'I think so too,' said Wanda. 'It is coming very soon; and I fear I did a cruel thing this morning.'
'What was that?'
'I sent a stranger to find his way over our hills to Matrey, as best he might. He will hardly have reached it by now, and if a storm should come——'
'A stranger?' said Princess Ottilie, whose curiosity was always alive, and had also lately no food for its hunger.
'Only a poacher; but he was a gentleman, which made his crime the worse.'
'A gentleman, and you sent him over the hills without a guide? It seems unlike the hospitality of Hohenszalras.'
'Why he would have shot a kuttengeier!'
'A kuttengeier is a horrible beast,' said the Princess, with a shudder; 'and a stranger, just for an hour or so, would be welcome.'
'Even if his name were not in the Hof-Kalender?' asked her niece, smiling.
'If he had been a pedlar, or a clockmaker, you would have sent him in to rest. For a gentlewoman, Wanda, and so proud a one as you are, you become curiously cruel to your own class.'