"Did you wish to buy them?" asked her son contemptuously, remembering the constant ebb in her finances.
"Hardly," she replied with an angry glance; "but I have always had a perfect passion for precious stones; and if your father had not died so suddenly, I should now have had a charming set of diamonds, which he had promised me, and you would have been six thousand thalers the poorer. But to return to the discovered jewels. Ferber told me just what they were, and, when I asked him, frankly replied that they would bring about eight thousand thalers,—that is what that fellow, Reinhard, calls inestimable wealth. Once more adieu for a few minutes."
The contemptuous smile disappeared from Hollfeld's face, as he listened to his mother's words, and gave place to a decided expression of disappointment; he had suddenly experienced a sensation like the shock of a shower-bath.
Scarcely was the door closed behind the baroness, when Helene aroused herself from her apparent apathy, and stretched out both hands to Hollfeld.
"Emil," she said quickly, in a low voice, with trembling lips, "if you succeed in gaining Elizabeth's love, and I cannot doubt that you will, I agree to your plan, but I must always live with you at Odenberg."
"Of course," he replied, although with some hesitation; his voice had lost its former decision of tone, "but let me warn you that you will have to resign many luxuries. My income is not large, and as you have just heard, Elizabeth has nothing."
"She shall not come to you poor, Emil,—rely upon that," the little lady rejoined in a tender voice, and with eyes unnaturally bright. "From the moment she promises to be yours I regard her in the light of a sister; I will share faithfully with her, and will instantly make over to her the rents of my estate of Neuborn, in Saxony; I will talk to Rudolph about it as soon as he returns, and when death closes my eyes, all that I possess will be hers and yours. Are you content with me?"
"You are an angel, Helene," he cried; "you shall never repent your magnanimity,—your generous devotion."
And this time there was no dissimulation in his delight, for the rents of Neuborn made Elizabeth a very wealthy bride.
CHAPTER XVIII.