"What do you mean?"
"I mean, that for the Baron much depends upon his learning what I really know, and his sister may well seem to him the tool well fitted for the purpose."
Cecilia rose to her feet, shocked and excited. Although these words were perfectly unintelligible to her, so much she did understand, that the matter involved here was something very different from the expected conquest. This was not the language of a man upon whose lips hovered a declaration of love. Something like hatred and contempt flashed upon her from his eyes.
"I do not understand you, Herr Runeck," said she, with rising warmth, "but I have a feeling that you insult me and my brother. Now, I will know, what happened that time between you two, and you are to tell it me!"
"Should that really be necessary?" asked he, cuttingly. "Herr von Wildenrod will have sufficiently instructed you. Well, then, tell him I know more of his past, than might be pleasant to him!"
Cecilia turned pale; her eyes, too, flashed threateningly, the same lurid light burning in them as in the glance of her brother when he was provoked.
"What does that mean?" cried she, trembling from excitement. "To whom do your words refer? Beware, lest Oscar call you to account!"
Her warning came too late, producing not the slightest effect upon Egbert, whose nervous system had been subjected to great strain, through the silent, torturing conflict, which he had been waging for months. He was intensely excited. Had he been the calm and collected man of earlier days, he would not have spoken, at least not at this hour and this place; he would have spared in Cecilia, the woman. But now there fermented within him only that wild desire after revenge upon her who had stolen his soul from him, who, syren-like, had chained to herself all his thoughts and feelings, and whom he believed that he hated, wanted to hate, because he despised her. If he should now inflict a deadly insult upon her, if he should open a gulf between them that no bridge could span--no word nor look cross--that would bring deliverance, break the spell, then an end would be put to it!
"Baron von Wildenrod is to call me to account, is he?" cried he, with bitter scorn. "The thing might shape itself differently. I have hitherto been silent, had to be silent, for my own conviction, however firm it might stand, would go for nothing against Eric's passion and his father's sense of justice. They will demand proofs, and I have them not at present. But I shall know how to find them, and then my forbearance ceases."
"Are you out of your senses?" interposed Cecilia, but he continued with increasing vehemence.