Everything is a matter of comparison in this world: the woman of eighty looked positively young, thus closely brought in contrast with the man's petrified features. This that was written on his face and figure was not to be expressed by the mere words "old age"; the woman beside him was old, but he was more than old. Near the ashy tint of his face, the streak of angry red in her cheek might almost have been mistaken for freshness; the skin which in her had hardened into parchment, in him was worn away almost to transparency. Every muscle and bone appeared to have shrivelled from the mere force of time: it seemed as though the fibre and material of which Nature had fashioned him had been used up long ago, and he had sat since then in this same tattered chair, forgotten both by his fellow-creatures and by the Angel of Death, breathing on from day to day in a state of existence scarcely worth the name of life. How many young souls had been forced to take wing from out of their vigorous bodies during the century that this man had counted as his lifetime! Better and nobler and more precious lives had been cut off short without mercy: the roses outside had put out their buds and shed their leaves and beaten against the window-pane for years, while this old man had sat here through summer and winter, through bright days and dull days, in a state of living torpor or torpid life, forgotten and uncared for. The movement in the room seemed to have roused some spark of his lingering life; or perhaps the thunder-clap, which at this moment shook the ceiling above his head, had awakened him. He turned his head slowly, and his blear eyes fell straight upon the figure of the girl in the doorway. Gretchen had come forward two steps; there was an overblown rose in her hand, and a bunch of roses stuck in the front of her dead-black dress-they had begun to fall already-and as she stood there, with the floating petals around her, it seemed as if the queen of the rebellious roses had broken in here, and was advancing ready to brave him to his face. Perhaps the old man had seen some such figure long ago, for after a minute a voice, faint and far off, reached the listener's ears. "Yes, I have a long life before me-a long life before me.' The words were like an echo of something heard before. Surely that phrase was familiar! He went on nodding, with his eyes always on Gretchen, mumbling the words over again between his toothless jaws. He did not seem to hear the thunder-clap, which just at this moment shook the ceiling above his head, and made the window rattle in its socket. "They shall not touch you, Jósika!" cried the woman, bending over him. "I shall take care they shall not touch you." "I "Did you hear that? She calls him Jósika," said Ascelinde, in a whisper of extreme agitation. know of only one Jósika, and that was my guardian. Doctor Komers, is this my guardian?" But Dr Komers could give her no information, although he was beginning to believe that this was indeed all that remained of Ascelinde's guardian, and that this shrivelled figure in the chair was the man who, forty-three years ago, had bowed Eleonore Damianovics out of the house, and walked back into it, rubbing his hands as he laughed over the word "Justice." He had kept his word; he had survived the end of the lawsuit; but his long life was behind him now, instead of before him, and must be gone from him soon. And the deformed woman beside him-could this be the handsome housekeeper of other days? She was the only creature who cared for his life or his death; and yet he seemed to have forgot ten her presence, as his lack-lustre eyes hung on the girlish figure that confronted him. Most likely he could not see her distinctly; she may have seemed like a vision of something unreal to his failing eyes-like the Angel of Death come at last to end this long, long, and useless life. But death could surely not come in so fair a shape, with hair like fretted gold and dewy lips softly parted. Hark! Is that not rather the Angel of Death riding on the blast outside, which comes with sudden tearing force sweeping right over the plain? Is not that his trumpet thundering across the sky and his signal flashing straight into their eyes, in a sheet of blinding light? "Yes-yes, I have a long life before me," muttered Jósika again -"a long life;" and then the eyes fixed on Gretchen seemed to go out like the flame of a candle burnt down to the socket, and the eyelids closed. reached the spot; it seized the rose-bushes with furious strength, and all around the house there was a rush as of a mighty body of water. For the space of a second the wind held its breath, and then the rush burst out with double strength, and roared round them on all sides. A cloud of dust was whirled past the window, and a dense shower of rose-leaves was carried with it, high up in the air. Upon Gretchen a fit of nervous terror had descended. It had grown very dark in the room, and the first heavy drops of rain fell like blows upon the window-pane. A fancy came over her that that whirling wind must carry with it something else, something beyond the dust and rose-leaves which flew past in a cloud. Dust and flower-petals seemed too paltry a prey for the strength of that mighty hurricane. In the glare of the lightning she saw the old woman bending across the chair; there was a tear on her wrinkled cheek. Together with the lightning came the thunder, making the house tremble this time through every fibre of its mouldering walls. But though they waited long, the old man in the chair did not The blast, tearing onward, open his eyes again. CHAPTER XXII.