"Me? After me?" cried the lady, in a virtuous fury. "How dared you think such a thing!"
She paused, panting, to measure the whole humiliation of her position.
Sidonia was gone—gone with the pretty Austrian boy whom she, Betty, had so determinedly marked as her own. It was an infamous trick, and for Sidonia to play it ... Sidonia! Bah! She, who knew herself so well, should not have placed faith in any woman.
"The minx was in love with him all the time," she babbled, "and he—he, oh, he well knew, no doubt, that no richer heiress would ever pass his way! I trust, Herr von Wellenshausen, that you have sent widely in pursuit." Her mind was working at a tremendous rate. "You have not let yourself be taken in by this cunning wretch's story—Geiger-Hans, or whatever his name is? Oh, I can tell you something of him, sir. There's an intriguer for you, and in Kielmansegg's confidence from the beginning! God alone knows what infamous bargains they may have made together! It has all been a plot."
The Burgrave stood looking at her, an abject mass of bilious misery.
"I am afraid there may have been an accident," he murmured, moistening his dry lips.
"Accident?" screamed she, and withered him. "You fool!" Then she turned on him, snarling like an angry little cat. "It is all your fault! Why did you ask him back here, to spy and pry? Yes, if the girl has disgraced us, it is your fault—the fault of your evil mind! You drove them to elope, old jealous fool!"
The Burgrave clenched his hands and shook them above his head, fell into a chair, and wept aloud. Elope? If she but knew! Alack, poor Sidonia! Poor little Sidonia! He had always loved the child.
"I trust you will come to soberness presently," said Betty, with a disgusted look at the row of empty bottles.
And it was at this moment that shouts from the courtyard proclaimed the return of the lost ones.