At Dick's first words to Catherine, the Landgrave, with a sudden ejaculation and frown, had turned and walked precipitately from the room. The Landgravine, seeing Gerard's movement, had instantly hastened out by another door, that her eyes might not be outraged by a scene. It was the duty of all the guests to follow, and so, as if by magic, while the two young men stood gazing at each other, with Catherine looking on as if turned to marble, the three found themselves alone in the assembly rooms. Gerard was the first to perceive this fact. His face suddenly lost its look of wrathful challenge, and took on one of deep sorrow and concern. "Mon Dieu!" he moaned. "We are lost! Oh, Dick, why did you come here? Why didn't you understand?"
"What do you mean? Understand what?" asked Dick, with a sudden fear of having made a terrible false step.
"That it was for your own sake and ours we pretended not to know you," replied Gerard, despairingly. "The Landgrave attributed my sister's repulses to the fact that she loved another. We have tried to conceal who that other was, lest the Landgrave should destroy you; we thought best to keep even our acquaintance with you unknown at court, so lynx-eyed is that evil old lieutenant of police, Rothenstein. But now all is out, and your chance of making your fortune is ruined! Even your life is in peril if you stay in Cassel another hour!"
"Let me understand!" cried Dick. "Repulses, you said?" He turned to Catherine. "Then it is only in the Landgrave's evil hopes, not in fact, that you are his—that you—"
"How can you ask?" said Catherine, with a world of patient reproach in her voice and eyes.
Dick knelt at her feet. "Forgive me!" he said, in a broken voice that could utter no more.
She held out her hand. He pressed it to his lips.
"And what are we to do now?" he asked, rising.
"You must leave Cassel," said Gerard.
"We must all leave Cassel," said Dick.