"I have got no young lover," said Linda; "and if I had, why shouldn't I? What would that be to you?"
"It would be very much to me, if it be the young man I think. Yes, I understand; you blush now. Very well. I shall know now how to manage you;—or your aunt will know."
"I have got no lover," said Linda, in great anger; "and you are a very wicked old man to say so."
"Then you had better receive me as your future husband. If you will be good and obedient, I will forgive the great unkindness of what you have said to me."
"I have not meant to be unkind, but I cannot have you for my husband. How am I to love you?"
"That will come."
"It will never come."
"Was it not unkind when you said that I was three times as old as you?"
"I did not mean to be unkind." Since the allusion which had been made to some younger lover, from which Linda had gathered that Peter Steinmarc must know something of Ludovic's passion for herself, she had been in part quelled. She was not able now to stand up bravely before her suitor, and fight him as she had done at first with all the weapons which she had at her command. The man knew something which it was almost ruinous to her that he should know, something by which, if her aunt knew it, she would be quite ruined. How could it be that Herr Steinmarc should have learned anything of Ludovic's wild love? He had not been in the house,—he had been in the town-hall, sitting in his big official arm-chair,—when Ludovic had stood in the low-arched doorway and blown a kiss across the river from his hand. And yet he did know it; and knowing it, would of course tell her aunt! "I did not mean to be unkind," she said.
"You were very unkind."