The professor was dumb with amazement at his wife's penetration, and at the clear, logical way in which she had stated the case. He thought her incredibly clever, and yet he was horrified as she counted out to him on her fingers the secrets he had believed impenetrable.
"And no one tells me a word of all these things," continued Gretchen, in ever-increasing indignation, "not a word, when you and papa both know that I can keep a secret. Who saved an outbreak at the castle by sending Assessor Hubert on a fool's errand over to Janowo; who, indeed, if not I alone? You hadn't a thing to do with it. The princess and the Countess Wanda always know what is going on; the Polish women are the confidants of their fathers and husbands; they are allowed to take part in politics, and especially in conspiracies; but we poor German women are always slighted and kept back by our husbands; they humiliate us by the most insulting distrust, they treat us like slaves; they--" The professor's wife could not go on; as a realizing sense of her slavery and humiliation clearly dawned upon her mind, she began to sob aloud. Her husband was almost beside himself.
"Gretchen, my dearest Gretchen, do not weep," he said, entreatingly. "You know that I have no secrets from you which concern me alone, but these secrets concern others, and I have pledged my word not to divulge them, not even to you."
"How can any one exact a promise from a married man to withhold secrets from his wife?" cried Gretchen, sobbing still more violently. "It is not right; it ought not to be required."
"I have for this once given my promise," said Fabian, despairingly. "Now control your emotion! I cannot bear to see you in tears. I--"
"Well, if this isn't a most beautiful display of petticoat government!" interposed the superintendent, who had entered unremarked, and had witnessed the pathetic scene. "My daughter errs in regard to the person who suffers humiliation and slavery. Do you allow yourself to be controlled in this manner, Emil? Do not take it ill of me if I say, that although you are an excellent scholar, you play a most pitiable part as a married man."
He could not more effectually have come to the aid of his son-in-law. No sooner had Gretchen heard the disparaging words, than she rushed to her husband's rescue.
"Emil is the noblest, the dearest, the most excellent of husbands," she said, and her tears straightway ceased to flow. "You need not reproach him, papa; it is only natural that he should love his wife."
Frank laughed. "Do not be so hasty, child," he said, "I meant no harm; and, after all, you excite yourself without cause. We are compelled to draw you into our plot, which you have rightly divined. News has just come that the princess and her niece will be here in the course of the afternoon. You must go over to the castle and receive them, as Waldemar is absent, and would naturally delegate that duty to his friend Fabian and his wife. Our aim is to disarm the suspicion of the servants, who well know that these ladies have not entered Villica for a year. The princess and her niece know what is going on, and will await the issue of events here. I shall drive over to the border-forester's, and wait there with my horses, according to agreement. Your husband will explain the rest to you, my child; I have no time."
He went, and Gretchen received full details of the plot for the count's release from her husband. Her ill-humor vanished, and her face and manner expressed supreme delight at the consciousness that she was at last treated with as much respect as even a Polish woman could demand, and allowed to have her share in the conspiracy.