"Listen, Oldenburg----"
"Hush! Are you quite safe here? It seemed to me I heard a cat behind the hangings."
"It was nothing."
"Eh bien; then announce to me your fatal tale in the fewest possible words."
The voices of the speakers became lower, but not so low that Oswald could not hear every word distinctly. He deplored his position, which compelled him to listen, but he saw no chance of escaping. As Oldenburg had recognized Emily von Breesen, he would have compromised her honor if he had shown himself now. He tried to open the window, in order to escape by a bold leap over the gooseberry bushes, which were right underneath, into the garden, and from there through the open door back again into the ball-room; but he abandoned the plan as too hazardous, and tried to reconcile himself as well as he could, though not without secretly cursing his evil star, to his half-ludicrous, half-painful situation.
"Oldenburg," said Barnewitz, "did Cloten ask you to let him sit by my wife, or was it a notion of your own?"
"Why do you ask that curious question?"
"Never mind. Just answer."
"Not before I know what you are aiming at."
"I want an answer and no subterfuge," said the furious nobleman.