"What do you mean?" asked the Baron, breathing hard.
"I mean that the last knot has come to the comb." Aleksij Orsinski covered his face with his hands.
"Perhaps, after all," he thought, "this is nothing but a hideous dream."
"Do you not find, Baron, that Anya, your Anya as you call her, reminds you of another girl, the girl you——"
"Countess, for mercy's sake, I can bear this no longer; who are you?"
The Baron, trembling, panting, sprang to his feet and went up to the Countess. She thereupon threw off her mantilla, and appeared in the bright light of the full moon, which was streaming through the mullioned windows.
The Baron stretched out his arms.
"Jadviga!" he said, in a low, muffled tone; then he again covered his face with his hands.
"And now, Aleksij Orsinski, now that my story is at an end," said the Countess, in a jeering tone; "now that, at last, you have wakened from your day-dream, whom am I to call—Anya your fiancée, or Anya your own daughter?"
A low moan was the only answer.