“We are not related at all.”
“But you are German?”
“No.”
“You are English! I always imagined you a foreigner.”
“No—I am not English.”
“Italian?—Spanish?”
She shook her head, and turned away her face.
“I never cared for the scorn of these other creatures,” she said in a low troubled voice. “I could give them back scorn for scorn. But it will be hard to be scorned by the child whom I saved from death.”
“Mother! I scorn you? Why, the thing could not be. You are all the world to me.”
“It will not be so always, my son. Howbeit, thou shalt hear the truth. Rudolph, I am a Jewess. My old name is Countess, the daughter of Benefei of Oxford.”