Page:Maria Felicia.pdf/193

 “I do not mean how she described it. I mean what she told you about how it came into the possession of her family.”

“The Castle was given to them about a century and a half ago by the Emperor of Austria.”

“For what?”

“As a reward for military services.”

Andrew laughed wildly.

The harper, deeply flushed, watched him keenly.

“Surely your hatred toward that family does not go so far that you would deny its valor.”

“That, I swear before God, I could not do, if I wished a thousand times to deprive them of that honor,” and Andrew laughed more wildly than before. “To see ten, twenty, thirty heads roll off a block into sand saturated with human blood, in one half day; to see ten, twenty and twice that number of bodies tortured in a thousand different ways by the headsman—and those the bodies of their own former friends, fellow-believers and