His sin against me had been the one absolutely unforgivable. He had married my sister; and too late we had discovered that at the time he was already married. The blow and the shame had killed her and broken my mother's heart; and over my sister's coffin I had sworn to have his life for hers. But he had fled, and no efforts of mine had been able to find him up to the hour of my own supposed death. And now here he was delivered into my hands, and actually in the very act of repeating his foul offence. Fate had surely brought us together in this dramatic fashion. I could not disclose my identity to him; but I could be the agent to detect this new sin, and could thus myself punish him for the old.
With my pulses throbbing with this fire, was it likely that I could make an instant decision in accordance with the dictates of mere surface conventionality? I held back from the decision, and even then might have persisted in avowing the truth, when the man himself came ruffling into the room. His strong, dark, coarse features wore an expression of bullying assertiveness; his manner was that of the lord of the place toward an interloper; and he spoke to me in the hectoring tone of a master toward an inferior servant. The personal contact with him, the sound of his voice, the insolent look of his heavy eyes, and my old hate of him were like so many knots on a whiplash goading me to fury.
"I heard you had come, but I suppose you know your errand is a fruitless one."
Had I been the most contemptible lickspittle on the meanest and greediest quest, his expression could not have been worse. I saw the other two men exchange a rapid glance.
"What do you deem my errand?" I asked quietly.
"Oh, that's plain enough," he answered, with a sneer. "You've come after what you can get. The Prince probably sent you by these agents of his"—with a contemptuous sweep of the hand toward them—"some wonderful account of the good things in store for you here, and very naturally you came to gather them. But the Prince's death has knocked the bottom out of that barrel," and he laughed very coarsely. "There's nothing here for you except an empty title, and a beggarly old castle mortgaged from the bottom of the old moat to the tip-top of the flagstaff. That and a mess of very hazardous intrigue is all you can hope for here."
This speech, coarse and contemptible as it was under such circumstances, was not to be compared with the ineffable brutality of the manner which marked its delivery. I was astounded that any man could so behave; but I saw his motive instinctively.
He had heard little of me except as a meek-spirited student, likely to shy at any danger, and his object was to frighten me away.
"And who are you, then?" I asked. "These gentlemen have told me nothing of the position of matters here."
"Then the sooner you know something the better. Have the goodness to leave us, Captain von Krugen."