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the Count would hear of it in the morning if news of the incident had not already percolated within the walls of the Castle.
    ‘There was some trouble in the woods near the village. I understood from my driver that marauding wolves have been seen. A villager was killed. A woodman, I believe.’
    Homolky’s face became white, and he controlled himself with an effort. Slowly he turned from the fire to confront his guest directly.
    ‘The devil, you say, Professor!’
    Coleridge got up from his chair.
    ‘I am sorry to bring bad news. It is not the first death, I believe.’
    The Count put his lips together in a grim expression.
    ‘No, it is not the first time, Professor Coleridge. And curiously, it constitutes the material of the purest folklore. Ironic, is it not, when it is the very subject which has brought us all together here.’
    Coleridge nodded, setting his empty goblet down on the table. He felt a sudden weariness permeating his limbs. The Count, who had brilliantly penetrating eyes, evidently noticed this, for he laid a sympathetic hand on the other’s arm.
    ‘Not a word of this tonight to my family, Professor. We have had trouble enough, and one is able to face things more resolutely in the daylight.’
    He led the way across to the door through which he had come in.
    ‘They have been eagerly awaiting your arrival, and there is just time to greet them before retiring.’
    ‘We have waited long for this moment, Professor!’
    The tall, dignified woman who rose from a carved chair at the end of the vast library gave Coleridge a smile of great nobility.
    The visitor felt a faint flush of embarrassment as he came down the room with its serried ranks of books lining the shadowy walls. It was something he was learning to control; a feeling which had come back to him again at the Congress just past. One would have thought that he would have become used to such recognition at the age of forty-six.
    But it was always the same at the opening of a function, or, as now, when meeting new people who knew his standing in the field in which he had gained his reputation. It would disappear within a short while, but in the meantime it was vaguely disconcerting.
    His host, at his side, gave a faint smile as though he had glimpsed something of the guest’s thoughts.
    ‘My mother, the Countess Irina,’ he said, sotto voce. ‘Though almost eighty she is a remarkable old lady. I fancy you will find her well-versed in your works.’
    He put his hand on the other’s arm and steered him round a huge circular walnut table whose surface was littered with books.
    ‘You are among friends, Professor.’
    Coleridge felt reassured.
    ‘That is good to know,’ he said.
    As they moved closer to the carved wooden fireplace where a heaped fire of logs blazed, throwing dancing shadows across the spines of the books and the sheen of the furniture, he made out the figures of two much younger women who stood either side of the mantelpiece; like two carved nymphs supporting the structure, they appeared stately and still in their evening dress until they stepped forward to add their greetings to those of the elderly lady.
    The Count made the formal introductions in English, and it was obvious all three women were fluent not only in that language but in others, because they occasionally dropped into French and German among themselves as the conversation proceeded. Coleridge bowed low over the hand the Countess extended to him, conscious of a remarkable countenance and a pair of grey eyes of piercing sharpness which were turned upon him.
    The other two women were both elegant and beautiful, and the Count introduced them as his wife and daughter. Coleridge did not properly catch the names during the sudden buzz of conversation. If the ladies were tired, they did not show it; Coleridge had rarely seen such animation and comeliness in the opposite sex, and it was equally clear that the Count’s mother had herself been a notable beauty in her