—all except the
ancient Spiegelmann, who sat solemnly over his pipe-tube, and winked his
small black eyes occasionally, as if trying to shut in the internal
pleasure the rattling melody gave him.  His large black moustache caught
the tobacco-smoke that issued from his lips; and his wrinkled
weather-tanned face, like the other sunburnt faces around, caught a
bronzed glow from the solitary candle before him.

"The Spiegelmann missed a buck in the second drive," said one.  "He will
pay the forfeit of a song."

"I was driving, not shooting, the roe," growled the Spiegelmann, though
he was not displeased to be asked to sing.

All at once, before any of his comrades were prepared, the venerable
keeper, blinking fiercely, began to sing, in a low, querulous, plaintive
voice, the first stanza of a well-known ballad, which ran somewhat in
this fashion—

    "’Twas into the forest three sportsmen went,
    On shooting the white deer they were bent."

Suddenly, and while Miss Brunel fancied that the old man was singing a
pathetic song of his youth, there rang out a great hoarse chorus from a
dozen bass voices—the time struck by a couple of dozen horny hands on
the table—

    "Husch, husch! bang, bang! trara!"

Then Spiegelmann, gravely and plaintively as before, took up the thread
of the wondrous story—

    "They laid themselves down beneath a fir-tree,
    And a wonderful dream then dreamed the three,
    (_All._)   Husch, husch! bang, bang! trara!"

Here a tall Italian-looking keeper, who hailed from the Tyrol, and who
was sitting next to Spiegelmann, sang forth the experiences of the first
dreamer—

    "I dreamt that as I went beating the bush,
    There ran out before me the deer—husch, husch!"

His neighbour, Bagel, who had once been complimented by Kaiser Francis
of Austria, and was never done with the story, personated the second
dreamer—

    "And as from the yelp of the beagle he sprang,
    I riddled his bide for him there—bang, bang!"

The third from Spiegelmann, a short stout little man, called Falz, who
had once been a clockmaker in Whitechapel, was the next dreamer—

    "So soon as the deer on the ground I saw,
    I merrily sounded my horn—trara!"

The burden of the tale now returned to Spiegelmann, who thus finished
it, and pointed the moral—

    "Lo! as they lay there and chatted, these three,
    Swiftly the wild deer ran past the tree:
    And ere the three huntsmen had seen him aright,
    O’er hill and o’er valley he’d vanished from sight!
    (_All._)  Husch, husch! bang, bang! trara!
      Husch, husch! bang, bang! trara!"

"I declare," said little Mrs. Christmas, standing on tiptoe, to peep in
at the window on the bronzed faces, and the dim candle, and the long
narrow tables in the low-roofed room, "it is quite like a scene in a
play, though they don’t sing very well."

"They keep capital time," said the Count, who looked upon them as so
many performing animals, belonging to himself.

"Voulez-vous entrer, mademoiselle?" said Grete, hesitatingly.  "La
fumée—j’en suis bien fâchée——"

She went into the inn, nevertheless; and Hans Halm was summoned to give
his opinion about the various roads leading down to Basle or Schaff
hausen. Meanwhile, the keepers had sent a polite message, through
Margarethe, to the young English lady, hoping that she enjoyed the day’s
sport; that her companion’s accident had not been serious; and that she
would not be annoyed to hear one or two of the old Schwarzwald songs.

It was now for the first time that Annie learned the true extent of the
injury which Will had suffered; and this had the effect of immediately
altering her resolutions.  It was with a dangerous throb of the heart
that she was told how he might not leave his bed for days, or even
weeks, so prostrated was he by loss of blood; and anxious—terribly
anxious, as she was to get free from the place, she could not bear the
thought of stealing away, and leaving him to the unknown chances of the
future.

The Count had almost begun to fancy that it was the horror of the
accident that she had caused which was driving her away from the too
painful witnessing of its results; but she now said that she would not
leave until Will was entirely out of danger.  He could not understand
her, or her motives; above all, he was puzzled by the unwonted
earnestness of her expression—its new life and intensity.  He knew
nothing of the fire at the heart which kept that slumbering light in the
dark eyes.

"And in a few days, Grete, you go to the Feldberg?" she asked.

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"Is there an inn there at which one can stay?"

"There is, mademoiselle—right on the top of the mountain, if you choose
to go so high.  My cousin Aenchen lives down in the valley."

"I hope, Miss Brunel," said the Count, anxiously, "you won’t think of
leaving Schönstein so long as you remain in this district.  The accident
which has happened, I know, may rob the neighbourhood of some of its
attractions; but what better will the Feldberg be?"

She paid no attention to him.  She was only determined not to see Will
Anerley again; and yet there was in her heart a vague desire to be near
him—to be under the same daylight—to look on the same scenes, and hear
the same quaint strange talk that he listened to.

"When must you go to see your cousin?" she asked.

"Very shortly," said Grete.  "Aenchen Baumer goes to a convent in
Freiburg, where she will learn English, and fine needlework, and many
things. She is a good friend of mine, and a companion once; and I want
to see her before she goes."

"If you wait a few days, we shall go to the Feldberg together."

Grete clasped her hands with delight.

"And will madame, your mamma, go also?" she asked, rejoiced to think she
had not the journey to make alone.

