"You should not have irritated him," replied Althea, with mild rebuke: "Why do you meddle with him, if he does not please you?"
"You do not understand it, cousin. 'Tis in the blood of me, I cannot let him rest in quiet. Nothing is more delightful than jeering a cit, who would fain play the noble, and has not the stuff for it in him."
"Then you ought not to complain if he pays you in your own coin. I cannot comprehend, either, what satisfaction you men can find in fleering and flouting at any one who, in your opinion, is beneath you. If the person so mocked is patient enough to bear it, your victory is easy and inglorious; if he parries the attack with similar weapons, then there arise unnecessary quarrels: and in any case it shows an unchristian want of charity, to hunt out the foibles of a neighbour only to ridicule them for your amusement."
"The most lovely preacher that I ever heard," said Bieler, gallantly.
"You defend the rascal most nobly," muttered Netz. "If he were single I should suspect something; but as it is, I believe you do it merely that you may always contradict me."
"To what subterfuges will the consciousness of injustice turn itself rather than confess to truth she is in the right!"
She was interrupted by a gentle knocking at the door, and went hastily herself to open it, when there entered a tall stately man, about thirty years of age, in a plain knightly costume, and decorated with the sable scarf of Austria. Black locks hung about his clear forehead, while power and gentleness spoke out from his large dark eyes, that sparkled with friendly glances at the handsome widow.
"Am I so fortunate as to greet in you the wife of Henry von Netz?" he asked, with a dignified inclination to all present, which forced a similar courtesy from the two wild nobles.
"I was so," replied Althea; and a tear forced itself from her eye.
"Was!" said the stranger,--"and this habit! You are a widow, then? Heavens! So early has my good Henry gone! and, as the appearance teaches me, from the bosom of a most happy marriage. That does, indeed, grieve me!"