"You said something like that to me before," she replied, with the same nervous haste to exhibit every objection-was it that she the more wished them to be explained away?-"and I told you I did not think much of the charity that was only extended to me personally because my face was not old and haggard. Suppose that I were old and painted, and--"

"But if you were old, you would not be painted."

"I might."

"In that case, all the women would have some ground to be suspicious of you; and many of them would be angry because you were allowed a luxury denied them by their husbands. Really, Miss Brunel, you do the 'outsiders' an injustice," he added, warming to his work. "Stupid people and uneducated people do not care for nice discriminations. They have always decided opinions. They like to have clear lines of thought and positive decisions. They ticket things off, and stick to their cla.s.sifications through thick and thin, as if they were infallible. But you do wrong to care for the opinion of the stupid and uneducated."

"I should like to believe you; but how can I? If, as you say, we have fallen so low as even to earn the contempt of the stupid--"

"My darling," he said, and then he stopped as if a bullet had gone through him, "I-I beg your pardon; but I really fancied for the moment I was quarrelling with some of Dove's nonsense--"

She smiled in such an easy way at the mistake, however, that he saw she put no importance upon it.

"I was going to say-how could stupid people exist if they did not despise their superiors in wit, and intellect, and artistic perception?

There is a man at my club, for instance, who is intellectually, as he is physically, a head and shoulders taller than any of his brother members.

What reputation has he? Simply that of being 'an amusing young fellow, but-but very shallow, don't you know.' The empty-headed idiots of the smoking-room sit and laugh at his keen humour, and delicate irony, and witty stories; and rather patronise and pity him in that he is weak enough to be amusing. A dull man always finds his refuge in calling a man of brighter parts than himself 'shallow.' You should see this friend of mine when he goes down into the country to see his relations; how he is looked upon at the dinner-table as being only fit to make the women smile; and how some simpering fool of a squire, with nothing more brilliant in his library than a pair of hunting-boots, will grin compa.s.sionately to some other thick-headed boor, as though it were a ludicrous thing to see a man make himself so like a woman in being witty and entertaining."

"And you think the women in these country-houses more intelligent and amusing than the men?"

"G.o.d help country-houses when the women are taken out of them!"

"What a large portion of my life have I wasted over this abominable Bradshaw!" said Count Schonstein, coming up at that moment, and their conversation was for the present stopped.

But Will now recognised more firmly than ever the invisible barrier that was placed between her and the people among whom his life had been cast; and, perhaps, for Dove's sake, he was a little glad that he could never look upon this too-charming young actress but as the inhabitant of another world. And sometimes, too, he involuntarily echoed Dove's exclamation, "You are too beautiful to be an actress?"

When, after a pleasant little supper-party in the Mayence Hotel, at which they stopped, they parted for the night, Will congratulated himself on the resolution he had taken in the morning. It had been such a pleasant day; and who was the worse for it? He was sick at heart when he thought the time would come in which he could no more enjoy the keen pleasure of sitting near this tender creature, of watching her pretty ways, and listening to her voice. The love he felt for her seemed to give him a right of property in her, and he thought of her going for ever away from him as an irreparable and painful loss. There was a quick, anxious throbbing at his heart as he attempted to picture that last interview; for he had resolved that after their return to England, he would not permit himself to see her again. He thought of her going away from him without once knowing of that subtle personal link which seemed to unite them in a secret friendship. She would be quite unconscious of the pain of that parting; she might even think that he had yielded to the prejudices of which she had spoken, and had become ashamed of her friendship.

"That, too, must be borne," he said, with a sigh. "I cannot explain why I should cease to see her; and yet we must never meet again after we return to England. If it were not for Dove, I should look out for some appointment abroad, and so get an excuse; for it is hard to think that I must wound the self-respect of so gentle a creature by appearing to refuse her proffered friendship without a cause."

Then he sat down and wrote a long letter to Dove; and for the first time he felt a great constraint upon him in so doing. He was so anxious, too, that she should not notice the constraint, that he wrote in a more than usually affectionate strain, and strove to impress her with the necessity of their being married very soon.

"Once married," he said to himself, "I shall soon forget this unhappy business. In any case, we must all suffer more or less; and it is entirely owing to my carelessness in enjoying Miss Brunel's society without looking at what it might lead to. But how should a man of my years have antic.i.p.ated such a thing? Have I not been intimate with as pretty and as accomplished women in all parts of the world, without ever dreaming of falling in love with them?"

But no, there was no woman so pretty and charming as _this_ one, he reflected. No one at all. And so, counting up in his mind, like a miser counting his guineas, one by one, the few days he would yet have to spend in the torturing delight of being near to her, he got him to bed, and did _not_ dream of St. Mary-Kirby.

The next day they reached Freiburg, and here the Count had a carriage awaiting them, with a couple of swarthy Schwarzwalders in his somewhat ostentatious livery.

"Now we are getting home," he said, with a bland laugh to Mrs.

Christmas; "and you must have a very long rest after so much travelling.

We shall see what the air of Schonstein will do for you, and a little of the Schonstein wine-eh, eh?"

Their entrance to the Black Forest was inauspicious. It was towards the afternoon before they left Freiburg; and the air was oppressively hot and sultry. Just as they were approaching the Hollenthal-the Valley of h.e.l.l-a strange noise attracted Will's attention; and, looking over the back of the open carriage, he saw behind them a great red cloud, that entirely shut out the landscape. Two minutes afterwards a sudden gust of wind smote them with the violence of a tornado; they were enveloped in a dense lurid pall of sand; and before they could cover over the carriage, great drops of rain began to fall. Then the far-off rumbling of thunder, and an occasional gleam of reflected lightning, told what was coming.

