Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/240

230[February 6, 1869] heard, of all that he had seen or read, and tell strange tales of adventure with a charm which would have won the heart of a less willing listener. The sweet German nature, looking out of those calm blue eyes, grew daily closer to his; her happiness expanded daily, sending forth stronger shoots and tendrils, which clasped themselves around whatsoever belonged unto her "mann"—her Albrecht. His word would have been her law under any circumstances; it became a law of devotion, and not of discipline alone.

They spent three weeks on the Danube: they visited a large estate of the count's, near Pesth. Then, towards the end of the second month after their marriage, they moved to the old mansion of the Rabensbergs at Prague; worm-eaten, gloomy, uninhabited for years, with rust on its hinges, and grass-grown courts, and the sorrow of many generations hanging over it like a pall. The count was more pre-occupied, more strange in his demeanour than usual that night. After supper, when the servants had left the room, he said suddenly:

"We shall only be here two nights, Magda To-morrow I must leave thee alone for the day. I go to Schloss Rabensberg, which is but a few hours' journey to prepare it for thy reception, my darling  and then"

He abruptly broke off: pressed her to his bosom, and struggled to cast aside the care which had weighed upon his spirits all the evening. The young wife was not very keen sighted; she soon forgot the shadow, in the sunshine, artificial though it was; and slept that night the calm sleep of a child, unconscious that her husband never closed his eyes, but lay and watched with a look of intense anxiety, the sweet untroubled face beside him.

He was off by daybreak; and Magda wandered about the house feeling a little lonely, and dreaming old-world dreams in the great desolate rooms, half the day. She drew a spinning-wheel from a dusty corner in one of the rooms, and set it near a window; bravely resolving to employ herself. It proved a failure; the thread broke every minute, and she pushed the wheel aside, at last, in despair. She could not sit down to her knitting to-day; she wanted something to employ her thoughts, and not her fingers only. She turned to the pictures; she examined them all in detail; they were mostly portraits, and among them was one which struck her young imagination forcibly; she came back to it again and again—why she could not tell. There were splendid-looking warriors, but it was not one of these; gay courtiers, and fair ladies in farthingale and ruff, but none of them possessed for her the attraction of a portrait representing a plain woman in the hideous dress in fashion fifty years since. The face was wholly unlike Albrecht's, unlike any one Magda remembered; unless indeed—but the fancy was absurd! Her own eyes, as the glass told her, were soft, light blue; these were grey, and anything but soft; passionate intensity was their characteristic, and the secret of their rivetting the spectator. Those eyes would not let themselves be forgotten; the only beautiful spot in the picture, it was natural she should think and speculate about them; but why should they seem to her like the broken, confused reflection of her own eyes, given back by the troubled waters of a steel-cold lake? There was neither name nor date affixed to the portrait, and no servant in the house knew who the original was. She returned to the room twice to look at it; and the memory of it haunted her long after the shades of twilight had gathered round; until the clatter of a horse's hoofs in the court-yard roused her to Albrecht's return.

He came in looking excited, but worn and anxious, and after embracing her tenderly, he almost immediately began thus:

"We leave this to-morrow morning, my dearest Magda. Art thou prepared to start?"

"Surely We go to Schloss Rabensberg? I shall be glad to get out of this gloomy house, Albrecht."

"Schloss Rabensberg is still gloomier, Magda. It is surrounded by a moat, and stands in the midst of a wild forest. The walls are thick and the windows small It is not a cheerful residence, my poor child."

"Never mind. I shall get accustomed to it, Albrecht. It is the country—and we can walk about the woods all day long in the sweet summer time; and at night I shall not mind the gloom, with thee."

" Ah! that is it." He paused; and then continued with an effort, "Magda, I have to put thy love to a strange test Art thou ready to undergo a separation from me, for awhile—for my sake?"

"What dost thou mean, Albrecht?"

"That for reasons I cannot explain, I earnestly wish thee to go to Schloss Rabensberg—but alone. Thy stay there unless, indeed, I am able to join thee, which