Count Zarka: A Romance

The young man sitting opposite to him smiled. “At least, Excellency, let me hear it. May not the man before whom the danger will lie be the best judge of whether he can undertak...

The nearly horizontal rays of a setting September sun, red with the promise of a brilliant resurrection on the morrow, struck full against the great elevated timber-line, where,...

Gorla’s Meierhof, or Grange, was a picturesque house which had been converted into a kind of shooting-box from a farmhouse, which, in turn, had been adapted from the ruins of an...

Next morning, as in duty bound, Von Tressen stopped on his way to Kulhausen to inquire after Fräulein Harlberg’s injury. The surgeon had pronounced it to be trifling, had extrac...

At about nine o’clock that evening the two friends set out through the forest for the Schloss Rozsnyo. They had been careful to utter no hint of their intention which might be o...

Next day, as the two friends were preparing for a morning’s sport, they were surprised by a visit from no less a personage than Count Zarka himself. He came in, all smiles, to i...

That afternoon, as arranged, Von Tressen and Galabin paid a visit to Rozsnyo. Count Zarka received them with every sign of hospitality, and led them through a wide corridor line...

“I cannot make out our friend the Count,” Galabin observed, as the two walked back to their temporary home. “The whole business is a puzzle, but I must say an interesting one, a...

“I wonder if we shall come across our friend of last night,” Von Tressen observed, for while the servant, Bela, had been near they had not spoken on the subject.

“Perhaps. For I do not quite make out your friends. Herr Harlberg comes for sport, here to a wild farmhouse, yet he does not shoot, nor does he seem very keen about it. For I ma...

Next morning Philippa, taking a book with her, set off for a quiet stroll in the forest. The unaccustomed monotony of her life at the old Grange, shut up with her step-father, w...

He drew a step nearer to her and fixed his dark eyes piercingly on her face. His manner was not rough; hardly, in its outward form, uncivil; yet there was in it a suggestion of...

Count Zarka had paid his accustomed visit to Gorla’s farm, and was far from pleased to find Philippa absent, and no hint left behind of her whereabouts. He chatted for a while w...

“I did not understand then,” she answered, “but now have no doubt the Lieutenant knew all about it. Who was privileged to rescue the poor Fräulein?” she went on, with a touch of...

The giant trees of the great forest streaked the velvety glades with their lengthening shadows as the autumn sun touched the broken outline of the mountain screen and sent the l...

There was a note of jeering exultation in the Count’s voice as he called to them, as it were a warning that it was no use their trying to escape him. They were clearly in view a...

“There seems no object in delay,” Galabin had argued. “If the place is watched by Zarka’s people, the patrol will continue as long as there is any reason for it. No; our friend...

Next morning Count Zarka received a letter which occasioned him a considerable amount of uneasiness. It reached him by the hand of a peasant from the mountain district, and its...

That afternoon, Abele D’Alquen, prowling about the forest in his fiercely watchful mood, was startled and brought up suddenly by the report of a gun close behind him, and the sh...

Philippa spent the rest of that day in a state of anxious indecision. Everything seemed against her. On all sides danger threatened, and her situation was made doubly distressin...

The danger of her situation flashed upon her. It was this man, then, who must have struck the light she had seen. What an escape she had had. If he found her there alone would n...

“Not till I please,” Royda flung back. “You shall never go, if I can help it, for I mean to try to kill you. I tell you,” she went on, in an access of fury provoked by Philippa’...

Royda said nothing, either through faintness or because she seemed overwhelmed with mortification and disappointment. She turned her face away and remained passive, as though ut...

It took a great deal, in a general way, to astonish Aubray Zarka, nevertheless the frame of mind in which that enterprising nobleman rode to Gorla’s farm next day was one border...

Meanwhile the Count had ridden on with his brain in a whirl of love, jealousy, and the rage of thwarted will. But, notwithstanding the hazardous double game he was playing, his...

These words scrawled in a note had been brought to Philippa. She had hesitated; then, in an access of grief and consternation, determined to go to Rozsnyo. She seemed to have no...

“It is a lie!” Philippa gasped, recovering from her half faint, and struggling to free herself from Zarka’s grasp. “This man is a villain. I have been lured to this place by a t...

Little doubt remaining in the minds of the three men as to the identity of the masked prisoner, it had been agreed that a determined attempt to release him should be made that n...

To return to the chapel. When Zarka went down from Prince Roel’s blow the way of escape seemed cleared, but no time was to be lost. Leaving the Count to recover as best he might...