"Hush, mother!" warned the forester, finger on lip, and turned towards the door.
Count Steven had finished his plate of venison stew, and was condescending to enjoy a crust of bread with a glass of the tart wine. The sense of expectation about him made him now likewise turn round in his chair—languidly, for the high-born are never openly curious.
Outside, in the night, against a background of flickering leaves and under the glare of a couple of torches, he saw a picturesque group of hounds and huntsmen; two of these last laden each with a murdered roebuck, whose pretty, innocent head hung trailing on the ground. Suddenly the scene dissolved. A man came from the midst of the foresters into the kitchen. The rest disappeared with their booty; hounds and horses were led away towards the distant kennel premises; the woodland glade resumed its peace.
As the new-comer passed him, the head forester made a spasmodic movement, arrested midway, of hand to forehead. His mother swept a dignified curtsey. The peasant girl, her hands clasped at the back of her neck, stared with frank curiosity, her mouth open so that all who cared to look might wonder upon the doubled splendour of her young teeth.
He stood and glanced round upon them all: a slight young man of somewhat low stature and dark, fine-cut face, with hair cropped short at back and side to come down in a curly wave in the middle of his forehead. He had large eyes under thick, straight eyebrows; and his forester's uniform, though ostensibly of the same cut as Friedel's, was of finer cloth and obviously brand new. The collar of the coat rose very high on each side of his chin, which in the centre rested on folds of delicate cambric.
"Positively," thought Steven Lee, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg, etc., "a gentleman like myself!"
But the hunter's first word dispelled the illusion.
"My friend," said the new-comer to the old dame—he spoke German with a strong foreign accent—"my fellow-forester there, Friedel, has assured me that you would give his brother woodsman hospitality to-night."
Now, as he smiled, his handsome face assumed a trivial, almost inane, expression, which destroyed its look of breeding and caused Count Steven to return to his bread and wine with a mental shrug.
"Any friend of my son is welcome here," said the old lady, smiling doubtfully.