Waldemar was silent. He had not courage to recall to Wanda the words she had spoken at their last meeting. The sight of the Count's bowed frame forbade any touch of anger, and pleaded powerfully in favour of the daughter's prayer, but all the egotism of love rose up in revolt against it. The young man had braved so much to earn for himself the hand of the woman he loved, he could not bear that the reward should longer be denied him. With contracted brow and lips tightly pressed together, he stood, looking to the ground, when all at once the Princess interfered.
"I will take any anxiety on your father's account from you, Wanda," said she. "I shall go with him."
Her listeners started in extreme surprise.
"What, Hedwiga?" asked the Count. "You think of going with me?"
"Into exile," concluded the Princess, with a steady voice. "It will be no new thing to either of us, Bronislaus. We have tasted it before, during long years. We will take the old fate on us again."
"Never," cried Waldemar, with kindling eyes. "I will never consent to your leaving me, mother. Your place, in future, is here at Wilicza, with your son."
"Who is busy imprinting on his land the mark of the German?"--the Princess Baratowska's tone was almost severe in its earnestness. "No, Waldemar, you underrate the Pole in me, if you think I could stay on in Wilicza, in the Wilicza which is growing up under your rule. I have given you a mother's love tardily but completely, and it will ever be yours, though we part, though I go to a distance, and we only see each other from time to time--but to stay here at your side, to look on day by day while you overturn all that I have laboured to build up, to give the lie to my whole past life by associating with your German friends--on each occasion when our opposite opinions come into collision to bow to your word of authority, that, my son, I cannot do, that would be more than, strive as I might, I could accomplish. It would rend asunder the newly formed ties between us, would call up the old strife, the old bitterness again. So let me go, it will be best for us all."
"I did not think any of the old bitterness would intrude upon this hour," said Waldemar, with some reproach in his tone.
The Princess smiled sadly. "There is none in my heart against you, but not a little, perhaps, against the Fate which has ordained our ruin. Over the Morynski and Baratowski families the decree has gone forth. With Leo one noble Polish house died out, which for centuries had shone with lustre in the annals of our country. My brother is the last scion of another. His name will soon be extinct, for Wanda is the last to inherit it, and she will merge it in yours. Wanda is young, she loves you--perhaps she may learn to forget, which to us would be impossible. Life is before you, the future belongs to you--we have only the past."
"Hedwiga is right," spoke Count Morynski. "I cannot remain, and she will not. The marriage with your father brought nothing but evil to her, Waldemar, and it seems to me, as though no union between a Nordeck and a Morynska could be productive of happiness. The disastrous cause of discord, which proved so fatal to your parents, exists in your case also. Wanda, too, is a child of our people. She cannot renounce her race any more than you can yours. You are entering upon a hazardous experiment in this marriage, but you have willed it, both of you--I make no further opposition."