"My God, Romberg, do you hear that?" cried Dick, throwing the valet to the ground. "And do you see that?" he added, picking up the whip, of which he now recognized the curiously formed handle, though his last sight of it had been on that New Jersey road where, three years and a half ago, he had volunteered to recover her stolen miniature.
Von Romberg, who had begun to understand the situation in a general way, shook his head sadly, and said, with quiet tenderness, "We must not expect too much of the sex, my friend."
Dick sank down on the log, dropping the whip, and began to weep like a child. The wild suspicion had seized him that Catherine might have favored the prospective marriage to himself either as a cloak for a liaison with the Landgrave or as a refuge on the possible termination of such liaison. The valet, making no attempt to recover the whip, now used his opportunity to rise and dash off through the woods.
Suddenly Dick started up, and faced his kindly, pitying friend.
"I will find out!" he cried. "The thing is too damnable for belief. I'll not hold a woman guilty till I've seen with my own eyes, or heard from her own lips. I will go to her as fast as my horse can carry me!"
"But," said Romberg, in great alarm, grasping him with strong arms around the body, "is she in Cassel?"
"She is in the palace. Don't delay me, Romberg, for God's sake!"
"But they will arrest you. You are guilty of high treason, man. They are doubtless searching for you now. It is madness and suicide to go to the palace. My friend, would you throw yourself into the Landgrave's hands?" For Dick, exerting all his strength, was violently getting the better of Romberg's hindering embrace.
"I would learn the truth!" he cried. "If that lackey lied, I shall either escape again or be content to die. I would rather die and know her pure, than live forever and doubt her honor." And, hurling Romberg away from him, he was free.
"And what if you find the story true?" called Romberg after him, in a voice of sympathetic dismay.