"And you too are an ardent hunter. Why did you leave the party so soon?" asked Wanda.
"I have had enough of it," returned Waldemar, shrugging his shoulders. "Such a crowd and tumult spoil all my pleasure. I prefer to hunt alone."
Wanda also had grown weary of the rush and noise, and had come here in quest of silence and solitude, but she would not confess it. "Do you come from the rendezvous?" she asked.
"No; but I have sent my horse there. The day's sport is nearly over; the hunting-party will pass here on its return, and I propose to await it."
As he said this, he set down his fowling-piece and the cock he had shot.
Wanda frowned. What business had he to be waiting here in the place she had chosen as her own retreat? Her first impulse was to leave; but was it not his duty to withdraw? She resolved to remain, even at the cost of being forced to tolerate the presence of this detestable man.
He did not manifest the slightest intention of leaving; he stood near her with folded arms, gazing upon the surrounding scene. The sun had been all day hidden behind a dense veil of clouds, but now a golden radiance broke through the fog, lighting up the western horizon and shimmering through the tree-tops. Ere long misty shadows, the harbingers of approaching night, began to rise from the meadows. The forest with its half dismantled trees and the withered leaves strewing the ground, lent the scene a bleak, autumnal aspect. There was no trace of that fresh, invigorating breath which pulsates through the woods in spring and summer; no token of that potent, life-giving power which at those seasons throbs through the veins and arteries of nature. Waning existence, slow, irresistible decay, were impressed upon all around.
Wanda's eyes rested as if in gloomy meditation upon the face of her companion; she seemed anxious to decipher his hidden thoughts. Although his face was half averted, he must have been conscious of her gaze, for he turned abruptly, and said indifferently,--
"There is something really comfortless in an autumnal landscape at an hour like this."
"And yet it has its own melancholy, poetic charm," returned Wanda; "do you not think so?"