She laughed. “You did not think there was any habitation, perhaps.”
“Except Rozsnyo.”
He thought her face changed curiously. At any rate the smile died out of it. “I am not bound there,” she replied. “We are living for the time at an old farm, the Meierhof Gorla. My father has come for sport.”
“That, too, is my reason for being here,” he said. “But I am a gipsy—for the time. I have a travelling cart and a tent, pitched over yonder”—he pointed across the valley—“my name is Osbert Von Tressen, and I have the honour to hold the rank of lieutenant in the second regiment of cavalry.”
“My father’s name,” she told him in return, “is Harlberg. We live, when we care for civilization, in town. But I love forest life.”
“You have enough of it here,” he returned drily. “I thought perhaps you had come from the Schloss Rozsnyo. You know Count Zarka?”
She hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Yes, we know him. Do you?”
“No; only by—reputation.”
She gave a quick glance at him as though to detect a significance in the last word. If she seemed tempted to ask him what that reputation was, she refrained.
“I hope,” he asked sympathetically, “your hand is not very painful?”