"Yes; but the lady is not my mamma, Grete. _She_ died when I was
scarcely your age; and this is my second mother, who has been with me
ever since."

All the next day she waited, lingering about, and unable to do anything
in her feverish anxiety and impatience.  She was not afraid to see him.
She had suddenly been awakened to a sweet and new consciousness of
strength—a fulness of life and will which she knew would sustain her in
any emergency. She had no fear whatever, so far as she herself was
concerned.  But she dreaded the possible effect of their meeting again
in these too seductive circumstances; she dreaded it, while she thought
of Dove. Already there lay over her the shadow of the wrong done to the
bright young English girl whose pretty ways and violet eyes she so well
remembered—a wrong inscrutable, not to be condoned or forgotten. Whose
was the fault?  She only knew that she dared no longer stay there after
having once read Will’s secret in that quick mutual glance in the
forest.

Another day passed, and yet another: the torment was becoming
unbearable.  She could not leave the place while danger yet hung over
him: on the other hand, her delay was provoking the chances of that very
meeting which she had resolved should not take place.  Many a time she
thought she could go away happy and content if only she might shake
hands with him and look once in his eyes; then there came a misty
remembrance of Dove’s face floating before her, and the young girl
seemed to regard her reproachfully.

She began to think that a little far-off glimpse of him would do:
moderating her desires, she grew to long for that as the one supreme
boon, bearing which with her she could go away with a glad heart.  Only
a glimpse of him to see how he looked, to bid a mute farewell to him,
herself unseen.

"Our patient is much better this morning," said the Count to her, on the
fourth day.  "Won’t you come upstairs, and see him?"

"No," she said, softly, looking down.

She was more incomprehensible to him than ever. Formerly she seemed to
be quite familiar with him; she was happy and careless in his presence;
she responded to his nonsense with nonsense of her own. Now she seemed
to have been translated to another sphere.  He was no longer jovial and
jocular with her.  He watched and studied the Madonna-like calm of the
clear dark face, until he felt a sort of awe stealing over him; the
intense dark life of her eyes was a mystery to him.

In these few days she began to wonder if she were not rapidly growing
old: it seemed to her that everything around her was becoming so serious
and so sad.

"And if I do look old, who will care?" she said to herself, bitterly.

The Count, on the other hand, fancied she had never been so beautiful;
and, as he looked on her, he tried to gladden his heart by the thought
that he was not a mercenary man.  To prove to her and himself that he
was not, he swore a mental oath that he would be rejoiced to see her a
beggar, that so he might lift her up to his high estate.  Indeed, so mad
was the man at the time—so much beside himself was he—that he was ready
to forswear the only aim of his life, and would have married Annie
Brunel only too willingly, had it been proved to him that she was the
daughter of a gipsy.

"Another day’s rest is all that the doctor has prescribed," said the
Count.  "I hope to see our friend down to breakfast to-morrow morning."

"Is he so much better?" she asked.

She inquired in so earnest a tone that he fancied her anxiety was to
know if the damage she had done was nearly mended—and so he said:

"Better?  He is quite better now.  I think he might come down and see us
this morning, unless you would prefer paying him a visit."

Immediately after breakfast Miss Brunel went over to the inn, and there
she found Hans Halm and his daughter.

"Grete," she said, "could you go to the Feldberg to-day?"

"Yes," said Grete.

"Could you be ready to start by twelve o’clock?"

"My father’s _wagen_ has gone to Donaueschingen, mademoiselle," she
said.

"The Count will lend us a carriage, and you must come with me."

The matter having been arranged, she returned to the Count, and told him
of her intention, firmly and quietly.  A week previous he would have
laughed, and pooh-poohed the notion; now he was excessively courteous,
and, though he regretted her decision, he would do everything in his
power, &c.

"Will you let Hermann come with us as far as the Feldberg?"

"I devote Hermann entirely to your service for a week—a month—as long as
you choose," said the Count.

English Polly was got up from the kitchen—where she had established a
species of freemasonry between herself and the German servants—to assist
in the packing; and while she and Mrs. Christmas were so engaged, Annie
Brunel sate down, and wrote these lines on a slip of paper:

"_I am glad to hear you are letter.  You wished us not to meet again,
and as it is easier for me to go than you, I leave here in an hour.  You
will forgive me for having caused you so much pain.  Good-bye._

_A.B._"

She put the paper in an envelope, and took it down to the Count.

"I have written a note to Mr. Anerley, explaining our going away so
abruptly.  Will you please send it to him?"

"I will take it to him myself," said the Count, and he took it.

A few minutes afterwards, when the Count returned, she was seated at the
window, looking out with vague absent eyes on the great undulations of
the black-green forest, on the soft sunlight that lay upon the hills
along the horizon, and on the little nook of Schönstein with the brown
houses, the white church, and the large inn.  She started slightly as he
entered.  He held another envelope in his hand.

"I have brought a reply," he said, "but a man does not write much with
his left hand, in bed."

On a corner of the sheet of paper she had sent, there were written these
words, "_I thank you heartily. God bless you!—W.A._"  And her only
thought as she read them was, "Not even in England—not even in England."

