“The Count listened to her earnest prattle, not knowing whether to be amused or troubled. The touch of her lips upon his hand had been very sweet, and, stern recluse that he was, he had no heart to resist such attractive pleading.
“‘Child,’ said he—and he spoke Italian very readily—‘we will talk of all these things presently. Come up now to the house, that I may learn your story.’
“He offered her a stirrup leather, and holding to this she ran by his side, awed by his presence, yet drawn to him by an instinctive feeling that here she had found a friend. And he encouraged her to talk, desiring to form some opinion which would help him to deal with her future.
“‘Well, my little girl,’ he said cheerily, ‘and who taught you to play the fiddle?’
“‘Pietro,’ said she, ‘Pietro who sings for the priest at Zlarin. Oh, Pietro is a wise-head; he has great eyes and great ears and great hands like yours, Herr Count. When he opens his mouth it is just like looking into a pumpkin. He talks to his fiddle and his fiddle talks to him. It is good to see Pietro at the feast, Herr Count—such notes out of his mouth—oh, they are like cannon on the sea; such anger—oh, it is something to watch Pietro beat his fiddle when he is angry. And he laughs and nods his head all the time, and says: “What music I make! What injustice that I do not play at Vienna!” He taught me the scales, and when I could not do it he would beat his breast and break my bow and smack my face; but when I pleased him he would cry: “Brava! the whole city shall dance to music such as that.”’
“The Count had smiled when she spoke of his great hands, excellency, for in truth he was a big man, uncouth of limb, large of frame, and a very giant in strength. But forty years of life had robbed him of all the vanities, and he was pleased to find one who spoke truth and had no shame of her words. He could not help but remember, as he looked down upon the picturesque little figure running at his side, that life in the house of the Zaloskis had been a poor round of official dulness these twenty years and more. Christine brought him to a sudden recollection of a past day when a woman had enchained him and drank of the heart’s blood of his affections, leaving him at last a soured and broken man. He recalled the hour when a glance from eyes, that were very like the eyes of his little Italian girl, had warmed him to ecstasies of hope and love; his mind went back to those fleeting years of passion when a woman’s hand had led him, and a woman’s whim had betrayed him and had cast him out with affections withered and soul embittered. They had given him the name of woman-hater since those days. Strange, then, to hear the babble of a pretty girl’s voice in his own park, to feel his hand warm at her kiss. More strange that such things should have been pleasing to him, that he should have decided in his mind not to send Christine from the house if circumstances would permit him to retain her there.
“He had come to this conclusion as he rode up to the gate of the château, and giving his horse to a groom, led the way to his study. This was a great vaulted apartment in the east wing—a room with many pillars buttressing the arches of the roof, and windows opening towards the green mountains of Jajce. The walls of it spoke eloquently of the Count’s common employments—hunting implements, swords, suits of mail, old guns which dying Turks had dropped, spears, lances, pikes, adorned them. The tiled floor was covered with the soft skins of wolf and bear; other skins were piled upon the couches and the chairs. The heavy sideboard of oak shone resplendent with silver cups and jugs—mighty jugs for mighty drinkers. A small case for books, many implements of science, a table littered with papers, seemed out of place in that museum of a hundred wars—a soldier’s room, excellency, the room of a man whose ancestors had fought unnumbered battles.
“To such a room Count Paul led Christine. Here he pulled off his big riding-boots, and having lighted a cigar, he sat down at his table and bade her squat upon the cushion of skins at his side. And then he fell to questioning her.
“‘Child,’ said he, ‘they tell me that your father, Andrea, is now living at Sebenico, and that you ran away from him when he wished you to finish your education in a convent?’
“‘My father Andrea!’ she answered with surprise. ‘Oh, he is not my father, Herr Count, he is only my friend.’