"But you did let it go on—and I—consented. Do not let me forget that," she exclaimed. "I will go home, Albert."
"Ha, Elise! I wish I could feel more confidence in your teachers when you get there."
"I need no one to tell me what my duty is just here," she answered.
"Have you ever loved me, child? Child! I am talking to a rock. You do not yield to this?" He waved the letter aloft, and as if he would dash it from him. Elise looked at him, and did not speak. "Sister Benigna will of course feel called upon to bless the Lord," said he. "But Wenck shall find a way out of this difficulty. Then we will have done with them both, my own."
"Am I to have no voice in this matter?" she asked. "What if I say—"
Spener grasped her hand so suddenly that, as if in her surprise she had forgotten what she was about to say, Elise added, "Sister Benigna is my best friend. She knows nothing about the lot."
"Does not?"
"I told you, Albert, that it was to be so. And—you do not mean to threaten Mr. Wenck?"
"I mean to have him find a way out of this difficulty. He ought to have said to your father that this lot business belongs to a period gone by. He did hint at it. I supposed, of course, that he would see the thing came out right, since he let it go on."
"Did you then believe it was only a play or a trick?" exclaimed Elise indignantly.