'Not if they do what I tell them; I will be very kind if they are good. Gela always does what I tell him,' he added after a little pause; 'I do not want any but Gela.'
'It is natural you should be fondest of Gela, as he is nearest your age, but you must love all the brothers you may have, or you will distress your mother very greatly.'
'Why does she want any but me?' said Bela, clinging to his sense of personal wrong. And he was not to be turned from that.
'She wants others beside you,' said the physician, adroitly, 'because to be happy she needs children who are tender-hearted, unselfish, and obedient. You are none of those things, my Count Bela, so Heavens ends her consolation.'
Bela opened his blue eyes very wide, and he coloured with mortification.
'She always loves me best!' he said haughtily. 'She always will!'
'That will depend on yourself, my little lord,' said Greswold, with a significance which was not lost on the quick intelligence of the child; and he never forgot this day when his brother Victor was shown to the people.
'There will be no lack of heirs to Hohenszalras,' said the Princess meanwhile to his father.
He thought as he heard:
'And if ever she know she can break her marriage like a rotten thread! Those boys can all be made as nameless as I was! Would she do it? Perhaps not, for the children's sake. God knows——she might change even to them; she might hate them as she loves them now, because they are mine.'