CHAPTER XXX
A BYGONE TRAGEDYHe sat so long silent after that outburst that I feared he might not be willing to tell me any more of what I was painfully eager to hear.
"Did she--the Countess Anna--die here, sir?" I asked at last.
He roused himself with a start.
"I beg your pardon; I had almost forgotten you were there," he said apologetically. "Die here? No; better, far better for her if she had! Still, she was not happy here. The old people did not like her; did not try to like her; though I don't know how they could have held out against her, for she did her best to conciliate them, to conform to their narrow ways,--except to the extent of coming to church with them. She was a devout Roman Catholic, and she explained to me once how the tenacity with which the Polish gentry held to the
