'Thank God, thank God!' breathed Everard, with a great sigh of relief. 'The groom was saying----'
'The groom has grossly exaggerated the affair,' Oswald interrupted him. 'Your master is very slightly injured--wounded in the hand, nothing more. It was quite unnecessary to alarm the Countess in this way. Go now and let Baron Heideck know the true state of the case, that he may not be startled in like manner by the news of some dangerous injury.'
Everard withdrew to fulfil his mission, and Oswald was about to leave the room, when his eyes, wandering with a casual and indifferent glance towards the writing-table, fell on the small case which lay thereon.
Curiosity did not rank among Oswald's failings, and he would have thought it impertinent to examine even that which lay open to view in his aunt's room. But now he was misled by a very pardonable error. Only the day before he had begged the Countess to make over to him a portrait of his father, which had been in the possession of the late Count Ettersberg, and was, no doubt, still to be found among his personal belongings. Now that he was leaving the old home, Oswald wished to take this souvenir with him, and the Countess had been quite willing to accede to his wish, promising to look for the portrait. It appeared, so he said to himself, that she had been successful in her quest.
In this certain presumption, Oswald took up the picture. He had but a dim remembrance of it, and really did not know if it were enclosed in a frame or in a case. The faded appearance of the little _étui_ seemed to confirm his belief, so he opened it.
The case contained a portrait, certainly--a miniature painted on ivory--but it was not the one he sought. At the first glance Oswald started, surprised in the highest degree.
'Edmund's likeness!' he murmured, under his breath. 'Strange that I should never have seen it before. Besides, he has never worn uniform, to my knowledge.'
With ever-increasing astonishment he examined first the miniature, which so unmistakably portrayed the young Count's features, and then the old-fashioned and discoloured case wherein it had evidently long lain enclosed. He had alighted on an enigma.
'What can it mean? The portrait is an old one. That is plain from its colouring, and from the shape of the case--yet it represents Edmund as he now appears. To be sure, it is not quite like him, it has an expression, a look which is not his, and ... Ah!'