"Was self-defense," finished the young wife. "You must have felt, as well as I did, what the object of the conversation was."
"Nevertheless, at your first appearance you have made for yourself an antagonist whose enmity can materially render your own and my position more difficult."
"Yours?" Adelaide looked at him in surprise. "Are you, the Ambassador of a great power, to ask the grace of a malicious woman who happens to be related to a ducal family?"
"My child, you do not understand," returned Wallmoden coldly. "An intriguing woman can be more dangerous than a political opponent, and Princess Sophie is well known in that line. Even the Duchess is known to be in fear of her malicious tongue."
"That is the Duchess' affair. I am not in fear of it."
"My dear Adelaide," said the Ambassador, with a superior smile, "that proud turn of your head is very becoming to you, and I approve entirely of your making yourself unapproachable with it in other circles, but you will have to leave it off at Court, as well as several other things. One does not give royalty a lesson before so many observers, and you did that when you spoke of the refusal of the title. In any case, it was not necessary for you to lay so much stress upon the descent of your father."
"Should I perhaps have denied it?"
"No, for it is a well-known fact."
"Of which I am as proud as was my father."
"But you are not Adelaide Stahlberg any longer, but the Baroness Wallmoden." The voice of the Ambassador had acquired a certain sharpness. "And you will admit that it is very contradictory to boast of your burgher pride when you have given your hand to a man of the old nobility."