feelings; they were of a gentle, pathetic character, often mournful and touching. He played on and on. Little was he aware who was listening to them. Could he have looked through the thick walls of his dungeon, he would have beheld a female form, her handkerchief to her eyes, leaning on the parapet of a terrace which ran along one of its sides. The lady whose tender feelings he had excited was no other than Isabelle Van Arent, who, with her sister and father and mother, had come that afternoon to pay a visit to Mynheer Bunckum. At length the Count ceased playing, and the lady tore herself away from the spot to rejoin her family, to whom she could not refrain from speaking of the pathetic music to which she had been listening.
“Oh, that must have been my steward, Hans Gingel. I know he plays the fiddle,” observed Mynheer Bunckum, “and he sometimes goes to some out-of-the-way corner that he may not disturb the rest of the household, who are not generally inclined to be enraptured by his music.”
“But he must, I assure you, be a very good player,” urged the fair Isabelle.
“I dare say he can manage to produce a few good notes sometimes,” said Mynheer Bunckum, in a careless tone. “Probably distance lent enchantment to the sound. I will not advise you to allow him to play very near at hand.”
Vrouw Isabelle looked puzzled, and began to fancy that her ears had deceived her; at all events, the Count had not obtained the advocate he might have gained, had she known who was the hidden musician to whom she had been listening. Mynheer Bunckum waited till his guests were gone, when he summoned his steward, Hans Gingel. “Has anything been heard of the other stranger?” he asked.
“I have him safe enough in the dungeon,” answered the steward. “He is not a bad fellow after all, as he takes the way he has been treated with wonderful good humour.” And the steward described the mode in which he had hauled the Count out of the well. “He is a rare player, too, on the violin, and I lent him mine to amuse himself with.”
“Then it was not your music with which Vrouw Isabelle was so delighted just now,” observed Mynheer Bunckum.
“No, no, no!” answered the steward laughing, “my strains are not calculated to draw tears from a lady’s eyes; to tell you the truth, Mynheer, I believe he is a Count after all.”
“His playing only agrees with the story of his being a travelling musician,” observed Mynheer Bunckum.
“But travelling musicians are not as polite and well-mannered as our prisoner,” said the steward. “I know a gentleman when I meet him.”