"She seems pleasant and sympathetic," says Harry, adding, after a short pause, "I have seldom seen so perfect a beauty."

"She is as good as gold," Lato says, quickly, adding, in a rather lower tone, "and most forlorn, poor thing!"

CHAPTER XV.

COMRADES AND FRIENDS.

The clumsy Komaritz mansion casts its huge shadow upon the old-fashioned garden, upon the large rectangular flower-beds bordered with sage and parsley, wherein bloom in gay companionship sweet-smelling centifolia roses, dark-blue monk's-hood, scarlet verbenas, and lilac phlox; upon the tangle of raspberry- and blackberry-bushes that grow along the garden wall; and upon the badly-mown lawn. Ancient pear-trees and apple-trees mingle their shade with that of the old house.

An afternoon languor broods over it all. The buzz of bees above the flower-beds sounds languid; languid sounds the rustle of the leaves when, after a prolonged slumber, they awake for an instant, shiver, and then fall silent again; languid is the tone of the old piano, upon which the youngest Leskjewitsch is practising the 'Cloches du Monastere,' under the supervision of a teacher engaged for the summer holidays,--a Frulein Laut.

Nothing is for the present to be seen or heard of the other inmates of the castle. Hedwig is consulting with her maid, and the Countess Zriny is endeavouring to repair a great misfortune. On her journey from Vienna to Komaritz she relieved her maid, who was overladen with hand-bags, of two objects particularly dear to her soul,--a carved, partly-painted and partly-gilded St. John, and a large bottle of eau de Lourdes. In changing trains at Pernik, she slipped and fell at full length upon the platform; the bottle of eau de Lourdes flew one way and the St. John another; the bottle was broken, and St. John not only lost his head and one hand, but when the poor Countess gathered up his remains he proved to be injured in every part. His resuscitation is at present the important task of the old lady's life. At this moment she is working away at the folds of his garment with much devotion--and black oil paint.

Harry and Lato have told no one of their arrival. They are lying upon a gra.s.sy slope beneath a huge apple-tree, smoking, and exchanging reminiscences.

"How homelike all this is!" says Treurenberg, in his soft voice, and with a slightly drawling intonation. "I grow ten years younger here.

The same flowers, the same trees, the same fragrance, the same world-forgotten solitude, and, if I am not mistaken,"--he smiles a little,--"the same music. You used to play the 'Convent Bells' then."

"Yes," Harry replies, "'Les Cloches du Monastere' was the acme and the point of departure of my musical studies. I got rid of my last music-teacher and my last 'coach' at the same time."

"Do you mean Tuschalek?" asks Treurenberg.

"That was his name."

"H'm! I can see him now. Heavens! those hands!" Treurenberg gazes reflectively into s.p.a.ce. "They were always as red as radishes."

"They reminded me rather of carrots that had just been pulled out of the ground," Harry mutters.

"How the old times rise up before me!" Lato muses, letting his glance wander anew over the garden, where there is buzzing of innumerable bees; over the clumsy faade of the mansion; over the little eminence where still stand the quarters of Tuschalek and the Pole; then up to the old ruined castle, which stands out against the dark-blue August skies an almost formless shape, brown and grim, with its old scars from fire, and hung about with wreaths of wild climbing vines.

"'Tis odd,--something has seemed to me lacking about the dear old nest," Lato begins again, after a pause. "Now I know what it is."

"Well?"

"The little figure of your cousin Zdena. I am always looking for her to come skipping from among the flowers like a wayward little fairy."

Harry frowns, plucks a b.u.t.tercup growing in the gra.s.s, and is mute.

Without heeding his friend's mood, Treurenberg goes on: "As a child, she was most charming and unusually intelligent and gifted. Has the promise of her childhood not been fulfilled?"

Harry pulls another b.u.t.tercup out of the gra.s.s, and carefully deposits it beside the first.

"That is a matter of opinion," he remarks, carelessly, without looking at his friend.

"'Tis strange! Many a girl's beauty vanishes suddenly at about fourteen without leaving a trace; but I would have wagered my head that your cousin would have been beautiful," remarks Lato.

"I have not said that she is ugly," Harry growls.

"But you do not like her!" Lato now rivets his eyes full upon the gloomy face of his former playmate.