Grete appeared, blushing in her elaborate finery. Her violet bodice was
resplendent, with its broad velvet collar embroidered with gold; her
snow-white sleeves were full-blown and crimp; and her hair was braided,
and hung down in two long tails from underneath the imposing black
head-dress, with its ornamentation of gold beads.  Grete had
manufactured another of those embroidered miracles, which she was now
carrying in her trunk to Aenchen Baumer.  It was with a little sob of
half-hysteric delight that she drove out of the stone courtyard, and
realised the stupendous fact that Hermann Löwe was to accompany them to
the Feldberg.

Mrs. Christmas, studying the strange expression of her adopted
daughter’s face, thought she was becoming remarkably like the Annie
Napier whom she knew long ago.

"May she have a very different fate!" said the old woman to herself, as
she thought of the weary and solitary life-struggle, the self-denial,
the heroic fortitude of those bygone and bitter days.

                              CHAPTER XX.

                               HOMEWARDS.

"If mademoiselle chooses," said Grete, "we can walk along the side of
the Titi See, and allow the carriage to go on by itself.  The road is
very pretty from the lake onwards to the Feldberg."

Mademoiselle was in that frame of mind when any change involving action
was a delicious relief, and she gladly embraced the proposal.

"If the old lady prefers to drive all the way," said Grete, with a touch
of maidenly pride, "Hermann ought to accompany her.  I can find the way
for us two, mademoiselle."

That also was agreed to, the distance being too great for Mrs. Christmas
to walk.  And so Annie Brunel and Grete Halm set out upon the winding
path, or rather track, which runs along the shore of the beautiful Titi
See—here skirting the edge of the rocky promontories which jut out into
the still blue lake, there cutting through the dense coppices lying in
the sunshine along the foot of the hills, or again passing some
deep-roofed and sleepy farmhouse, with its small stone chapel standing
in the yard.  Grete reverentially crossed herself every time they passed
one of these numerous private chapels; and her companion, peeping in
through the wooden bars, generally saw within the sanctuary a large
framed lithograph of the Virgin Mary in red and blue, with a vast number
of little gilt trinkets and other pious offerings lying on the altar.
Some of these chapels had forms within capable of accommodating a
congregation of from twelve to twenty persons.  One or two people had
built no chapel at all, but had hollowed out a niche in the wall
surrounding their garden, and had placed therein a wooden crucifix, more
or less painted, exhibiting the details of the Crucifixion with mediæval
exactitude.  And Grete, being a good girl, crossed herself as she saw
these humble memorials of a devout faith.

"Why did you send Hermann away, Grete?" said Annie Brunel, as they
walked along.

"Because, mademoiselle, I wished him to know that I could do without
him," said Grete Halm.

"You are very fond of him, are you not?"

"Yes, mademoiselle, but——"

"And he of you?"

"He is very fond of me, I know," said Grete, simply.

"I don’t wonder at it; but have you ever asked yourself why he is fond
of you?"

"Why, mademoiselle?  Because—because I am a girl and he is a man, and he
wants to be married."

Annie Brunel laughed; it was the first smile her companion had seen on
her face for some days.

"But suppose he did not want to be married—suppose he could not be
married to you—would he be fond of you?  Or suppose you knew, Grete,
that he was to marry some one else, what would you do?"

"I should do nothing, mademoiselle; I should be miserable."

"You would not cease to love him?"

"If I could, yes; if not,——"

"If not, you would only be miserable."

The tone in which the words were uttered caused Grete to look up
suddenly in her companion’s face. She saw nothing there but the
inwardly-reflecting eyes, the beautiful, pale, dark complexion, and the
placid sweetness of the unkissed lips.

"In England, Grete, I am an actress.  They say that an actress must
never reflect, that she lives for immediate gratification, that she
educates impulses, and that she cannot pause, and regard her position,
and criticise herself.  If I cease to feel any pleasure in immediate
gratifications, if I feel ill at ease and dissatisfied with myself, and
fancy that the stage would no longer give me any pleasure—must I cease
to be an actress?"

"Is mademoiselle in earnest?"

Grete Halm could not believe that her companion was an actress.  Had she
ever seen, even in Carlsruhe itself, an actress with such a noble air,
with such a face, and such a manner?

"I am in earnest, Grete.  I have been an actress all my life; I feel as
if I were one no longer."

"What has changed you, mademoiselle, may I be permitted to ask?"

"I do not know myself, Grete.  But I have turned an old woman since I
came to the Black Forest; and I shall go back to England with a sort of
fear, as if I had never been there before."

_Since she came to the Black Forest_.  For a moment a suspicion crossed
Grete’s mind that she must be miserable through loving some one; but so
completely had she been imbued with the idea of her companion being some
mysteriously beautiful and noble creature, who could not be moved by the
meaner loves and thoughts of a girl like herself, that she at once
dismissed the supposition.  Perhaps, she thought, the shock of severely
injuring her friend still affected her, and had induced a temporary
despondency.  Grete therefore resolved, in her direct way, to be as
amusing as possible; and she never tired of directing her companion’s
attention to the beautiful and wonderful things they saw on their
way—the scarlet grasshoppers which rattled their wings among the warm
grass, the brilliantly-coloured beetles, the picturesque crucifixes by
the wayside, or the simultaneous splash of a lot of tiny fish among the
reeds as some savage pike made a rush at them from the deeper water.

