CHAPTER X. THE RIGHT TO LIVE AND LOVE
Dinner was over in the dull old dining-room. The Archduchess Annunciata lighted a cigarette, and glanced across the table at Hedwig.
Hedwig had been very silent during the meal. She had replied civilly when spoken to, but that was all. Her mother, who had caught the Countess’s trick of narrowing her eyes, inspected her from under lowered lids.
“Well?” she said. “Are you still sulky?”
“I? Not at all, mother.” Her head went up, and she confronted her mother squarely.
“I should like to inquire, if I may,” observed the Archduchess, “just how you have spent the day until the little divertissement on which I stumbled. This morning, for instance?”
Hedwig shrugged her shoulders, but her color rose. It came in a soft wave over her neck and mounted higher and higher. “Very quietly, mother,” she said.
“Naturally. It is always quiet here. But how?”
“I rode.”
“Where?”