Ten minutes may have pa.s.sed before the door was again opened and Martha came in. Her uncle was gone, and Ulric lay back in the arm-chair, his head buried in his hands. That did not appear to surprise her much; she cast one glance at him, then went up to the table and began to put together her work. Ulric had raised himself as she approached. He stood up now slowly and went over to her. In general, he paid but little heed to the girl's doings, and would still less trouble to speak to her of what concerned herself. But now he did both these things.

Perhaps a moment had come when even his reserved unbending nature longed for a word, for a token of sympathy, at a time when all fled from him, all avoided him.

"So you and Lawrence have made it up?" he began. "I have not spoken to you about it yet, Martha, I have had so many other things in my head of late. Are you engaged?"

"Yes," was the short and not very encouraging answer.

"And when is the wedding to be?"

"There is time enough for that."

Ulric looked down at the girl, who with quick-coming breath and trembling fingers was busying herself with her work, without even raising her eyes to him. A sort of reproachful feeling rose up in his mind towards her.

"You have done right, Martha," he said, in a low voice. "Karl is a good fellow, and very fond of you, fonder, perhaps, than .... than others might have been. Yet you sent him away again without an answer after our last talk. When did you promise to marry him?"

"Yesterday three weeks."

"Yesterday three weeks! Why, that was the day after the accident. So it was then you promised?"

"Yes, it was then. I could not do it before. It was only on that day I felt as if I ever could be his wife."

"Martha!"

The man's voice swelled half in anger, half in pain. He would have laid his hand on her arm, but she started back involuntarily. He let his hand fall and moved away.

"You too?" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Well, yes, I might have known it."

"Oh, Ulric!" exclaimed the girl in wild despairing accents, "what have you done to yourself, to us all!"

He was still standing opposite her. His hand shook as it rested on the table, but his face had grown stern and hard again.

"Whatever harm I may have done myself, I shall take the consequences of it without troubling any one else. As for you all, why, there is not one of you that will even listen to me. But I tell you now, once and for good," here his voice grew hard and menacing, "I have had enough of your endless hinting and tormenting. I won't bear it any longer.

Believe what you will and whom you will, it shall be just the same to me in future. What I have begun, I shall go through with, in spite of every one; and if there is really to be an end of all confidence, I shall, at least, know how to enforce obedience."

So saying he went out. Martha made no attempt to detain him, and she would certainly have tried in vain. He crashed to the door of the room behind him, making the little house shake in its foundations. Next minute he had left the cottage.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The arrival of the guests up at the chateau had brought some animation to that divided household, but it had hardly drawn the young couple more closely together. Although the visitors' stay was limited to a few days, Arthur continually found pretexts and opportunities for withdrawing from their society, an attention for which his father and brother-in-law were both sincerely grateful.

The Baron was but now returning after a sojourn of several weeks on the Rabenau property, his own from this time forth. Notwithstanding the frightful catastrophe which had occurred on the occasion of his first visit, he had been forced to leave his daughter on the following morning, a nearer duty calling him to his cousin's grave. Even when the last offices were over, there remained much to be set in order, and the heir's presence had been indispensable.

He was now returning in company of his eldest son, whom he had sent for to join him, and, this time also, they made the short detour round by the Berkow estates, all the more readily that the young Baron Conrad had not seen his sister since her marriage.

More was intended by this visit than a mere family meeting, or so it appeared from a conversation which took place in Eugenie's boudoir on the day after their arrival, Arthur being absent as usual. His wife sat on the sofa listening to her father, who was standing before her, and just winding up a long peroration, while Conrad, leaning against a chair at a little distance from them, watched his sister with a look of eager expectation.

Eugenie sat resting her head on her hand so as to shade her face. When her father ceased speaking, she did not alter her position or look up, but replied in a low voice:

"No hints or allusions are needed for me to understand what you mean, papa. You are speaking of a separation."

"Yes, my dear," said the Baron, earnestly, "to a separation, no matter under what pretext, or at what cost. What is obtained by force must be kept by force, the Berkows should have remembered that. Now that I am once more master of my own actions, that I need be their debtor no longer, I will employ every means to free you from those chains which you took upon yourself solely on my account, and which, deny it as you may, are making you wretched in the extreme."

