“Of young Mr. Dunoisse, and the struggle that is before him. He is courageous.... He means so well.... He is so earnest and sincere and high-minded and generous.... But one cannot forget that he has not been tried, or that fiercer tests of his determination and endurance will come as the years unfold, and——”
“He will—supposing him a man of flesh and blood like other men!” said Bertham—“find his resolution—if it be one?—put, very shortly, very thoroughly to the proof. For—the Berlin papers of last Wednesday deal voluminously with the subject, and the Paris papers of a later date have even condescended to dwell upon it at some length—his grandfather, the Hereditary Prince of Widinitz, who practically has been dead for years, is at last dead enough for burying; and the question of Succession having cropped up, it may occur to the Catholic subjects of the Principality that they would prefer a Catholic Prince—even with a bar-sinister, badly erased, upon his ’scutcheon—to being governed by a Lutheran Regent. And that is all I know at present.”
“It is a curious, almost a romantic story,” she said, with her grave eyes upon the glowing fire, and a long, fine, slender hand propping her cheek, “that provokes one to wonder how it will end?”
“It will end, dear Ada,” smiled Bertham, “in this young fellow’s putting his Quixotic scruples in his pocket, taking the goods the gods have sent him—with the Hereditary diadem, when it is offered on a cushion!—marrying some blonde Princess-cousin, with the requisite number of armorial quarterings; and providing,—in the shortest possible time, the largest possible number of legitimate heirs to the throne. I lay no claim to the prophetic gift; but I do possess some knowledge of my fellow-men. And—if your prejudice against gaming does not preclude a bet, I will wager you a pair of gloves, or half a dozen pairs, against the daguerreotype of you that Mary and I are always begging for and never get;—that M. Dunoisse’s scruples and objections will be overcome in the long-run, and that the whole thing will end as I have prophesied.”
She listened with a little fold between her eyebrows, and her thoughtful eyes upon the speaker’s face.
“I fear you may be right. But I shall be glad if you prove wrong, Bertham. One thinks how bravely he has borne the pinch of poverty, and the dearth of the pleasantnesses and luxuries that mean so much to young men of his age——”
“‘Of his age?’.... You talk as though you were a sere and withered spinster, separated from the world of young men and young women by a veritable gulf of years!” cried Bertham, vexed.
She did not hear. She was looking at the fire, leaning forwards in her low chair with her beautiful head pensively bent, and her slender strong hands clasped about the knee that was a little lifted by the resting of one fine arched foot—as beautiful in its stocking of Quakerish gray and its plain, unbuckled leather slipper as though it had been covered with silk, and shod with embroidered kid or velvet—upon the high steel fender.
“One would like to be near him sometimes unseen—in one of those moments of temptation that will come to him—temptations to be false to his vow, and take the price of dishonor, for the devil will fight hard, Bertham, for that man’s soul! Just to be able to give a pull here, or a push in that direction, according as circumstances seek to mold or sway him, to say ‘Do this!’ or ‘Do not do that!’ at the crucial moment, would be worth while!...”