CHAPTER VIII.

The summer glided away and became autumn, and the Countess Wanda refused obstinately to fill Hohenszalras with house-parties. In vain her aunt spoke of the Lynau, the Windischgrätz, the Hohenlöhe, and the other great families who were their relatives or their friends. In vain she referred continually to the fact that every Schloss in Austria and all adjacent countries was filling with guests at this season, and the woods around it resounding with the hunter's horn and the hound's bay. In vain did she recapitulate the glories of Hohenszalras in an earlier time, and hint that the mistress of so vast a domain owed some duties to society.

Wanda von Szalras opposed to all these suggestions and declarations that indifference which would have seemed obstinacy had it been less