“Why, my darling,” said the Baron, “why does everybody love my child?”
“I do not know,” she answered, with a thoughtful, puzzled look. “Perhaps,” she added shyly, “it is because I love everybody.”
“That much nearer heaven than I,” said the father, gazing into the picture-like face, with the mild look which never came into his own except for her. “The angels in heaven can do no more.”
Her fresh, light rooms, the only cheerful ones in the dismal stone pile, opened out on a broad balcony, filled with plants; fluttering leaves, speckled shadows, sweet-smelling flowers, through which the sun at setting poured his last, last rays, as lingering through the late twilight to kiss her pure forehead once more. The blessed sunlight! You might think some of its brightness was tangled in the golden head which glanced among the flowers, and that their sweetness had passed into her soul.
It was the Baron’s study to smooth from her path every care and trial, and to temper every wind that blew past her. The walls round the courtyard below the balcony were so high it was sheltered from the coldest blasts, so that birds sang in the bare, leafless thickets of shrubbery as though it were always spring; and all the year round it was a delightful playground.
In summer, with her little maid, Geta, she used to play hide and seek in the alleys of the rose garden, where the roses were all red—the Baron would not have a white one among them—and as the quick color came and went in her face, he would say:
“My child, the roses are ever at war in thy cheek.”
“Yes, father; but thou sayest the red always wins.”
“So it does, dear heart, and so it shall. No white leaf for us! The red rose forever! When I miss it from thy face the sweetness of my life is gone; and thou must wear one for me ever in thy hair.”
Near the castle wall was a dark forest, of which awful tales were told; how it was full of robber caves, and dens, and dim paths leading into snares and pitfalls, and among roaring wild beasts that were forever seeking what they might devour.