Etta stood looking over this to the far horizon, where the white snow and the gray sky softly merged into one. Her first remark was characteristic, as first and last remarks usually are.
“And as far as you can see is yours?” she asked.
“Yes,” answered Paul simply, with that calm which only comes with hereditary possession.
The observation attracted Steinmetz’s attention. He went to another window, and looked across the waste critically.
“Four times as far as we can see is his,” he said.
Etta looked out slowly and comprehensively, absorbing it all like a long, sweet drink. There was no hereditary calmness in her sense of possession.
“And where is Thors?” she asked.
Paul stretched out his arm, pointing with a lean, steady finger:
“It lies out there,” he answered.
Another of the little incidents that are only half forgotten. Some of the persons assembled in that room remembered the pointing finger long afterward.
“It makes one feel very small,” said Etta, turning to the breakfast-table—“at no time a pleasant sensation. Do you know,” she said, after a little pause, “I think it probable that I shall become very fond of Osterno, but I wish it was nearer to civilization.”
Paul looked pleased. Steinmetz had a queer expression on his face. Maggie murmured something about one’s surroundings making but little difference to one’s happiness, and the subject was wisely shelved.
After breakfast Steinmetz withdrew.
“Now,” said Paul, “shall I show you the old place, you and Maggie?”
Etta signified her readiness, but Maggie said that she had letters to write, that Etta could show her the castle another time, when the men were out shooting, perhaps.
“But,” said Etta, “I shall do it horribly badly. They are not my ancestors, you know. I shall attach the stories to the wrong people, and locate the ghost in the wrong room. You will be wise to take Paul’s guidance.”
“No, thank you,” replied Maggie, quite firmly and frankly. “I feel inclined to write; and the feeling is rare, so I must take advantage of it.”
The girl looked at her cousin with something in her honest blue eyes that almost amounted to wonder. Etta was always surprising her. There was a whole gamut of feeling, an octave of callow, half-formed girlish instincts, of which Etta seemed to be deprived. If she had ever had them, no trace was left of their whilom presence. At first Maggie had flatly refused to come to Russia. When Paul pressed her to do so, she accepted with a sort of wonder. There was something which she did not understand.
The same instinct made her refuse now to accompany Paul and Etta over their new home. Again Etta pressed her, showing her lack of some feeling which Maggie indefinitely knew she ought to have had. This time Paul made no sign. He added no word to Etta’s persuasions, but stood gravely looking at his wife.
When the door had closed behind them, Maggie stood for some minutes by the window looking out over the snow-clad plain, the rugged, broken rocks beneath her.
Then she turned to the writing-table. She resolutely took pen and paper, but the least thing seemed to distract her attention—the coronet on the notepaper cost her five minutes of far-off reflection. She took up the pen again, and wrote “Dear Mother.”
The room grew darker. Maggie looked up. The snow had begun again. It was driving past the window with a silent, purposeful monotony. The girl drew the writing-case toward her. She examined the pen critically and dipped it into the ink. But she added nothing to the two words already written.
The castle of Osterno is almost unique in the particular that one roof covers the ancient and the modern buildings. The vast reception-rooms, worthy of the name of staterooms, adjoin the small stone-built apartments of the fortress which Paul’s ancestors held against the Tartars. This grimmer side of the building Paul reserved to the last for reasons of his own, and Etta’s manifest delight in the grandeur of the more modern apartments fully rewarded him. Here, again, that side of her character manifested itself which has already been shown. She was dazzled and exhilarated by the splendor of it all, and the immediate effect was a feeling of affection toward the man to whom this belonged; who was in act, if not in word, laying it at her feet.
When they passed from the lofty rooms to the dimmer passages of the old castle Etta’s spirits visibly dropped, her interest slackened. He told her of tragedies enacted in bygone times—such ancient tales of violent death and broken hearts as attach themselves to gray stone walls and dungeon keeps. She only half listened, for her mind was busy with the splendors they had left behind, with the purposes to which such splendors could be turned. And the sum total of her thoughts was gratified vanity.
Her bright presence awakened the gloom of ages within the dimly lit historic rooms. Her laugh sounded strangely light and frivolous and shallow in the silence of the ages which had brooded within these walls since the days of Tamerlane. It was perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Alexis family, this beautiful tragedy that walked by the side of Paul.
“I am glad your grandfather brought French architects here and built the modern side,” she said. “These rooms are, of course, very interesting, but gloomy—horribly gloomy, Paul. There is a smell of ghosts and dullness.”
“All the same, I like these rooms,” answered Paul. “Steinmetz and I used to live entirely on this side of the house. This is the smoking-room. We shot those bears, and all the deer. That is a wolf’s head. He killed a keeper before I finished him off.”
Etta looked at her husband with a curious little smile. She sometimes felt proud of him,
