"Pardon me, uncle--I know what I am doing."
"That is exactly what you don't know," he muttered.
"Yes, I do," was the pettish reply. "Or do you think I ought to go there and beg him with folded hands to take me back into favor again?" And something like scorn curved her lips.
"It would be the most sensible thing you could do," replied Uncle Henry, rather angrily.
She bent back her head proudly.
"No!" came from her lips, "not if I were still more miserable than I am! I can forgive him, but--fawn upon him like--like a hound--no!"
"God forgive me, but it is nothing but the purest arrogance that animates you," cried the old man. "Who gave you the right to set yourself so high above him? He was a poor man who could not marry without money--is it a crime that he should have asked a question as to this matter? It happens to every princess. You are stern and unloving and unjust. Have you never done anything wrong?"
She had started at his first reproachful words like a frightened child, now she sprang up and as she knelt down before him her eyes looked up at him imploringly.
"Uncle, do you know how I loved him? Do you know how a woman can love? I looked up to him as to the noblest being on earth, so lofty, so great he seemed to me. I have lain at his feet, and at night I folded my hands and thanked God that he had given me this man for my husband. I thought he was the only one who did not look on me only as a rich girl, and he has told me so a hundred times. Uncle, you have been always alone, you don't know how people can love! And then to come down and see in him only a common man, a man who does not disdain to tell a lie--O, I would rather have died!" And she hid her face in her trembling hands. "And there, where I have been so happy, shall I satisfy myself with the coldest duty? I must be his wife and know that it was not love that brought me to his side? I shall hear his tender words and not think, 'He does not mean them?' He will say something to me and I shall torment myself with doubts whether he really means it? Oh, hell itself could not be more dreadful, for I loved him!"
Tears stood in the old man's eyes. He stroked Gertrude's smooth hair in some embarrassment.