The countess smiled.
"Quite another kind of beauty. Much more gloomy and melancholy. When I went to her, she sat crying, and would pay no attention to me. 'Every one dislikes me,' she kept saying. And she repeated this all day long. She did nothing but walk back and forth, crying and lamenting. Only with the greatest trouble could she be induced to rise in the morning, and be dressed, and in the evening, to go to sleep. Her mind was diseased, and little by little it has grown worse. My husband died, and I remained with the three daughters, caring for them as well as I could."
Countess Dolores studied for a while her beautiful, gem-adorned hands, and then went on, with frequent pauses.
"Heléne knew very little concerning her mother; but she steadfastly maintained that she was living, and would return, and also ... that her father and mother had been married...."
Another prolonged silence, the countess regarding Johannes with her lightly half-closed eyes, to see if he understood. Apparently he did not understand; for he sat, in unsuspecting patience, waiting for whatever else was to be said.
"Can you fancy, Johannes, what that would signify to me to my children ... if it were true?"
Johannes fancied only that he was looking at the speaker in a somewhat confounded and sheepish manner.
"Bigamy, Johannes, is a terrible crime!"
Wait!—A light broke in upon him, albeit a feeble one. His dearly loved children, then, were not legal—were illegitimate—natural, or whatever it was called. Yes, indeed! That was terrible, even though no one, to look at them, would ever think it. But the countess enlightened him still further.
"The idea of living upon the property of another, Johannes, is, to a woman of honor, insufferable!"