But how is this possible? How can she confess that she has been in his room? Her cheeks burn; half fainting in her misery, she throws wide her window to admit the fresh morning air.
What is that? A scratching at the house door below, and then a melancholy whine. Olga hurries out into the corridor again, and at first cannot tell whence the noise proceeds. It grows louder and more persistent, an impatient scratching and knocking at the door leading out into the park. She hastens down the stairs and opens it.
"Lion!" she exclaims, as the dog leaps upon her, then crouches before her on the gravel, gazes piteously into her face, and utters a long howl, hoarse and ominous. Olga stoops down to him. Good God! what is this? His shoulder, his paws are stained with blood. The girl's heart seems to stand still. The dog seizes her dress as if to drag her away; releases it, runs leaping into the park, turns and looks at her. Shall she follow him?
Yes, she follows him, trembling, panting, through the park, through the village, out upon the highway, where the trees are vocal with the shrill twittering of birds. A clumsy peasant-cart is jolting along the road; the sleepy carter rubs his eyes and gazes after the strange figure with dishevelled hair and disordered dress, hastening towards the forest.
She has reached it at last. The dog's uneasiness increases, and he disappears among the trees. Olga stops; she cannot go on. The dog howls more loudly, and slowly, holding by the trees, she totters forward. What is it that makes the ground here so slippery? Blood? There,--there by the poacher's grave, at the foot of the rude wooden cross, she finds him.
A shriek, wild and hoarse, rings through the air. The leaves quiver and rustle with the flight of the startled birds among their branches. The heavens are filled with wailing, and the earth seems to rock beneath the girl's feet.
Then darkness receives her, and she forgets the horror of it all in unconsciousness.
[CHAPTER XLIII.]
COUNT HANS.
There was a dinner at Count Capriani's, and Count Hans Treurenberg, slender and erect, the embodiment of elegant frivolity, had just said something witty. One of his fellow-aristocrats, a noble slave of Capriani's, had been discoursing at length upon the new era that was dawning upon the world, and had finally proposed a toast to the union of the two greatest powers on earth, wealth and rank. All present had had their glasses ready; Count Hans alone had hesitated for a moment, and had then remarked, with his inimitable smile,--