"No, no," replied the Count, "that is because you know nought of the world, dear girl. Why Count Frederick himself is just the same gay, joyous soul as ever, and is as old as I am, or a year older. Now, I dare say, to your young eyes, I seem to have reached a vast antiquity, for it is only in looking back that space seems short. It appears but yesterday that I was a boy."
"Nay, I do not think you so very old," replied his daughter, smiling, "when I set you against Seckendorf, you seem but a youth."
"But when you compare me with Ferdinand," replied her father, laughing, "I am quite an old man. Is it not so, child?"
Adelaide neither answered nor coloured, as might have been perhaps expected, but smiled faintly and fell into thought; for it is wonderful what a vast chain of associations is very often spread out before the mind, by a few very simple words; and those associations are nine times out of ten totally different from any that the speaker intended to awaken.
It was so in this case. The comparison of her lover's light and active youth, with the gay rose upon the cheek, the glossy unchanged hair, the movements full of elastic life, the eye lighted up with that heart's fire, which, like the watcher's lamp, grows slowly dimmer with each passing hour, and her pale, thoughtful father, with his stern look, his rigid air, his hair thickly scattered with the snow of time, went on to take in the two elder men where the progress of decay had passed its first stage; and at each step her fancy halted to ask, "And will he whom I love soon be like this--and this?" Her father had said, it seemed but yesterday that he was a boy; and Adelaide thought, "It may be but to-morrow ere I look back upon these days and feel the same." From time to time a sudden consciousness of the great truth, that mortal life is but a point amidst eternity, seems to burst upon us and is then lost again--the whisper of an angel drowned in the tumult of earthly hopes and fears.
Before she had roused herself from her reverie, Seckendorf had taken up the conversation, saying, "And so, my good lord, Count Frederick is as gay and jovial as ever? I remember you and him, and the late Count, your brother, all curly headed boys together--two merry ones and one grave one; for you were always more serious than the rest."
"Because I had less cause for merriment," replied the Count, with a cloud coming over his brow. "They wanted to make a priest of me at that time, Seckendorf; and it was not to my taste--But do not let us talk of those days. The past is always a sad subject. You will see our friend to-morrow; for he will be here ere nightfall, and may stop a week or more, so that we must have all things prepared. The great hall, too, must be made ready; for we shall not have room here. The casements must be mended early to-morrow; and the dust cleaned off the walls and banners."
Seckendorf did not answer, but looked at the Count stedfastly, with an inquiring air, in reply to which his lord nodded, saying, "It must be done."
"By my faith! my good lord," cried Karl von Mosbach, "you won't get many people willing to do it; for every one says that the hall is haunted; and we love not even passing by the door."
"We will have it sprinkled with holy water," replied the Count, somewhat bitterly; "but do not tell me that any of my men will refuse to obey my orders, or I will shame you all by a girl."