It seemed to cost the Count an effort to continue an interview so repugnant to him, but he controlled himself, and said, sternly and authoritatively, "Come here!"
Michael never stirred; he stood as if he had not heard the command.
"Have you not even learned obedience?" Steinrück asked, in a menacing tone. "Come here, I say!"
But Michael still stood motionless, until the forester, feeling himself called upon to come to the rescue of what was probably stupidity, seized him roughly by the shoulder, encountering, however, decided resistance on the part of his foster-son, who shook him off angrily. There was only defiance in the movement, but it looked like a desire for flight, and as such the Count understood it. "A coward, too!" he murmured. "There has been quite enough of this!"
He rang the bell and ordered the servant to have the carriage brought round immediately. Then he turned to the forester, and said, "I have a word or two to say to you; follow me," as, opening the door of a small adjoining room, he preceded him into it.
Wolfram attempted, as he followed, to excuse his foster-son's conduct: "He is afraid of you, Herr Count; the fellow has not a spark of courage."
"So I see," Steinrück rejoined, with infinite contempt; he could forgive almost anything save cowardice,--that was inexcusable in his eyes. "Never mind, Wolfram, I know you cannot help it; but you must keep the fellow for a while yet; there is nothing for him but this mountain forestry; he may dream away his life here for all I care, since he is good for nothing else."
He went on talking to the forester without bestowing another glance upon Michael, who stood motionless. The dark flush had not faded from his face, which was no longer expressionless. Gloomily, with compressed lips, he gazed after the man who had just passed so pitiless a verdict upon himself and his future. He had often heard such words before from the forester without their producing any effect upon him, but they had a different sound when issuing from those haughty lips, and the contemptuous glance of those eyes pierced him to the very soul. For the first time he felt the treatment to which he had been accustomed from childhood as a burning disgrace, crushing him to the earth.
He was alone in the room. Through the bow-window the sunlight streamed in, and fell full upon the writing-table, where the diamonds in the star of the order glittered and sparkled in every colour of the rainbow. Even on the dark wainscoting bright gleams were playing, and they mingled with the glow of the fire upon the hearth, which was sinking away to embers.
"What are you doing here?" a child's voice suddenly asked.