So with a sweeping glance at the house he mounted and rode off.
Harlberg went in and, lighting a fresh cigar, took up a novel and proceeded to make himself as comfortable as the place permitted. He had scarcely settled himself in the easiest chair the room afforded when his step-daughter came in.
“The Count has gone?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered casually, glancing up from the book. “He talks of coming again to-morrow. He is an agreeable fellow and will enliven our exile. By the way, my dear girl,” he went on in a voice of languid expostulation, “you must take care of yourself in the forest. How foolish of you to play the water-rat. Lucky the fellow was a bad shot and only hit your hand.”
“It was hardly a question of his being a bad shot,” the girl replied indifferently. “He could see nothing to aim at except the movement of my hand, and he hit that.”
“It is unfortunate.”
“No; the wound is absurdly slight.”
“I meant,” he said a little querulously, “the fact of the Lieutenant’s breaking in upon our privacy.”
“I do not see,” she returned, “that we have anything to fear. I thought you would be glad of company beyond our own.”
“Quite so. But under the circumstances, perhaps the fewer acquaintances we make the better. We have always the Count.”