"Then you still loved the man who——"
"Love either flows away like water, or it rankles in a festering heart and changes into gall. At St. Petersburg I saw again my parents. Their curse had fallen on their own heads; fortune's wheel had turned—their wealth was all gone—they were paupers. How despicable people are who, having once been rich, cannot get reconciled to the idea of being poor! How mean all their little makeshifts are! how cringing they get to be! You can even make them swallow any amount of dirt for a dinner you give them. They are all loathsome parasites. I might have ignored my parents—left them to their fate, or else helped them anonymously. I went to see them; it was so pleasant to heap burning coals on their heads. I doled out a pittance to them, received their thanks, allowed them to kiss my hands, knowing how they cursed me within their hearts. Gratitude is the bitterest of all virtues; it sours the very milk of human kindness."
The Countess laughed a harsh, bitter, shrill laugh, and her guest wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
"I shall tell you all about them some other time, in the long winter evenings when the wind howls outside and the country is all covered with its pall of snow. It will be pleasant to sit by the fire and tell you all these old family stories, Aleksij Orsinski."
And the dark figure buried in the big arm-chair laughed again in a mocking, discordant way.
"After some years the Count died, and then I was left sole mistress of all his wealth."
"And Anya?"
"Why, I hardly ever saw her. She was brought up here, in this dreary old castle, like a sleeping beauty; you, like Prince Charming, came to waken her up. You found her here by chance, did you not?"
"Yes, Countess; I happened——"
"Count Yarnova, likewise, found me by chance," said the woman in the dark, jeeringly, and interrupting him.