“I think I can guess,” said Selaka, smiling.
“Oh, I loved her so! and, Heaven help me, I cannot choose but love her still. May I hope to see her, sir?” he asked, humbly.
“No, Herr Rudolph,” said Selaka, shaking his head. “That I cannot permit, nor would she consent. In the years to come, when I shall be no more, it will be for her to choose her friends, but as long as I stand between her and the world those friends shall be spotless, or at least their names shall be untainted by the breath of public scandal.”
“The lives of young men would be very different if all parents were as particular and severe as you, Herr Selaka,” observed the baroness, turning round from the window.
Rudolph moved upon his pillow, and covered his eyes with his arm.
“You are right, sir, I am not worthy to look upon her,” he said.
Suddenly there was heard from the hall an ominous sound, the louder because of the stillness of the house. The baroness ran to the door and held it open, listening anxiously. Could that voice, pitched in a key of lofty indignation, be mistaken for other than the voice of an angry hero? Ah, who but Miltiades, the glory of modern Athens, could stride in that magnificent fashion through a hall, clatter and clang his spurs along the tessellated pavement, rattle and shake the stairs, the balustrade, with as much noise as all the heroes of Homer sacking Ilion; nodding fearful menace in his crimson plumes and sending potent lightning flames with his violet glances?
The baroness looked question and alarm at Selaka, and poor Rudolph, cowed by weakness and fright, shuddered among his pillows, whiter far than the linen that framed his face.
“Do not seek to bar my passage, menial,” Miltiades was roaring, as the clatter and clang of sword and spurs approached the sick chamber. “It is Monsieur Rudolph Ehrenstein I desire to see.”