Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/67

1885.] neck was gradual: having reached the desired angle, she fixed her eyes first upon Kurt, and then the slow gaze moved on to Gretchen's face, and there for a full half minute it remained fixed.

Gretchen had seen those eyes before. They had haunted her memory from the moment that the travelling carriages had passed each other on the road, until the picture of Draskócs had taken all other pictures from her mind. But seeing them again, they were at once familiar. They were as dark as her hair, and, like the hair, they seemed to want light a little; but they were beautiful eyes, long-shaped, well-cut, and velvety-black. The face was a rather full oval, with a low forehead and straight black eyebrows, – almost too rich in the line of chin, and the luxurious sweep of the full red lips. She might be twenty-four, or perhaps twenty-five, thought Gretchen, as she marked the deliberate ease of that heavy stare. Her gaze was not keen or penetrating, but it was very persevering, and it remained where it was fixed until it was satisfied. But what could be the satisfaction it wanted? This fixed gaze had an object. After eating through the previous half of her dinner with such unmoved stolidity, it had not been without reason that she now paused and turned round with the last morsel of fried trout hovering before her lips.

Gretchen went over quickly in thought the phrases which had just been said; but it was scarcely likely that the discussion of Kurt's extravagant habits, or of the vices he had learnt at school, or a question as to the quality of his cigars, could have awakened any interest in this Roumanian lady's mind.

For a full half-minute the black eyes remained fixed upon Gretchen's face, and then, as slowly as she had turned round, the woman turned away again, and the hovering morsel of trout was raised to her lips and vanished there from sight.

"Who is that woman?" Gretchen asked of her brother.

Kurt shrugged his shoulders. "Cannot say, really. One of the barbarous grandees. Have not learnt to particularise them yet."

"But she is beautiful!"

"I rather fancy she is," said Kurt, with the confidence of a connoisseur. "I always told you that it would take very little to make one of those Roumanian women beautiful; this one has just hit it off, you see."

Undoubtedly she had hit it off, reflected Gretchen; and all the way home she thought of nothing but the beauty of that face and the stare of those black eyes, until some words behind her roused her from her reflection.

"When is the Baron to return?" one man was saying to another.

"On Thursday, I hear. She had a letter from him this morning."

"Who had a letter?" said the first voice. The answer was given in a lower tone, but Gretchen just caught it –

"Princess Tryphosa."