"Proving how her strong nature has been cowed by that scoundrel," cried Johannes with warmth. His mother looked at him anxiously. "How could she, if she is such a strong, noble woman, submit to be cowed by such a man?" "Why not, dearest mother?" replied Johannes. "However noble and strong she may be, she is only a woman, after all." At this moment a carriage thundered past the house. They all looked out of the windows. "The Worronska!" "The fast countess!" cried Moritz. "What a model of an Amazon! How beautiful she is, managing those four horses and looking up here! That look is for you, Johannes. See! she is smiling at you." "I shall not interfere with Herbert," laughed Johannes. "I hear he is devoted to her." "What! Herbert!--to the Worronska?" cried Moritz. "How did that happen?" "Why, he was tutor for some years to a friend of the count's in St. Petersburg. He knew her there," replied Johannes. "Now, that would be a charming daughter-in-law for you, my dear Staatsräthin," said Helm. "Why, she would be even worse than the Hartwich." "Bah!" said Johannes. "She too is only a woman. If she fell, she owed her ruin to a man,--and a man might have been her saviour." CHAPTER II. THE SWAN. A dark, gloomy pile overlooked the village of Hochstetten, that lay about two miles from the city, in the midst of a charming country. It had once been called Hochstetten Castle; but since the direct line of the noble family in which it had passed for a century from father to son had died out, and only a castellan had dwelt there, to hold it in possession for a distant branch of its ancient house, it had gone by the name of the "Haunted Castle" among the people; for of course in such an old house, where so many men had died, there must be ghosts, and popular superstition declared that the spirits of the departed still hovered about the spot where their earthly forms had been wont to wander. But in this last year it happened that the castle was really inhabited by a spirit whose appearance inspired the vulgar, who suspect the devil's agency in whatever they do not comprehend, with quite as much horror as they had felt at the ghosts of their former lords,--although this latter spirit still inhabited a young and very beautiful body. Ernestine Hartwich had rented the castle, and, with her uncle, was living her strange life there. Since her arrival the house and the overgrown grounds within the high walls were certainly under a spell, and were avoided by all who were not obliged to go that way. There lay the old castle, in the midst of lovely hills and mountain-chains, embosomed in green trees, bathed in the sunlight of a dewy summer morning, and yet its gray, ancient walls looked abroad over the fresh life of wood and plain as gloomily as if they hid within them only death and decay.