A half-stifled cry interrupted him. "Did she really dare then, hypocrite that she is, to raise her eyes to her sister's betrothed? Has she avowed her sinful love to you?"
He looked at her for an instant with speechless indignation. "However base the accusations you may utter, you cannot sully the stainless purity of that character," he said, firmly. "Since that departure I have never heard one word from her lips, not even during the past night when with returning consciousness she opened her eyes. She returned yesterday, but I did not know of it. I had retired to my garden to avoid the noise and bustle of the evening's entertainment, reports of which had pursued me from patient to patient during the day, when I suddenly saw her upon the bridge, an exile who dared not cross it, banished thence by my cruel words." He paused, and his face flushed; never could he confide to these ears how then and there the entrancing conviction had possessed his soul that the girl weeping by the poplars loved him.
"After the fearful catastrophe I sought her in the park," he continued, forcing himself to proceed calmly, "and as I raised her from the ground I told myself that death had passed her by that I might yet be happy. I tore myself loose from the fetters of conventionality and a false sense of honour, I rose superior to the malice of a calumniating world, and resigned all claim to the title of a 'respected' hypocrite."
During his last words Flora's air and manner underwent a transformation; she had lost her game, all was at an end, and the cold designing woman used her quick wit to become mistress of this situation also. All that was defiant in her bearing vanished, and was replaced by a soft cat-like suppleness. She hurriedly drew her morning cap over her curls, and looking up from beneath them with a Satanic smile that showed her sharp white teeth, she said, as if in reply to his last declaration, "What! without asking me, Herr Doctor? Well, let it go! In view of all these naïve confessions, I cannot but ask, with a sigh of relief, 'What would have become of me at the side of such a sentimental enthusiast?' And therefore it happens well, well for each of us. I give you back your troth, but only as one might let loose a bird tied fast by a string that has one end wound around one's finger." She smiled again, and touched the betrothal-ring upon her hand with her delicate finger-tip. "Woo the most charming girl in the capital, one who hates and envies me,—and there are enough who do so,—and I will resign the ring to her, but never to Kitty, never! Do you hear? Although you should flee across the ocean together, or stand before the altar in the most obscure village church, I shall be there at the right moment and forbid the union."
"Thank God you have no power to do so!" he said, drawing a deep breath, and very pale.
"Do you think so? Trust me to bar the fulfilment of your hopes in the future, pitiable traitor that you are, who could trample down a superb flower-bed to pluck a daisy! You shall hear from me again!"
With a low, sneering laugh, she hastily retired to the next room, locking the door behind her, and almost at the same moment a footman knocked, to request the doctor to come instantly to Fräulein Henriette, who had suddenly become much worse.
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
For years nothing had excited such universal interest and sympathy in the capital as the explosion in the tower, to which not only the Councillor, but also Franz the miller, had fallen a victim.
Two days had passed since the catastrophe, and in these forty-eight hours the horror and grief occasioned by the death of the millionaire had gradually been replaced by dark reports, alarming the business world, and carrying dismay among the labouring classes. The rich man's name, it was said, represented upon various books many thousands of indebtedness. The councillor had undertaken all the improvements upon his Baumgarten estate at the same time, and consequently only a small portion of their cost had been defrayed. The statement made upon the spot immediately after the explosion by the engineer, and afterwards confirmed by others, began to be widely circulated, and Von Römer's debtors asked one another anxiously how the explosive material came to be in the vault just below the chamber containing all his bonds and securities. They did not wait long for a reply. Confidential letters from Berlin, where news of the councillor's terrible death had not yet been received, spoke of immense losses which he must have sustained from the failures in quick succession of various houses there. He had indeed understood as few speculators ever had done how to keep his confidential business friends in ignorance of his money transactions; even the former book-keeper of the factory, whom after its sale he had retained as his private secretary, had no knowledge of his affairs. He had also been able so to dazzle the eyes of those with whom he had dealings by the splendour of the golden cloud in which he enveloped himself, that the dark side of his schemes and speculations never was evident to them. And thus, in spite of these revelations as to his losses, his fate might always have been bewailed as a result of his antiquarian love for the historic powder in the ruins, had he not made the mistake of selecting for his instrument of destruction a modern explosive material. This was the rent in the curtain which let in the light of reality upon the corpse, as Flora had said.