Zdena's face is crimson, her cheeks and ears burn with mortification.
"We grew up together like brother and sister," she murmurs. "I have always considered you as a brother----"
"Ah, indeed! a brother!" His pulses throb wildly; his anger well-nigh makes him forget himself. Suddenly an ugly idea occurs to him,--an odious suspicion. "Perhaps you were not aware there in Vienna that by a marriage with you I should resign my brilliant prospects?"
They confront each other, stiff, unbending, both angry, each more ready to offend than to conciliate.
Around them the August heat broods over the garden; the bushes, the flowers, the shrubbery, all cast black shadows upon the smooth-shaven, yellowing grass, where here and there cracks in the soil are visible. Everything is quiet, but in the distance can be heard the gardener filling his large watering-can at the pump, and the jolting along the road outside the garden of the heavy harvest-wagons laden with grain.
"Did you know it then?" he asks again, more harshly, more contemptuously.
Of course she knew it, quite as well as she knows it now; but what use is there in her telling him so, when he asks her about it in such a tone?
Instead of replying, she frowns haughtily and shrugs her shoulders.
For one moment more he stands gazing into her face; then, with a bitter laugh, he turns from her and strides towards the summer-house.
"Harry!" she calls after him, in a trembling undertone, but his blood is coursing too hotly in his veins--he does not hear her. Although he is one of the softest-hearted of men, he is none the less one of the most quick-tempered and obstinate.