Count Leuchtenstein drew a deep breath, and stared at him like a man demented. 'I think that you must be mad,' he said at last. 'If not, tell me what you mean.'
'What I say,' the Waldgrave answered stubbornly. 'I forbid the bargain to which I have no doubt that that letter relates.'
'In Heaven's name, what bargain?' the Count cried.
'You think that I do not know,' the Waldgrave replied, with a touch of bitterness; 'it did not require a Solomon to read the riddle. I found my cousin distrait, absent, moody, sad, preoccupied, unlike herself. She had moved heaven and earth, I was told, to save me; in the last resort, had come to you, and you saved me. Yet when she saw me safe, she met me as much in sorrow as in joy. The mere mention of your name clouded her face; and she must see you, and she must write to you, and all in a fever. I say, it does not require a Solomon to read this riddle, Count Leuchtenstein.'
'You think?' said the Count, bluntly. 'I do not yet know what you think.'
'I think that she sold herself to you to win my pardon,' the Waldgrave answered.
For a moment I did not know how Count Leuchtenstein would take it. He stood gazing at the Waldgrave, his hand on a chair, his face purple, his eyes starting. At length, to my relief and the Waldgrave's utter dismay and shame, he sank into the chair and broke into a hoarse shout of laughter--laughter that was not all merriment, but rolled, in its depths something stern and sardonic.
The Waldgrave changed colour, glared and fumed; but the Count was pitiless, and laughed on. At last: 'Thanks, Waldgrave, thanks,' he said. 'I am glad I let you go on to the end. But pardon me if I say that you seem to do the Lady Rotha something less than justice, and yourself something more.'
'How?' the Waldgrave stammered. He was quite out of countenance.
'By flattering yourself that she could rate you so highly,' Count Leuchtenstein retorted, 'or fall herself so low. Nay, do not threaten me,' he continued with grim severity. 'It was not I who brought her name into question. I never dreamed of, never heard of, never conceived such a bargain as you have described; nor, I may add, ever thought of the Lady Rotha except with reverence and chivalrous regard. Have I said enough?' he continued, rising, and speaking with growing indignation, with eyes that seemed to search the culprit; 'or must I say too, Waldgrave, that I do not traffic in men's lives, nor buy women's favours, nor sell pardons? That such power as God and my master have given me I use to their honour and not for my own pleasure? And, finally, that this, of which you accuse me, I would not do, though to do it were to prolong my race through a dozen centuries? For shame, boy, for shame!' he continued more calmly. 'If my mind has gone the way you trace it, I call it back to-day. I have done with love; I am too old for aught but duty, if love can lead even a young man's mind so far astray.'