The Duke’s Unlucky Penny.
CHAPTER XVIII.
“IS IT A DREAM?”
From his interview with his daughter Bodé Volcker comes out a great sadness in his Flemish eyes, and finding Guy waiting for him, breaks forth: “This painter Oliver! What right had such a man to love anything but his country? What right had he, with torture hanging over him, to love my child?”
“The right that all men have to love the beautiful,” sighs Guy, Bodé Volcker’s surprising revelations as Doña de Alvas’ convent yearnings having made him not only romantic, but sad.
“But not the right to sacrifice the beautiful. Oliver’s treachery to Alva put danger upon Mina, and now his death has broken her heart. She cannot even go to her home for fear of Alva’s torture. Alva!” shrieks the merchant, “who has brought this misery upon me and mine. Alva! who has ruined me.”
“Ruined you? How?” queries Chester uneasily. He has been waiting for the merchant, being in need of financial aid, and this talk of ruin makes him anxious.
“How?” echoes Bodé Volcker. “First by destroying my home. Second by destroying my business with his tenth penny tax, and third by taking from me as a forced loan for the Spanish government five hundred thousand crowns.”
“Do you want to get it back again?”