The Baron and his son looked at one another, as though such a piece of intelligence overstepped their powers of comprehension.
"Indeed! I was not prepared for that," said the Baron, at last, slowly. "He himself! I should not have expected it!"
"No matter," cried Conrad with a sudden burst of tenderness, "no matter, so long as he gives you back to us, Eugénie. We have none of us been able to take any pleasure in the inheritance which has come to us, because we knew that you have been made unhappy for our sakes. My father will not be fairly at ease in the new life until you come back, no more will any of us. We have missed you so in everything."
He threw his arm round his sister, and she hid her face for a few seconds on his shoulder. It was as deadly white and cold in its beauty as it had been when she stood before the altar; yet now she was on the eve of returning to her father's house, from which she had that day been torn away.
The Baron looked at his daughter in some surprise, as she now raised her head and passed her handkerchief over her brow.
"Excuse me, papa, if I seem rather strange to-day. I am not quite well, not well enough, that is, to discuss this subject. You must let me go to my room, I"----
"You have had too much to bear of late," said her father tenderly. "I see it, my dear, even though you will not confess it. Go, and leave all to my care. I will spare you as much as possible."
"It is odd though, is it not, sir?" said the young Baron, as the door closed behind his sister. "Do you understand this Berkow? I don't."
Windeg paced up and down the room with a frown on his brow. He was not merely surprised, but wounded in his pride by this disclosure. To the aristocrat it had seemed quite explicable that a parvenu owning millions of money should employ all the means at his disposal, hesitating neither at intrigue nor sacrifice, to obtain a connection with himself, even though such endeavours were met with unbounded hatred and contempt. But that his plebeian son-in-law should have received the hand of a Baroness Windeg with perfect equanimity, as if there had been nothing extraordinary in such a marriage; that, as time went on, he should have shown himself as insensible to the honour done him as his father was the reverse;--these were things he never could forgive. And now this man, this Arthur Berkow, retired from the connection of his own free will, before any inducement to do so had been held out to him. This was too much for the haughty Windeg. He had been eager to struggle for, to re-conquer, his daughter's freedom, but that he should owe it to her husband's generosity or indifference was intolerable to him.
"I will speak to Berkow," he said presently, "and if he really does agree, which I doubt, in spite of what Eugénie has told us, we must set to work without delay."