"Hitherto I have concealed the state of our circumstances from the world, and I intend still to do so. To you, I neither can nor will make a secret of our position. Yes, I am compelled to seek a refuge with my brother. You know something of the events which happened during the term of my second marriage. I stood at my husband's side when the storm of revolution swept him down. I followed him into banishment, and for ten long years I shared his exile. Our fortune was sacrificed to the cause; for some time there has been a hopeless discrepancy between the claims of our position and the means at our command. A cursory inspection of our affairs, made since the Prince's death, has convinced me that I must give up the struggle. We are at the end of our resources."
Waldemar would have spoken. His mother raised her hand to silence him.
"You can understand what it costs me to make these disclosures to you, and that I never should have entered on the subject if I myself had been alone in question; but as a mother, I must look to my son's interests. Every other consideration must give way to that. Leo stands on the threshold of life, of his career. I do not fear for him the privations of poverty, but its humiliations, for I know that he will not be able to bear them. Fate has willed it that you should be rich; henceforth, your wealth will be at your unlimited disposal. I confide your brother's future to your generosity, and to your sense of honour."
Any other woman would have felt, and shown she felt, it keenly mortifying thus to sue for help from the son of the man she had fled from in scorn and hatred; but this woman so carried herself that the painful step she had to take was in no degree lowering to her, and wrought no prejudice to her dignity. Her bearing, as she stood before her son, was not that of a supplicant. She made appeal neither to his filial feeling, nor to an affection which, as she well knew, did not exist. The mother with her rights stepped, for the time being, into the background. She did not take her stand on them; but she demanded from the elder brother's sense of justice that he should befriend the younger--and it soon appeared that she had not erred in her judgment of Waldemar. He sprang up quickly.
"And you only tell me this now, today? Why did I not hear of it sooner?"
The Princess's eyes met his gravely and steadily.
"What answer would you have made me if, on our first meeting after our long separation, I had made this communication to you?"
Waldemar looked down; he very well remembered the insulting manner in which he had asked his mother what it was she wanted with him.
"You are mistaken in me," he replied, hastily. "I should never have consented to your seeking help from any one but me. What! I am to be master of Wilicza and allow my mother and brother to live in a state of dependence! You are mistaken in me, mother; I have not deserved such distrust!"
"I was not distrustful of you, my son, but only of that influence which has guided you so far, and may perhaps be your guide even now. I do not even know whether your friends will permit you to offer us an asylum."