"What reason can they have for so much mystery, I wonder?" musingly
observed the baroness.

"That I cannot say. I can furnish only the data; for the deductions I
must refer your ladyship to the Herr Doctor."

"Ah, true!" ejaculated her ladyship, joining in the general laughter.
"The doctor, to be sure! If you are the county clock, Herr Doctor,
surely you ought to know something about our mysterious neighbors?"

"I have two versions, either of which your ladyship is at liberty to
accept," promptly responded the doctor. "According to the first
'authentic' declaration, the nameless count is the chief of a band of
robbers, who ply their nefarious trade in a foreign land. The lady is
his mistress. She fell once into the hands of justice, in Germany, and
was branded as a criminal on her forehead. That accounts for the heavy
veil she always wears--"

"Oh, that is quite too horribly romantic, Herr Doctor!" interrupted the
baroness. "We cannot accept that version. Let us hear the other one."

"The second is more likely to be the true one. Four years ago the
newspapers were full of a remarkable abduction case. A stranger--no one
knew who he was--abducted the wife of a French officer from Dieppe.
Since then the betrayed husband has been searching all over the world
for his runaway wife and her lover; and the pair at the castle are
supposed to be they."

"That certainly is the more plausible solution of the mystery. But there