'And for the sake of this sentimental folly you conjure up a frightful danger, a danger which threatens ruin both to yourself and your son. Do not these features speak clearly enough? Formerly, when Edmund was a child, the likeness was not so striking, so extraordinary; but now that he is nearly of the same age as ... as the other, it is positively damning. Your imprudence has cost you a lesson, however, and a hard one. You know into whose hands the picture fell?'
'I have known since yesterday evening. My God, what will come to us now?'
'Nothing,' said Heideck coldly. 'The fact of his surrendering it is ample proof of that. Oswald is too good a lawyer not to know that a mere likeness is no evidence, and that a charge cannot be founded on such testimony. Still, it was a generous act to give it back. Another man would have held possession of it, if only to harass and torment you. That picture must be destroyed.'
'I will destroy it,' said the Countess.
'No, I will do that myself,' retorted her brother, replacing the little case carefully in his pocket. 'I rescued you once from a very real danger, Constance; now I must stand between you and the remembrance of it, which may be almost as fatal. That ghost has been buried for years. Do not let it rise up again, or the whole fortune and happiness of Ettersberg may be wrecked. This unfortunate souvenir must disappear to-day. Edmund must have no more suspicion of the secret than his father had before him.'
Involuntarily he raised his voice as he pronounced these last words, but he ceased speaking suddenly, for at that very moment the door which led into the adjoining room was thrown open, and Edmund appeared on the threshold.
'What am I not to suspect?' he asked with quick vehemence.
The young Count had naturally not supposed that his mother's prohibition of admittance extended to himself. He had crossed the anteroom softly, fearing to disturb her. The closed doors and the subdued tone in which the conversation had been carried on made it well-nigh impossible that he should have overheard more than his uncle's last words. The expression of his face bore proof of this. It betokened astonishment, but no fear.
Nevertheless, the Countess bounded from her seat with a terrible start, and it required a mute but significant gesture of warning from her brother, a pressure of his hand upon her shoulder, to give her back her self-control.
'What is it I am not to suspect?' repeated Edmund, as he came quickly towards them. He addressed his question to the Baron.