“Let us walk a little quicker, and don’t keep kissing my hand. It is ridiculous,” she said, with some acerbity, for when you are going to marry a man it is always best not to be too civil to him. “Now listen here. Your greatuncle Khris is dead. I was with him when he died. I persuaded him to do an act of very tardy justice to his daughter. I knew the whole story long ago, and that was why I went to see him. I wanted to try and persuade him to undo the harm he had done.”
The young man was silent. He was surprised and could not grasp her meaning, for he knew that it must be something other than what her mere words expressed.
“You never knew Olga, did you?” he said, rather stupidly.
“No,” said Mouse, keeping both hands in her muff. “I never knew her, but I have always pitied her profoundly, and I knew her wicked old father could set things right if he chose, for once he almost confessed as much to me. But all this does not matter to you. It is an old story, and they are now going to live happy ever afterwards like people in a fairy-tale. That is their idea of felicity; it wouldn’t be mine. If you would believe it, that man has never cared about anybody else. It seems impossible, but it is so. I suppose men of business are not like other people.”
“I don’t understand,” said the young prince humbly, and in great perplexity. “Who are going to live happily for ever? Who are you speaking of? Please tell me more.”
“Nobody wants you to understand—you are to listen,” said Mouse, with her brilliant eyes flashing on him above her sable collar. “I tell you I was with your greatuncle when he died, and he gave me his confession to take to Adrian Vanderlin, and the proof of the false witness which he had bribed people to bear against his daughter, because he was so angry that she did so little to get her husband’s money for him (when you think of it, that was natural enough, for one don’t give one’s daughter into the bourgeoise without expecting to be paid for it). He played Iago’s part, you know, and Vanderlin was jealous, and your cousin Olga was too proud to clear herself, and so they were made very miserable and separated. Well, this is what he did and what he confessed, and if I had not been there he would have had the papers burned, for he was a bad, vindictive old man to the last.”
This she said with great sincerity and emphasis, for she saw in memory the glare of those steel-blue eyes in the yellow, drawn face.
“But why should you have been the intermediary?” asked the young man, bewildered. “Why did not poor old Khris send to my uncle Ernst (his nephew, you know), who has always remained a devoted friend of Olga’s?”
“I don’t know why he didn’t. I know he did not,” she replied irritably, for she was not disposed to submit to cross-examination, and she had by this time come to believe in her narrative as actual fact. “I was there; and he was mortally ill. I doubt if anyone else would have had patience to unravel his confused confessions.”
“Well?” said the young prince anxiously.