I own that, while it was with a sense of relief I learned to believe that the Countess was not the sister of my poor friend, I still could not help feeling something akin to disappointment at the discovery. I felt as though I had been heaping up a store of care and anxiety around me for one I had never seen before, and for whom I could really take no deep interest. One husbands their affections as they grow older. The spendthrift habit of caring for people without even knowing why, or asking wherefore, which is one of the pastimes--and sometimes a right pleasant one, too--of youth, becomes rarer as we go further on in life, till at last we grow to be as grudging of our esteem as of our gold, and lend neither, save on good interest and the best security. Bad health has done for me the work of time, and I am already oppressed and weary of the evils of age.
Something, perhaps, of this kind--some chagrin, too, that the Countess was not my old acquaintance» though, Heaven knows, it had grieved me far more to know she had been--some discontent with myself for being discontented--or "any other reason why,"--but so was it, I felt what in fashionable slang is called "put out," and, in consequence, resolved to leave the party and make my way homeward at the first favourable opportunity. Before setting out I had determined, as the night would be moonlit, to make a slight _détour_, and thus avoid all the _fracas_ and tumult of driving home in a mob; and, with this intention, had ordered my phaeton to meet me in the Mourg-Thal, at a small inn, whither I should repair on foot, and then make my tour back by the Castle of Eberstein.
A move of the company to take coffee on a rock beside the Waterfall gave me the opportunity I desired, and I sauntered along a little path which in a few moments led me into the Pine Forest, and which, from the directions I had received, I well knew conducted over the mountain, and descended by a series of steep zigzags into the valley of the Mourg.
Although I had quitted the party long before sunset, the moon was high and bright ere I reached the spot where my carriage awaited me. Exhilarated by the unwonted exertion--half-gratified, too, by the consciousness of supporting a degree of fatigue I had been pronounced incapable of,--I took my seat in good spirits, to drive back to Baden. As I ascended the steep road towards Eberstein, I observed that lights were gleaming from the windows of the large salon of the castle, that looks towards the glen. I knew that the Grand Ducal family were at Carlsruhe, and was therefore somewhat surprised to see these signs of habitation in one of the state apartments of the château.