"You too?" he said hoarsely. "Well, yes, I might have known it."
"Oh, Ulric!" exclaimed the girl in wild despairing accents, "what have you done to yourself, to us all!"
He was still standing opposite her. His hand shook as it rested on the table, but his face had grown stern and hard again.
"Whatever harm I may have done myself, I shall take the consequences of it without troubling any one else. As for you all, why, there is not one of you that will even listen to me. But I tell you now, once and for good," here his voice grew hard and menacing, "I have had enough of your endless hinting and tormenting. I won't bear it any longer. Believe what you will and whom you will, it shall be just the same to me in future. What I have begun, I shall go through with, in spite of every one; and if there is really to be an end of all confidence, I shall, at least, know how to enforce obedience."
So saying he went out. Martha made no attempt to detain him, and she would certainly have tried in vain. He crashed to the door of the room behind him, making the little house shake in its foundations. Next minute he had left the cottage.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The arrival of the guests up at the château had brought some animation to that divided household, but it had hardly drawn the young couple more closely together. Although the visitors' stay was limited to a few days, Arthur continually found pretexts and opportunities for withdrawing from their society, an attention for which his father and brother-in-law were both sincerely grateful.
The Baron was but now returning after a sojourn of several weeks on the Rabenau property, his own from this time forth. Notwithstanding the frightful catastrophe which had occurred on the occasion of his first visit, he had been forced to leave his daughter on the following morning, a nearer duty calling him to his cousin's grave. Even when the last offices were over, there remained much to be set in order, and the heir's presence had been indispensable.
He was now returning in company of his eldest son, whom he had sent for to join him, and, this time also, they made the short détour round by the Berkow estates, all the more readily that the young Baron Conrad had not seen his sister since her marriage.
More was intended by this visit than a mere family meeting, or so it appeared from a conversation which took place in Eugénie's boudoir on the day after their arrival, Arthur being absent as usual. His wife sat on the sofa listening to her father, who was standing before her, and just winding up a long peroration, while Conrad, leaning against a chair at a little distance from them, watched his sister with a look of eager expectation.