She shook her head sadly, and sat down upon the sofa, as if the weight of all these rushing memories at once, were too heavy to be borne standing. She remained a while absorbed in thought; and then at last, taking an agate snuffbox from her pocket, she strengthened herself with a pinch, before she answered. "It is a strange story, Sir, which nobody can tell so well as I can; and I may tell it now, that the grass is growing over many a younger head than this old foolish one of mine. It will be nine-and-forty years at Christmas, since I went up these stairs for the first time. I was the schoolmaster's daughter, a silly green young thing, and I thought I was being taken straight to Heaven, when our gracious Countess first took me into her service as a waiting maid. The young Count was not born then, nor ever likely to be: there was little love between my master and my mistress. To be sure my lady would always have been willing to worship him, for all he did to vex her. But they were an illmatched pair; and when Count Henry, who was almost always travelling about, came home in Autumn for the shooting-season, he managed to make his pretty patient wife still more unhappy than when he was away. "I had not been two days in the castle, before I knew that my lady was suffering from some sore trouble; I used to find her pillow wet of mornings, and her eyes all swollen with crying. "For you see, Sir, the count was a gentleman who had a quick temper and a wild way of his own, and the countess was meekness itself; she was too quiet for him, and he soon wearied of her.--I suppose he had only married her to please his father; some wilful, imperious, dark-eyed lady would have done better for him; some Frenchwoman, or Spaniard, such as often came to visit at the castle; who would have kept him at his wits' end, and made him hate her mortally to-day, and love her desperately to-morrow. He only loved what gave him trouble; he rode the wildest horses, and shot the biggest stags. "Our countess loved him far too well, and that was her misfortune--and our young count was exactly like her, and that was his. Only she was small-made and delicate, and had a voice like the clearest bell. When at last, after many long years of waiting, she had hopes of being a mother, she looked like some fair angel; her joy was shining so peacefully in her eyes! And the count seemed kinder, and even stayed here all the summer, to be present at the baby's birth. When the nurse brought it to him, so small and weakly looking, with its little yellow down upon its head, he said nothing, but put it back into its cradle, and left the room without a word. "I saw that my lady was deeply hurt, and I felt so angry, that I could not keep from saying, half to myself; 'Boys don't come into the world on horseback!' But I repented directly, for my lady heard me, and sent me out of the room. A week after this, she died.