"Oh, no, you neither could nor would," said Ernestine with cutting contempt. "You would not afford the world the spectacle of so bold a champion of our freedom ending her days in penal confinement."
"You are right,--it would be folly to commit a crime when easier means would gain the same end. I will deal you a death-blow, and your life shall bleed slowly away, and none of our excellent laws can touch me. I will wrest from you the man whom you love. I will,--and, trust me, what I will I can."
Ernestine said not a word. She was benumbed, as if by a blow. She did not see the countess leave the room,--she saw only, by the glare of the burning torch that the wretched woman had hurled into her breast, her own heart.
Was she, then, in love? And with whom?
[CHAPTER VIII.]
"WHEN WOMEN HOLD THE REINS."
Breathless with rage, the Worronska descended the stairs and left the house. A groom was driving a splendid carriage-and-four up and down before the house. She beckoned to him; he drove up and sprang down to assist his mistress, who, mounted upon the box, took the reins and whip, and, relieved by being able to vent her wrath upon some living thing, cut viciously at her impatient horses. The groom sprang nimbly into his place behind her, and away like the wind went the modern Victory in her triumphal chariot, as if rushing to breathe vengeance and hate into hosts fighting upon the battle-plain.
"Is it possible that that hectic, ill-tempered girl can rival me with such a man as Möllner?" she said to herself. "But shame on me!" she instantly added, "let me not, in my anger, prove a slanderer! She is beautiful, and a thousand times wiser than I,--but, curse her! I could strangle her with this hand!"
The passionate woman felt hot tears coursing down her cheeks. She struggled for composure; her chest heaved with the effort to breathe freely. She encouraged her horses to still greater speed, so that her carriage fairly rocked from side to side. She was glorious to behold in her wrath, as she both urged and restrained the spirited animals,--fit emblems of her own wild passions.
"But I will show her who she is and who I am," she murmured. "That I should be insulted by this German prude!" And she gave the near horse a cut with her whip, making him rear wildly and then drag on the others in his headlong career. In a few minutes the village was passed through, and the village curs desisted from barking at the horses' heels, and retired growling to their homes. The steep descent of the hill upon which the village was built was close at hand.