"You must admit, my dear Fräulein," he said, "that this brutal reception was well calculated to silence the voice of Nature once more. This old--but no! He is right; if I had been in his place, and my son-in-law had taken twenty years to make up his mind to stammer out his peccavi, I should probably have been even less ceremonious, and have simply kicked the fellow down-stairs, even if I had done nothing worse to him. But still, as you can easily imagine, this encounter rather shattered me."
He threw himself into the chair again, sighed like a man in utter desperation, and ran his hands through his hair.
"And how can I help or advise you, Herr Baron?" asked Julie, after a pause. "It seems to me there is nothing left for you to do but to write to Herr Schoepf and to your daughter, and tell them by letter what they would neither of them listen to in their first excitement."
"Pardon, my dear Fräulein, that wouldn't do much good. These two mad beings would not treat my letters any better than they did their author. And yet, you will understand that I cannot rest content when my father-in-law and my daughter have turned me out-of-doors. I must atone for my old crime so far as such a thing is possible at this late day. For me, in my years and circumstances, to suddenly long for paternal joys, to receive this girl into my bachelor's quarters, and to introduce her to society as a young baroness--I, who have already had such a hard time with one grown-up daughter, by whom I am forced to let myself be ordered about--would be the height of the ridiculous: to say nothing of the fact that I doubt very much whether I should ever be able to tame this red-maned lioness. But, on the other hand, Father Schoepf, as he now calls himself, is no longer one of the youngest men in the world; and, aside from that, by no means a Crœsus. If the child stays with him, who knows but what she, too, will fall into bad hands, like her poor mother? And in case she should remain a good girl--you know, my dear Fräulein, that virtue as a sole dowry is not particularly in demand nowadays. I want, therefore, to secure for my daughter--whether she acknowledges me or not--a respectable marriage portion; not merely a dowry--it must be known that Fräulein Schoepf possesses in her own right so and so much property. Now, you see, my dear Fräulein, only such a soft and winning voice as yours can succeed in persuading Father Schoepf to consent to such an arrangement, which is so greatly for the interest of the child. Now, if I should send Schnetz to him, he would, if he had to deal with a man, fire up about his ridiculous manly honor, and the end of the story would be that Schnetz would likewise be shown the door. But you, if you will only consent--and why shouldn't you consent?--may even succeed in the end in inspiring this wild creature, my own flesh and blood, with some human emotion; so that she will feel for her papa, who really is no monster--but stop! the visit in the next room is over. Not a word of this to Irene. Promise me this. May I depend on you?"
He reached her both his hands across the table with such a true-hearted and, at the same time, comically-crushed manner, that she did not hesitate for a moment to close the bargain. In a second his mood seemed to have gone through a complete transformation. He sprang up, bent over her hand, which he eagerly kissed, and began to hum a tune and to light a cigar, talking all the while about the masked ball of the night before. His niece, when she entered again, laughingly asked what magic charm her beautiful friend had been using in her absence, to dispel so completely her dear uncle's melancholy mood.
Julie smiled and answered that people ought not to laugh at the secrets of magic, and the baron acted as though nothing at all had happened. Then the two friends took leave of one another. Julie was anxious to see Jansen again, whom she confidently hoped to find in his studio at this hour. But on the stairs, to which the baron escorted her, she whispered to him:
"Why don't you want to let Irene into the secret? Unless I am very much mistaken, she already knows the first half; you owe it to her to tell her the other half, which truly does you honor."
"Do you think so?" answered the baron. "Irene have a suspicion? Good God, these young girls nowadays! One takes great credit to one's self for the profound innocence and ignorance in which one has brought them up, and they are wiser than we ourselves! Well, then, in Heaven's name! one sour apple more; my teeth are yet on edge from the first one."
He kissed Julie's hand once more and returned, sighing, to his niece.