"It is not that alone, though that is bad enough," sobbed Anna Maria; "but we also are threatened with a similar exposure," and under the pressure of a moment, yielding to the natural impulse of all helpless sufferers to cling to others at any hazard, she told Helen in a few words all about Oswald's claims on her fortune, and that if these claims should be legally established she and her daughter alike would be beggars.
Helen had listened to her in breathless excitement. Her color came and went continually, her eyes were fixed on her mother, her hand held her mother's hands with a firm grasp.
"Beggars! you say? Better so and a clear conscience than in abundance and fainting with anxiety! Come, mamma, I am not afraid of poverty! You have often told me how poor you were before you were married to papa.
Why should I be better off? I do not see that being rich has made you happy, or papa; he told me so in his last hour. I have seen it with my own eyes how much happier people are who have nothing but their affection, who rely on nothing but their own strength. I have strength; I can and will work for you, if it must be so. But now let us go away from here. You are sick and weary; your hand is icy cold, and your forehead is burning; stay, do not get up. I will pack your things; you need not trouble yourself; I shall be down in five minutes."
"No," said the baroness, "let me do that. Mary can help me. You can do something else for me. We cannot well leave without writing a few words of farewell to the princess, as she is too unwell to see us, and we are in such a hurry. Sit down and write a few lines, kindly and politely, but neither more nor less than what is indispensable."
"I will do so," said Helen, sitting down at her escritoire, while her mother went into the adjoining room.
Helen had just taken up her pen when she heard a noise behind her which made her look up. In the middle of the room stood Oswald, deadly pale, his large eyes, brilliant with fever, fixed upon her. Helen was so terrified that she could not speak nor move. She thought for a moment it was an apparition.
Oswald seemed to guess so.
"It is really I!" he said. "Pardon me for my abrupt appearance. I asked for the baroness; they showed me in here."
"I will call my mother," said Helen, rising.
"I pray, stay," said Oswald; "I pray you! I have only two words to say.
I would rather say them to you than to the baroness."
There was something so solemn in Oswald's manner and tone of voice that Helen had not the heart to refuse his request.
"Will you sit down?" she said, sinking herself into a chair and pointing at another chair near her.
Oswald sat down.
"I do not know, Miss Helen, if your mother has spoken to you of certain intrigues by which she has been troubled of late, and which originate mainly with a certain Mr. Timm?"
"I have just this morning heard of it for the first time."
"That was my own fate. And this is what brings me here. I cannot bear the thought; I believe I could not die quietly if I thought that you believed me capable of employing such vile means against you. Will you please tell the baroness so?"
"I will."
"And tell her also, I pray, and believe yourself, how bitterly I regret that you have been troubled with such a matter."
"It was nothing but an invention of Mr. Timm!"
"No, Miss Helen!" said Oswald, with a sorrowful smile. "I presume it is more than that. I am only too much afraid it is the real truth, and that is the second reason why you see me here."
"You surely do not imagine we would refuse to acknowledge legitimate claims against us?"
"That case will never arise. I have no desire to make such claims. I should never have done so, under any circumstances; and least of all now."
He cast a look around him. The splendor of the apartment reminded him forcibly in whose house he was.
"Least of all now!" he repeated. "Here are the papers which prove this most unfortunate of all stories. I desire the baroness to take them and to keep them, so as to be secure at all times against that man's machinations."
He placed the documents and papers which Timm had brought him a few hours before upon Helen's escritoire, and bowed to take leave.
"One moment, sir!" said Helen, rising likewise. "Do you imagine my mother will accept such a gift? Who has given you the right to think so little of us?"
"I think, Miss Helen, your pride misleads you in this instance. There is evidently no one whom this whole matter concerns except myself, and I desire to be relieved of an unpleasant suspicion. It was hardly necessary to remind me that a few hundred thousand dollars, more or less, mattered little to the mother of the owner of Grenwitz, and to the betrothed of Prince Waldenberg."
"Circumstances ought not to affect our duties," replied the young girl, rising to her full height and curving her lips contemptuously; "and you need not believe that I am so indifferent to your claims because, I am proud of our wealth and our rank. We are at this very moment on the point of leaving for Grenwitz, where my brother is lying dangerously ill; and there, on my escritoire, lies the beginning of a letter in which the princess will be told that I shall never be her son's wife."
Helen's dark eyes were shining brightly; the hot blood gave greater depth to the red on her cheeks. Oswald had never seen her so beautiful, so marvellously beautiful. And this at the moment when he had already in his heart bid farewell to life, which had no longer any charms for him. Just now this glorious beauty, this highest beau-ideal of his wildest dreams, must present herself to him, not at an inapproachable distance, but within reach attainable to his bold desires--to his firm will, perhaps! Why did she tell him that she would never marry the prince? And why did she tell it in such a defiant tone, if she did not mean to humble him--the weak, hesitating, fickle man--by the strength of her will, by the promptness with which she abandoned all this splendor, merely in order to remain true to herself?
These thoughts passed swiftly through Oswald's mind, which worked all the faster as he had been so long sleepless and feverish. He knew that she would never have told him all this if she had not loved him at some time or other; if she did not perhaps still love him; and yet he knew with absolute certainty that they were separated from each other irretrievably by all that had happened. There was therefore no bitterness, but deep sadness in his voice, as he fixed his eyes immoveably upon the heavenly beauty before him and said, slowly:
"Let us not sadden one another still more by violent, bitter words! Who knows whether we shall ever speak to each other again? I feel like a dying man, and what I am going to say I do not say for myself, but from an earnest desire to state the truth. Helen, I have loved you from the hour when I saw you first in the park at Grenwitz! I have never forgotten that moment. I know that you also would have loved me if I had but been true to myself; you might have become my own. But when I forsook myself you also forsook me, and now there is an abyss between us over which there is no bridge. And what seemed to be about to bring us together--the discovery of this morning--only parts us forever. I feel it clearly. You will never be disposed to accept a gift, as you call it; and I would rather burn my right hand than stretch it out after the inheritance of a man who made my mother the most wretched of women. There is no peace possible between us, even if everything else were as it ought to be. And now, Helen, before we part--probably forever--one more request; give me your hand across that gulf which parts us, as a token that I am forgiven!"
Helen laid her hand in Oswald's.
Thus they stood and looked deep into each other's eyes; and as they so looked they saw all the golden summer mornings in the past at Grenwitz under the whispering trees, and all the purple-glowing evenings in the green beech woods near the sea-shore--and then they saw nothing more, for a close veil of tears hid the enchanting images.
"Farewell, Helen!"
"Farewell, Oswald!"
"Forever!"
"Forever!"
Oswald did not take the beloved one in his arms; a feeling of holy reverence kept him back. He felt that the time for repentance which was granted to him was too short, and swearing new vows which he felt no strength to keep was not making amends for so many broken ones.
He let the hand go which he had held in his own, and--the next moment Helen was alone.
She was still standing so, her eyes fixed on the door through which Oswald had disappeared, when the baroness came back to the room.
"It is high time, Helen," she said; "the carriage is waiting. Are you ready?"
"Yes."
"What papers are those on the escritoire?"
"Did he not take them again?"
"Who?"
"Oswald."
"Has he been here? What did he want?"
"He came to say good-by. Take those papers, mother. He brought them to you."
"Helen, you look pale; and you have been crying! What does that mean?