He had not even time to sit down and think it out. His excuse had been as imperative as it was inane. He flew off to his dinner-party and laughed and flirted, wondering all the time whether Ursula could possibly have had “a weakness” for him. That seemed to be the only possible explanation. Evidently it was Mademoiselle Papotier’s. Romance, exaggeration, these were probable; but he could hardly believe in intentional spite or untruth.
And yet—he was very much out of temper with Ursula for her capture of “that fool, Otto.” His rage against his brother, softened by time and a capital new horse, melted still more at the thought that he had wronged Otto regarding Helena. Ursula, then, was at the bottom of the mischief. Ursula, the designing intruder; the nobody who, one day, would rule at the Horst. She had always been a subject to him of kindly indifference. He was angry with himself for the violence of his new passion against her.
On returning home he found a note awaiting him. It contained only these two quotations, evidently from Papotier’s favorite seventeenth-century romances:
“Said Marcellino: ‘Damaris, my brother is faithless. I can prove it to you. Why, then, should your heart, blinded by useless smoke, still refuse to perceive the flame that is burning in mine—i.e., heart.’”
“Rodelinda replied: ‘Adelgunda, I thank you for warning me. The lover that deserted you shall never have an opportunity of trampling upon Rodelinda’s affections.’”
“Exactly,” said Gerard, sighing heavily. He was very miserable. And then he went to sleep.
Meanwhile Otto plodded on, unconscious of the sins laid to his charge and to Ursula’s. The story which Adeline had forced upon him in the public gardens at Drum he had folded away on a shelf in his memory. What else could he do? He was not the man to influence Gerard. We know it was not through him that the tale reached Ursula—or Helena.
His occupations called him away from Boxlo to Bois-le-Duc, the capital of Brabant. There he came into frequent contact with a cousin, of whom he had previously known very little—nothing personally—and regarding whom his parents would hardly have cared to enlighten any one. This was a young Van Helmont, who lived with a widowed mother, and supported himself as a post-office clerk. The Helmonts of the Horst did not object to his poverty, but to his mother. To Otto’s enthusiastic eulogies the Baroness listened bored. She was too polite to ask him to change the subject; besides, perhaps she felt that such a measure would have proved quite useless, for, whatever Otto might select to say, he bored her by his way of saying it. She could only love this son, not live with him. She rejoiced with exceeding joy when Gerard, whose character was incapable of vindictiveness, consented once more to sit opposite to Otto at table. Still, the brothers held aloof.
And the wedding-day drew near, overshadowingly near. One person delighted in that thought. Otto.