"Here is one of them; the General will be glad to let you have the other, no doubt; I do not think the son will lay claim to it."
Ferdinande read the letter.
She had considered it certain that Antonio alone could have been the betrayer; but this letter was not by Antonio—could not be by him. Then other eyes than the passionate jealous eyes of the Italian had looked into the secret. Her cheeks, still pale, flared with outraged modesty.—"Who wrote the letter?"
"Roller; he has not even disguised his hand to the General."
She gave the letter back to her father quickly, and pressed her forehead as if she wished to remove the traces of emotion. "Oh, the disgrace, the disgrace!" she muttered; "oh, the disgust! the disgust!"
The dismissed inspector had taken up his residence in her family till Ferdinande had noticed that he was audaciously beginning to pay attention to her; she had made use of a pretense of a disagreement, which he had had with her father, first to strain the social relations, then to drop them. And the bold repulsive eyes of the man—"Oh, the disgrace! oh, the disgrace! oh, the disgust!" she muttered continually.
She paced with long strides up and down, then went hurriedly to the writing-desk which stood at one end of the large room, wrote hastily a few lines, and then took the sheet to her father, who had remained standing motionless in the same spot. "Read!"
And he read:
My father wishes to make a sacrifice of his convictions for me, and consents to my union with Lieutenant von Werben. But, for reasons which my pride forbids me to record, I renounce this union once for all, as a moral impossibility, and release Lieutenant von Werben from all responsibility which he may consider he has toward me. This decision, which I have reached with full freedom, is irrevocable; I shall consider any attempt on the part of Lieutenant von Werben to change it as an insult.
Signed, Ferdinande Schmidt.