Though light was not spared at the burg it was only such light as oil and wax could give the galleries and passages; dim mysterious figures loomed from the rooms and shadows seemed to stretch away on every side to vast unknown chambers that might hold the secrets of a thousand centuries. When he was ushered into the radiance of the great white room he felt dazzled and blinded.
He felt his bruise still, and he walked with a slight lameness from a strain of his left foot, but this did not detract from the grace and distinction of his bearing, and the pallor of his handsome features became them; and when he advanced through the opened doors and bent before the chair and kissed the hands of the Princess Ottilie she thought to herself, 'What a perfectly beautiful person. Even Wanda will have to admit that!' Whilst Hubert, going backward, said to his regiment of under-servants: 'Look you! since Count Gela rode out to his death at the head of the White Hussars, so grand a man as this stranger has not set foot in this house.'
He expected to see the Countess Wanda von Szalras. Instead, he saw the loveliest little old lady he had ever seen in his life, clad in a semi-conventual costume, leaning on a gold-headed cane, with clouds of fragrant old lace about her, and a cross of emeralds hung at her girdle of onyx beads, who saluted him with the ceremonious grace of that etiquette which is still the common rule of life amongst the great nobilities of the north. He hastened to respond in the same spirit with an exquisite deference of manner.
She greeted him with affable and smiling words, and he devoted himself to her with deference and gallantry, expressing all his sense of gratitude for the succour and shelter he received, with a few eloquent and elegant phrases which said enough and not too much, with a grace that it is difficult to lend to gratitude which is generally somewhat halting and uncouth.
'His name must be in the Hof-Kalendar!' she thought, as she replied to his protestations with her prettiest smile which, despite her sacred calling and her seventy years, was the smile of a coquette.
'M. le Marquis,' she said, in her tender and flute-like voice, 'I deserve none of your eloquent thanks. Age is sadly selfish. I did nothing to rescue you, unless, indeed, Heaven heard my unworthy prayer!--and this house is not mine, nor anything in it; the owner of it, and, therefore, your châtelaine of the moment, is my grand-niece, the Countess Wanda von Szalras.'