Eugenie did not answer. Her father took her hand and sat down by her.

"The thought is new to you and takes you by surprise? It flashed upon me directly I received the weighty news which brought about such an unexpected change in our circ.u.mstances. At that time it would have been difficult to realise it. The elder Berkow had left nothing undone to secure an alliance with our family. It was out of the question that he should consent to a dissolution of the marriage, for that would have shut him out from those circles to which he hoped to gain access through us; and with such a man as he, capable of anything in his utter unscrupulousness, we could not well proceed to open fight. His death put an end to all the difficulties at a blow, for his son's resistance can be got over. He has played a merely pa.s.sive role throughout the business, and simply lent himself to be his father's tool. He will yield, I hope, to energetic action on our part."

"He will yield," affirmed Eugenie under her breath. "Have no fear on that score."

"So much the better!" replied Windeg. "We shall attain our end the more speedily."

He was, it seemed, desirous of pushing forward to that end without loss of time, and such was indeed the fact. To the poor n.o.bleman, heavily laden with debt, there had been no choice left but to accept Eugenie's sacrifice, and so save his own and his sons' name and position; whatever it may have cost him, he bent to a hard necessity, and the very necessity of the case taught him how to bear it.

But, to the Lord of Rabenau, who had regained complete independence, and with it all his old sense of dignity, who could pay back with ease the sums he had received, this bond of restraint appeared a burning disgrace, and he looked upon his daughter's marriage as an act of injustice committed to her prejudice, and which he must repair at any cost. During his stay at Rabenau this thought had haunted him, and had gradually shaped itself into a plan which was now ripe for execution.

"It will certainly meet both your wishes and ours that this painful affair should be entered into and settled as quickly as possible," he continued. "I was going to propose that you should accompany us to the city under some pretext or other, and, when there, take the necessary steps to accomplish it. You need simply refuse to return to your husband, and insist upon a separation. We will take care that he does not make good his claims by force."

"Yes, by Jove, that we will, Eugenie!" broke in Conrad pa.s.sionately.

"If he should find he has made a bargain to his liking, and refuse to give it up, your brothers will compel him to yield at the point of the sword. He cannot threaten us now with shame and public humiliation as his father did. That was the only thing the Windegs feared, the only argument by which a daughter of their house could ever have been won from them."

His sister stopped him almost impatiently.

"There is no occasion for threats. Con, and none for your anxiety, papa. Both are equally uncalled for. That which you expect to have to fight for and win by force has long been a settled thing between Arthur and myself."

Windeg started up, and Conrad came a step nearer impetuously in his surprise.

Eugenie strove to give firmness to her voice, but she could not succeed; it quivered audibly as she went on:

"Before Herr Berkow's death we had come to an agreement about it, but we wished to avoid the eclat of too early and sudden a rupture, and so we imposed on ourselves the restraint of living for a time under the same roof."

"Before Berkow's death?" interrupted her brother. "Why, that was soon after you were married!"

"So you introduced the subject yourself?" said the Baron with equal animation. "Did you insist upon it?"

They neither of them seemed to understand the pain which was so plainly written on the young wife's face. She called up all her self-command and answered steadily.

"I never alluded to the matter. Arthur voluntarily offered me a separation."

The Baron and his son looked at one another, as though such a piece of intelligence overstepped their powers of comprehension.

"Indeed! I was not prepared for that," said the Baron, at last, slowly.

"He himself! I should not have expected it!"

"No matter," cried Conrad with a sudden burst of tenderness, "no matter, so long as he gives you back to us, Eugenie. We have none of us been able to take any pleasure in the inheritance which has come to us, because we knew that you have been made unhappy for our sakes. My father will not be fairly at ease in the new life until you come back, no more will any of us. We have missed you so in everything."

He threw his arm round his sister, and she hid her face for a few seconds on his shoulder. It was as deadly white and cold in its beauty as it had been when she stood before the altar; yet now she was on the eve of returning to her father's house, from which she had that day been torn away.