Page:Maria Felicia.pdf/91

 fields, and because autumn, beautiful autumn, would nevermore see her ride through the purple and golden woods.

Before this she had never examined the pictures on the walls; she had only glanced at them casually; but now they began to interest her. One especially attracted her attention. It was the smallest and most insignificant of them all, hung in the gloomiest corner of the roam. She stood before it for hours, silently buried in thought.

The picture represented an old castle surrounded by a lonely forest. Flocks of daws flitted around its battlements, and in the crevices overgrown with ivy, wild pigeons nestled. She dreamed about the moonlight in its ancient chambers and dark corridors; she imagined the rising sun reproducing on the floor the colors of the glass in the stately windows; she galloped through the forest on her fiery black steed, breathed freely the fresh, sweet-scented air, greeted the weeping flowers in the moss, fondled the pet deer, and