In process of time they left the soft blue breadth of the lake behind
them, and found themselves in the valley leading up to the Feldberg.
Grete struck an independent zigzag course up the hill’s side, clambering
up rocky slopes, cutting through patches of forest, and so on, until
they found themselves on the high mountain-road loading to their
destination. Nothing was to be seen of the carriage; and so they went on
alone, into the silence of the tall pines, while the valley beneath them
gradually grew wider, and the horizon beyond grew more and more distant.
Now they were really in the Black Forest of the old romances—not the
low-lying districts, where the trees are of modern growth, but up in the
rocky wilderness, where the magnificent trunks were encrusted and coated
with lichens of immemorial age—where the spongy yellow-green moss, here
and there of a dull crimson, would let a man sink to the waist—where the
wild profusion of underwood was rank and strong with the heat of the sun
and the moisture of innumerable streams trickling down their rocky
channels in the hillside—where the yellow light, falling between the
splendid stems of the trees, glimmered away down the narrow avenues, and
seemed to conjure up strange forms and faces out of the still brushwood
and the fantastic grey lichens which hung everywhere around.  Several
times a cock capercailzie, with two or three hens under his protection,
would rise with a prodigious noise and disappear in the green darkness
overhead; occasionally a mountain-hare flew past; and Grete, with an
inherited interest, pointed out to her friend the tiny footmarks of the
deer on the sand of the rough and winding road.

"See, mademoiselle, there is Aenchen Baumer’s house."

They had come to an opening in the pines which revealed the broad yellow
valley beneath, with its sunlit road running like a thread of silk
through it.  Grete’s friend’s house was a little white building, with
green casements, and a few vines growing up one of the gables; it was
separated from the road by a paling which interrupted the long line of
rough stone posts which a paternal government had stuck in the ground to
prevent carriages tumbling still farther down into the bed of the
hollow.

"You have come a long way out of your road, Grete," said Miss Brunel.

"I came to accompany you, mademoiselle.  I can easily go back to
Aenchen’s house before the evening."

The upward road now grew more and more jagged, rough, and full of
mud-holes, until, at last, they left the forest region altogether, and
got into the high pasture districts of the mountain.  Finally, as the
path became a track, grass-grown and rocky, they arrived at a square
grey building, with a small garden attached, which stood on the summit
of the shoulder of the hill.

"It is the Feldberg Inn," said Grete.

"Is it pleasant to live on the top of the mountain?" asked her
companion.

"Oh, yes, mademoiselle; only it is a little cold. And when you look out
at night—in the moonlight—it frightens one; for all the house seems
surrounded by a yellow mist, which floats about and makes figures, and
then it sweeps away, and you see the garden sharp and clear.  It is the
clouds, you know.  Franz Gersbach has told me of his having been on the
top of the Niessen one morning before sunrise, and while all the great
mountains opposite—the Jungfrau, and the Mönch, and the Eiger, and all
these—were still cold and dark, he saw Monte Rosa and Mont Blanc, away
down in the south, with a pale pink flame on their peaks in the midst of
the green sky.  Here we have no snow on our mountains, except in the
winter-time; and then sometimes the people up here have their supplies
cut off for a long time."

There was a tall, fair-faced, sleepy-looking man standing at the door of
the inn, with whom Grete shook hands.  The giant blushed slightly,
answered her questions in laconic monosyllables, and then led the way
into the house, apparently relieved to be out of the observation of the
two girls.

"It is the landlord’s brother," said Grete, "and a friend of mine."

"You have a number of friends," said Annie Brunel, with a smile; "and
they seem to be all big men.  If you were as small as I am, one might
account for your liking big men."

Grete Halm looked at her companion.  There could be no doubt about the
German girl being the taller and certainly the stouter of the two; and
yet until that moment she had fancied that Miss Brunel was ever so much
taller than she.

"It is the manner of your walk, mademoiselle, and your figure—and
perhaps the expression of your face—that make me think you tall.  No, I
see you are not tall."

For a moment Margarethe’s soft brown eyes dwelt on her companion—perhaps
with a touch of wistful, puzzled longing to know why grace of form
should so touch our sympathies; then she turned to the large Heinrich
Holzmann—whose big shoulders should have been more attractive to a
girl’s eye than another girl’s waist—and said that the young English
lady wished the best apartments in the house. Margarethe further gave
him to understand that his guests would be very particular about their
cookery; and, above all, that they would not submit to have but one fork
and knife to attend them through four or five courses.  Heinrich said
"Yaw" in a grave manner to all her directions, and begged her to tell
the English lady that his brother, who spoke French, would be home next
day.

"But the lady and her friend—who will be here presently—must not starve
till to-morrow," said the practical Grete.

"Nein," said Heinrich, absently.

"I mean they must have dinner here, and you must look after it, Heinrich
Holzmann."

"Ja, ja."

"You have plenty in the house?"

"Ja."

"The lady says that after the carriage arrives, you can have dinner
prepared: that is, the lady and her friend at one table, and Hermann
Löwe, the coachman, and I at another.  Do you understand?"

"Freilich.",

"If the girls want help, ask me."

"Danke schön, Grete."

"And as you don’t seem to have anybody here, shall I take the lady
upstairs and pick out what rooms she wants?"

"Yes, if that pleases you," said the fair-haired giant; and therewith he
opened the door for Miss Brunel, and made her a grave bow as she went
with Grete into the passage, and so up to the rooms above.

