"Try it!"
"The attempt and success are one. Do you wish to become the mistress of Lieutenant von Werben?"
"What has that question to do with my love?"
"Then I will put it in another form: Have you the courage to wish to be like those wretched foolish creatures who give themselves up to a man, out of wedlock or in wedlock—for wedlock does not change matters—for any other prize than the love which they take in exchange for their love? Von Werben has nothing to give in exchange; von Werben does not love you."
Ferdinande laughed with scorn.—"And he came to you, knowing that you hated him and his whole family with a blind hatred, in order to tell you this?"
"He could not come; his father had to do the difficult errand for him, for which he had not the courage, for which his father had to enforce the permission of his son."
"That is——"
"It is not a lie! By my oath! And still more: He did not even go of his own will to his father; he would not have done it today, he would perchance never have done it, if his father had been content with asking him whether it was true, what the sparrows chatter from the roof and the blackmailers wrote to the unsuspecting father anonymously, that Lieutenant von Werben has a sweetheart beyond the garden-wall or—how do I know!"
"Show me the letters!"