A protest leapt to my lips. But I did not give it utterance. The thought of the girl I had seen, the Countess Minna, left helpless in the power of that consummate villain von Nauheim, silenced me. I would wait until at least I had time to think out a course of action.

CHAPTER III

"AS YOUR HIGHNESS WILL"

The perplexing difficulty of my position was extreme. The eyes of both men were fixed on me, noting every expression that crossed my face, waiting upon my lightest word, and eager to show their allegiance to me as the new head of the house.

A career of magnificent promise lay invitingly at my very feet, and I had but to utter a word to step into a position of power and influence.

Moreover, every chivalrous instinct of my nature was stirred with a desire to save the beautiful girl I had seen from the clutch of the man threatening her with worse than ruin; while my red-hot desire for revenge on the man himself was prompting me to stay where I was until at least I could expose and punish him.

His sin against me had been the one absolutely unforgivable. He had married my sister; and too late we had discovered that at the time he was already married. The blow and the shame had killed her and broken my mother's heart; and over my sister's coffin I had sworn to have his life for hers. But he had fled, and no efforts of mine had been able to find him up to the hour of my own supposed death. And now here he was delivered into my hands, and actually in the very act of repeating his foul offence. Fate had surely brought us together in this dramatic fashion. I could not disclose my ident.i.ty to him; but I could be the agent to detect this new sin, and could thus myself punish him for the old.

With my pulses throbbing with this fire, was it likely that I could make an instant decision in accordance with the dictates of mere surface conventionality? I held back from the decision, and even then might have persisted in avowing the truth, when the man himself came ruffling into the room. His strong, dark, coa.r.s.e features wore an expression of bullying a.s.sertiveness; his manner was that of the lord of the place toward an interloper; and he spoke to me in the hectoring tone of a master toward an inferior servant. The personal contact with him, the sound of his voice, the insolent look of his heavy eyes, and my old hate of him were like so many knots on a whiplash goading me to fury.

"I heard you had come, but I suppose you know your errand is a fruitless one."

Had I been the most contemptible lickspittle on the meanest and greediest quest, his expression could not have been worse. I saw the other two men exchange a rapid glance.

"What do you deem my errand?" I asked quietly.

"Oh, that's plain enough," he answered, with a sneer. "You've come after what you can get. The Prince probably sent you by these agents of his"--with a contemptuous sweep of the hand toward them--"some wonderful account of the good things in store for you here, and very naturally you came to gather them. But the Prince's death has knocked the bottom out of that barrel," and he laughed very coa.r.s.ely. "There's nothing here for you except an empty t.i.tle, and a beggarly old castle mortgaged from the bottom of the old moat to the tip-top of the flagstaff. That and a mess of very hazardous intrigue is all you can hope for here."

This speech, coa.r.s.e and contemptible as it was under such circ.u.mstances, was not to be compared with the ineffable brutality of the manner which marked its delivery. I was astounded that any man could so behave; but I saw his motive instinctively.

He had heard little of me except as a meek-spirited student, likely to shy at any danger, and his object was to frighten me away.

"And who are you, then?" I asked. "These gentlemen have told me nothing of the position of matters here."

"Then the sooner you know something the better. Have the goodness to leave us, Captain von Krugen."

The latter started, as I thought angrily, at the sharp imperious tone in which he was addressed, and glanced at me in some hesitation.

"Do you hear me, sir?" exclaimed von Nauheim, still more sharply; and then, getting no sign from me, the two men left the room. "That fellow gets more presuming every day. The Prince made far too much of him; but I'll soon have a change. So you don't know the position of things here, eh, Mr. Student? Do you set much store on your life?" And he eyed me very sharply, expecting to see me wince.

I did not disappoint him. I started and, in a tone of some alarm, asked:

"Why? There is no danger of that sort here, is there?"

"Do you know how your late cousin, Gustav, lost his?"

"What do you mean?"

"Ah, I thought the question would surprise you. I'm not going to tell you everything, because these matters are for men of action, and not bookworms. He died in a duel, forced on him for the sole reason that he was the Prince's next heir."

"Oh, but that cannot be possible," I cried, as if incredulous.

"Possible," he echoed, with a laugh. "Can you fight? I mean, do you think you can stand before the finest swordsmen or the picked shots in all Bavaria?"

"I don't see the necessity."

"Perhaps not--just yet," he returned dryly. "Poor Gustav didn't--but the time came none the less. The man who puts on the mantle of the dead Prince upstairs must look to find little in the pockets except challenges."

"But what of you? Who are you? Why do you tell me this?"

"Because I dislike attending funerals," he replied, with a grim laugh.

"Besides, I am a soldier; and it's my business to fight. You have probably heard my name already. I'm the Count von Nauheim, and the late Prince's daughter is my betrothed wife."

"And you mean, I suppose, that all the Prince's wealth will pa.s.s to the daughter?"

"That is the Prince's will. And you weren't in time to get him to alter it, you see," he sneered; but I let the sneer pa.s.s for the moment.

"Then you will be the head of the family in all but the name--the husband of the daughter, the owner of the wealth, and the guardian of its honor?"

"You can put a point with the clearness of a lawyer," he said.

"Have you, then, fought the man who killed the son Gustav?"

As I asked the question I kept my eyes fixed steadily on his, and all his bl.u.s.ter could not hide his discomfiture.

"These are things you don't understand," he said bruskly. "There is much behind--too much to explain to you."

"But if you say that my cousin Gustav was murdered, that you know this to be so, that fighting is your business, and that you are the guardian of the family's honor, why have you not called the murderer to account?"

"I tell you you don't understand these things. We don't manage matters like a parcel of swaggering student duels."

"Apparently not," I answered in a studiously quiet tone. "Students would say in such a case that you did not fight because--you dared not."

"You speak with a strange license, and if you are not careful you will get yourself into trouble!" he cried furiously, trying to frighten me with a bullying stare. "You won't find every one ready to make such allowances for your _gaucherie_ as I am. You will have the goodness to withdraw that suggestion."

"I will do so with pleasure the moment I know you have challenged the man you call a murderer, or have repeated in his presence what you have said about him to me."

His surprise at this unexpected tone of quiet insistence on my part was almost laughable; but he tried to carry it off and bear me down with his boisterous, bullying manner.

"You had better take heed how you presume on my forbearance toward one in your position, or even the fact that you are nominally a member of the family will not prevent me from giving you a pretty severe lesson."

"You mean, I suppose, that, although you dared not challenge the man who killed Gustav, you think you might tackle me with impunity. That is not a very high standard of courage," and I shrugged my shoulders, and curled my lips in contempt, as I added, "If that is all the protection the Gramberg honor can rely upon, G.o.d save the family reputation."

The sneer drove him mad, and the blood rushed to his face, until every one of his coa.r.s.e features glowed with his pa.s.sion.

"With the Prince lying dead in the castle, this is not the time for such a matter to be settled; but I will not suffer such an insult even from you to pa.s.s unpunished. Why should you seek to force a quarrel on me at such a time?"

"You forget the quarrel is of your making," I answered coolly. "The moment you entered this room you insulted me by saying I had come here for what I could get, and sneered that I was too late to induce the Prince to alter the will leaving his property to his daughter. In my view that will is perfectly just and right. Then for some object, I know not what as yet, you tried to frighten me into running away from the place altogether. You have mistaken your man, sir. I have no hankering for the late Prince's wealth; but what you have said of yourself is more than enough to prove that the honor of my family is not in safe keeping when left in your hands. As there is nothing but that honor, I will accept that part of the inheritance."

Rage, hate, threats, and baffled malice were in the look he turned on me at this.