Harry turns away his head.

"I did not say I did not like her," he bursts out, "but I can't talk of her, because--because it is all her fault!"

"What is 'all'?" asks Lato, still looking fixedly at his friend.

Harry frowns and says nothing.

Lato does not speak again for a few moments. Then, having lighted a fresh cigar, he begins: "I always fancied,--one so often arranges in imagination a friend's future for him, particularly when one's own fate is fixed past recall,--I always said to myself that you and your cousin would surely come together. I liked to think that it would be so. To speak frankly, your betrothal to Paula was a great surprise to me."

"Indeed? Well, so it was to me!" Harry blurts out, then turns very red, is ashamed of his unbecoming confession; and then--then he is glad that it has been extorted from him; glad that he can speak frankly about the affair to any one with whom he can take counsel.

Treurenberg draws a long breath, and then whistles softly to himself.

"Sets the wind in that quarter?" he says at last. "I thought so. I determined that you should show your colours. And may I ask how you ever got into such a confounded sc.r.a.pe?"

Harry groans. "What would you have?--moonlight, nervous excitement,--all of a sudden there we were! I had quarrelled with my cousin Zdena--G.o.d bless her! In spite of her whims and fancies,--one never knows what she would be at,--she is the dearest, loveliest creature----! But that is only by the way----"

"Not at all, not at all; it interests me extremely," Treurenberg interrupts him, laughing.

"That may be, but it has very little to do with my explanation," Harry rejoins, dryly. "The fact is, that it was a warm night in August, and I was driving alone with Paula,--that is, with no coachman, and only my groom, who followed with my horse, and whom I entirely forgot,--from Zirkow to Dobrotschau, along that rough forest road,--you remember,--where one is jolted against one's companion at every step, and there is opportunity for a girl to be becomingly timid--h'm! She suddenly became frightened at a will-o'-the-wisp, she never struck me before as having such weak nerves,--and--well, I was distraught over my quarrel with Zdena, and I had taken perhaps a gla.s.s too much of Uncle Paul's old Bordeaux; in short, I kissed her. In an instant I recollected myself, and, if I am not mistaken, I said, 'Excuse me!' or, 'I beg pardon!' She cannot have heard this extremely sensible remark, however, for in the twinkling of an eye I was betrothed. The next day I was determined to put an end to such nonsense, and I sat down at my writing-table--confound it all! I never was great with the pen, and the model of such a letter as I wanted to write was not to be found in any 'Complete Letter-Writer.' Everything I tried to put on paper seemed to me so terribly indelicate and rough, and so I determined to tell the mother. I meant to bring forward a previous and binding attachment; to plead in my excuse the superlative charms of the Baroness Paula--oh, I had it all splendidly planned; but the old Baroness never let me open my lips, and so matters came to be arranged as you find them."

Through the open gla.s.s doors of the dining-room, across the flower-beds, comes the faint voice of the old piano. But it is no longer echoing the 'Cloches du Monastere,' but a wailing canzonetta by some popular local composer upon which the youngest Leskjewitsch is expending a most unnecessary amount of banging upon keys and pressing of pedals. With a grimace Harry stops his ears. Treurenberg looks very grave.

"You do not, then, intend to marry Paula?"

"G.o.d forbid!" Harry exclaims.

"Then,"--Lato bites his lip, but goes on calmly,--"forgive an old friend who is aware of the difficulty of your position, for the disagreeable remark,--but if you do not intend to marry my sister-in-law, your conduct with regard to her is not only very unbecoming but also positively wrong."

"Why?" Harry asks, crossly.

"Why?" Lato lifts his eyebrows. "Why, because you compromise her more deeply with every visit you pay her. You cannot surely deceive yourself as to the fact that upon the superficial observer you produce the impression of an unusually devoted pair of lovers."

"I do not understand how you can say such a thing!" Harry exclaims, angrily, "when you must have seen----"

"That you are on the defensive with Paula," Treurenberg interrupts him, with a wan smile. "Yes, I have seen it."

"Well, she ought to see it too," Harry mutters.

Lato shrugs his shoulders.

"She must lose patience sooner or later," says Harry.

"It is difficult to exhaust the patience of a young woman whose sensibilities are not very delicate and who is very much in love,"