"I had made my preparations so skilfully that I escaped all the prince's researches, though he moved heaven and earth to find the fugitives. He would have started in pursuit himself, no doubt, only his alarm at what had happened, brought on a violent attack of his old gout. And well had he cause to be alarmed."

The prince suddenly arose from his chair, and walked once or twice across the room, stopping again before the portrait of his father, at which he looked with a darkened countenance. He then resumed his seat, and proceeded:

"I had already got as far as Munich, when the old servant whom you have seen overtook us. He was the bearer of a letter in cipher, in which there was important information from various members of my family, and a few lines in my father's own hand, upon reading which I had laughed aloud. They ran: 'I adjure you by all that you hold sacred, to part from her at once if you do not wish to load yourself with a horrible crime: Constance von Zehren is your sister.'"

"Great heavens!" I cried.

"As I said," continued the prince, "I laughed; laughed madly at the thought, and then felt a shudder run over my whole body and seem to settle in my heart.

"The letter referred me to the old servant for further particulars, until the prince was in a condition to write me more fully. He, who from his youth had been attached to the prince's person, and had accompanied him upon all his travels, was better able than any other to explain the matter. He had been with the prince in Paris at the time when Herr von Zehren arrived there in his wild flight from Spain with his beloved. The two gentlemen had been very intimate friends, and at our court the two handsome stately young men went by the names of Orestes and Pylades. But it seems that this friendship was much shaken when the prince married my mother, whom Herr von Zehren had also courted. Whether the prince could never forgive his friend this rivalry, or whether Herr von Zehren, who was a man of fierce and uncontrolled pa.s.sions, gave the prince afterwards any cause of offence--I do not know: but it appears that the prince was not only fascinated by the charms of the young Spanish lady, who tormented by her conscience, and perhaps as weak-minded as she was beautiful, bestowed upon her lover's friend a confidence which he abused, and perhaps also a love which he only did not refuse.

"Was the prince the father of the child which pa.s.sed for Herr von Zehren's? It could not be certainly known; and the doubts which the prince himself had on this point might never have been removed; for when a few years later the unfortunate woman came to Rossow, where the prince was then staying, and threw herself, with dishevelled hair at his feet, crying that he was the father of her child, imploring him to protect her and her child from their pursuer, and to tell her the way to Spain--at this time she was a mere maniac. But there were other confirmatory circ.u.mstances. An old female servant--the same horrible old woman who was with Constance later, and whom you probably knew--declared that her young mistress had told her the secret from the first. She may have lied; but nature rarely deceives, and the prince found in the child, which he contrived to see privately, a likeness of which perhaps a trace may still be discovered in that picture yonder."

The prince pointed with trembling hand to the portrait of his father; but he only told me what I had discovered for myself while he was telling me this frightful story. He must have read in my looks what I did not venture to express, for he continued, fixing his beautiful melancholy eyes upon me:

"You see it too, do you not? We easily discover the truth when it is pointed out to us; and I perceived it while the old woman was making her terrible confession, and I blessed a merciful heaven that had saved me from an awful crime. But how to free myself from this wretched entanglement? Perhaps I should have disobeyed the prince's orders and told Constance the whole truth; but I cannot too often repeat that I was very young, and not in a condition to judge what might be all the consequences of my hasty resolution. So I thought I should be managing with great adroitness if I could continue to inspire Constance with hate of me, or at least aversion, for the love that I now regarded with horror. The means of attaining this end she had herself supplied me in her arts of keeping me at a distance, in which I now was disposed to see more than mere calculation. I returned her caprice with caprice, her obstinacy with obstinacy, her coldness with coldness; I played my game so well that I could not fail to win. What she suffered, I never heard her say; but I saw it in her face which grew paler day by day, in her eyes in which there often seemed to be the fire of madness.

"At last came the catastrophe. After a violent scene, which I had provoked, in Naples, whither we had come on our travels--I do not now know why or how--I parted from her, in the firm conviction that she would employ the ample means I had left at her disposal, either in returning, or in the flight with which she had often threatened me. But this would have been insufficient for the revenge which she conceived such treachery as mine deserved. She, whom I had held to be the proudest of the proud, who refused to belong to the Prince of Prora unless he made her his wife--she cast herself into the arms of the first comer, a wretched c.o.xcomb whose acquaintance we had made by the way. I shudder when I think what this first step must have cost the unhappy girl; but I shudder still more when I think how little all subsequent steps have cost her."

He sighed deeply, and his sigh awakened a terrible echo in my own breast. I sprang up and took a stride towards the door.

"Where are you going?" asked the prince.

I grasped my temples with both hands; my brain seemed on fire.

"I do not know," I said, "I only know that this duel must not take place."

The prince smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"It is a queer business, altogether," he said.

"And is there no remedy--none?" I cried.

"Not that I know of," the prince answered with the same kindly melancholy smile. "The young man would have to declare that he was out of his senses. And that would not help; for any one who declares his own insanity is not insane--ah, there you are, dear Edmund!"

I had not seen that Count Schlachtensee had entered the room behind me.

The prince advanced to meet him, and took his hand: the count said "I come----" and then checked himself and fixed a surprised look on me whom he now observed for the first time.

"I must now take leave of you," said the prince. "I thank you heartily for your visit--heartily," and he grasped my hand firmly in his own which was small and delicate as a woman's. "Farewell!"

I was at the door when he followed me and gave me his hand again.

"Farewell," he said once more, and added in a low tone, "perhaps for ever!"

I stood in the street, with the snow driving into my face. I turned back to look at the palace, and saw upon the lowered curtain the shadows of two men who were pacing up and down the room. They were the prince and his cousin; and I knew what they were conversing about, and that there was not a moment to be lost. I called a hackney-coach that was pa.s.sing, and ordered the coachman to drive as quickly as possible to the lodging of the actor Von Sommer, who went by the name of Lenz.

