Countess Zriny and Hedwig have already ordered their old-fashioned coach and have started for home. Harry's horses--his own and his groom's--are waiting before the entrance.
It is ten o'clock,--time for bed at Zirkow. Frau Rosamunda rubs her eyes; Zdena stands, unheeded and weary, in one of the window embrasures in the hall, looking out through the antique, twisted grating upon the brilliant August moonlight. Paula is still conversing with the gentlemen; she proposes a method for exterminating the phylloxera, and has just formulated a scheme for the improvement of the Austrian foundling asylums.
They are waiting for her pony-carriage to appear, but it does not come. At last, the gardener's boy, who is occasionally promoted to a footman's place, comes, quite out of breath, to inform his mistress that Baroness Paula's groom is in the village inn, so drunk that he cannot walk across the floor, and threatening to fight any one who interferes with him.
"Very unpleasant intelligence," says Paula, without losing an atom of her equanimity. "There is nothing left to do, then, but to drive home without him. I do not need him; he sits behind me, and is really only a conventional encumbrance, nothing more. Good-night, Baroness! Thanks, for the charming afternoon. Goodnight! good-night! Now that the ice is broken, I trust we shall be good neighbours." So saying, she goes out of the open hall door.
Frau Rosamunda seems to have no objections to her driving without an escort to Dobrotschau, which is scarcely three-quarters of an hour's drive from Zirkow, and even the major apparently considers this broad-shouldered and vigorous young woman to be eminently fitted to make her way in the world alone. But Harry interposes.
"You don't mean to drive home alone?" he exclaims. "Well, I admire your courage,--as I admire every thing else about you," he adds, sotto voce, and with a Blight inclination of his head towards her,--"but I cannot permit it. You might meet some drunken labourer and be exposed to annoyance. Do me the honour to accept me as your escort,--that is, allow me to take the place of your useless groom."
"By no means!" she exclaims. "I never could forgive myself for giving you so much trouble. I assure you, I am perfectly able to take care of myself."
"On certain occasions even the most capable and clever of women lose their capacity to judge," Harry declares. "Be advised this time!" he implores her, as earnestly as though he were praying his soul out of purgatory. "My groom will accompany us. He must, of course, take my horse to Dobrotschau. Have no scruples."
As if it would ever have occurred to Baroness Paula to have "scruples"! Oh, Harry!
"If you really would be so kind then, Baron Harry," she murmurs, tenderly.