"It was nothing but an invention of Mr. Timm!"
"No, Miss Helen!" said Oswald, with a sorrowful smile. "I presume it is more than that. I am only too much afraid it is the real truth, and that is the second reason why you see me here."
"You surely do not imagine we would refuse to acknowledge legitimate claims against us?"
"That case will never arise. I have no desire to make such claims. I should never have done so, under any circumstances; and least of all now."
He cast a look around him. The splendor of the apartment reminded him forcibly in whose house he was.
"Least of all now!" he repeated. "Here are the papers which prove this most unfortunate of all stories. I desire the baroness to take them and to keep them, so as to be secure at all times against that man's machinations."
He placed the documents and papers which Timm had brought him a few hours before upon Helen's escritoire, and bowed to take leave.
"One moment, sir!" said Helen, rising likewise. "Do you imagine my mother will accept such a gift? Who has given you the right to think so little of us?"
"I think, Miss Helen, your pride misleads you in this instance. There is evidently no one whom this whole matter concerns except myself, and I desire to be relieved of an unpleasant suspicion. It was hardly necessary to remind me that a few hundred thousand dollars, more or less, mattered little to the mother of the owner of Grenwitz, and to the betrothed of Prince Waldenberg."
"Circumstances ought not to affect our duties," replied the young girl, rising to her full height and curving her lips contemptuously; "and you need not believe that I am so indifferent to your claims because, I am proud of our wealth and our rank. We are at this very moment on the point of leaving for Grenwitz, where my brother is lying dangerously ill; and there, on my escritoire, lies the beginning of a letter in which the princess will be told that I shall never be her son's wife."