Fabian looked down in much embarrassment. "I don't know, but I imagine that his frequent visits to the steward's house have a purely personal motive. He called on me to-day."
"And you received him with the utmost friendliness? Doctor, you are a living impersonation of the doctrines of Christianity. To him who smites you on the right cheek, you will meekly turn the left. I believe you would not hesitate a moment to render Professor Schwarz an important service, if it were in your power. But beware of this Assessor, with his frantic mania for arresting people. He is on the hunt for conspirators again, you may be sure; and limited as his intelligence may be, chance might for once play the right cards into his hands. It would not be difficult here at Wilicza."
The last words were spoken in such a tone of angry annoyance that the Doctor let fall the first volume of his 'History of Teutonism,' which he had just taken up.
"You have made some unpleasant discovery?" he asked. "Worse even than you expected. I thought so, though you have said so little about it."
Waldemar had sat down, and was leaning his head on his hand.
"You know that I am not fond of talking of worries so long as I have not mastered them; and besides, I wanted time to look about me. What guarantee had I that, in representing matters to me as he did, the steward was not prompted by some interest of his own, that he was not exaggerating and distorting facts? One can only trust to one's own judgment in these things, and I have been exercising mine during the last few weeks. Unfortunately, I find every word confirmed which Frank wrote to me. So far as his supremacy extends, there is order, and hard enough it must be for him to maintain it; but on the other estates, on the other farms, and worst of all in the forests--well, I was prepared to find things in a bad way, but such an utter chaos I really did not expect!"
Fabian had pushed his books and papers to one side, and was following Waldemar's words with anxious sympathy and attention. The gloomy look on his old pupil's face seemed to cause him some uneasiness.
"Uncle Witold always imagined that my Polish estates could be managed from a distance," went on Nordeck, "and unfortunately he brought me up in that belief. I disliked Wilicza. For me the place had none but bitter memories; it reminded me of the sad breach between my parents, of my own joyless early childhood. I was accustomed to look on Altenhof as my home; and later on, when I intended coming, when I ought to have come, something else held me back---- The penalty for all this has to be paid now. The twenty years of official mismanagement during my guardian's time had worked mischief enough; but the worst has come to pass in the last four years under the Baratowski régime. It is altogether my own fault. Why have I never taken any interest in the property? Why did I adopt that unfortunate habit of my uncle's of putting faith in every report which stood on paper in black and white. Now I am, as it were, sold and betrayed on my own land."
"Your majority was fixed at so early a date," said the Doctor, soothingly; "those three years at the University were indispensable to your mental culture and improvement, and when we determined on giving twelve months to travelling, we had no suspicion of how matters stood here. We set our faces homeward so soon as you received the steward's letter, and you, with your energy, will, I am sure, find yourself equal to any emergency."
"Who knows?" said Waldemar, gloomily. "The Princess is my mother, and she and Leo are quite dependent on me. It is that which ties my hands. If I once let it come to a serious rupture, they will have to leave Wilicza. Rakowicz would be their only refuge. I will not expose them, or at any rate my brother, to such a humiliation. And yet a stop must be put to all this, especially to the doings in the Castle itself. You suspect nothing? That I believe, but I know it. I only wanted to get a clear view of the state of affairs first. Now I shall speak to my mother."