rthy of being
loved by a heart so faithful. He bore the stamp of his most ingenuous
soul so clearly upon his noble brow, that even those who merely saw him
pass, could not choose but believe all good of him. By the time I knew
him he had become reserved; but what must he have been to you, who
reared him from his birth, and were to him as a mother! What happened
to make him give up this place, and leave a home for ever, that used to
be so dear to him?"

She shook her head sadly, and sat down upon the sofa, as if the weight
of all these rushing memories at once, were too heavy to be borne
standing. She remained a while absorbed in thought; and then at last,
taking an agate snuffbox from her pocket, she strengthened herself with
a pinch, before she answered.

"It is a strange story, Sir, which nobody can tell so well as I can;
and I may tell it now, that the grass is growing over many a younger
head than this old foolish one of mine. It will be nine-and-forty years
at Christmas, since I went up these stairs for the first time. I was
the schoolmaster's daughter, a silly green young thing, and I thought I
was being taken straight to Heaven, when our gracious Countess first
took me into her service as a waiting maid. The young Count was not
born then, nor ever likely to be: there was little love between my
master and my mistress. To be sure my lady would always have been
willing to worship him, for all he did to vex her. But they were an
illmatched pair; and when Count Henry, who was almost always travelling
about, came home in Autumn for the shooting-season, he managed to make
his pretty patient wife still more unhappy than when he was away.

"I had not been two days in the castle, before I knew that my lady was
suffering from some sore trouble; I used to find her pillow wet of
mornings, and her eyes all swollen with crying.

"For you see, Sir, the count was a gentleman who had a quick temper and
a wild way of his own, and the countess was meekness itself; she was
too quiet for him, and he soon wearied of her.--I suppose he had only
married her to please his father; some wilful, imperious, dark-eyed
lady would have done better for him; some Frenchwoman, or Spaniard,
such as often came to visit at the castle; who would have kept him at
his wits' end, and made him hate her mortally to-day, and love her
desperately to-morrow. He only loved what gave him trouble; he rode the
wildest horses, and shot the biggest stags.

"Ou