gone, and Mr.
Pierre told us strange stories about it, which you will not care to
hear, sir.

"When the count first saw the girl again, Mamsell Gabrielle, as she was
called, I watched his face attentively as she walked across the hall.
He looked much as he used to do, when the dealers brought him horses,
and he had them trotted out into the yard. But he treated her just as
he did the rest of us, only that he spoke to her less often. She had
begun to bloom again, in the quiet life here among the woods, and with
the exercise she took when she was busy about the house. She had left
off mourning, and sometimes I even heard her singing in the little
garden she had laid out with her own hands in the moat, that we might
have our vegetables more handy.

"In this, as in everything else, she was clever, quiet, and
independent; I may say I got to love her dearly, and thought we never
should be able to do without her; and yet we had done so long!--We used
to sit together for many a pleasant hour, spinning and chatting. I used
to talk to her of my dear Count Ernest, and read his letters to her,
and when Count Henry was at home, we would stand at the window till
late at night, listening to his beautiful playing, and to the
nightingales singing. Then she would tell me how her childhood had been
passed, and of the happy life she had led when her parents were alive,
and how well off they had been; and also about her brother; and she
spoke of all this without any bitterness, and so I saw that she was
quite contented; and that the longer she lived among us, the more she
liked us.

"And now, for the first time, I was glad when the winter came, and we
were snowed up again by ourselves. When the count was here, we had no
peace; though he only received gentlemen, and was particular about
these. To be safe from the ladies of the neighbourhood, he had left all
the roads without repair, save only a few bridle paths. But it did not
come at all as I expected. The count did not leave the castle, and Mr.
Pierre insinuated that it was because he had never been able to forget
that faithless love of his, and therefore preferred to live in
solitude. I could not get this idea into my stupid old head, for I knew
my master too well to believe that he could be so long cast down, for
such an amour as that. However, stay he did, and the winter came, and
snowed us up; and with us, the count and Mr. Pierre.

"How he managed to get through those long winter