THE CRIMSON SHAWL


Henry Fenwick and the Count went shooting. He came and asked my leave as
one who is uncertain of an answer. And I gave it guiltily, saying to
myself that anything which took his mind off Madame Von Eisenhagen was
certainly good. But there leaped in my heart a great hope that, in what
remained of the day, I might again see the Countess.

I was grievously disappointed. For though I lounged all the afternoon in
the pleasant spaces by the lake, only the servants, of the great empty
hotel passed at rare intervals. Of Lucia I saw nothing, till the Count
and Henry passed in with their guns and found me with my book.

"Have you been alone all the afternoon?" they said, innocently enough.
And it was some consolation to answer "Yes," and so to receive their
sympathy.

Henry came again to me after dinner. The Count was going over the hills
to the Forno glacier, and had asked him; but he would not go unless I
wished it. I bade him take my blessing and depart, and again he thanked
me.

There was that night a band of thirty excellent performers to discourse
music to the guests at the table--being, as the saw says, us four and no
more. But the Count was greatly at his ease, and told us tales of the
forests of Russia, of wolf-hunts, and of other hunts when the wolves
were the hunters--tales to make the blood run cold, yet not amiss being
recounted over a bottle of Forzato in the bright dining-room. For,
though it was the beginning of May, the fire was sparkling and roaring