"I shall wait." Then, with a sudden softening, for he loved the girl
after his fashion: "I am growing old, my child. If I should die, what
would become of you? I have no son; your Uncle Franz, who is but a
year or two younger than I am, would reign, and he would not tolerate
your madcap ways. You must marry at once. I love you in spite of your
wilfulness. But you have shown yourself incapable of loving.
Doppelkinn is wealthy. You shall marry him."
"I will run away, uncle,"--decidedly.
"I have notified the frontiers,"--tranquilly. "From now on you will be
watched. It is the inevitable, my child, and even I have to bow to
that."
She touched the paper in her bosom, but paused.
"Moreover, I have decided," went on the duke, "to send the Honorable
Betty Moore back to England."
"Betty?"
"Yes. She is a charming young person, but she is altogether too
sympathetic. She abets you in all you do. Her English independence
does not conform with my ideas. After the wedding I shall notify her
father."
"Everything, everything! My friends, my liberty, the right God gives
to every woman--to love whom she will! And you, my uncle, rob me of
these things! What if I should tell you that marriage with me is now
impossible?"--her lips growing thin.
"I should not be very much surprised."
"Please look at this, then, and you will understand why I can not marry
Doppelkinn." She thrust the bogus certificate into his hands.
The duke read it carefully, not a muscle in his face disturbed.
Finally he looked up with a terrifying smile.
"Poor, foolish child! What a terrible thing this might have turned out
to be!"
"What do you mean?"
"Mean? Do you suppose anything like this could take place without my
hearing of it? And such a dishonest unscrupulous rascal! Some day I
shall thank the American consul personally for his part in the affair.
I was waiting to see when you would produce this. You virtually placed
your honor and reputation, which I know to be above reproach, into the
keeping of a man who would sell his soul for a thousand crowns."
The girl felt her knees give way, and she sat down. Tears slowly
welled up in her eyes and overflowed, blurring everything.
The duke got up and went over to his desk, rummaging among the papers.
He returned to the girl with a letter.
"Read that, and learn the treachery of the man you trusted."
The letter was written by Steinbock. In it he disclosed all. It was a
venomous, inciting letter. The girl crushed it in her hand.