"I know it. But is she not something more? No subterfuges! I require the plain, unvarnished truth. Is your intimacy with her such as your betrothed would approve? Yes or no."
Raoul was silent. He was no liar, nor could he feign while those eyes were fixed upon him as if to search his very soul and wring the truth from him however he might try to conceal it.
"It is true, then," said Steinrück, hoarsely. "I could not and would not believe it."
"Grandfather----"
"Hush! I need no further reply; your silence has spoken. Can it be? A girl like Hertha sacrificed, and to whom? Have you lost both sight and sense? The thing is as incomprehensible as it is disgraceful."
Raoul stood biting his lip and chafing at reproaches uttered in such a tone. It irritated him beyond endurance, and his air when he spoke was defiant rather than ashamed. "You load me with reproaches, grandfather, but Hertha, with her insulting coldness, her frigid reserve, is most to blame for our estrangement. She never loved me; she is incapable of loving."
"You are greatly mistaken there," the general said, bitterly. "You, to be sure, failed to win her love, but another knew how to succeed. To him she is neither proud nor cold; to him she willingly sacrifices her rank, and he dares to offer her a name not without stain,--Michael Rodenberg!"
The young Count at first stood gazing at his grandfather as if thunderstruck, and then his whole nature seemed to rise in revolt. He had, in spite of all, once loved his cold, beautiful betrothed; her invincible reserve had driven him from her. The thought that she could belong to another, and that other the man whom he hated, robbed him of all self-possession, and he burst forth furiously, "Rodenberg? He dare to woo a Countess Steinrück, to beguile her secretly while she is betrothed to me! Scoundrel----"
"Hush!" the general said, in a tone of command. "You have been the scoundrel, not Michael. He has just been here to recall in Hertha's name her promise to you, and to disclose everything to me. You kept silence, while you betrayed your betrothed."
"How could I speak? You would have annihilated me with your anger if I had dared to tell you of my love for Héloïse."