d, gray eyes were sunken in their orbits;
and deep lines were drawn about his mouth, as if some secret grief
were gnawing at his vitals. And, indeed, good cause existed for his
sorrow; for, but a few days previously, he had lost his wife. They had
buried the countess at midnight, as was the custom of the family, in
the old, ancestral vault of the castle. Vassal and serf had waved
their torches over the black throat of the grave, and the wail of
women had gone up through the rocky arches. Still the count had been
seen to shed no tear. An old warrior, schooled in the stern academy
of military life, he had early learned to conquer his emotions;
indeed, there were those who said that nature, in moulding his
aristocratic form, had forgotten to provide it with a heart; and this
legend found facile credence with the cowering serfs who owned his
sway, and the ill-paid soldiers who followed his banner. The last male
descendant of a long and noble line, he was ill able to maintain the
splendor of his family name; for his dominions had been "curtailed of
their fair proportion," and his finances were in a disordered state.

As, like Hardicanute in the old ballad,

"Stately strode he east the wa',
And stately strode he west,"

there entered a figure almost as grim and stern as himself. This was
an old woman who now filled the office of housekeeper, having
succeeded to full sway on the death of the countess, the young
daughter of the count being unable or unwilling to assume any care in
the household.

"Well, dame," said the count, pausing in his walk, and confronting the
old woman, "how goes it with you, and how with Alvina? Still sorrowing
over her mother's death?"

"The tears of a maiden are like the dews in the morning, count,"
replied the old woman. "The first sunbeam dries them up."

"And what ray of joy can penetrate the dismal hole?" asked the count.

"Do you remember the golden bracelet you gave your lady daughter on
her wedding day?" inquired the old woman, fixing her keen, gray eye on
her master's face as she spoke.

"Ay, well," replied the count; "golden gifts are not so easily
obtained, of late, that I should forget their bestowal But what of the
bawble?"

"I saw it in the hands of the page Alexis, when he thought himself
unobserved."

"How!" cried the count, his cheek first reddening, and then becoming
deadly pale with anger; "is the blood of the gitano asserting its
claim? Has he begun to pilfer?