Mazeppa.
Count Willnitz was striding to and fro in the old hall of his ancestral castle, in the heart of Lithuania. Through the high and narrow Gothic windows the light fell dimly into the cold apartment, just glancing on the massive pillars, and bringing into faint relief the dusty banners and old trophies of arms that hung along the walls, for the wintry day was near its close. The count was a dark-browed, stern-featured man. His cold, 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?"