untry people
passed aside and did not venture up the mountain road which indeed had
become overgrown with verdure. And for their part the servants were
contented to stay alone. It was very quiet, but as good a place to die
in as any other.

Marishka listened calmly, trying to weave the complete story and Captain
Goritz's part in it. Whether Schloss Szolnok was or was not the property
of the German government--and it seemed probable that it would have been
confiscated upon the discovery of Baron Neudeck's treachery--the fact
was clear that Goritz was now its occupant and master. She had not dared
to wonder what was still in store for her at the hands of Captain
Goritz, and had lived from day to day in the hope that something might
happen which would end her imprisonment and martyrdom. She heard nothing
from the outside, and Ena, who had long ago given up the world, was in
no position to inform her.

But as she gained her strength, Marishka knew that she could not longer
deny herself to Captain Goritz. The mirror showed her that her face,
while thin and wan, was still comely. Wisdom warned her that however
much she loathed the man, every hope of liberty hung upon his favor. And
so she gained courage to look about her and to plan some means of
outwitting him or some mode of escape from durance. The latter
alternative seemed hopeless, for it seemed that the castle was built
upon a lonely crag, its heavy walls, which dated from feudal times,
imbedded in the solid rock. From her bedroom window, below the
buttressed stone, were precipitous cliffs which fell sheer and straight
to the rocky bed of the stream which rushed through the ravine two
hundred meters below. But there would be other modes of egress, and so,
feeling that her strength was now equal to the task, she determined to
go forth and test the cordon which constrained her. One morning,
therefore, she called Ena's attention to her pallid face and suggested
the sunlight of the garden as a means to restoration. The woman was
delighted, and attired in a costume of soft white silk crepe, which she
had fashioned in her convalescence from some posthumous finery that Ena
had discovered, Marishka walked forth of her room down a stone stairway
into the great hall of the castle; and so into the ancient courtyard
where the flower garden was. She had expected Captain Goritz to join
her, and in this surmise she was not mistaken, for she had culled an
armful of blossoms which she