Some of his old youthful respect for her came back momentarily, so that he needed to give himself a slight reminder before he could resume his manner of easy defiance.
"I have come to talk seriously to you," he said, frowning, as he placed a chair not quite opposite her, so that the corner of the table was still between them.
She drew herself slowly erect, and pushed the leather cushion against which her head had been resting lower to support her back.
"I have been expecting you, dear Leo," she said, "ever since that day we met again. You must have been saying to yourself all the time that it was not the same between us as it used to be, yet you have not come for an explanation. It is your own fault that you have had to carry about with you the consciousness of being estranged from your sister. But, all the same, you have managed to go your way laughing and whistling.
That is the first thing I have to reproach you with."
He felt his heart harden under her words. Did she want to impress upon him the superiority of her mind over his own? And as a sign that he was not the man to be easily intimidated, he took his chair, twirled it three times on its castors, then seated himself straddle-legged upon it, and leaned his elbows on the back.
"You will permit me to make myself comfortable, I trust?" he said.
"One"s persuasive arguments are not so likely to be effective if one begins too ceremoniously."
A haughty lowering of her lids showed him that she was not inclined to tolerate his roughness without protest.
"Oh, please," she said, "don"t put any restraint on yourself because of me. Why should you? You have accustomed the others to expect the manners of the bar at Halewitz."
"At Halewitz the manners which I approve shall not be criticised, dear Hannah," he replied; "and, if they seem too coa.r.s.e for you, I advise you to withdraw to our aristocratic dower-house, where you will not be in the least troubled by them."
"Does that mean, Leo, that you will drive me and my stepdaughter from under your roof?"
"It means, Hannah, that I will be master in my own house, and that I have no desire to let my temper be spoilt by the whims of parsons and women. For my good temper is very necessary to me, more so than you are."
She folded her hands. "What has come to you, Leo?" she cried, staring at him.
He laughed in her face. "Come to me? Nothing, except that I am now an ordinary healthy-minded fellow, who intends to do his work in life without being dictated to by any woman, sister, or any one else."
"You are well satisfied with yourself," she asked, "as you are?"
"Perfectly, so long as I am left unmolested."
"You positively are aware of no fault? Nothing that you would like to obliterate from your memory?"
"Ha! ha!" he exclaimed. "Now I know what you are driving at. Well, I am in the mood to let you preach. So fire away."
She cast her shadowed eyes in a heavenward direction.
"Oh, don"t turn up the whites of your eyes over me," he added. "I can a.s.sure you, I and the Almighty are on excellent terms."
His scoffing tone appeared to wound her deeply. She put her hands before her face, and leaned back in her chair, trembling.
His mothers advice occurred to him. He saw now that he ought to have made more allowance for the excitable condition of her nerves, and was vexed with himself for having been so rude.
"Hannah," he entreated, in a voice full of kindness, "be reasonable.
Let us talk freely and openly, straight from the heart, as we used to do in old days. If we are frank with each other, things must be cleared up. A quarrel between you and me is a pure caprice. Come, Hannah, tell me, what is the grudge you bear against me?"
She let her hands fall from her face. Every drop of blood receded from her cheeks and brow. Then, as she raised both arms as if shielding herself from him, she cried, in a voice from which all the pent-up torment of a thousand sleepless nights seemed to break forth--
"Leo, she was your mistress!"
Now he needed his utmost strength to parry the attack. "I don"t understand you, my dear," he said, shrugging his shoulders with affected coolness.
"Are you going to deny it, Leo?" she asked.
He looked hard at her, full of suspicion. Yet, after all, what could she know? A rumour from the gossip round neighbouring coffee-tables may have reached her ears, which had become a fixed idea in her pondering brain, and now seemed to her an actual fact. That must be it. It couldn"t be otherwise. Yet he resolved, at all events, to sound her cautiously.
"Look here, my dear child," he said, "nothing is further from my thoughts than to pose to you as a saint. I am, and have been all my life, a full-blooded piece of goods.... But, I a.s.sure you ... I haven"t the slightest notion to which of my foolish affairs--all are over now--you are referring."
"I am not speaking of "foolish affairs," but of adultery," she answered.
"Indeed! Is it possible?" he inquired, still schooling himself to scorn. "That is almost worthy of the holy mouth of our old pastor Brenckenberg. And that leads me to a conclusion at which I have slowly arrived, that you have had a hand in the lamentations he poured out over me to-day."
"You have only just arrived at that conclusion?" she exclaimed.
"You know I am a little dense," he replied, with a laugh. But a cold sweat had broken out on his forehead.
She gazed at him, seeking to find a pa.s.sport into his soul. "You want to spare her," she said, with a weary smile of contempt. "It is hardly necessary now. I let myself be deceived by her long enough. She knew well how to play, the innocent with those eyes. Through her consummate acting she ruined you all ... the perfidious woman."
She had clasped the arm of the chair with her thin hands, and sat erect as if preparing for a spring.
Leo hung greedily on her lips. "She understands the art of hating," he thought, and his heart beat loud.
And then, without further inquiry on his part, she told him how she had discovered the secret.
It was about two years ago, when Felicitas was already engaged, that she had found her one day in his study rummaging in his writing-table, the key of which was generally in Ulrich"s keeping, and, when she saw that she was caught, she went down on her knees and had besought Johanna not to betray her; it was because she could no longer endure the thought of her fiance sitting at the same writing-table which contained her letters that she had searched for them. Her letters, and to whom? So it had come to light.
"The fool!" Leo burst forth. "She might have known that her letters were burnt long ago."
His sister seemed to have awaited this incautious exclamation. "You confess, then?" she said, pleased.
He hesitated. "Confess! There is nothing to confess! A few scrawls belonging to the time of that boy-and-girl flirtation which went on under your eyes. Beyond that, I never had a line from her."
She looked at him again with her tired smile. "You are stubborn, dear friend," she said. "Your whilom mistress capitulated at once. She did me the doubtful honour of making me her confidante, but the _role_ was not to my taste. The very next moment I showed her the door."
Leo saw at last that his secret, for good or ill, was in his sister"s possession. To deny any more would be sheer madness.
"And instead of using your knowledge to help and to save," he said, grinding his teeth, "you must needs rush and confide it to the bosom of our old private chaplain, and through that crooked channel try to ruin your brother"s honourable name and peace of mind, eh?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "He knew it long ago," she responded.
"How? From whom?"
"From Rhaden himself."
"The hound! the hound! He and I were sworn to secrecy. He has broken his vows to the dead."
"Do you deserve anything else?"