It was a useless question. None of them had seen him.
They gave her a chair. She sank down on it, and sat silent for a while. There was no sound in the room. All looked at her and wondered at her. At last she grew frightened at the silence, started, and tried to speak of indifferent things. She turned to the old man in the corner, “I think I have heard that you have been a soldier,” she said. “Tell me something of the war!”
The silence grew still deeper. The old man sat as if he had not heard.
“It would be very interesting to hear about the war from some one who had been there himself,” continued the countess; but she stopped short, for the Broby clergyman’s daughter shook her head at her. She must have said something forbidden. Everybody was looking at her as if she had offended against the simplest rule of propriety. Suddenly a gypsy woman raised her sharp voice and asked: “Are you not she who has been countess at Borg?”
“Yes, I am.”
“That was another thing than running about the wood after a mad priest.”
The countess rose and said farewell. She was quite rested. The woman who had spoken followed her out through the door.
“You understand, countess,” she said, “I had to say something; for it does not do to speak to the old man of war. He can’t bear to hear the word. I meant well.”
Countess Elizabeth hurried away, but she soon stopped. She saw the threatening wood, the dark mountain, and the reeking swamp. It must be terrible to live here for one whose soul is filled with evil memories. She felt compassion for the old man who had sat there with the dark gypsies for company.