"I have long since remarked that something was preying on your mind," said he--"something that has altered your whole being. What has gone wrong with you? Be candid, Victor, and maybe your fatherly friend can advise and help you."
"You cannot help me," gloomily declared the young lord, "but I will confess to you--it may lighten the load on my heart.--You know the ground of dissension between Conrad and me. At times Conrad was hard upon me, and finally made his assistance, that I absolutely needed, dependent upon one condition. He planned a union between Maia Dernburg and me, that should henceforth lift me above care, and I--well, I was irritated, embittered, I wanted to be rid of that galling dependence at any price--and I acquiesced. I came here, saw Maia again, and then all was over with calculation and sordid considerations of any kind--for I fell ardently in love with the sweet girl the very first time we met. And then--then I was punished severely enough, for having once calculated."
"You were rejected? Impossible! The young girl awhile ago was as cordial and unconstrained in her manners as possible."
"Maia knows nothing of my proposing to address her; it did not even come to a declaration. Conrad's plan was reported to her father in the most hateful manner. He took me to task about it, and as I could not and would not deny the truth, he treated my courtship as a speculation of the basest sort, myself as a fortune-hunter. He said the most unfeeling things to me----" Victor clinched his teeth at the bare recollection. "Excuse me from saying any more."
"So that is the way the matter stands?" said Stettin reflectively. "To be sure, what cares this proud industrial prince for a Count Eckardstein! Well, do not look so desperate though, my boy; circumstances are entirely different from what they were six months ago. Providence meanwhile has made you lord of Eckardstein, and you have it in your power, by a renewal of your courtship, to prove to that old hard-head the purity of your motives."
"I cannot get my own consent to do so--never! Maia is lost to me now and forever."
"Do not be so rash, please! A few harsh words can always be borne with from a future father-in-law, especially when he has not been altogether wrong in the matter. If your pride forbids the making of any advance, then let me take the initiatory steps. I shall have a talk with Dernburg."
"Just to have it announced to you, with polite regret, that his daughter is engaged to Baron von Wildenrod?" said Victor bitterly. "We may as well spare ourselves that mortification!"
"What are you thinking of? Wildenrod is in his forties and Fräulein Dernburg----"
"Oh, he has some demoniacal power of enchantment, and knows how to use it. I am convinced that the insinuation which so infuriated Dernburg against me originated with him. I was in his way, he was already basing his calculations upon Maia's fortune. And Maia has not remained indifferent to him; already they are everywhere talking of an engagement, and just now I gained certainty as to the state of her affections. Maia betrayed herself--I have nothing more to hope for."