“It is so,” said Madam Lothner, “but I never knew till the deed was accomplished to what length her Highness had chosen to push her folly. I could not then attempt to interfere or advise, still less could I be the person to send tidings to the Court.”
“So?” said I, as she paused.
“So,” said she, “in great fear and trembling, I deemed it best to obey her Highness’s strict command, and await events at the Castle of Schreckendorf, still in my assumed part.”
“But when my wife returned to you,” I said, and my voice shook, “returned to you in a peasant’s cart,—oh, I know all about it, Madam, I know that I drove her forth through the most insensate pride that ever lost soul its paradise,—when she returned, the truth must have already been known?”
“Ach, yes,” murmured the sentimental Saxon, her eyes watering with very sympathy at the sight of my bitter self-reproach. “Yes, it was because of rumours which had already reached the residence (from your friends in England, I believe), that his Serene Highness the Duke sent in such haste to recall us. He would not come himself for fear of giving weight to the scandal. But it was her Highness who chose to confirm the report.”
“How?” cried I eagerly.
“Why, sir,” answered the doctor’s lady, flowing on not unwillingly in her soft guttural, though visibly perturbed nevertheless, and now and again anxiously alive to any sound without—“why, sir, her Highness having returned to Schreckendorf before the arrival of the ladies and gentlemen from Lausitz, and being, it seemed, determined”—here she hesitated and glanced at me timidly—“determined not to return to Tollendhal ever again, her Highness might easily, had she wished, have denied the whole story. And indeed,” continued the speaker with a shrewdness I would not have given her credit for, “had she so behaved it would have best pleased her relations. But she was not so made.”
“Ah, no indeed,” said I, “her pride would not stoop to that.”
“You are right,” said Madam Lothner, with a sigh, “she is very proud. She was calm and seemed to have quite made up her mind. ’I will give no explanation to any one,’ she said to me, ’and I recognise in no one the right to question me. But my father shall know that I am married, and that I am separated from my husband for ever. I am not the first woman of my rank on whom such a fate has fallen.’ That was her attitude.”