-PRINCESS TRYPHOSA. "Let none object my lingering way, I gain, like Fabius, by delay. When the travellers again reached the peaceful Hercules valley, they found it by no means as peaceful as when they had left it a week ago. Some people looked scared, others looked anxious; door-bolts and shutter-bars were being examined, and firearms were much in demand. -GAY. Alarming reports had been started, and were being circulated from mouth to mouth. These reports spoke of robber-bands among the hills. It was asserted that dozens of savage men, bent upon bloodshed and pillage, and armed with death-dealing weapons, were haunt ing the overhanging crags. Terrifying stories were told, in which it was positively affirmed that mysterious individuals, mysteriously muffled up, had been heard at dead of night to chant mysterious songs around a roaring red fire. The Hercules valley, now at the height of its season, was thrown into a panic; and the rustic police set up guards at the two entrances by which the place might be surprised. Every day some new version gained favour; and on the day of Madame Mohr and her daughter's return, the newest story was one referring to the rocky mountainface which rose straight behind the Cursalon. At the height of some hundred feet the rock was split by a narrow gorge, leading to the very edge of the sheer precipice. From that edge a man could look down straight upon the Hercules baths at his feet; and this was exactly what the robbers were reported to have been seen doing-laying their plans, no doubt for a nightly attack. Ascelinde, crushed in spirit as she already was, and now met by those startling tales, took to her bed immediately after her arrival, and declared her intention never to leave it again. In truth it still remained a question whether a serious illness would not be the result of that journey. It must not be supposed, in spite of Gretchen's burst of laughter at the gate of Draskócs, that the failure had left no dejection behind it. The dream had been cherished too long and tenderly to be thus yielded up without a pang. In this very account-book there stood a calculation of the supposed income which she had assigned to the imaginary estate; and it was with a bitter sigh that she now drew an ink-line across it. There was no denyingthat her chances of fortunemaking were narrowed; and, looking at her situation from a logical point of view, the upshot of her meditations was as follows: A pretty girl without money has got one chance of success in life, marriage. I am a pretty girl without money, therefore it stands to reason that marriage is my one chance of success. Shall I throw it away, as so many foolish women have done, for the sake of beautiful whiskers, or eloquent eyes? I do not think that any whiskers or beard that ever grew would look beautiful in a garret, and even the fire of eloquent eyes must be fed with something more substantial than sighs and poetry. "No, thank heavens!" said Gretchen, with 3 devout sigh-" thank heavens, I am sensible;" and it never struck her, as she said it, that all this excess of sense was in itself a folly, greater perhaps But Gretchen was skeptical than many outspoken phases of about the robbers; she declined the disease. "Thank heavens, I to accept the evidence unsifted. am sensible. People can say "People always let their fancy what they like, but it is ever so run away with them," she con- much easier to be happy when one temptuously remarked to herself, has a whole dress on, instead of a as on the day after their return, ragged one, and ever so much she was noting down the expenses easier to be virtuous when one has of the Draskócs expedition in the eaten roast partridges and iced same leather-bound volume in pudding, than when one has dined which she had made her estimate off bread and cheese. Oh no, I of fortune on the afternoon of have no liking at all for breadAsh-Wednesday. crusts; bread and-cheese marriages may appear attractive to breadand-butter Misses, but the thing will not suit me. No," concluded Gretchen, with an almost unnecessary decision, as she drew line after line across the Draskócs calculation. "No, I am afraid-that is to say, I think that I have only one chance of fortune!" As she reflected thus, her eyes chanced to fall on the page which faced the imaginary estimate. There was a list written there, a sort of inventory apparently; she had put it there herself not many weeks ago, and now her last inkstroke was arrested, as with sudden attention she scanned the opposite sheet. She read it over and over again carefully, with thoughtfully puckered brow, and at last she exclaimed aloud "Yes, I have another chance!" And leaving her last ink-stroke incompleted, Gretchen plunged headlong into a sea-of arithmetical figures, in which she was still disporting herself when, an hour later, Belita entered the room. The news of the Draskócs failure had been received by Belita last night