"That may still be questioned," cried Almbach, beginning to wax furious. "Are we judicially separated? Has the law given Reinhold to you? He remains my son, whatever there may be between you and me; and if you refuse me my rights as a father any longer, I shall know how to enforce them."
The threat was not without effect, but it quite failed in its purpose. Ella drew herself up, and exclaimed with quivering lips, but with great energy--
"You will not do that; you have not the conscience to do it, and if you had, there is, thank God, another power to which I can appeal, and which is, perhaps, not quite so indifferent to you as the family bonds and duties which you broke so lightly. The world would learn that Signor Rinaldo, after he had forsaken his wife and child for years, and had not enquired after them, now dares to threaten his wife with the same laws which he scorned and spurned with his feet, because she does not choose that her boy should call him father; and all your fame, and all the adoration yonder, would not protect you from the merited contempt."
"Eleonore!"
It was a cry of rage which escaped his lips as she uttered the last word, and his eyes flashed in terrific wildness down upon the delicate form standing before him. Once Reinhold's passion was excited to its utmost, it knew no limits, and all around him were wont to tremble. Even Beatrice, although so little his inferior in violence, dared not at such moments irritate him farther; she knew where the line was drawn, and once this was reached she always yielded. Here it was different; the first time for years he was stranded by another's will; before the eyes which met his own, so clear and large, his defiance succumbed altogether--he was silent.
"You see yourself that it would be worse than mockery were you to resort to law," said his wife, more calmly.
Reinhold leaned heavily against the seat near which he stood. Was it shame or anger made the hand tremble which buried itself in the cushion?
"I see that I laboured under a serious mistake when I believed I knew the woman who was called my wife for two years," replied he, in a singularly compressed tone. "Had you only once shown yourself to be the same Eleonore whom I meet now, much would have remained undone. Who taught you this language?"
"The hour in which you forsook me," replied she, with annihilating coldness, as she turned away.
"That hour seems to have given you much more that was once foreign to you--the pleasure of revenge, for example."