"I do not know whether the name is familiar to your Excellency," George hazarded, but quickly repented of his hasty speech. The Baron's eyes met his, or rather, as Gabrielle expressed it, they bored him through and through, seeking to read the secrets of his inmost heart. There was a dark menace in that searching gaze that warned the young man to go no step further. He felt as though he were standing on the verge of an abyss.
"You are an intimate friend of Dr. Brunnow's son," Raven began again, after the pause of a second; "and therefore, in all probability, intimate with the father also."
"I only made the Doctor's acquaintance this summer, and though his views are occasionally warped by a certain harshness and bitterness, I found him an honourable and upright man, for whom I must entertain the greatest esteem."
"You would do wisely not to express your sentiments so openly," said the Baron, with frigid displeasure. "You are the servant of a State which has passed judgment on a certain class of political offenders, and still inexorably condemns them. You ought not to, and must not, consort familiarly with those who publicly proclaim themselves its enemies. Your position imposes on you duties before which all mere emotional feelings of friendship must give way. Remember that, Mr. Winterfeld."
George was silent. He understood that behind the icy calm of this address there lay a threat; understood, too, that the threat was levelled not at the official, but at the man who had been initiated into the secrets of a past which Raven had probably believed long buried and forgotten, and which now started up, phantom-like, before his eyes. Painful as it might be, the remembrance had not power to move the Baron for more than an instant. As he rose from his chair, and slightly waved his hand in token of dismissal, the old unapproachable haughtiness marked his bearing.
"You are warned now. That which has passed shall be overlooked, considered as a hasty error. That which you may do in future will be done at your own risk and peril."
George bowed in silence, and left the room. He felt now, as he had often felt before, that Dr. Brunnow had been right in warning him against the almost magic influence exercised by Raven over all who came in contact with him.
The young man, after the weighty disclosures which had been made to him, had felt he was entitled to look down from a lofty height on the traitor and the renegade; but the power to do so had gone from him as he re-entered the charmed circle surrounding that master-mind. Disdain could not hold its own before those eyes which so imperatively demanded obedience and compelled respect; it glanced off scathless from the man who carried his guilty head with so high and proud a mien, as though he recognised no judge over him or his actions.
Little as George allowed himself to be affected by the exalted position and imperious bearing of his superior, just as little could he escape the spell of that chief's intellectual ascendency. And yet he knew that sooner or later a struggle must come between himself and the Baron, who held in his hands Gabrielle's future, and, consequently, all his own chances of happiness. The secret could not be kept for ever--and what would happen when it should be known?
The image of his love rose up before the young man's eyes--of his love, of whom as yet he had caught no glimpse, though she had arrived the evening before, and at that moment the same roof covered them--and by its side appeared the iron inflexible countenance of him he had just left. Now, for the first time, he divined how severe would be the struggle by which he must hope to conquer all that he held dear in life.