"Upon my soul I cannot make out what you would be at!" he suddenly exclaimed, standing still and facing his cousin. "Sterzl has never found any fault with my behavior and it is much more his affair than yours."
Truyn changed color a little, but did not lose his presence of mind.
"Sterzl, with all his dryness of manner, is an idealist," he said, "who would fetch the stars from heaven for his sister if he could. He has never for an instant doubted that your intentions with regard to her were quite serious."
"That is impossible!" cried Sempaly.
"But it is so," Truyn asserted. "He is too blind to think his sister beneath any one's notice."
"And he is right!" exclaimed Sempaly, "perfectly right--but the pressure of circumstances--of position--the duties I have inherited...."
He had seated himself on the deep inner ledge of one of the windows, with his elbows on his knees and his chin between his hands, and was staring thoughtfully at the floor.
"Allow me to ask you," he said, "what induced you to mix yourself up in the affair?"
"It has weighed on my mind for a long time," said Truyn, "but what especially moved me to speak of it to-day is the circumstance that last evening, before you came into the 'Falcone,' Mesdames De Gandry and Ferguson allowed themselves to speak in a way which convinced me that your constant intimacy with Zinka is beginning to do her no good."
"Oh! of course, if you listen to the gossip of every washerwoman," Sempaly interrupted angrily. And he muttered a long speech in which the words: 'Sacred responsibility--due regard for the duties imposed by Providence,' were freely thrown in. Truyn's handsome face flushed with contempt and at length he broke into his cousin's harangue, to which for a few minutes he had listened in silence: