"Oh, sir," she exclaimed with biting scorn, and shrugged her shoulders, "how well you are served; I make you my compliments!" Underneath her impertinent airs there was fluttering terror. But, like a bird, she would peck to the last. "And did Martin indeed tell you that I bade him admit my kinsman and his companion in your name?" she pursued, drawing a long breath. Then superbly, "It is true, M. de Wellenshausen. Do you mean me to understand that you would have wished me to refuse the hospitality of your house?"
The wave of wrath was again ebbing from the Burgrave's huge frame. He stared blankly at the little creature. Her words had a singular plausibility. She saw her advantage and flew to it.
"My cousin, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg, is travelling through this country," said she. "My dear mother announced his arrival in her last letter."
"The courier came on Wednesday," interpolated Eliza, pinning the brooch in a slightly less conspicuous position amid the folds of her kerchief.
"She is most anxious to have personal news of my health ... knowing the delicacy of my chest, and how much I am likely to suffer in these harsh airs where it is your pleasure to immure me."
The Burgravine wheeled her chair round to face her lord.
"It is perhaps dull of me," she went on more boldly still, "not to have understood that I am not the mistress of these barren walls, but rather their prisoner. When I heard that my cousin was below, I had no hesitation in ordering him to be admitted. Yes, sir, I even said that it would be your wish.—Ach, Eliza, what a stupid mistress you have! You heard me actually lament, I believe, your master's absence on the occasion!"
"Madame la Comtesse, indeed, made the remark to me," quoth Eliza, "that it was of the last annoyance that Monsieur le Comte should be absent that evening. It was so trying for Madame la Comtesse to have to receive alone!"
"And indeed, my poor girl," said the lady, picking up the thread herself, "I could regret that we should thus innocently have infringed the rules of the castle of—I should say the prison of Wellenshausen—for it was to very poor results. Yes, we should have allowed M. de Wellenshausen's doorkeeper—turnkey, I mean—to send the gentlemen down the hill again. My people would have wondered. But, mon Dieu, will they wonder less when my kinsman tells them of these dismal walls, these rude surroundings, this savage solitude? Poor young man! in spite of his affection for me he could not bring himself to face another day of it.—Eliza, my shoe!"
"Indeed, madame," commented the maid, pursuing the theme from where she knelt to fit each little foot, "the gentlemen would not even tarry for breakfast, so hurried were they to be gone!"