She returned to her place beside the Baron, who looked silently into the fire; her pretty head drooped on his shoulder, and he leaned his cheek to hers, her hand in his.
“My daughter!” he said, in a tone he never used to aught on earth but her.
“My father!” she answered, softly as a wind-harp sounds.
“I would have my baby once more.”
He turned to the maid:
“Geta, go get your mistress ready for bed. Wrap her in my Siberian mantle. She shall rest to-night in the arms which were her first cradle, and I shall rock her to sleep.”
Ginevra laughed. “I can easily be a child again. I have only to go a few steps backward,” and she disappeared with Geta.
A moment later she was robed in a snow-white mantle which muffled her from head to foot. And, like a wintry fairy, she passed her chamber door, where her father stood waiting. He caught her up from the floor.
“Take care of the baby feet,” he said. “These floors are never warm. Thou art all fair, my love. We will not go below. We will sit in the brown parlor.”
This was a small room adjoining Ginevra’s bedroom, where there was a cumbrous chair, called Prince Rupert’s, which was shaped like a throne. The walls were made strange with portraits—men in queer costumes looking stiff and ghastly, women rigid as pasteboard, except the picture of one young girl in long bodice and flowing skirt, around her hounds and huntsmen, a hawk on her wrist, her horse at hand ready for mounting—a lovely lady. This was Ginevra’s mother; and she loved the portrait, and always kept a lamp of perfumed oil burning below it.