Page:Heavens!.djvu/49

 After a pretty long pause the baroness went on: “I take your silence as a dignified answer, and in your favour. I shall now introduce you to the young baroness and to my son.”

She rang the bell and gave Ferdinand the necessary orders. In another moment the young baron and his sister made their appearance by the opposite door. After the introductory words the young baroness shook hands with Miss Jenny; the baron merely bowed coldly. Sály then asked permission to take the young lady with her to her own room, and, her mother making no objection, the girls left the august presence.

“I am thinking of making some changes on one of the farms,” said the baroness to her son.“ Please sit down, Mundy, and let us talk them over and advise together.”

”The baron drew a chair to his mother’s writing-table, but only listened with indifference to what she put before him.

The first month of trial, and afterwards the whole of the first year, passed smoothly enough with Jenny at Labutín Castle. Though she had to suffer many petty disagreeables during the time, and to swallow many a bitter pill, still on the whole she was satisfied with her condition. The life in the merchant’s house in Prague had certainly been more agreeable, because it was heartier and more varied; but there was less work to do at Labutín, and of a much easier kind, and the salary was the same. The aristocratic noblesse, the measured stiffness, so void of heart or feeling, the polished formalities observed in every trifling thing, imposed, of course, a very great constraint on the poetical mind of the young girl; but being endowed with a good deal of common sense, and conscious of her dependent position, she 3em