"Because I am old and poor. I have nothing to leave them, and when I die, they will have to go to service. That frets me. It is because I love the maidens so dearly that I am troubled about them."
"Let their poverty trouble you no longer, my friend. I will provide for them. I have it in my power to make them both comfortable, and that they shall be, I promise you."
The old man spoke his thanks, and presently came Marianne to announce the dinner. It was served in an arbor covered with honeysuckles and red beans, and the emperor thought that he had never had a better dinner in his imperial palace. The shackles of his greatness had fallen from him, and he drank deeply of the present hour, without a thought for the morrow. Marianne was at his side, and as he looked into the lustrous depths of her dark eyes, he wished himself a peasant that he might look into them forever.
Meanwhile Kathi and her father walked together in the garden. They were both examining the diamond ring, and the hearts of both were filled with ambitious thoughts and hopes.
"He must be very rich," said Kathi, in a low voice. "He has fallen in love with Marianne, 'tis plain, and she has only to ask and have any thing she likes. Look, father, he is kissing her! But don't let them see you. The more he loves her, the more he will give us. But you must speak to Marianne, father. She is as silly as a sheep, and doesn't care whether we are poor or rich. Call her here, and tell her that she MUST ask for a great sum of money—enough for us to buy a fine farm. Then Valentine will marry me at once, and I shall be able to give a wedding-dress to all the other maidens in the village."
"But suppose that the lord should want Marianne?" asked Conrad, turning pale.
Kathi still held up her ring, and she turned toward the sun until it seemed to be in a blaze. "Look, father," said she, in a low tone, "look."
The eyes of the old man were fixed upon the jewel; and strange hopes, with which, until now, he had been unacquainted, stirred his heart. The serpent had found its way into Eden, and it spoke to both in the glitter of this unhappy ring.
"Father," said Kathi, at length, "if Marianne had such a ring as this on her finger she would find many hundred wooers who would forgive her for having had ONE before them."
"Silence!" cried the old man. "If your mother were alive to hear these guilty words, she would think that you were no longer innocent yourself. How I wish she were here in this trying hour! But since you have no parent but me, I must protect you from shame."