“Oh, no—yes, I am fond of engineering,” the other answered. “Did you see doors or passages in the rock?”
His two hosts glanced at each other, repressing a smile. Galabin replied: “I noticed nothing of the sort; did you, Von Tressen?”
“Nothing,” the Lieutenant corroborated.
For a few moments their guest was silent. Then he suddenly asked: “You went all over the Schloss?”
“Hardly all over; but we saw everything which, according to the Count, was worth seeing. I do not think we told you of the beautiful private chapel in the——”
A loud laugh from D’Alquen made him stop short. It was a curious laugh of derision on a single sustained note, and it rang through the forest, so as to be almost startling in the silence around.
“A chapel!” he exclaimed in reply to their stare of astonishment. Their guest was every moment becoming more of a puzzle. “A chapel! That is a comical idea. The Count is pious, then?”
“We can hardly answer for that.”
D’Alquen laughed again, this time not so loudly, but with a jarring, sarcastic note.
“No; we can answer for no man outside our own skin, not even for the honourable Count Zarka. And if my estimate of that nobleman is not wrong, the man would be rash indeed who would answer for his piety.”