The Count looked much alarmed.

"The Hollenthal is a fearful place," said he, to the ladies: "overhanging rocks, dark as pitch, precipices, you know-and-and hadn't we better return to Freiburg? That is, if you think you will be afraid.

For myself, I'd rather go on to-night, and save a day."

"Don't think of turning on our account," said Annie Brunel. "Mrs.

Christmas and I have been together in a good many storms."

So they went on, and entered that gloomy gorge, which is here the gateway into the Black Forest. They had just got themselves closed in by the mighty ma.s.ses of rock, when the storm thoroughly broke over their head. It was now quite dark, and the thin white shafts of lightning shot down through the ravine, lighting up the fantastic and rugged sides of the pa.s.s with a sudden sharpness. Then the thunder crackled overhead, and was re-echoed in hollow rumbles, as if they were in a cavern with huge waves beating outside; and the rain fell in torrents, hissing on the road, and swelling the rapid stream that foamed and dashed down its rocky channel by their side. Every flash whitened the four faces inside the carriage with a spectral glare; and sometimes they got a pa.s.sing glance down the precipice, by the side of which the road wound, or up among the overhanging blocks and crags of the mountains.

Mrs. Christmas had been in many a thunderstorm, but never in the Hollenthal; and the little woman was terrified out of her life. At every rattling report of the thunder she squeezed Miss Brunel's hand the more tightly, and muttered another sentence of an incoherent prayer.

"Unless you want to kill your horses, Count," said Will, "you'll stop at the first inn we come to; that is about a mile farther on. I can tell by the sound of the wheels that the horses are dragging them through the mud and ruts by main force; and up this steep ascent that won't last long."

"Think of poor Mary and Hermann," said Annie Brunel. "Where must they be?"

"I'll answer for Hermann coming on to-night, if he's alive," said the Count. "And I hope that he and the luggage and Mary won't be found in the morning down in that tremendous hole where the stream is. Bless my life, did any mortal ever see such a place, and such a night! What a flash that was!"

It was about midnight when they reached the Stern inn; and very much astonished were the simple people, when they were woke up, to find that a party of visitors had ventured to come through the h.e.l.l Valley on such a night.

"And the hired carriage from Freiburg, Herr Graf," said the chief domestic of the little hostelry; "it won't come up the valley before the morning."

"What does the fool say?" the Count inquired of Will.

"He says that the trap with the luggage won't come up to-night."

"Bah!" said the Count, grandly. "Sie wissen nicht da.s.s mein Forster kommt; und er kommt durch zwanzig-durch zwanzig-zwanzig-damme, get some supper, and mind your own business."

"Yes, eef you please, my lord," said the man, who knew a little English.

The Count was right. Hermann did turn up, and Mary, and the luggage.

But the hired vehicle had been a badly-fitting affair, and the rain had got in so copiously that Mary was discovered sitting with Hermann's coat wrapped round her, while the tall keeper had submitted to be drenched with the inevitable good-humour of six-feet-two. Some of the luggage also was wet; but it was carried into the great warm kitchen, and turned out and examined.

At supper, the Count, who was inclined to be merry, drank a good quant.i.ty of Affenthaler, and congratulated Mrs. Christmas on her heroic fort.i.tude. Annie Brunel was quiet and pleasant as usual-a trifle grave, perhaps, after that pa.s.sage through the Hollenthal. Will was at once so happy and so miserable-so glad to be sitting near the young Italian-looking girl, so haunted by the dread of having to separate from her in a short week or two-that he almost wished the storm had hurled the vehicle down into the bed of the stream, and that there he and Schon-Rohtraut might have been found dead together in the grey morning.

CHAPTER XVI.

SCHoNSTEIN.

"Welcome to Schonstein!" cried the Count, gaily, as a turn in the road brought them in sight of a little hamlet, a small church, and beyond these-somewhat back from the village-an immense white house with green sunshades over the windows.

"Friend Anerley," said the Count to himself, "if you ever had a thought of paying your addresses to the lady opposite you, your case is rather hopeless _now_!"

Annie Brunel looked forward through the ruddy mist that the sunset was pouring over the picture before them, and thought that it was very beautiful indeed. She paid little attention to the gaunt white house.

But this little village, set in a clearing of the great forest-its brown wooden houses, with their heavy projecting eaves and numerous windows; the small white church, with a large sundial painted in black on the gable; the long, sloping hill behind, covered, away even, to the horizon, with the black-green pines of the Schwarzwald-all these things, steeped in the crimson glow of the western light, were indeed most charming and picturesque.

"Why do they project the roofs so much?" she said, looking especially at the inn of the little hamlet they were approaching. "I thought these splendid old houses only existed in Swiss lithographs."

"For the snow," said the Count, grandly, as if the intensity of the Black Forest winters belonged to him. "You should see a regular snowstorm in this country, with half the houses buried, the mail-coaches turned into sledges-why, every man who keeps a carriage here must keep it in duplicate-a wheel-carriage for the summer, a sledge for the winter."

With which they drove through the village. Hans Halm, the st.u.r.dy innkeeper, was at the door of that palace in brown wood which he called his house; and to Hermann's hurried-"Wie geht's? Wie geht's, Halm?" he returned a joyous "Danke schon, Hermann."