"Yes," she replied.
She looked me full in the eyes. Her look had that strange, half-sad, half-indignant expression which I had only observed once, on the morning of that fatal day when she disengaged herself from my arms in which I had clasped her to save her from the falling Belvedere. It was a recollection which filled me with an indefinite fear, and so confused me that my glances fell before the maiden's large luminous eyes.
At this moment I heard her draw a long breath, and as I looked up the strange expression had vanished from her eyes, and her voice was soft as ever, as, taking my hand and leading me to a small sofa, she said:
"Come, let us sit down and consult what is to be done right calmly and wisely, as brother and sister should do."
"Did they know then all the time that I was here?" I asked.
"Yes," she answered; "and I would have told you all if you had asked me; but you did not ask; it was a little secret which you, quite unnecessarily, seemed to think yourself bound to keep; a harmless game of hide-and-seek, such as every one plays now and then. She played the same game: I was on no account to let you know that she was resolved, at any price, to have Richard the Lion-heart, and that she inquired after you in every letter, I told her that I would say nothing about it so long as you did not ask. But the commerzienrath, I believe, really did not know, although we cannot altogether trust him. For that he now writes for you so eagerly as you tell me, is no proof: he needs you just now."
"Did you send him my memorial?" I asked.
"That was dreadful, was it not?" said Paula, smiling with pale lips; "but I had to do what you hesitated at doing, and perhaps could not do yourself: I had to do it, even at the risk of your displeasure, for it was a matter in which, as it seemed to me, your whole future was at stake."
"My whole future?"
"Scarcely less. Indeed rather more; for you must know that I am proud of you, George, and convinced that you only need the means to accomplish really important things in your profession. The commerzienrath has these means. You must teach him to employ them; you are the only one who can, for I have long known that he has taken the exact measure of your talents with that acuteness of insight which is peculiar to men of his stamp. And now he has in his hands the proof of what you can do. Then you have the advantage that he is personally well-disposed toward you, so far as such an egotist may be said to be capable of unselfish, genuinely human interest in any one. In a word: the opportunity is a more propitious one than you are likely ever to have again."