He, too, was secretly beginning frequently to share the opinion
now tolerably current in the village, that Panna was not altogether
right in her mind.
Meanwhile Spring had come, Panna worked industriously in the fields and
in the vineyard, nothing betrayed what thoughts were occupying the mind
of the silent, reserved woman. Not until the latter part of May did
she begin to grow restless and excited, then she repeatedly entreated
her father and the gardener, though it evidently cost her a great
effort to control herself, to ask at the castle whether the day of the
master's release was known. Her father flatly refused to comply with
her crazy wishes, and very earnestly exhorted her to trouble herself no
farther about the castle and its owner. As for the gardener, he had
cautiously intimated repeatedly that it would be unnatural for so
young, robust, and beautiful a woman to remain a widow long, especially
when there was some one who would consider himself only too happy to
put an end to her widowhood, and he now added his entreaties to the old
man's that she would at last banish from her mind the memory of the
evil past.
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