lent and thoughtful, beside him, watching him rather anxiously as
though she feared lest the excess of his happiness might do him an injury.

"You do not say anything, Vjera. You do not seem glad," he said, suddenly
noticing her expression.

"I am very glad, indeed I am," she answered, smiling with a great effort.
"Who would not be glad at the thought of seeing you enjoy your own again?"

"It is not for the money, Vjera!" he exclaimed in a lower and more
concentrated tone. "It is not really for the money nor for the lands, nor
even for the position or the dignity. Do you know what it is that makes me
so happy? I have got the best of it. That is it. It has been a long
struggle and a weary one, but I knew I should win, though I never saw how
it was to be. When they turned me away from them like a dog, my father and
my brother, I faced them on the threshold for the last time and I said to
them, 'Look you, you have made an outcast of me, and yet I am your son, my
father, and your brother, my brother, and you know it. And yet I tell you
that when we meet again, I shall be master here, and not you.' And so it
has turned out, Vjera, for they shall meet me--they dead, and I alive.
They jeered and laughed, and sent me away with only the clothes I wore,
for I would not take their money. I hear their laughter now in my
ears--but I hear, too, a laugh that is louder and more pitiless than
theirs was, for it is the laugh of Death!"

CHAPTER III.

The Count rose to his feet as he finished the last sentence. It seemed as
though he were oppressed by the inaction to which he was constrained
during the last hours of waiting before the great moment, and he moved
nervously, like a man anxious to throw off a burden.

Vjera rose also, with a slow and weary movement.

"It is late," she said. "I must go home. Good-night."

"No. I will go with you. I will see you to your door."

"Thank you," she answered, watching his face closely.

Then the two walked side by side under the lime trees in the deepening
evening shadows, to the low archway by which the road leads out of the
Hofgarten on the side of the city. For some minutes neither spoke, but
Vjera could hear her companion's quickly drawn, irregular breath. His
heart was beating fast and his thoughts were chasing each other through a
labyrinth of dreams, inconsequent, unreasonable, but brilliant in the
extreme. His head high, his shoulders thrown back, his eyes flashing, his
lip