“In God’s name,” I cried, “why have you done this?”
“And did you think,” she said, looking at me, I thought, with a sort of pity, “that princesses, out of fairy tales, are so ready to marry lovers of low degree, no matter how rich or how gallant? Oh, I know what you would say—that you are well-born; but for all that, princesses do not wed with such as you, sir!”
Every drop of my blood revolted against the smart of this humiliation. Stammering and protesting, my wrath overflowed my lips.
“But this deception,—this impossible, insane fraud,—what is its object? What is your object? You encouraged me—you incited me. Confusion!” I cried and clasped my head. “I think I am going mad!”
“Her Serene Highness thought that she would like to see me settled in life,” said my bride, with the old look of derision on her face.
I seized her hand.
“It was the Princess’s plan, then?” I asked in a whisper; and it seemed to me as if everything turned to crimson before my eyes.
She met my look—and it must have been a terrible one—with the same dauntlessness as before, and answered, after a little pause, with cool deliberation:
“Yes, it was the Princess’s plan.”
The carriage drove on through the rain; and again there was silence between us. My pulses beat loud in my ears; I saw, as if written in fire, the whole devilish plot to humiliate me for my presumption. I saw myself as I must appear to that high-born lady—a ridiculous aspirant whose claim was too absurd even to be seriously dealt with. And she, the creature who had lent herself to my shame, without whose glib tongue and pert audacious counsels I had never presumed, who had dared to carry out, smiling, so gross a fraud, to wear my ring and front me still—how was I to deal with her?