"Why do you speak so politely to me, young master? You never did it before, I am sure. Yes, I was up at the castle. You know my husband was dead, and the boys were dead, and the girls, and I was the only one who looked a little after things up there since the death of the baroness. I did not like to stay there, Heaven knows, for Castle Grenwitz was no better than Sodom and Gomorrah. Every day came friends, and often half a dozen other visitors besides, and then playing and drinking till late in the morning."
"Did ladies ever come to the castle?"
"No, even the boldest were afraid of these wild men. And most of them were not married then, like Baron Berkow; or their wives had died, like Baron Barnewitz, and thus they could carry it on undisturbed. There never were any women there I would speak of, except one, except one----"
"And who was that one?"
"The last one--a beautiful, innocent angel, who might have converted devils even; but Harald and his companions were worse than devils."
"What was her name? Where did she come from?"
"We called her Miss Marie; where she came from I never heard, nor where she went to."
"Then she did not take her own life, as people say?"
"No--she was too good and too pious to do that; she would have borne her cross to Golgotha. Oh! she was so young and fair, and so gentle and so sweet; my eyes have never seen anything like it before or after. If I had known they meant her when Baron Harald, over the wine, betted Baron Barnewitz I do not know how many thousand dollars that the girl should follow him, of her own free will, to Castle Grenwitz--I would have poisoned them all in their wine, like a nest of vile rats."
"And how did Baron Harald go about to win his wager?"