"Nay, my poor lamb, I am wrong! Go, go in your touching confidence; I will say no further word. It would be cruel to enlighten you a day sooner than necessary, and——"
"I think you're mad," interrupted the bride. "I cannot imagine what you mean." With steady fingers she removed the myrtle wreath from her head, then approached her aunt with a countenance singularly altered. "You must explain yourself, Aunt Betty," she said.
The Burgravine rushed again into passion. "Were you the innocent you pretend to be," retorted she, panting, "it would be no kindness to let you depart in ignorance of the true state of your affairs. But, for all your baby pose, you cannot make me believe, my love, that you are blind to the fact that this poor, chivalrous young man has only wedded you, all said and done, to save your name, your honour. A—ah, he has vowed, and you believe him, that he loves you?" (It is well to lash oneself into blind anger when it is difficult to strike in cold blood.) "Ten days ago, on that very turret platform," she dramatically pointed through the window to the silhouette of the east tower, "only ten days ago he held me to his heart—this devoted lover of yours—and consecrated his life to me!"
"I do not believe you," said Sidonia, again. But her soft, young face seemed suddenly turned to marble. "If he loves you, what does he want with me?" The girl spoke slowly. She had been shaken, but she was not convinced. "I don't believe it, Aunt Betty," she resumed. "Nobody would have said any harm of me. Every one knows me here! Wellenshausen," cried the child, in angry common-sense, "is not Vienna, nor yet Cassel!"
Betty, who possessed the faculty of changing her mind with ease, had no bashfulness at all in eating her own words when occasion offered. Indeed, so accommodating was her disposition that she was quite ready to believe her own hasty concoctions, however contradictory, at a moment's notice. Shrewish blew the gusts of the jealous temper.
"Well, mon coeur, is it not better to think him an excellent chivalrous person than to try and seek for less noble motives? 'Tis granted, isn't it, that since he loved me at nine o'clock in the evening, loved me to the point of elopement, he could hardly be ready to love you very devotedly at eight the next morning? We will not think that my Bluebeard dropped him a hint of your money bags.... The situation was delicate, you see, and if the Burgrave, who is fond of you after all, my dear, and who, no doubt, wanted to repair the damage he had wrought, failed to move the young gentleman by one plea, he may have succeeded in another. There are compensations about you: that is a fact. It was after their private conversation, remember, my little angel, that Beau Cousin proposed...."
Sidonia set her teeth in her trembling lip. Every word was a dagger wound to pride and love and maidenliness. Then all her loyalty revolted. Her knight of the forest, so base? Never! And if the Burgravine was false in the one instance, why not in all?
"Aunt Betty," she said deliberately, "this is all a lie."
"Fool," snapped Betty. She ran from the room like a fury, to return with incredible quickness. She shook a crumpled note before the bride's eyes, then spread it with frenzied fingers upon the table.
"See here! Read! read what he writes to me—to me! Ah, you know his handwriting by this time! Read, read! He asks me to meet him among the ruins. 'All will be ready!' What does that mean, think you? Why, that his coach was waiting ready for us at the foot of the hill, to whirl us two to our own land, to safety, to happiness!"