The situation began to verge upon the ridiculous, despite the fact that it was in a measure embarrassing. I could not for the moment see what to do, and was debating this in my thoughts when a sudden turn was given to matters by the entrance of Minna herself, the door being opened from without.
"Ah, Minna!" I cried, hastening to her.
The Baroness Gratz stepped in between us, however, and lifted her hand as if to keep me away.
"The countess is here in my charge," she cried to me; "and while that is so I forbid you to go near her."
But love laughs at prohibitions. A moment later we were hand-locked, and she had read in my glad face that my news was good. Then she turned angrily upon the baroness, her face flushed and her eyes shining:
"You have no right to interfere with me," she said, her words shortly and sharply spoken. "I have just heard, to my intense indignation, that you have even ventured to tell my servants who shall and who shall not enter my house. Is this true?"
"So far as it relates to this person, of course it is true. You are in my charge, and it is my duty——"
"You have mistaken your duty and overstepped your privileges. You have no right to give such orders, and to do it in my name. You must have known as well as I that the last man in the world against whom my door would ever be shut would be—my affianced husband;" and she raised her head, and stood very erect, looking rarely beautiful in her pride and happiness.
"I did it to save you from the wiles of an adventurer who——"
"Silence, aunt Gratz, and shame to you for those words," cried Minna hotly. "It was this 'adventurer,' as you dare to say, who saved me from the hands of the villain whose schemes you helped, and from the cowardly double plot of the Baron Heckscher there. As for you, sir, if you knew the character of your puppet and tool von Nauheim, as I firmly believe you did," she cried to Baron Heckscher, "there are no words bad enough to paint the infamous vileness of your treachery. While pretending to conspire in my interest, and while professing loyalty to me and mine, you plotted to ruin and dishonor me; and when I find you here to-day I can only believe you have some further abominable motive or plot against me, and that you are here to suborn some of those about me for your purposes. Be good enough to leave the house."