"My reason overshadows it. You do not suppose that I take any especial
pleasure in forcing you? But you leave me no other method."
"I am a young girl, and he is an old man."
"That is immaterial. Besides, the fact has gone abroad. It is now
irrevocable."
"I promise to go out and ask the first man I see to marry me!" she
declared.
"Pray Heaven, it may be Doppelkinn!" said the duke drolly.
"Oh, do not doubt that I have the courage and the recklessness. I
would not care if he were young, but the prince is old enough to be my
father."
"You are not obliged to call him husband." The duke possessed a
sparkle to-night which was unusual in him. Perhaps he had won some of
the state moneys which he had paid out to his ministers' that day.
"Let us not waste any time," he added.
"I shall not waste any,"--ominously.
"Order your gown from Vienna, or Paris, or from wherever you will.
Don't haggle over the price; let it be a good one; I'm willing to go
deep for it."
"You loved my aunt once,"--a broken note in her voice.
"I love her still,"--not unkindly; "but I must have peace in the house.
Observe what you have so far accomplished in the matter of creating
turmoil." The duke took up a paper.
"My sins?"--contemptuously.
"Let us call them your transgressions. Listen. You have ridden a
horse as a man rides it; you have ridden bicycles in public streets;
you have stolen away to a masked ball; you ran away from school in
Paris and visited Heaven knows whom; you have bribed sentries to let
you in when you were out late; you have thrust aside the laws as if
they meant nothing; you have trifled with the state papers and caused
the body politic to break up a meeting as a consequence of the
laughter."
The girl, as she recollected this day to which he referred, laughed
long and joyously. He waited patiently till she had done, and I am not
sure that his mouth did not twist under his beard. "Foreign education
is the cause of all this," he said finally. "Those cursed French and
English schools have ruined you. And I was fool enough to send you to
them. This is the end."
"Or the beginning,"--rebelliously.
"Doppelkinn is mild and kind."
"Mild and kind! One would think that you were marrying me to a horse!
Well, I shall not enter the cathedral."
"How will you avoid it?"--calmly.
"I shall find a way; wait and see." She was determined.