Read Ebook: Count Zarka: A Romance by Magnay William Sir Greiffenhagen Maurice Illustrator

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Ebook has 1573 lines and 60667 words, and 32 pages

n the girl's brown travelling skirt.

"Yes; some shot hit my hand," she replied coolly, bringing forward her left hand bound with her handkerchief the delicate texture of which was absorbing blood like blotting paper.

"And ruined my gown," she went on in the same calm voice, contrasting curiously with his excited tone. "Or perhaps it was my fault. I should have held my hand out of harm's way."

He pulled out a folded handkerchief.

"Let me offer you this. Can you staunch the bleeding till I fetch a doctor?"

She reached for the handkerchief without looking at her companion.

"Thank you. I will take that. But you need not bother about a doctor."

She interrupted him with the same equable voice.

"If you will direct me to the nearest road to Gorla's Farm, I won't trouble you any more."

His look of concern was gradually changing to one of puzzled surprise. He could not make her out, nor tell whether she was seriously offended with him or not, so little emotion, or even expression, did she evince. His self-reproaches and vehement apologies seemed to go for nothing. The girl made even less of them than she did of her wounded hand, and she regarded that coolly enough. But a man does not, even unwittingly, inflict bodily harm on another, still less on a woman, without feeling genuine regret for it, and this man could not at once check his expressions of sorrow, cavalierly as they were received.

He looked surprised. "Do you live in these wilds?"

She laughed. "You did not think there was any habitation, perhaps."

"Except Rozsnyo."

He thought her face changed curiously. At any rate the smile died out of it. "I am not bound there," she replied. "We are living for the time at an old farm, the Meierhof Gorla. My father has come for sport."

"That, too, is my reason for being here," he said. "But I am a gipsy--for the time. I have a travelling cart and a tent, pitched over yonder"--he pointed across the valley--"my name is Osbert Von Tressen, and I have the honour to hold the rank of lieutenant in the second regiment of cavalry."

"My father's name," she told him in return, "is Harlberg. We live, when we care for civilization, in town. But I love forest life."

"You have enough of it here," he returned drily. "I thought perhaps you had come from the Schloss Rozsnyo. You know Count Zarka?"

She hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Yes, we know him. Do you?"

"No; only by--reputation."

She gave a quick glance at him as though to detect a significance in the last word. If she seemed tempted to ask him what that reputation was, she refrained.

"I hope," he asked sympathetically, "your hand is not very painful?"

"It hurts very little. I had no idea shot was so painless."

They had come to the crossing-place over the stream; Von Tressen, going first and stepping backwards, handed her safely across.

"Take care," he warned her midway. "I slipped on that stone myself just now."

"You did not fall in?"

"I saved myself at the expense of a wet foot."

She looked at him in a little amused commiseration. "How uncomfortable you must be! Do not let me keep you. I had rather lost my bearings, but if you can tell me the point to make for I can easily find my way home."

He laughed. "I should have felt infinitely more uncomfortable if I left you now. I had really forgotten my damp boot. I hope my company is not offensive to you as, after all my folly, I fear it ought to be."

"Oh, no," she answered. "I am not vindictive enough to send you away."

"Then you have forgiven me?"

"For what? I brought the accident on myself. I was tired and hot and thought it would be pleasant to lie down among the cool rushes and paddle my hand in the water, forgetting I ran the risk of being taken for a water-fowl or water-rat. There is nothing to forgive."

"I shall never forgive myself."

"You may easily," she returned.

They walked on in silence for a time over the thick, springy, plush-like turf. The girl seemed preoccupied, and her companion had too much tact to force her to talk. Presently she asked, "Have you had good sport to-day?"

"A big bag of small game which my man has taken to the tent. I have been obliged to shoot alone, as a brother officer who was to have joined me cannot get leave just yet."

As they emerged from the wood a glorious landscape lay before them. A great valley, broken up into a thousand tints of light and shade by the setting sun which played among rock and thicket, here and there catching a bend of the glinting stream which wound its way through it. Beyond rose a purple backing of millions of pines, and above and beyond them again the snow-capped mountains in all their stern grandeur.

The girl stopped for a moment. "How lovely!" She spoke without the least suspicion of gush; it was a genuine expression of delight, perhaps curbed by the presence of her companion.

"Yes," he agreed, "the valley looks beautiful to-day, but, to my thinking, it looks grandest under a stormy sky."

She was looking towards a spot where, high up on the pine-clad hill a great splash of crimson fire sparkled and glinted, glowing with a brilliancy which tinged the woods around it with its own blood-red colour.

"The Schloss Rozsnyo stands well," he observed.

"Like a fairy palace," she commented.

"Yes, it is," he replied. "Quite a show place, built half upon, half inside the rock, I am told. Most romantic, but singularly out of the way in these regions. It seems sheer waste. But then the Count, no doubt, is a man of peculiar ideas."

His last remark was half a question, but the girl did not answer it. He was not exactly sorry to notice that her interest in Rozsnyo and its owner did not seem to be altogether of an agreeable nature.

They turned and walked on. She was busy with her thoughts now, he could see; and he forebore to interrupt them. As they turned into one of the broad glades that intersected the forest, he said:

"This is an afternoon of surprises after my week's solitude. Who comes here?"

The girl's look followed his. A few hundred yards away, coming towards them at a leisurely trot, was a horseman.

As they and the rider drew nearer, an idea struck Von Tressen.

"I wonder if by any chance this is the man we have been speaking of--Count Zarka?"

He was quite within recognizable distance now. But it seemed from her absence of curiosity--for she kept her eyes from the advancing figure--that Fr?ulein Harlberg had known him at once.

"Yes it is," she answered curtly.

Von Tressen, in the glance which he could not resist, saw her face set with a peculiar look of suppressed feeling, almost of defiance. Next moment the Count was reining up in front of them. The two men raised their hats, but Zarka's eyes were upon the girl. They had probably already taken in her companion during the approach.

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