"Carl von Lichtenberg?" replied Eloise. "Why, he is the Baron's son. He is eight, and he tore my frock this morning right up here." She shifted in her chair, and plucked up the hem of her tiny skirt to show me the place. "But it was not for that Carl has been put in prison, for I never told, did I, Gretel?"
Gretel grunted.
"Come," said she, "if you have finished supper you can have half an hour's play before bed."
She took the lamp in her hand, and led us from the room down a corridor; then, opening one side of a tall, double door, she led us into an immense picture-gallery.
Portraits of dead-and-gone Lichtenbergs stared at us from the walls. Men in armour, knights dressed for the chase, ladies whose beauty or ugliness wore the veil of the centuries.
"Why, this is the picture-gallery!" cried Eloise.
"It is the shortest way to the playroom," grimly replied Gretel, as she stalked before us with the light.
We followed her, walking hand-in-hand, as the babes in the wood walked in that grim story, to which the pity of the robins is the sequel.
Suddenly Gretel halted. She stood lamp in hand before a picture.