'Hence he is to me a stranger, and must be greeted and received as such.'
'I think my brother Heinrich is acting foolishly in bringing the English friend (of whom he writes so frequently) to Frankenburg,' said Ernestine.
'Why?' asked the Countess.
'Because Herminia, in the very spirit of opposition, may fall in love with him.'
'My father could not have taken a surer way to make me shun and loathe my cousin, and even do something more dreadful still, than by forming this arrangement.'
'Something more dreadful still!' repeated the Countess, raising her voice, and surveying her niece through her gold eyeglass. 'In Heaven's name, what do you mean, Herminia?'
'By compelling me to marry a man I don't love; for what happiness could follow a union with a total stranger? Besides, I don't want to marry.'
'Your own cousin a stranger?' persisted the Countess. 'But though we have discussed this subject a thousand times before, there is one feature in it to which I have never referred, and which, consequently, will be new to you.'
'I am glad to hear that,' replied the contumacious little beauty, shrugging her pretty shoulders and almost yawning.
'I mean a clause in your father's will, by which, if you do not marry our Heinrich, your fortune will be divided between him and your cousin Ernestine,—leaving you, in fact, without a silver groschen.'