But she gave a sudden little shudder. “No, no!” she cried, snatching back her hand. Then she turned away and went quickly down the steep path.
CHAPTER XXI
THE COUNT AND HIS PRISONERS
WHEN Countess Minna awoke that morning, she had found herself among surroundings which, as she examined them, gave her considerable uneasiness. In her fatigue and the excitement of the night before she had but cursorily noticed the room, merely finding that it was next to the Princess’s, and communicated with it. When she rose in the morning she saw that this door, which had overnight been left open, was shut. When she tried it she found it locked; when she called to her mistress no answer was returned. She ran to the other, the outer door of her room; that was locked also. A vague alarm seized her. She looked round and shuddered in an excess of fear at the unprepossessing character of the apartment. At night it had looked fairly comfortable; the grey light of morning now brought out its dismal, almost funereal, sombreness. The great bed resembled a catafalque; its hangings, like the rest in the room, were black, scarcely relieved by a purple line of device. The few pictures were portraits, all of singularly forbidding aspect, and the whole tone of the apartment bore out the note of gloom. She went to the window and threw back the curtains; as she did so almost starting back in dismay. The outlook was upon a sheer wall of hewn rock, as gloomy and depressing as was the room. The place had the aspect of a prison, and it seemed very much as though it were really one as far as she was concerned.
“Worse than Krell,” she gasped, as she turned away and began to dress herself. When this was done, she tried the doors again, shaking and knocking at them, but without getting any response. Her fears now increased every moment; she thought of all the tales she had heard of wild robber nobles and their death-traps; were they not nicely caught there? The very circumstance of their flight had made their rescue or any knowledge of their imprisonment an impossibility. Had they not, she asked herself miserably, by their own folly destroyed every clue to their whereabouts, and so unwittingly contrived their disappearance from the face of the earth? Yes, she persuaded herself, they had fallen into hands which would take care that they were never seen or heard of more.
Just as she was working herself into a perfect frenzy of fear and despair, the door suddenly opened, and a maid of somewhat repellent aspect brought in breakfast. This she set down without speaking a word or, indeed, showing any particular consciousness of the other’s presence, and was leaving the room, when Minna sprang after her and asked her anxiously why the door between the rooms had been locked. To this the girl merely shook her head and answered, “I do not know.”
“But I wish to see the other lady at once,” Minna protested. “Will you either unlock that door or show me the way to her room?”
Again the maid shook her head. “I may not. I know nothing,” was her unconvincing reply.
“Then,” exclaimed Minna, pushing forward to the door, “I will go myself and find the way. I will not stay—ah!”
She started back with a little cry. At the door stood a man; none other than the Count.
He came in with a smile, which did not tend to restore Minna’s confidence. The maid went out, and the door was shut again.