Part 72 (2/2)
how he takes him around the waist and lifts him up. He will throw him down, here at my feet. There, there----”
The unfortunate woman broke out in hysterics, mixed with a horrible laugh. Between times she raved:
”Don't let the count know! The count will tell the baroness! The baroness will tell her beautiful daughter, and then she wont take the rope-dancer's son! There he comes, his head cut open, and----”
A fearful cry broke from the bosom of the sufferer. She started up, and stared with haggard looks at the baroness. Immediately she sank back once more, fainting anew. Nadeska came in with a couple of Russian maids. She seemed to be anxious to get the baroness out of the way.
”The princess has these attacks quite often,” she said, in her smooth, humble manner, while the servants took up the fainting lady and carried her into her bed-room. ”She must be left alone in such cases; the presence of strangers makes it only worse.”
”I am not going to disturb her, my dear,” said the baroness, coldly; ”especially as I have to leave in an hour. I shall write a few lines to her grace.”
”What does that mean?” said Nadeska. ”Does she also know more than she ought to know?”
The baroness returned to her rooms in a state of indescribable excitement. What was that she had seen and heard? The wild expression in the prince's face, the confused speeches of the princess, the suspicious' manner of the waiting woman, who evidently knew all about the family drama--what was she to think of it? What ought she to do? It was perhaps the first time in her life that the clever, sensible woman was utterly at a loss. But was not the ground giving way under her feet? Was the indestructible pillar of her success not snapping suddenly like a bruised reed? The prince a rope-dancer's son! A family secret anxiously guarded for twenty-odd years, suddenly proclaimed in the streets and on the house-tops! Her son, the legitimate heir to the immense estate, sick unto death! An unknown scion of a former owner, rising unexpectedly from obscurity, a lost will in his right hand, which made him owner of a fortune that the baroness had all her life regarded as her own! And what would Helen say? How her pride would suffer when she learnt that the diamonds of the princely crown were nothing but vile gla.s.s, unfit for the lowest of the low!
A carriage came das.h.i.+ng into the court-yard. It was Helen. The heart of the baroness beat as if the decisive moment was only now approaching. A few anxious moments and the beautiful daughter came, pale and distressed, into the room, and threw herself into her mother's arms with a pa.s.sionate vehemence which contrasted most strangely with her usual reserve and coldness.
”G.o.d be thanked you are back!” said Anna Maria. ”I must go; I wanted to ask you if you will go with me!”
”Can you ask me?” cried Helen. ”I should stay here, and without you?”
”Then you do not feel happy here, Helen?”
”No, no! I do not love the prince! I have never loved him!” And Helen hid her face on her mother's bosom.
The baroness was much surprised. Helen's words, and even more the tone in which she said them, and her whole strange, pa.s.sionate manner, suddenly gave her an utterly new insight into her daughter's character.
She had a dim perception that large portions of her inner life had so far been utterly unknown to her, and that all her cleverness, of which she was so proud, had not enabled her to see clearly in her own daughter's heart.
”Why did you give your promise then?” she asked.
”I cannot tell. I was--I did not know what I was doing. But now I do know it. I cannot marry the prince; he must give me back my word. If you insist upon the marriage I shall die!”
”And if I do not insist?”
It was now Helen's turn to be surprised. She looked at the baroness with wondering eyes.
”As I say, my dear child, I have made certain discoveries this morning which have startled me, to say the least, very much, and which have brought me the conviction that we have proceeded in this whole matter with a want of caution which might possibly have been quite disastrous to us all.”
”I do not understand you, mamma!” said Helen.
”Well, it is hard to understand,” said Anna Maria, plaintively. ”I hardly know where my head is. I am perfectly miserable!”
And the baroness threw herself into a chair as if she were broken-hearted, and commenced weeping bitterly.
Helen had never seen her mother weep. The unusual sight touched her deeply. She knelt down by her, and tried to console her with kind, soothing words. But it was all in vain.
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