DANIEL. Yes, your brother; his honor, your brother—another day I will tell you more about it, when we have time—and how cleverly she sent him about his business when he came a wooing every blessed day, and offered to make her his countess. Oh, I must go; I must go and tell her; carry her the news (is about to run of).
CHARLES. Stay! stay! she must not know—nobody must know, not even my brother!
DANIEL. Your brother? No, on no account; he must not know it! Certainly not! If he know not already more than he ought to know. Oh, I can tell you, there are wicked men, wicked brothers, wicked masters; but I would not for all my master's gold be a wicked servant. His honor thought you were dead.
CHARLES. Humph! What are you muttering about?
DANIEL (in a half-suppressed voice). And to be sure when a man rises from the dead thus uninvited—your brother was the sole heir of our late master!
CHARLES. Old man! what is it you are muttering between your teeth, as if some dreadful secret were hovering on your tongue which you fear to utter, and yet ought? Out with it!
DANIEL. But I would rather gnaw my old bones with hunger, and suck my
own blood for thirst, than gain a life of luxury by murder.
[Exit hastily.]
CHARLES (starting up, after a terrible pause). Betrayed! Betrayed! It flashes upon my soul like lightning! A fiendish trick! A murderer and a robber through fiend-like machinations! Calumniated by him! My letters falsified, suppressed! his heart full of love! Oh, what a monstrous fool was I! His fatherly heart full of love! oh, villainy, villainy! It would have cost me but once kneeling at his feet—a tear would have done it—oh blind, blind fool that I was! (running up against the wall). I might have been happy—oh villainy, villainy!
Knavishly, yes, knavishly cheated out of all happiness in this life! (He runs up and down in a rage.) A murderer, a robber, all through a knavish trick! He was not even angry! Not a thought of cursing ever entered his heart. Oh, miscreant! inconceivable, hypocritical, abominable miscreant!
Enter KOSINSKY.