to say, she must leave them to himself! Could she choose to do otherwise? Did any choice remain to her? Must she not submit whether she would or no? And if she wavered--one minute only alone with him--here in this room, in which so often they had in fancy stood together, which she had so minutely described to him that he knew every piece of furniture, every picture on the wall--this especially, the portrait of the man from whose arms he had scornfully torn her, that some day his picture might hang here--the portrait of the new lord, who would pull down this barbaric edifice and build a new castle--the new lord! He stood before the picture, and looked at it with an evil smile. "You were the last of your race, with your narrow forehead and the broad ribbon of some high order over your cold heart! and now you are mouldering in the tomb of your ancestors! And he, whom in life you could not vie with, stands still alive here, in his undiminished strength--the peasant's son, who will now be the founder of a race of princes for whom even the chair of St. Peter shall not be too high!" A shock like that of an earthquake struck the castle. The windows rattled, the doors flew open and banged to again. The picture, to which he was looking up, and which had hung from its rusty nail for a generation past, shook and fell, so that the mouldered frame broke into fragments, and the picture itself, after standing upright for a moment, fell forward under his feet. He sprang back. "Do you still move, accursed dust? Down into hell to his accursed soul!" And, as if in answer to the master's voice, from the depths of hell to which he had called, howls and yells resounded round Castle Warnow. CHAPTER VIII. They looked back after the groom as he galloped back to the castle. "Carla!" said the Count. He had brought his horse close up to hers; she bent towards him, and he put his right arm round her slender form and kissed her again and again on lips and cheek. "Bad man!" said Carla. He hastily put up his hand to remove the veil which the wind was blowing between their faces, and in so doing pulled off her hat. "Axel, do be sensible!" She dropped the reins on her horse's neck and tied her veil round her hat. "Sensible!" cried the Count; "when I am really alone for the first time with the prettiest girl in all the world!" "You are too bad," said she. She put on her hat again and secured it; he tried to renew the charming game. "You shall not have another kiss!" cried she, touching her horse with the whip and starting forward. He soon overtook her, and for a short time they galloped on side by side, lost in each other, eye meeting eye, and often hand touching hand, unheeding the road till both horses suddenly stood still.