CHAPTER VII
THE CASTLE BY DAY
That afternoon, as arranged, Von Tressen and Galabin paid a visit to Rozsnyo. Count Zarka received them with every sign of hospitality, and led them through a wide corridor lined with statues and bronzes, to an octagonal belvidere room where, somewhat to the visitors’ surprise, they found two ladies. The Count presented them to his cousin, Madame d’Ivady, a stately, picturesque woman, and her daughter, Fräulein Royda, a dark, rather handsome girl.
“My cousins,” Zarka said, with his easy, tactful, man-of-the-world air, “are kind enough to take compassion on my loneliness in this rocky stronghold, and give me as much of their company here as my conscience will allow me to take, knowing as I do that I am thereby depriving them of the joys of the outer world of gaiety and fashion, and that world of their presence.”
The elder lady swept her hand towards the windows which filled nearly three-quarters of the side of the room.
“We have at least nothing like this in Paris or Vienna,” she said with a sort of stately patronage, which made the two visitors struggle with a smile.
Perhaps the girl noticed their repressed amusement, for she moved to the window, saying—
“I don’t know where in the whole of Europe another view like this is to be found. Is it not magnificent?”
She turned her head in invitation to the young men to join her, and they moved to her side. There was no gainsaying the paramount loveliness of the panorama beneath and around them; the multitudinous shades of colour, ranging from the purple black of the pine woods to the red gold of the mountain tops; the spray of the torrent catching the sunlight, the deep glassy mirror of the lake, the luscious, restful green of the valley, and the brilliant flower-clad bank from which the castle rose—all made it indeed a position of surpassing beauty.
“Before we go over the place,” Zarka said, “you must have some refreshment. Walking in the forest is so fascinating that one is apt to forget how exhausting it may be. Now you shall try some Imperial Tokay.”
A large salver with cakes and flasks of wine had been brought in, and Zarka did the honours with a flourish and excess of politeness which hardly left room for the suspicion of a grim nature beneath.