"You torment yourself with self-created fears! We alone know the secret, and can guard it securely enough. The world can and will never know more than a breath of it."
The Count raised his head slowly, his brow dark as night.
"The world! But I know that I am dishonoured! I know the disgrace, the curse which rests upon my name, and upon my riches, and that is the dark spot of my life which I can never, never, blot out. Whatever I may accomplish, whatever I may attain to, this dark memory continually forces itself between. I cannot forget it!"
The grandmother laid her hand authoritatively upon his arm--
"Let that rest, Hermann! I hardly know you, whenever this unhappy circumstance is touched upon. You, so strong, so energetic in everything else, are in this as weak as a child. As a boy, you showed more courage, you kept silence towards your mother, who would have been killed if she had heard it, and only revealed it, where you knew it would be safely guarded. And you were silent years afterwards, as perhaps no other child would have been, and that made my guardianship of you easy. Must the man, then, hesitate, and be ready to throw off the burden of responsibility he has incurred by no fault of his own?"
Hermann did not answer, but looked moodily into the distance.
"If only we could find a trace of the wife and child! Your enquiries were fruitless, but I renewed them with redoubled zeal, every possible means of discovery are at my command now, but in vain. It really seems as if they had disappeared from the face of the earth."
"They must have left the country."
"And perhaps perished miserably, whilst I--"
He sprang up suddenly, went to the door, and pressed his forehead against the glass panes; the usually calm man was fearfully agitated. The Präsidentin was silent, she had seen him before in this mood; however great her influence over her grandson might be, this was a point on which she did not dare to argue further with him, over which her power did not extend, she knew that he must now be let alone, unless she wished to make matters worse.