"My aunt will never listen to such a demand."
"I should be sorry, for your sake, and for your aunt's sake, if you were not to accept my offer. I can only make you both responsible for the consequences."
"You speak as if it depended on no one but yourself who was to have the two estates!"
"And on whom else can it depend?" replied Albert, and his lips seemed to grow thinner, his nose more pointed, and his whole face sharper, as he spoke: "I tell you, I have made the net so close and so strong--leaving only a few meshes open on purpose till I should hear your decision--that I can draw it together at any moment, right over your head, and you may struggle as you may; it will not break, but you will die. You know, Grenwitz, that I have rather a good head for such things, and you know also that I have no cause to show you the shadow of generosity."
"Me! I have no personal interest whatever in the whole matter."
"Do you think I am a child, Grenwitz? Don't you want to marry Miss Helen? and are not the two estates to be the dower of the young lady?"
"I marry Helen! Who says so? I don't dream of it."
"Well, then, don't marry her; hand the young beauty over to the man whom you have more reason to hate than all other men--who is even now your favored rival--at least evil report has it so--and who will lose nothing, I am sure, in Miss Helen's eyes, if he can present himself a second time as her cousin, and the lawful heir of a very considerable fortune."
Felix had turned alternately white and red as his adversary was inexorably punishing him with these words. His vanity, deeply wounded by the allusion to his fatal encounter with Oswald, writhed like a worm on which somebody has trod. He could not but confess that for the moment Albert was by far the stronger of the two, and that he, who was so proud of his cleverness and adroitness, was utterly helpless in the power of an adversary whom he had in reality always despised.
"Lower your demands a little, Timm," he said, in a subdued voice. "I must confess it is a matter of the very greatest importance for me to bury the whole affair in silence, and if it depended on myself alone I might not be unwilling to pay you the sum which you demand. But you know my aunt, and you know that she would rather let matters go on to the last point than to make such an enormous sacrifice. I tell you, Timm, it can't be done; upon my word, it can't be done. And what do you want with so much money at once? You will lose it in a few unlucky nights at roulette, and then you are poorer than you ever were before. Come, now, I'll make you an offer. We will pay you for one year four hundred dollars a month, and at the end of the year six thousand dollars in a lump."