"I am still confident that all will come right if we can only get time enough. And time we must have at any risk and cost."
"There is always one way open," she said hesitatingly. "At least I presume so. Do you think if I were to agree to do what Herr von Felsen requires, that he could still obtain my father's pardon?"
"Would you do it, if I did think so?"
"What else can I do?" she cried distractedly.
"For one thing--keep a stout heart and have patience. I do not pretend that your father's arrival here and his visit to the Jew's house has not seriously complicated matters; but you may still have a little grain of trust in me."
"As if I had not! But the thought of the danger you are----" She broke off as if she had been about to say something that might have been embarrassing. "Of course I trust you," she added after the pause.
"That is all I ask--at present, at all events, until that last resource you spoke of need no longer be contemplated. And now, let us have this talk with your father."
She put out her hand impulsively, and as I pressed it our eyes met. No other word was spoken, but I think she understood much of what I should have said had not my lips been sealed.
The interview with the Baron was a curious mixture of pathos and burlesque. The pain which I could see Althea was suffering cut me to the quick, and I sought to shorten the conversation as much as possible. But her father was so full of his own importance, so talkative about his wrongs, so insistent upon my complete obedience to his orders, so obviously unable to take a rational view of any part of the subject, and so incapable of understanding the risks and dangers of the position, that it was a long time before we could drive it home upon him that the only hope of success lay in his leaving everything to me.
"But your very presence in Berlin is a danger," said Althea more than once when we were attempting to persuade him to leave the city.