This was stronger confirmation than he had expected, and he now continued, in the low voice of suppressed anger: “I have long suspected something of this kind, Crescenz—your mother desired me to say nothing to you about it, as she imagined you too innocent to be capable of such perfidy—I cannot, at my age, expect you to love me as I do you—but I did imagine that in time I should gain your affection—if this be not possible, tell me so at once, for I will not be made a fool of by you or any one else!”
“I don’t understand you!” cried Crescenz, terrified at his constrained manner and flushed face, “I don’t in the least understand you!”
“Then I will speak to your mother,” he cried, rising hastily, and pushing back his chair with great violence. “She will understand me quickly enough.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t complain of me!” cried Crescenz beseechingly, while the tears started to her eyes. “I will do anything you please, and pay the greatest attention, if you will only promise not to tell mamma.”
“Then you did understand me, and know what I was about to say to her?” he asked, frowning.
“Oh, yes—you were going to tell her that I would not talk about the furniture, and that I looked at Hildegarde playing with the snuffers—and—Mr. Hamilton with his foot on the stove, instead of listening to you!”
This speech was made with consummate cunning—a more common ingredient in the composition of weak characters than is generally supposed. Major Stultz’s manner had frightened Crescenz—she feared the anger of her step-mother and the reproaches of her father, for she was essentially timid, and the want of moral courage made her affect a simplicity which, although in perfect keeping with her real character, was on the present occasion mere acting, as she had perfectly understood Major Stultz’s meaning. She could not have answered better; he was deceived, and while wiping the perspiration from his crimson face, he begged her to forgive his impatience, said that he had been guilty of entertaining odious suspicions, and though Crescenz continued to blush while he spoke, and would not raise her eyes from the table, he was too generous to distrust her again, and attributed her subsequent embarrassment altogether to timidity. Partly from a jealous recollection of the expression of Hamilton’s eyes, partly from shame at her own duplicity and annoyance at the unmerited praises now lavished on her by her lover, Crescenz began to weep bitterly, and poor Major Stultz was obliged to talk a deal of youthful nonsense in order to restore her equanimity, and induce her to continue the interrupted conversation.
In the meantime, the unconscious cause of all the disturbance had indulged in a long scrutiny of Hildegarde’s beautiful profile. She put an end to it by turning to him, and saying with a glance at his book: “You must have been reading French or English—our German letters at such a distance from the light would have been illegible.”
“I have been reading Bulwer’s last novel. It is extremely interesting.”
“Indeed! I wish you would lend it to me before you send it back to the library.”