with a certain amount of consternation, but without any remorse. Gretchen's indignant reproaches had entirely failed in their effect,-it was not possible to quarrel with the Contessa. She cheerfully acknowledged that she had made a mistake, and cut the matter short by remarking that Dr Komers must, after all, be a greater fool than she had taken him for. "Are those the bills for your new black dresses?" she asked now, throwing a glance of interest at the account-book. "If it is a dress-estimate, I will help you." "No," answered Gretchen, coming to the surface of the arithmet ical sea; "it is a calculation about my fortune.” "But my dear child-____” "Belita," said Gretchen, solemnly, "I have got a new idea about my fortune. Shall I tell you how I mean to make it?" "What other idea can you possibly need to have beyond Baron Tolnay ?-provided you are lucky enough to get him." "But must there be only one way?" retorted Gretchen, impatiently. "Why should I not make my fortune in my own way?" "But what way could by any possibility, be better than the one you are on?" "I will tell you, Belita; listen," said Gretchen, with a ring of triumphant superiority; and taking up her account-book, she read from it aloud: "Thirty-eight Turkish gold-bags, one hundred and fifty silver-bags, nine hundred and ninety Russian roubles, five thousand bejas zirmilik, three golden chalices, seventeen golden necklaces and golden ear-rings,-enough to fill three fullgrown skulls.'" "Well," said Belita, a little startled, "who does all this belong to? Where is it to be seen? What does it mean?" "It is the brigand's treasure," was the impressive answer. "And what has the brigand's treasure to do with you?" "Simply that I mean to find it." Belita burst into a long and hearty laugh, while Gretchen, her dignity a little ruffled, proceeded to expound her views. The list in the account-book had been written down from memory, on the evening after her meeting with the Bohemian. About so interesting a subject as a brigand's treasure, the methodical Gretchen could not omit to make a note at the time even though she had then enter tained no serious intentions with regard to it; it was only now that she recognised its true importance. She had spent an hour in abstruse calculation, had ascertained what proportion of the treasure she would have to relinquish to Government, and what income, at a given rate of percentage, she could derive from the remainder. "The ear-rings can be melted down," she concluded; "but the three chalices I shall, of course, return to churches." She could not understand what made Belita laugh. "Since the treasure had never been found, it stood to reason that it must be there still; and it only required an energetic and sensible person, unhampered by superstition, to discover it. She was a sensible and energetic person, unhampered by superstition, therefore it stood to reason," &c. "My dear child," said Belita at last, when she had, with some difficulty, been brought to understand that Gretchen was not joking, "I am afraid that the air of the Hercules valley does not agree with you. These waters of Hercules seem to go to everybody's head but mine; is it any mythological influence, I wonder? If you had been at school here, you certainly would never have carried off the prix de logique It was a mystery to the Contessa how any one, holding a baron in the hand, should prefer to him a mysterious treasure, which was not even in the bush, but rather hid`den among millions of bushes and, which even might prove not to be, and never to have been, there at all. "How on earth can you talk of finding the brigand's treasure, when you cannot even find that horrid black hole where you tell me it is buried?" "But I intend to find Gaura Dracului.” 'By what means?" "By means of the Bohemian.” "But since the devout fool will not break his vow?" "He need not break his vow; I have settled all my plans.” And Gretchen's plans were laid with a truly feminine cunning; though as a first step towards them she herself would require to eat a slice of that most distasteful of all dishes, called humble pie. She had no more liking for humble pie than for bread-crusts; but she hoped that the unsavoury dish might this time be more than an entrée to the roast partridges and iced pudding. The Bohemian was to be sought out, and the offer, once so coldly rejected, was this time to be graciously accepted. Once having got him to guide her among the mountains, Gretchen had full confidence in her own skill and management in laying traps for the innocent man's secret, and causing his simple mind to betray itself unawares. As for the robbers, she settled the difficulty by not believing in them; and a couple of pistols would, in any case, be protection enough. air. Belita listened with a dissatisfied "Your interest in that unpronounceable place was always suspicious to me, Margherita. I cannot understand what gave you the idea of this most extraordinary wild-goose chase." "But it was papa's old manuscript-I wanted him to finish it, And oh, Belita "-there was a sudden break in Gretchen's voice, her lips quivered ominously. "Misericordia! Bambina, is there anything else wrong?" "Will--will papa ever be well enough to finish his manuscript? He is getting well so slowly." |