It was a fearful laugh. Oswald started and looked around to see if anybody else had laughed, perhaps some grim demon enjoying his sufferings.

The letter was still in his hand. He felt as if to read it meant to lose Melitta entirely, and to cut the last tie that bound him to her.

For a moment Helen appeared to him like a beautiful witch, who had come to tempt him.... If he should burn the letter without reading it? Might not then all come right? Might not Melitta remain his after all?

And while he was thinking this over, he had mechanically opened the letter and commenced reading it....

He had finished it.... he sat, his head resting in his hand, on the corner of the bench upon which he had sunk down unconsciously. Before him, on the green turf, bright lights and shadows were playing to and fro; in the thick foliage overhead the morning breeze was whispering, and birds were singing in subdued tones.... he saw it all, he heard it all, but he felt nothing, nothing but the one great fact, that if there ever had been a paradise for him on earth, he had been driven from that paradise forever.

CHAPTER XVII.

It was a few hours later. The baroness was sitting in her room, in her accustomed place near the open gla.s.s door. She had an embroidery in her lap; but her hands were idle, and only when steps were heard approaching the door, which opened upon the pa.s.sage, she quickly took up her work and sewed a few st.i.tches, letting it drop again in her lap when the steps had pa.s.sed. This was several times repeated, for there was an active movement going on at the chateau. Everybody was more or less busy with preparations for the evening, and the economical baroness found it very difficult to sit still, doing nothing, when her presence was so necessary in kitchen and pantry. But she had sent a request to Miss Helen to come and see her when she had done with her practising, and she wanted her daughter to find her calm and disposed to enter into a friendly, though serious, conversation.

At least externally calm. For in her heart there was little peace. The trouble about the letter, it is true, seemed to be uncalled for. It had evidently not been carried back to Helen, and that was, for the moment, the main point. She felt at liberty to use all the arrows which she had gathered from the letter, without being afraid of their rebounding upon the archer. Nevertheless, the clever and courageous lady had never in her life so anxiously looked forward to a conversation with any one.

And yet she had had many very serious interviews, as nearly the whole administration of the large estate was resting on her shoulders alone.

She did not think very well of men generally, and valued each one according to the price for which he would probably give up his convictions. For the baroness believed that everybody had his price, a belief shared by everybody who, like herself, served the G.o.d Mammon with his whole heart, his whole soul, and his whole mind.

She would have liked to consider her daughter also under the general rule, of which she herself did not claim to be an exception, but she found it impossible. A secret voice, which she could not silence, told her: Helen will not sell her soul for thirty pieces of silver, nor for so many millions, nor for anything in the world. Another mother would have been delighted with such an idea; she would have respected her daughter as her better self, and worshipped her as her beau ideal. The baroness knew no such enthusiasm. The spirit that throned on her daughter's proud brow, and looked so great, so n.o.ble in her dark eyes--that spirit was to her a strange, unnatural, and hostile spirit.

She had nothing in common with such thoughts. Helen was the child of her mind, but not of her heart. Helen had inherited the gentle disposition, and the honest upright character of her father the very qualities against which the baroness was, in truth, continually struggling. But she had, besides, the powerful intellect of her mother, and was thus enabled to protect the holy things of her heart with the sharp sword of the mind, without yet ever desecrating it by using it in a bad cause and this combination made her so irresistibly attractive to n.o.ble souls, so hateful to low and ign.o.ble souls.

At this moment, however, the baroness took much trouble to show a conciliatory, peaceful, and friendly disposition. The effort made her almost disposed to tears. It may be that she looked upon tears as, after all, probably the best means to touch her n.o.ble daughter's heart, and to win her for her own selfish views.

There came a knock at the door, The baroness s.n.a.t.c.hed up her work.

Upon her: Come in! Helen entered the room. The baroness was rather near-sighted, and did not at once notice that the n.o.ble, proud face of the young girl was deadly pale--not with that painful pallor which cowardice gives to the cheeks, but with that marble paleness which harmonizes very well with eyes full of heroic fire.

