"Why--who has told you so? You have your choice among any of the handsome and wealthy men who can offer you an equivalent for all that you resign. Prince von Metten-Barnheim, for instance! He is a visionary, it is true--"
"Prosaic Prince Emil a visionary!" said the countess, laughing bitterly.
"Well, I think that a man who surrounds himself so much with plebeian society, scholars and authors, might properly be termed a visionary! When his father dies, the luckless country will be ruled by loud-voiced professors. What does that matter! He'll suit you all the better, as you are half a scholar yourself. True, it might be said that the Barnheim family is of inferior rank to ours--the Prankenbergs are an older race and from the days of Charlemagne have not made a single mesalliance, while the Barnheim genealogical tree shows several gaps--which explains their liberal tendencies. Such things always betray themselves. Yet on the other hand, they are reigning dukes, and we a decaying race--so it is tolerably equal. You are interested in him--so decide at last and marry him, then you will be a happy woman and the curse of the will can have no power."
"Indeed?" cried the countess, trembling with excitement. "But suppose that I loved another, a poor man, whom I could not wed unless I possessed some property of my own, however small, and the will made me a beggar the moment I gave him my hand--what then? Should I not have a right to hate the jealous despot and the man who sacrificed me to his selfish interests--even though he was my own father?" A glance of the keenest reproach fell upon the prince.
He was startled by this outburst of passion, hitherto unknown in his experience of this apathetic woman. He could make no use of her present mood. Biting off a leaf from his cigar, he blew it into the air with a graceful movement of the lips. Some change had taken place in Madeleine, that was evident! If, after all, she should commit some folly--make a love-match? But with whom? Again the scene he had witnessed that evening rose before his mind! She had let her head rest on the shoulder of a common peasant--that could not be denied, he had seen it with his own eyes. Did such a delusion really exist? A woman of her temperament was incomprehensible--she would be quite capable, in a moment of enthusiasm, of throwing her whole splendid fortune away and giving society an unparalleled spectacle. Who could tell what ideas such a "lunatic" might take into her head. And yet--who could prevent it? No one had any power over her--least of all he himself, who could not even threaten her with disinheritance, since it was long since he had possessed anything he could call his own. An old gambler, perpetually struggling with debt, who had come that day, that very day, to--nay, he was reluctant to confess it to himself. And he had already irritated his daughter, his last refuge, the only support which still kept his head above water, more than was wise or prudent--he dared not venture farther.
He had the suppressed brutality of all violent natures which cannot have their own way, are not masters of their passions and their circumstances, and hence are constantly placed in the false position of being compelled to ask the aid of others!
After having busied himself a sufficiently long time with his cigar, he said in a soothing and--for so imperious a man--repulsively submissive tone: "Well, ma fille, there is an expedient for that case also. If you loved a man who was too poor to maintain an establishment suitable for you--you might do the one thing without forfeiting the other--Wildenau's will mentions only a change of name: you might marry secretly--keep his name and with it his property."
"Papa!" exclaimed the countess--a burning blush crimsoned her cheeks, but her eyes were fixed with intense anxiety upon the speaker--"I could not expect that from a husband whom I esteemed and loved."
"Why not? If he could offer you no maintenance, he could not ask you to sacrifice yours! Surely it would be enough if you gave him yourself."
"If he would accept me under such conditions,"' she answered, thoughtfully.