“Honorable poverty has just died in the person of Prince Khristof of Karstein-Lowenthal, and he had not a penny to pay his laundress, and his lodging, and his doctor, and his grave! Adrian Vanderlin paid for all of them.”
She said it cruelly, triumphantly, with her silvery laugh sounding shriller than usual.
The young man grew redder still with anger and shame commingled. His eyes were downcast. He had no reply ready as he walked beside her down the lonely alley.
She saw that she had wounded and offended him.
“Come, Wuffie, be reasonable,” she said, in another tone. “You know well enough that I shall no more marry you to remain penniless than I shall marry one of the croupiers in the Casino. If you were going to ally yourself with a royal princess, you would see nothing degrading in living on her allowance allotted to her by what is called the State, that is, taken out of the taxes paid by the public on their sugar, and tea, and cheese, and clothing, and yet, when you come to analyze it, that is not very creditable. It is much more creditable to take what an immensely rich financier never will miss, and offers, de bon cœur, to acquit himself of a debt of gratitude; and since you are so fond of your family, he is your cousin by marriage—at least he was and he will be again, for he means to re-marry his lost angel. My dear Wuffie, pray don’t mind my saying so, but German princes are living on their wives’ dowers all over the world by the hundred. It is their métier.”
He still did not answer. He looked on the ground as he walked. There was sufficient truth in what she said for his national and family pride to wince under it. He knew that if he looked at her he should consent to this abominable, indefensible, unworthy act to which she tempted him. He kept his eyes on the ground; the color burnt hotly in his cheeks. She was silent too a few moments. Then she stopped short in her walk, forcing him to stop also, and faced him, her hands in her muff and her face very resolute and insolent, with a contemptuous smile on her lips.
“My dear Wuffie,” she said with sovereign contempt, “you can’t suppose that I was going to marry you for yourself, do you?”
The young man colored, much mortified. He had supposed so.
“You are a very pretty boy, but one doesn’t marry for good looks,” she said in the same tone. “One marries for bread and butter. Neither you nor I have got it; but together we can get it.”
“But—but——” stammered Prince Woffram; he knew that he was being tempted to what was disgraceful; to what, judged by any court of honor, would brand him as unworthy to wear his sword.