It was nearly half an hour afterwards that the carriage arrived, and
Mrs. Christmas, with much excitement, caught Annie in her arms and
kissed her, declaring she had never expected to see her again. The road
they had come!—the precipices they had skirted, with the three horses
slipping on the smooth rocks at the very brink!—the vehicle leaning over
as if it were about to topple headlong down!—the jolting into deep ruts
and over blocks of stone!

"I screamed," she said, "and insisted on being helped out of the
carriage; for they would have me sit still, declaring there was no
danger.  Danger!——"

And the little woman shivered.

"So you walked all the way?"

"Until we got down into the valley."

Grete and Hermann were invited to dine with the two ladies; and, in the
evening, they all convoyed the young German girl down to the house of
her friend.

For several days they remained on the Feldberg, beguiling the time as
best they might.  Mrs. Christmas had now quite recovered her normal
condition of health and spirits, and laboured hard to discover why her
companion was so preoccupied, restless, and absent in manner.  Why, too,
was this journey down through Switzerland being indefinitely postponed?
Every morning it was——

"Miss Annie, do we start to-day?"

"Not to-day, mother.  Let us have another day’s quiet."

"You will kill yourself with dulness, Miss Annie. There is nothing for
you to do."

"Let us climb to the top of the peak, and see the tower——"

"I have tried twice, and failed.  And if you persist in going up there
alone, you will tumble down into that horrible lake you told me of."

"Then let us descend to the lake to-day, if you please."

She could not leave the neighbourhood.  She lingered there, day after
day, that she might have tidings from Schönstein.  Two letters she had
received from the Count told her nothing definite; they were very
polite, grave, respectful communications, in which he hoped she would
visit Schönstein again on her return.  Hermann, on going back to his
master, had written to Grete Halm, and merely mentioned that the English
gentleman was still in his room, and that the surgeon did not speak very
confidently of the case.

This day, also, she prevailed on Mrs. Christmas to stay; and together,
after breakfast, they set out in quest of the Feldsee, the small lake
that lies deep down in the heart of the mountain.  They were furnished
with a few directions from Heinrich Holzmann’s brother; but as neither
time nor direction was of much consequence to them, they plunged
carelessly into the forest, and proceeded slowly to descend the side of
the mountain.  At last, they came upon a path which led down through the
jumbled and picturesque confusion of shattered rock, smooth boulder,
moss, fern, and herbage, that lay around the foot of the tall,
resinous-smelling pines; and this track they leisurely followed until,
from the twilight of the trees, it led them out into the obscure
daylight which dwelt over the gloomy tarn they sought.

Nothing could well be more lonely or melancholy than this dark and
silent lake lying in its circular bed—evidently an extinct volcanic
crater—overshadowed by tall and perpendicular crags hemming it in on
every side, and scarcely ever having a breath of wind to stir its
leaden-like surface.  The tall thinly-clad rocks, rising to the circular
breadth of white sky above, were faintly mirrored in the black water
underneath; and the gloomy stillness of the quiet motionless picture was
not relieved by the least stir or sound of any living thing.  This
hideous hole, its surface nearly four thousand feet above the level of
the sea, is of unknown depth: no wonder that the superstitious
Schwarzwalders have legends about it, and that the children tell you of
the demon-deer that was wont to spring over the tall precipices above,
and so lure on the unwary huntsman and his horse to destruction.

There was a boat lying moored in a creek at one corner of the lake, and
of this Annie Brunel at once took possession.  She insisted on Mrs.
Christmas getting into it; and then, with a few strokes of the oars, she
pulled out to the centre of the lake. Mrs. Christmas did not at all like
the aspect of the place; and, if she had known that she was floating
over an extinct volcano, she would probably have liked it less.

"It looks like a place for murders to be committed," she said.

When they had reached the centre of the dark water, Annie laid aside the
oars, and seated herself in the stern of the boat with her companion.
There was no wind, no current: the boat remained almost motionless.

The old woman took the young girl’s hand, and said to her—

"Come now, Miss Annie, you must tell me what has been the matter with
you lately—what has vexed you—or what troubles you?"

"I have been thinking of returning to England," she said, absently.

"Why should that trouble you?"

"I am afraid of going back."

"Bah!  I have no patience with you.  You are as much a child as ever—as
when you used to whimper in a makebelieve way, and cause your mother to
laugh and cry together over your natural turn for acting."

"My natural turn for acting is going—is nearly gone," said she, with a
smile; "and that is what I am afraid about.  I am beginning to fear a
lot of faces."

"Then _why_ will you remain in such a dreadfully lonely place as this
mountain inn?  That it is which breeds strange fancies in you, my girl,
don’t doubt of it.  Afraid of faces!  Didn’t you use to tell me that you
were never conscious of seeing a face at all when you were on the
stage?"

"I may have said so," she replied, musingly.  "I don’t think I ever did
see faces—except as vague orange-coloured lamps in a sort of ruddy
darkness—over the blaze of the footlights, you know.  Certainly I never
thought of them, nor heeded them. When I went off, and heard the noise
of their hands and feet, it seemed like the sound of some machine with
which I had no concern.  I don’t think I ever feared an audience in my
life.  My mother used to be my audience, as she stood in the wings and
looked at me with the half-smile and kindly eyes I remember so well; and
then I used to try to please you, you know, and never succeeded, as you
also know, Lady Jane; and lately I have not thought of pleasing anybody,
but of satisfying a sort of delirium that came over me."

