vain.

"There is no portrait of Madame the Countess."

"She was not at dinner," I ventured. "Is she not well?"

"Oh, she is well, I am happy to say. She often dines in her own
apartments."

"She is well and yet keeps to her apartments?" I said, with as much
surprise as I thought the circumstance might naturally occasion.

"She does not keep to her apartments exactly," replied the man, a little
annoyed. "She walks in the garden much of the time. Is there anything
else I may show you, Monsieur?"

He stood at the curtained entrance, as if to attend my leaving the room,
and I thought best to take the hint. No doubt he had purposely followed
me, to hinder my going too far.

I returned to the hall, which was very silent, the two players being
deep in their chess. Somewhere in my wake the manservant vanished, and I
seemed free to explore in another direction. The Countess walked much in
the garden, the man had said. It was a fine afternoon--might she not be
walking there now?

Feigning carelessness, I went out a small door at the rear of the hall,
and found myself in that narrow part of the garden which lay between two
wings of the house, and which our chamber overlooked. This part, which
was really a terrace, was separated by a low Italian balustrade from the
greater garden below and beyond. I walked up the middle path to where
there was an opening in the balustrade at the head of a flight of steps.
But here my confidence received a check. Half-way down the steps was
sitting a burly fellow, who rose at my appearance, and said:

"Pardon, Monsieur: no further this way, if you please. I am ordered to
stop everybody."

"But I am the Count's guest," said I.

"It is all the same. Nobody is to go down to the garden yonder without
orders."

"Orders from the Count?" I asked.

"From the Count or the Captain."

I nearly let out my thought that the Captain had a good deal of
authority at the chateau, but I closed my lips in time. To show
insistence would only injure my purpose: so I contented myself with a
glance at the forbidden territory--a very spacious pleasance, indeed,
with walks, banks of flowers, arbours, and alleys, but with nobody there
to enjoy it that I could see--and went back to the hall.

As I could not sit there long inactive, for considering how the time was
flying and I had accomplished nothing, I soon started in good faith for
the chamber to which I had feigned to be going before. Once upstairs,
h