"I am sorry, dear child," said the baroness, "to have to interrupt you in your early studies. I sent for you in order to speak to you about a matter of the utmost importance. But sit down! Take that chair in which your father usually sits."

"Thank you," said Helen, and remained standing.

The measured, almost curt tone, in which these two words were uttered, made the baroness look up from her work. She noticed now for the first time the pale cheeks of her daughter, and her own cheeks lost their color.

"I hope you are not unwell," she said, and her voice was less firm than usual. "If you are, we will postpone our conversation till another time. You will need all your strength for to-night."

"I am perfectly well," replied the young girl; "I was myself on the point of asking you to grant me an interview, since I also have to speak to you of matters of importance."

"You to me?" said--the baroness, fixing her large, deep-sunk eyes upon her daughter's pale face. "You to me? What can that be? Speak out!"

"It is this!" said Helen; "I found night before last near the chapel a letter----"

The baroness raised her head, and cast at Helen a look in which consternation, wrath, fear, and defiance were strangely mingled.

"A letter," continued Helen, "which I had written and given to Louisa to be sent to the post-office. It was, of course, sealed when I gave it to Louisa; when I found it, it had been broken open. I can hardly imagine that Louisa, who is so very warmly attached to me, should take sufficient interest in my correspondence to commit such a wrong at the risk of being immediately turned out of the house. I must, therefore, a.s.sure you that there is somebody else in the house who takes the trouble to play the spy upon me. I intended, therefore, to come and ask you what I ought to do?"

The baroness had been steadily sewing at her work while Helen was speaking. Now she looked up and asked:

"For whom was the letter intended?"

"For Mary Burton."

"Did you speak very freely in your letter?"

"As friends write to friends."

"Did the letter contain things which you would not like to be seen by others?"

"Certainly."

"Not even by your parents?"

Helen made no answer.

"Not even by your parents?"

"Yes."

"For instance, that your parents are dead for you, as well as your other relations."

"You read the letter?"

"You see I did."

"Then I have nothing more to say or to ask."

Helen bowed and was about to leave the room.

"Stay!" said the baroness; "if you have nothing more to say, I have some questions to ask, which you will be good enough to answer. As for the letter, you need not give yourself any more trouble about it. When parents permit their children to correspond without surveillance, they expect that their children will be worthy of such a privilege. When they see themselves deceived in this expectation they withdraw the privilege. That is perfectly natural. But it is not at all natural that a child, after having received nothing but affection from her parents, should abandon them at once; it is not natural, when a child has the boldness to conceive such a thought, to write it down, and to communicate her disgrace to others. What can you say in reply?"

"Nothing."

"And if such a child takes all the love she owes her parents, and all the affection she owes her other relatives, and bestows them upon strangers, for instance, upon a so-called friend, whose only merit consists in having been at the same boarding-school, or upon a boy who has been taken into the house from charity, or upon a paid servant of her parents,--yes, miss! a paid servant, with whom the parents, moreover, are very much dissatisfied,--what can you say to that?"

"Nothing."

"And if your parents are still willing to forgive you, if your relatives, whose affection you do not deserve, are disposed not to give you up, if you see that parents and relatives join hands in order to save your imperilled honor,--if they propose to give you in the person of a husband a friend and protector, who will keep you hereafter from committing such follies, to use no harsher name, and if one of your relatives is willing to a.s.sume this difficult task of being your husband, friend, and tutor,--have you nothing to say to that also?"

"Oh yes," replied Helen, who had been standing there, pale and motionless, without moving a muscle, fixing her large dark eyes with an expression of invincible courage, till she had risen to confront her, "Oh yes! I have to reply to that, that I prefer death a thousand times to becoming Felix's wife."

She said this calmly, slowly, weighing, as it were, every syllable.

"And if your parents insist?"

"Then I cannot and shall not obey."

"And if they announce to-night your engagement to Felix to the a.s.sembled guests?"

"Then I shall say to the a.s.sembled guests what I have just said to you."