"You never pleased me!  You wicked creature! If I were blind and came
into a theatre where I heard you playing your ’Juliet,’ my eyes would
open of their own accord."

"That time has passed over, Lady Jane.  I am afraid of going to England.
I should see all the faces now, and wonder what the people were saying
of my hands outstretched, or of my kneeling posture, or of my elocution.
I feel that if I were to get up just now, in this boat, and speak two
sentences——"

"You would have us both laughing.  But did you ever try before, my dear,
to act to a scene?  You might as well try to speak to an empty theatre
as to that horrible loneliness over there.  It was Mr. Bridges, the
stage-manager at N——, if you remember, Miss Annie, who used to rehearse
in the morning his speech before the curtain—used to wave his hand and
smile to the empty benches, and then bow himself out backward.  But at
night, when the people were there, he always forgot the smile and the
wave of the hand, and mumbled like a schoolboy. And as for your not
being able to act when you hear the stir of a crowded house on the other
side of the curtain, and know there are a dozen bouquets waiting for you
in the boxes, why it’s nonsense, my dear."

"I am afraid of it none the less, mother, and I shall dread putting
myself to the test."

"All the result of this living out of the world," said Mrs. Christmas,
dogmatically.  "Say, shall we start to-morrow morning, Miss Annie?"

"Yes."

When they returned to the inn there was a letter from Schönstein
awaiting Miss Brunel.  She knew from the peculiar handwriting who had
sent it, and opened it joyfully, knowing that he was at least well
enough to write.  These were the words:—

"Schönstein, Thursday.

"MY DEAR MISS BRUNEL,—Ever since you left I have bitterly reproached
myself for having given you so much annoyance and trouble.  I hear that
you are living, without amusement or companions, in the Feldberg Inn.
May I beg of you to return here, adding the assurance that you will not
be troubled by my presence in any way whatever? Whether you do or not, I
cannot permit you to leave without bidding you good-bye—especially as we
may not see each other in England—and so, if you will forgive me this
once, I propose to cross over to the Feldberg to-morrow and visit you,"
&c., &c.

She read no more; the cramped left-hand writing had told her enough.
She hurriedly wrote a reply, peremptorily forbidding him to be at the
trouble and danger of such an expedition; and added that, before he
could possibly be at the Feldberg, she would be on her way to Freiburg
and Basle.  Then she called the elder Holzmann, desired him to get a
messenger to take over this letter to Schönstein that day, and informed
him that on the next morning she and her companion would set out for the
south.

It was a point of maidenly honour with her that she should go away with
her sad secret her own; and who could tell what disclosure might happen,
were she to see him suffering from the effects of the wound, entreating
her to stay, and with his own love for her speaking in his eyes?  He was
a man, and it did not matter; as for her, she closed this fatal
tenderness in her heart, and would fain have deceived herself into
denying its existence. Truth to say, she felt a touch of shame at her
own weakness; was dimly conscious that her virginal purity of soul was
tainted by a passion which she dreamed was a guilty one; and knew that
her punishment lay in the loss of that innocent gaiety and
thoughtlessness which had hitherto made her life so pleasant.

"We may not see each other in England," she said to herself, gazing at
the crooked and trembling lines on the paper.  "Not in England, nor
elsewhere, will be my constant prayer so long as I live."

So they left the gloomy mountain, and passing through the Hollenthal
once more, reached Freiburg; and from thence, by easy stages, they made
the round of the Swiss lakes until, as fate would have it, they came to
Thun.  There they rested for a day or two, preparatory to their
undertaking the voyage to England.

Here a strange incident befel Annie Brunel. Their first walk lay along
the shore of the lake; and no sooner had they left the side of the rapid
bright-green Aar, than Mrs. Christmas noticed a strange intense look of
wonder settling over her companion’s face.  Wistfully, and yet
curiously, the dark-grey eyes dwelt on the expanding lake, on the long
curving bays, on the sunlit mountains opposite, and on the far-off
snow-peaks of the Bernese Alps.

"I have seen all this in a dream," she said.

"Or in a picture," suggested Mrs. Christmas.

"It is more than a dream or a picture," she continued, in a
half-frightened way, as they walked along.  "I know the place—I know
it—the shore over there—the village down yonder at the point, and the
smoke hanging over the trees;—I am getting quite giddy
with—remembering——"

"My dear!" said Mrs. Christmas.

Her companion was now quite pale, and stood fixed to the spot, looking
over the long scene in front of her with a wild stare.  Then she turned
round, as if almost in fear, and no sooner had she done so than she
uttered a slight cry, and seemed ready to sink to the ground.

"I knew it!—I knew it!" she said.  "I knew the house was there before I
turned my head."

She looked up at the handsome building on the plateau above, as if it
were some horrible thing come to torture her.  It was only the house in
which Harry Ormond had bidden her mother farewell.

                              CHAPTER XXI.

                              IN ENGLAND.

Mr. Melton was overjoyed to see Annie Brunel in London again.  He had
spent half his fortune in beautifying his theatre, in getting up
elaborate scenery for the new piece with which he was to welcome the
return to town of his patrons, and in providing costly properties.  So
long as the heroine of the piece was wandering among the mountains of
the Schwarzwald, it was impossible that the manager’s mind could be well
at ease.

