“Dorothea! You talk like a child. Are all the schemes to which I have given up my life to be hampered and perhaps ruined by the obstinacy of a girl who cannot raise her mind above the level of the dairy?”
“But surely it is not my fault, Johann,” she remonstrated, with a little more spirit. “I did not want the King to love me, and I never undertook to interfere in your schemes. I was happy before all this came about. Why should I be dragged into these affairs, when I never wished to be?”
Johann did not condescend to answer this last question.
“I cannot understand you,” he observed bitterly. “I do not suppose there is another girl in the whole of Germany, from the Kaiser’s sisters down, who would not be glad of the offer which you have thrown away. There must be some reason for it.”
“There is a reason for it,” returned Dorothea, beginning to show some resentment at her cousin’s masterful tone.
“And what is it?”
“Simply that I do not love the King.”
“Perhaps you love some one else,” said Johann, in a tone of anger and dismay.
A bright flush overspread Dorothea’s cheeks.
“Perhaps I do,” she retorted boldly, rising at the same time from her seat, and making a movement to go.