The Castle of the Shadows | Page 5

brightness in the smile. "I shall be very pleased to speak with you before you go if there is anything you care to say to me," she replied, mechanically raising the great bunch of heliotrope she had been gathering to her lips.
"Now I will call our servant. He will put up your horses while you go in; though I'm afraid that we have no very good accommodation for them, as our stables have been empty for a long time."
"Oh, thank you, we needn't give him that trouble," said Trent. "I can fasten the horses' bridles to some tree or other, and they will be all right."
The girl disappeared, a slender, youthful figure in the plain black gown, yet her step, though it was not slow, had none of the lithsomeness of youth. She seemed to have lost all joy of life, though she could scarcely have been more than twenty-two or three.
"Another mystery!" Virginia said in a low voice. "How comes she to be English? Is she the girl they were talking about down below, or is she a companion?"
"She looks like a banished princess," said Trent. "I never saw such wonderful eyes. Deep as a well, reflecting a night of stars."
Lady Gardiner's lips tightened a little. She was rather vain of her eyes. "I think the girl would appear a very ordinary young person," she remarked, "if one saw her anywhere but here."
George lifted her down from the horse without answering, but Virginia did not wait to be helped. She sprang to the ground, and by the time that George had tethered the horses an old man in a faded livery came limping out from the side door through which the girl in black had lately disappeared.
Almost crippled with rheumatism, he had still all the dignity of a trusted servant of an ancient house, and his old eyes seemed gravely to defy these prosperous young people to criticize his threadbare clothing.
"Mademoiselle" had desired him to take monsieur and mesdames over the chateau, he politely announced in French, and went on to beg that they would give themselves the trouble of being conducted to the door at the front, that they might go in by the great hall. He also regretted that the visitors had not arrived earlier in the day, as the rooms could not be seen at their best advantage so near to sunset.
Virginia's heart began to beat oddly as she entered the house. She had still the feeling of having left realities behind and strayed into dreamland; but with the opening of the heavy door it seemed to her that the dream was about to change into a vision which would mean something for her future.
Of course it was all nonsense, she told herself, as the old man led them across the shadowy, tapestry-hung hall, and from one huge, dim, wainscotted or frescoed room to another; yet always, as they approached a doorway, she caught herself thinking--"Now a strange thing is going to happen."
"This is the state drawing-room; this is the library; this is the chapel; this is the bride's suite," the servant announced laconically. But though the castle was evidently very ancient and must have a private history of its own, centuries old, he offered no garrulous details of past grandeur, as most servants would. As they walked through a dining-room of magnificent proportions, but meagrely furnished, they passed a half-open door, and Virginia had a glimpse of a charming little room with a huge projecting window. Mechanically she paused, then drew away quickly as she saw that mademoiselle was seated at a table arranging the flowers she had gathered in the melancholy garden. The old man hobbled on, as if the door had not existed, and Virginia would have followed, had not the girl in black stepped forward and invited them in, with a certain proud humility.
"This is our sitting-room--my aunt's and mine," she said. "My aunt is not here now, so come in, if you will. It is a small room; still, it is one of the brightest and most home-like we have left."
She held open the door, and the three visitors obeyed her gesture of invitation; but suddenly the girl's face changed. The blood streamed up to her forehead, then ebbed again, leaving her marble-pale. She gave a slight start, as if she would have changed her mind and kept the strangers from entering; yet she made no motion to arrest them.
"She has just remembered something in this room that she doesn't wish us to see," thought Virginia; but it was too late to retreat, without drawing attention to an act which she could not explain. They all went in, the others apparently suspecting nothing; but in a second Virginia instinctively guessed the reason of her hostess's sudden constraint, and the sympathetic thrill