“You purchased your pleasure with the safety of us all. Perhaps that will add to your enjoyment,” retorted Katinka, as she hurried out of the room.
“Katinka is eager for national independence, but she does not like it in the family.”
“What do you suppose Bremenhof will do?” I asked.
“I don’t feel as if I cared at this moment. I am just revelling in my emancipation.” She threw herself into a chair and leaned back clasping her hands behind her head. “I suppose I did not know myself; certainly I never realized before what a capacity for deep feeling I have. I seem to be waking up. Oh, how I hate that man!”
“I think we should be doing something practical,” I suggested.
She sighed impatiently and sat up. “You are shocked because I tell you I can hate?”
“I mean merely that he may send to arrest you; and you should be prepared.”
She rose. “If he does I must fall back upon Ladislas.”
“Ladislas?”
She crossed to the door, turned, and with a slow smile I had learnt to know well, answered: “Did he not get a promise from you to help me? I should never have dared to do what I have done to-day if you had not been here. But influence like that has its responsibilities, also, you know, and you——” The sentence was interrupted by the servant who rushed in then.