A charwoman with a flat, red, perspiring face, and a knot of thin bristling hair at the back of her head, from which her yellow cotton kerchief had slipped down upon her neck, was shuffling upon hands and knees, her high kilted skirts leaving her red legs quite bare, over the tiles of the hall, rubbing away at the dirt and footmarks with a wisp of straw, while the steam of hot soapy water rose from the wooden bucket beside her.
The little girl outside had just planted a row of pink asters upon the grave, which she had dug with a pewter spoon, and had filled up duly, when the scratching of the wisp of straw suddenly ceased.
A young fellow was standing in the hall,--very young, scarcely sixteen, and with a portfolio under his arm. His garb was that of a journeyman mechanic, but his bearing had in it something of distinction, and his face was delicately modelled, very pale, with large dark eyes, almost black, gleaming below the brown curls of his hair. The same class of countenance is frequently seen among the Neapolitan boys who sell Seville oranges in Rome; but such eyes as this lad had are seen at most only two or three times in a lifetime.
The child in the garden looked with evident satisfaction at the young fellow. Apparently he had come into the castle through the back entrance,--the one used by servants and beggars.
The charwoman wiped her red hands upon her apron and knocked at one of the doors opening into the hall. She was a new-comer, and did not know that the Baron von Strachinsky was never disturbed upon any ordinary pretext.
She knocked several times. At last a sleepy, ill-humoured voice said, "What is it?"
"Your Grace, a young gentleman: he wants to speak to your Grace."
With eyes but half open, and the pattern of the embroidered cushion upon which he had been sleeping stamped upon his cheek, the Baron von Strachinsky came out into the hall.
He was of middle height; his face had once been handsome, but was now red and bloated with excessive good living; he was slightly bald, and wore thick brown side-whiskers. His dress was a combination of slovenliness and foppery. He wore scarlet Turkish slippers, trodden down at heel, gray trousers, and a soiled dark-blue smoking-jacket with red facings and buttons.