"Mild and kind! One would think that you were marrying me to a horse! Well, I shall not enter the cathedral."
"How will you avoid it?"—calmly.
"I shall find a way; wait and see." She was determined.
"I shall wait." Then, with a sudden softening, for he loved the girl after his fashion: "I am growing old, my child. If I should die, what would become of you? I have no son; your Uncle Franz, who is but a year or two younger than I am, would reign, and he would not tolerate your madcap ways. You must marry at once. I love you in spite of your wilfulness. But you have shown yourself incapable of loving. Doppelkinn is wealthy. You shall marry him."
"I will run away, uncle,"—decidedly.
"I have notified the frontiers,"—tranquilly. "From now on you will be watched. It is the inevitable, my child, and even I have to bow to that."
She touched the paper in her bosom, but paused.
"Moreover, I have decided," went on the duke, "to send the Honorable Betty Moore back to England."
"Betty?"
"Yes. She is a charming young person, but she is altogether too sympathetic. She abets you in all you do. Her English independence does not conform with my ideas. After the wedding I shall notify her father."