"You are not obliged to call him husband." The duke possessed a sparkle to-night which was unusual in him. Perhaps he had won some of the state moneys which he had paid out to his ministers' that day. "Let us not waste any time," he added.
"I shall not waste any,"—ominously.
"Order your gown from Vienna, or Paris, or from wherever you will. Don't haggle over the price; let it be a good one; I'm willing to go deep for it."
"You loved my aunt once,"—a broken note in her voice.
"I love her still,"—not unkindly; "but I must have peace in the house. Observe what you have so far accomplished in the matter of creating turmoil." The duke took up a paper.
"My sins?"—contemptuously.
"Let us call them your transgressions. Listen. You have ridden a horse as a man rides it; you have ridden bicycles in public streets; you have stolen away to a masked ball; you ran away from school in Paris and visited Heaven knows whom; you have bribed sentries to let you in when you were out late; you have thrust aside the laws as if they meant nothing; you have trifled with the state papers and caused the body politic to break up a meeting as a consequence of the laughter."
The girl, as she recollected this day to which he referred, laughed long and joyously. He waited patiently till she had done, and I am not sure that his mouth did not twist under his beard. "Foreign education is the cause of all this," he said finally. "Those cursed French and English schools have ruined you. And I was fool enough to send you to them. This is the end."
"Or the beginning,"—rebelliously.
"Doppelkinn is mild and kind."