"You shall come round now, and see what we have done for you, and give
us your opinion," said he, politely.

Indeed, he would like to have kissed her just then, in a fatherly way,
to show how delighted he was to have her back again.  He saw pictures of
overflowing audiences before his mind as he looked on the quiet little
figure before him, on the dark face, and the large grave eyes.

It was about eleven o’clock in the forenoon.  A tolerably clear light
fell upon the stage, a duskier twilight hung over the rows of empty
benches in the pit, and the gloomy darkness behind the galleries was
here and there lit up by a solitary lamp.  One or two gilders were still
at work on the front of the dress-circle; overhead an echoing clang of
hammer and nail told that carpenters were busy; and a vague shouting
from the dusky region of the "flies" revealed the presence of human
beings in those dim Olympian heights.  Everywhere, as usual, the smell
of escaped gas; here and there an odour of size or paint.

As they descended from the dark corridor behind the dress-circle into
the wings, a mass of millinery ran full-tilt against Mr. Melton, and
then started back with a slight cry and a giggle.

"God bless my soul!" said the manager, piously, although that was not
the part of his body which had suffered.

The next moment Miss Featherstone had thrown her arms around Annie
Brunel’s neck, and was kissing her and calling her "My dear" with that
profusion of sentiment which most actresses love to scatter over the
object, _pro tem._, of their affection.  Miss Featherstone was attired
in a green silk dress—in many a love-scene had _that_ rather dingy piece
of costume figured, on the stage and elsewhere—a blue cloth jacket, a
white hat with a scarlet feather, and yellow gloves.  During this
outburst of emotion, Mr. Melton had caught sight of a young gentleman—to
whom he gave thirty shillings a week in order that he might dress as a
gentleman should, and always have a good hat to keep on his head while
walking about in a drawing-room—who had been in pursuit of Miss
Featherstone, and who now sneaked away in another direction.

"And so you’ve come back, my dear, and none of the German princes have
run away with you!  And how well you look!  I declare I’m quite ashamed
of myself when I see the colour in your cheeks; but what with
rehearsals, you know, my dear, and other troubles——"

She heaved a pretty and touching sigh.  She intimated that these
quarrels with the young gentleman who escorted her to and from the
stage-door—quarrels which came off at a rate of about seven per
week—were disturbing the serenity of her mind so far as to compel her to
assist nature with violet-powder and rouge.

"Do you know, my dear," she said, in a whisper that sent Mr. Melton away
on his own business, "he swears he will forsake me for ever if I accept
a part in which I must wear tights.  How can I help it, my dear?  What
is a poor girl to do?"

"Wear trousers," said Annie Brunel, with a smile.

"Nothing will please him.  He would have all my comic parts played in a
train half a mile long.  At last I told him he had better go and help my
mother to cut my skirts and petticoats of a proper length; and he
pretended to be deeply hurt, and I haven’t seen him since."

Then she tossed her wilful little head with an air of defiance.

"He will write to me before I write to him."

"It is too cruel of you," said her companion.

"Yes, my dear, you may laugh; but you have no burlesque parts to play.
And you have nobody sitting in the stalls watching your every movement,
and keeping you in a fright about what he is thinking of you."

"No," said Annie Brunel, rather absently, "I have nobody to watch me
like that.  If I had, I should not be able to go upon the stage, I
think."

"And the bitter things he says about the profession—and particularly
about Mr. Gannet, and Mr. Marks, and Mr. Jobson—all because they are
young men, and he fancies they may be so polite as to lift a glove for
me if I let it fall.  You know, my dear, that _I_ don’t encourage them.
If there’s any fun at rehearsal, you know that _I_ don’t begin it."

"When we met you just now——"

"That was only some of Mr. Murphy’s nonsense. Oh, I declare to you, no
one knows what I have suffered.  The other evening, when he and I got
into a cab, he glared at the man who opened the door for us.  And the
fuss he makes about cosmetique and bismuth is something dreadful."

"He must be a monster."

There now ensued a little fragment of thorough comedy.  For a moment the
elderly young lady, who had been assuming throughout the tone of a
spoiled child, stood irresolute.  There was a petulance on her face, and
she had half a mind to go away in high dudgeon from one who was
evidently laughing at her.  Then through this petulance there broke a
sort of knowing smile, while a glimmer of mischievous intelligence
appeared in her eyes; and then, with an unaffected comical giggle, she
once more threw her arms round Annie Brunel’s neck and kissed her.

"I’m very wicked, I know," she said, with a shrug of the shoulders, "but
I can’t help it.  What’s bred in the bone, you know.  And it’s all the
men’s fault, for they keep teasing one so.  As for _him_, if he writes
to me, and makes an apology, and promises to be a good boy, I’ll make
friends with him.  And I’ll be very good myself—for a week."

It was with a cold inward shiver that Annie Brunel stepped out upon the
stage and looked round the empty theatre.  She tried to imagine it full
of people, and yellow light, and stir, and she knew within herself she
dared not venture before them. Even without that solitary pair of eyes
watching her movements, and without the consciousness that she might be
producing a strong impression, for good or evil, on one particular
person whose estimation she desired, she trembled to think of the full
house, and the rows of faces, and her own individual weakness.