CHAPTER XXIV.

I have often in later days tried to recall the state of mind in which I was on this miserable night: but have never been able perfectly to do so. So I am conscious than any account I can now give of it must be a most imperfect one. I can only say that I was overpowered by an emotion which was probably the intensest form of pity--a feeling always peculiarly strong with me, and which on far lighter occasions is aroused in my breast to an extent which must appear absurd and childish to shrewder and more coldblooded persons. Perhaps the extraordinary statements which I had just heard might have affected me differently, had the persons concerned been entire strangers to me; but this they were not. Constance had played an important and fateful part already in my life; the young prince had come into contact with me at eventful moments; and I had loved Constance, and the prince had inspired me with interest and sympathy such as an older brother might feel for a younger. What had happened appeared to me awful, and what was to happen, terrible. True I had again a dim consciousness that I could do nothing to hinder the march of fate, that I had started upon an idle, an insane expedition; but what was this to the voice that cried within: It must not be! it must not be!

In this intense excitement which now seems to me to have bordered on insanity, I reached the lodgings of the actor. He was greatly surprised at seeing me, but received me with politeness, and conducted me from the room in which I found him with one of his companions at the theatre, into another apartment to hear what I had to say.

But what had I to say? Good heavens, there was so much to be said, or else so little! The _much_ I could not tell him, for I felt that I had no right to disclose the secret, and that if I had revealed it, he would have considered it a wretched device suggested by the prince's cowardice. And the _little_--that the duel must not take place--what good could that do? What could the man do but shrug his shoulders and look sharply into my eyes to see if I was quite in my senses? He was a young man with a face wasted by a life of dissipation, and yet handsome, and with very expressive large dark eyes, and I felt how my cheeks flushed under their steady gaze. Under their gaze, and at the words which almost forced their way through my lips, the words that if he desired vengeance on Constance's lover--one who had been her lover at a time when he claimed her as his own--he should select the right man--he should come to me rather than the prince. And though I bit my lips to restrain myself from saying this, the words forced their way through my teeth in a hoa.r.s.e hissing tone, which the other probably took for the accents of rage that could scarcely be controlled.

"That is your business then," he said, rising from his chair. "A favored or a betrayed lover, I do not know which. Very well: I shall meet you, sir, you may rely upon it; and every one who has or pretends to have any claim upon the lady's favor. But each in his turn, sir, each in his turn; you have come some hours too late; and you will perceive that I can settle with my antagonists only in the order in which they present themselves. Is there any other way in which I can serve you?"

He made me a polite bow, as he finished, and added: "Through this door"--indicating by a gesture--"you can pa.s.s at once into the hall."

I had also arisen and stood facing him. I could have stricken this slender delicate man, feeble and nerveless from a life of dissipation, to the earth with a single blow; the puny arm which he extended towards the door with a theatrical gesture as I hesitated, I could have crushed in my hand. It was the only time in my life that I was ever tempted to abuse my physical strength; but I withstood the temptation, and forced myself out of the room and out of the house.

The coach was still standing at the door.

"Where am I to drive now?" asked the man.

I directed him to Constance's lodging, and we drove off. It was bitter cold, and the gla.s.s of the coach-window was encrusted with sleet, the crystals of which sparkled and glittered in the light of the street-lamps as we pa.s.sed them. I noticed it, and mechanically counted the seconds that elapsed until we pa.s.sed another lamp, when I again observed the sparkling and glittering, and recalled to mind certain optical laws which seemed to bear upon this phenomenon, as if I had nothing else in the world to do on my way to see Constance von Zehren, Prince Prora's sister.

The coach stopped.

Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour--it was now probably eleven o'clock--the door was opened at once; the hall and stairway were lighted up: they seemed in this house to be accustomed to late arrivals and departures. As I rang at the door upon which stood, in great golden letters, "Ada Bellini, Actress at the Theatre Royal," I heard the rustling of a dress inside, and the next moment Constance stood before me. She had doubtless expected a different visitor, and started back with a cry. I closed the door, caught her by the hand as, with a face white with terror, she endeavored to escape, and said:

"I must speak with you, Constance."

"You want to murder me!" she said.

"No; but I intend to prevent another being murdered on your account.

Come!"

I drew her, half by force, into the brightly lighted, almost gorgeous parlor which she had just left, leaving the door open after her, and led her to a chair in which she took her seat, her eyes uneasily watching all my movements.

"Have no fear," I said. "Do not be in the least alarmed. Once in long-past days you called me your faithful George, who was to kill all the dragons lurking in your path. Hitherto I have had no opportunity; or did not use it if I had. The hour is now come; but I cannot do it alone: you must help me and will help me."

"Are you a.s.sured of that?" she asked.

Her face had suddenly a.s.sumed another expression; the terror which had been previously imprinted upon it, had vanished and made way for a look of dark hatred, the same look that it wore that night when she adjured me to avenge her on the prince.

I do not know how I found the words, but I said what I had come to say.

"What does the prince pay you for it?"

This question was her reply.

It was the same reply that I had expected from the actor, and it was not to hear this that I had held my tongue before him. Here it was different: it was the sister to whom I was speaking: she _must_ believe me: I must find the place in her heart: nature could not so belie herself.

And whether it was that I succeeded in touching the mysterious bond that unites two beings whose veins flow with the same blood; whether it was that Constance's clear intelligence could not reject the proof that I offered, I saw that the dark look pa.s.sed away from her face, and gave way to a confusion, an astonishment, that pa.s.sed into actual horror.

"It was _that_, then!" she murmured; "_that_ was the reason! And that then was the reason that I hated my father--no, he was not my father--and that he hated me! That--but then _she_ must have known it!