"Countess Wildenau."
Another servant now brought in a letter on a silver tray.
The countess' hand trembled as she took it--the envelope was one of those commonly used by Freyer, but the writing was not his.
"Is any one waiting for an answer?" she asked in a hollow tone.
"No, Your Highness, it was brought by a Griess woodcutter."
The countess opened the letter--it was from the maid-servant at the hunting castle, and contained only the news that the steward had left suddenly and the servants did not know what to do.
The countess sat motionless for a moment unable to utter a word. Everything seemed whirling around her in a dizzy circle, she saw nothing save dimly, as if through a veil, the servant clearing away the breakfast.
"Let old Martin put the horses in the carriage," she said, hoarsely, at last.
How the minutes passed before she entered it--how it was possible for her to assume, in the presence of the maid, the quiet bearing of the mistress of the estate, who "must see that things were going on right," she did not know. Now she sat with compressed lips, holding her breath that she might seem calm in her own eyes. What will she find on the height? Two graves of the past, and the empty abode of a former happiness. She fancied that a dark wing brushed by the carriage window, as if the death angel were flying by with the cup of wormwood of which Freyer had once spoken!
She had a horror of the deserted house, the spectres of solitude and grief, which the vanished man might have left behind. When a house is dead, it must be closed by the last survivor, and this is always a sorrowful task. But if he himself has driven love forth, he will cross the deserted threshold with a lagging step, for the ghost of his own act will stare at him everywhere from the silent rooms.