The Opposite House: A Novel — page 271: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

266 The Opposite House. Marie sat down upon a log, and dreamed under the whispering boughs, whose silvery catkins drooped low over the quiet pool. The rusty chain for mooring boats lay at her feet, winding over the crumbling marble steps down into the mysterious depths. The yellow leaves of last year’s rtshes bowed rustling under the hem of her light-blue dress, which floated around her like an airy cloud. It was a fair picture, the slender, girlish figure beside the neglected pond, the brown water-grassés nodding about her. She looked like a thoughtful nymph, who had just risen from the glittering spray. How much the curious wrens on the willow: boughs would have liked to know what important thoughts occupied the fair little head, why the mouth smiled so bewitchingly, and the eyes were raised heavenward so thoughtfully, as if the radiant sunshine contained some vast, vast enigma, whose solution the young girl could not grasp! Count Hasso had called a few hours before, and, with a very important air, requested to see Baro- ness von Rotterswyl. Marie did not long for his society, especially to-day. When she was momentarily expecting the coming of another, who absorbed her every thought, and whose image alone hovered before her eyes— a tall, handsome officer, whose face grew radiant Comicbook<s