CHAPTER XI
Boleslav was almost happy. He had hit on a new and brilliant idea, and the hopes of carrying it out brightened for a time the deadening monotony of his existence. He believed he could clear his father's memory.
How it had first occurred to him he hardly knew. He had found certain letters from Polish noblemen addressed to his father, which seemed to suggest that the deceased had felt himself bound by a hastily-made promise which at the time he had not meant seriously, and that a chain of tragic circumstances had compelled him against his will to be a party to the treachery. If this did not exonerate him from all guilt, it at least put the slandered man in a new light--the light of a martyr.
If by minute study of the documents he could trace the affair to its source, and make public a true history of the disaster, in which he would demonstrate that Eberhard von Schranden, far from having played the devilish rôle that rumour attributed to him, had only been a victim of circumstances, surely there would at least arise some who would hold out their hand in remorse to the sufferer's heir. The more he absorbed himself in this task of vindication the more he began to feel united with the dead man, and accustomed to the idea of sacrificing his own innocent reputation for his sake.
His brain was so much occupied with these schemes that he slept little at night, and in the daytime tore about the park like one possessed. The less hope he cherished in his secret heart that his plan would succeed, the more did he long for some human soul into whose ear he could pour his doubts and fears. But there was no one to speak to but the taciturn woman, who glided past him with eyes guiltily cast down.
One evening, when his solitude almost maddened him, he said to her--
"Regina, aren't you frozen in your kitchen?"
"I never let the fire out, Herr."
"But what do you do in the evening, when it's dark?"
"I sit by the fire and sew, till my fingers get quite stiff."