"What do you think of the decorations, Miss Brunel?" said Mr. Melton,
coming up.

"They are very pretty," she said, mechanically.

"With your ’Rosalind,’ the theatre should draw all London to it."

"It is ’Rosalind’ you mean to play?" she asked, scarcely knowing what
she said.

"Certainly," replied the manager, with astonishment. "Don’t you remember
our agreement?  If you turn round, you will see the new forest-scene Mr.
Gannet has painted; perhaps it may remind you of something in the Black
Forest."

For a moment or two she glanced over the great breadth of canvas,
covered with gnarled oaks, impossible brushwood, and a broad, smooth
stream. With a short "No, it is not like the Black Forest," she turned
away again.

"Miss Featherstone will play ’Celia;’ and you know there is not a
’Touchstone’ in the world to come near Bromley’s.  Mrs. Wilkes refuses
to play ’Audrey,’ luckily, and Miss Alford will play it a deal better.
I have had several rehearsals, everybody is declared letter-perfect; and
we only you to put the keystone to the arch, as one might say."

She turned quickly round and said to him—

"If I were at the last moment prevented from playing in the piece, could
Miss Featherstone take ’Rosalind,’ and some one else play ’Celia?’"

"What do you mean, my dear Miss Brunel?" said the manager, aghast.  "You
frighten me, I assure you.  I calculated upon you; and after all this
expense, and your agreement, and——"

"Don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Melton," she said, quietly.  "I mean to
play the part so as to give every satisfaction both to you and myself,
if I can. I only asked in the event of any accident."

"Come," said he, kindly, "I can’t have you talk in that strain, with
such a prospect before us.  Why, we are going to set all London, as well
as the Thames, on fire, and have the prices of the stalls going at a
hundred per cent. premium.  An accident!  Bah!  I wish Count Schönstein
were here to laugh the notion out of your head."

So it was, therefore, that the play was put in full rehearsal for
several days, and Mr. Melton looked forward hopefully to the success of
his new venture. Sometimes he was a little disquieted by the remembrance
of Miss Brunel’s singular question; but he strove to banish it from his
mind.  He relied upon his new scenery and decorations, and upon Annie
Brunel; the former were safe, and he would take care to secure the
latter.

The gentlemen of the press had been good enough to mention the proposed
revival in terms of generous anticipation.  Altogether, Mr. Melton had
every reason to hope for the best.

Occasionally he observed an unusual constraint in the manner of his
chief favourite, and sometimes a listless indifference to what was going
on around her.  One or twice he had caught her standing idly behind the
foot-lights, gazing into the empty theatre with a vague earnestness
which revealed some inward purpose.  He still trusted that all would go
well; and yet he confessed to himself that there was something about the
young actress’s manner that he had never noticed before, and which he
could not at all understand.

Mrs. Christmas seemed to share with him this uneasy feeling.  He knew
that the old lady was now in the habit of lecturing her pupil in a
derisive way, as if trying to banish some absurd notion from her mind;
and whenever he approached, Mrs. Christmas became silent.

For the first time during their long companionship Mrs. Christmas found
her young friend incomprehensibly obstinate, not to say intractable.
Night and day she strove to convince her that in anticipating
nervousness and failure, she was rendering both inevitable; and yet she
could not, by all her arguments and entreaties, remove this gloomy
apprehension.

"I cannot explain the feeling," was the constant reply.  "I only know it
is there."

"But you, of all people, Miss Annie!  Girls who have suddenly come to
try the stage get fits of stage-fright naturally: but people who are
born and bred to it, who have been on the stage since their childhood——"

"Why should you vex yourself, mother?  I have no dread of stage-fright.
I shall be as cool as I am now.  Don’t expect that I shall blunder in my
part, or make mistakes otherwise—that is not what I mean.  What I fear
is, that the moment I go upon the stage, and see the men and women all
around me, I shall feel that I am just like one of them, only a little
lower in having to amuse them.  I shall feel as if I ought to be ashamed
of myself in imitating the real emotions of life."

"You never had any of those fantastic notions before.  Didn’t you use to
pride yourself on your indifference to the people?"

"I _used_ to."

"What has changed you?"

"My growing older," she replied, with a sad smile.  "I begin to feel as
if those things that make up acting had become part of my own life now,
and that I had no business to burlesque them any more on the stage.  I
begin to wonder what the people will think of my lending myself to a
series of tricks."

And here she fell into a reverie, which Mrs. Christmas saw it was
useless to interrupt.  The worthy old woman was sorely puzzled and
grieved by the apostacy of her most promising pupil, and ceased not to
speculate on what subtle poison had been allowed to creep into her mind.

Meanwhile the opening night had arrived.  People had come back from the
moors and Mont Blanc, and every place in the theatre had been taken. Mr.
Melton already enjoyed his triumph by anticipation, and tried every
means of keeping up Annie Brunel’s spirits.  She was bound to achieve
the most brilliant of all her successes, as he confidently told her.

                             CHAPTER XXII.

                               ROSALIND.

"_Ah, mon bon petit public_, be kind to my leetel child!" says Achille
Talma Dufard, when his daughter is about to go on the stage for the
first time.  The words were in the heart, if not on the lips, of Mrs.
Christmas, as the kindly old woman busied herself in Annie Brunel’s
dressing-room, and prepared her favourite for the coming crisis.  She