“Vanderlin will do whatever we wish,” said Mouse sharply, with an accent of inflexible authority. “He is made of millions, as Boo says, and he is immensely grateful to me. He wants to give me half his fortune, but of course he can’t give it to me, so I told him that I was going to marry you, and that he might give it you; quite secretly, you understand, and you will always consider that it is mine. That must be very distinctly understood.”
The young man was silent; he was, indeed, overwhelmed with astonishment and confusion. It seemed odd to hear that another man had been told of her intention to marry him before he himself had been informed of his future happiness; moreover, there was something about the projected arrangement which struck jarringly on his not very sensitive conscience and appalled him, and his proposed benefactor had divorced a woman of his race!
He stammered some German phrases, embarrassed and apprehensive of her displeasure, for he was afraid of her, keenly and childishly afraid.
“Don’t use that ridiculous language!” said Mouse, with a boundless scorn for the mother tongue of Goethe and of Kant. “Have you understood all I have been saying? If you accept what Vanderlin will do for us—and he will do a great deal—I will marry you. If you won’t, I shall never see you any more. Pray make no mistake about that.”
“But if you love me——”
“I never said I loved you. I don’t love people. I like you in a way, and I will marry you on certain conditions, but I will not marry you, my good Wuffie, to live on an empty title and the pay of a German lieutenant of cuirassiers. Not if I know it! I won’t even enter Germany, except for the month at Homburg when everybody’s there. Thanks—I have seen your father’s court, once in the duchy of Karstein-Lowenthal, and very often in the duchy of Gerolstein!”
She laughed cruelly, not relaxing her quick elastic step over the smooth gravel between the palms and the orange-trees. She intended to marry him, and she had no doubt whatever about the result of the conversation. Men were like horses. Ride them with a firm hand and you could put them at any timber you chose.
Prince Woffram’s face flushed painfully; the jeer at his father’s court hurt him. As far as he could feel offence with her he felt it then, as her clear unkind laughter rippled on the wintry air.
“You are very rough on me,” he said, humbly, in English. “I am poor—we are poor—I know that; but honorable poverty——”
Mouse turned her face to him, withering scorn flashing from her sapphire eyes upon him.