Of
late, the chief object of his telescopic observations during the day
were the doings at the neighboring manor. He was the "Lion-head" and the
"Council of Ten" in one person. The question was, whether the new
mistress of the manor, the unmarried baroness, should "cross the Bridge
of Sighs"? His telescope told him that this woman was young and very
fair; and it told him also that she lived a very secluded life. She
never went beyond the village, nor did she receive any visitors.

In the neighborhood of Neusiedl Lake one village was joined to another,
and these were populated by pleasure-loving and sociable families of
distinction. It was therefore a difficult matter for the well-born man
or woman who took up a residence in the neighborhood to avoid the jovial
sociability which reigned in those aristocratic circles.

Count Vavel himself had been overwhelmed with hospitable attentions the
first year of his occupancy of the Nameless Castle; but his refusals to
accept the numerous invitations had been so decided that they were not
repeated.

He frequently saw through his telescope the same four-horse equipages
which had once stopped in front of his own gates drive into the court at
the manor; and he recognized in the occupants the same jovial blades,
the eligible young nobles, who had honored him with their visits. He
noticed, too, that none of the visitors spent a night at the manor. Very
often the baroness did not leave her room when a caller came; it may
have been that she had refused to receive him on the plea of illness.
During the winter Count Vavel frequently saw his fair neighbor skating
on the frozen cove; while a servant propelled her companion over the ice
in a chair-sledge.

On these occasions the count would admire the baroness's graceful
figure, her intrepid movements, and her beautiful face, which was
flushed with the exercise and by the cutting wind.

But what pleased him most of all was that the baroness never once during
her skating exercises cast an inquiring glance toward the windows of the
Nameless Castle--not even when she came quite close to it.

On Christmas eve she, like Count Vavel, arranged a Christmas tree for
the village children. The little ones hastened from the manor to the
castle, and repeated wonderful tales of the gifts they had received from
the baroness's own hands.

Every Sunday the count saw the lady from the manor take her way to
church, on foot if the roads were good; and on