"That was very kind of you," retorted he, sarcastically. "And what said the fellow?"
The girl's teeth flashed in her tanned face. She poised her bucket on the rim of the well, and shrugged her shoulder archly.
"Geiger-Hans said to me," she giggled: "'If one wants to be followed, one must first retire—remember that, Mädel,' he said. He said that to me," she went on, "because of the lad I'm after."
Steven turned away with a "pish!" of scorn for such low dallying, and an uneasy sense of doubt that the fiddler's avoidance of him was deliberate. As he swung away from her, the girl called after him good-naturedly:
"If the gracious gentleman will go to Wellenshausen, he will surely find Geiger-Hans sooner or later. He is never far from the Burg, this time of year."
"Pah!" thought Steven, "shall I waste more time in running down this beggar? The folk here-abouts must think me as crazy as himself! They are all in league to make me tramp. I vow this is some trick of the vagabond. I think I see myself squatting at a wretched village, humbly waiting Master Fiddler's pleasure."
And yet, to Wellenshausen, he next day found his way.
Thus Steven Lee, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg, a young man of usually epicurean tastes, chose to linger in God-forsaken, out-of-the-way corners of Westphalia, this September in the year of wars, 1813.
In the eyes of his valet this was incomprehensible; seriously annoying; indeed, a matter for much head-shaking. Instead of making for the gay capital of King Jerome and enjoying himself "like a gentleman," he hung about the outskirts of the Thuringian Forest and haunted the inns of half-deserted townships, of poverty-stricken villages on the high imperial road. While the postilions and the above-mentioned valet cursed the thin wine and the gross fare, while the horses of the travelling-chaise fretted the hours away in unworthy stables, their lord and master took solitary rambles on foot, as if in search of no one knew what, only to return, haughty as usual, weary and discontented.
When a halt was ordered for the night in the hamlet of Wellenshausen, instead of pushing on to the decent town of Halberstadt, as he had expected, valet Franz felt the situation more than his lively Viennese spirit could endure and vowed he would resign. He tapped his forehead significantly as his master strolled out of the vine-grown guest-house, looking up and down the street in his singular, expectant fashion.