Cecilia supported herself on the back of the chair by which she stood. That sigh of relief had not escaped her, and her eyes were fixed upon her brother in deadly anguish.
"Have you no other answer, when your honor is assailed? Will you not call Runeck to account?"
"That is my affair! Leave it to me to get even with that man! What is it to you?"
"What is it to me, when you and I both receive a deadly insult?" cried Cecilia, beside herself. "To call us adventurers, to whom Odensburg is to fall a prey. Shall a man dare to say such a thing and go unpunished? Oscar, look me in the eye! You shrink from chastising that man. You are afraid of him! Alas! alas!"
She broke out into a wild and passionate fit of sobbing. Oscar stepped quickly up to her, and his voice fell to a low and angry whisper.
"Cecilia, use your reason! You behave like a madwoman. What has come over you, anyhow? You have been like a different person since this morning."
"Yes, since this morning!" repeated she passionately. "Since I awoke, and oh! what a bitter awakening! Do not evade me! You told me that our fortune was gone, and I was thoughtless enough not once to inquire how it came, that, in spite of this, we lived on a grand scale. When was it lost? In what way? I will know!"
Wildenrod looked at her darkly, that threatening tone in his sister was as new to her as her whole behavior; he must henceforth give up treating her as a child.
"Would you know when our fortune was lost?" asked he roughly. "At the time when our house broke with a crash. And our father--laid hands on himself."
"Our father!" The eyes of the young girl opened wide, and were full of horror. "He did not die from--a stroke of apoplexy?"