That evening the brothers had a violent dispute.
Goswyn admitted that the Princess was charming in spite of her wretched training and impossible behaviour; that there could not be a more amusing transient travelling acquaintance; that, finally, she certainly did come of very good stock, and was, in spite of her free and easy style of conversation, a pure-minded woman,--which should make it still more a matter of conscience with Otto not to compromise her as he was doing; for a marriage with her, even although her poor but haughty family could be brought to consent to the misalliance, was out of the question.
The result of this conversation was that Otto at last hung his head and admitted that his wiser, stronger brother was right; he promised to leave Florence with Goswyn the next morning; but when the trunks were all piled on the coach for their departure he met the Princess Dorothea on the stairs, and did not leave, but stayed and was betrothed to her.
It would be doing her injustice to say that she married him solely for his money. No, she really had a decided liking for "bears," and, as far as she could love any one, she loved her big, clumsy husband, just as she preferred brown bread and sour milk to all the delicacies of the table. During the honey-moon, which she spent with Otto upon his estate in Silesia, she developed an astonishing degree of tenderness, but she could not love anything for any length of time. Then, too, she was entirely unused to any regular life, and the dull routine at Kosnitz soon bored her to death. At first it delighted her to revel in her husband's wealth, to have dress after dress made, to adorn herself with all sorts of trinkets; but she soon found it tiresome and monotonous. Oh for a small room on the third floor of some hotel in Paris with Feistmantel, and poverty, and liberty, and a fresh conquest every day! how she longed for it all!
At first in Berlin, in honour of her husband, she had assumed the conventional air of a great lady; but of that she soon became desperately tired: it was the most wearisome of all the weariness in her new life.
In spite of all that evil tongues might say of her, she was as yet perfectly innocent: of that her husband was convinced.
"She is utterly unsusceptible,--utterly," he said to himself, as he tramped home through the mud and wet. And with this poor consolation he was obliged to be content.
But, slow-witted as he was, he was aware that women unsusceptible to temptation are apt to be equally unsusceptible to the disgrace of a fall. The matter is simply of no importance to them. Princess Dorothea would never be led astray through passion; but at the thought of the devouring, degrading ennui which was continually dragging her downward, Otto von Sydow shuddered.
Suddenly his cheeks burned; he could have boxed his own ears for such thoughts with regard to his wife.