Timéa's face beamed at these words with maidenly pride. A mixture of inexpressible pain, noble gratitude, and holy sacrifice lighted up her countenance. "Thrice, thrice," her lips stammered, but without a sound, only her sympathetic nerves heard what she wanted to utter. This man had so often saved her; he was always so good to her; he had never made sport of her, nor flattered her, and now he gives her all her heart could desire. All? No, all but one thing, and that is gone; it belongs to another.
Timar waited quietly for an answer. Timéa remained silent.
"Do not answer hastily, Fraülein Timéa," he said. "I will await your decision. I will come to-morrow, or in a week, or whenever you like to give me an answer. You are mistress of all I have handed over to you; I attach no conditions to it; it is all registered in your name. If you do not wish to see me here again, it only costs you one word; take a week or a month or a year to consider what you will answer."
Timéa stepped forward with decision from behind the stove where the other two women had pushed her, and approached Michael.
In her manner lay a precocious gravity, which lent to her face a womanly dignity. Since that eventful wedding-day she had ceased to be a child; she had become serious and silent. She looked calmly into Michael's face, and said, "I have already decided."
Frau Sophie listened with envious malice for Timéa's answer. If only she would say to Timar, "I don't want you—go away!" Anything is possible from such an idiot of a girl, who has had another man put in her head. And if Timar, just to revenge himself, were to say, "Well then, stay as you are; you shall have neither the house nor my hand, I will offer both to Fraülein Athalie"—and if he were to marry Athalie! As if cases had not been heard of in which an honest lover was refused by some stuck-up girl, and then out of pique offered his hand to the governess, or proposed to the housemaid on the spot! This hope of Frau Sophie's, however, was not destined to be fulfilled.
Timéa gave her hand to Timar, and said in a low but firm voice, "I accept you as my husband."
Michael grasped the offered hand—not with the fire of a passionate lover, but with the homage of a man, and looked long into the unearthly beauty of the girl's eyes.
And the girl allowed him to read her soul. She repeated her words: "I accept you as my husband, and will be a faithful and obedient wife; I only ask one favor—you will not refuse me?"
Happiness made Michael forget that a merchant should never sign his name to a blank sheet of paper. "Oh, speak! what you desire is already done."