Steinrück seemed speechless at the young officer's incredible audacity, but it was not that alone that silenced him. Once before, years previously, he had heard similar words; the same reproach had been uttered by a priest. Now they were hurled in his face with fiery energy, and the accusation came from the lips of him whom he certainly had hoped to make harmless by a 'peasant life.' Count Michael was not the man to receive an offence or an insult in silence; but now he had no reply to make, for he felt the truth of what the young officer had said. If he had formerly refrained from any clear analysis of his mode of action, it was distinctly revealed to him now as in a mirror, and it was an ugly sight,--one quite unworthy the proud wearer of the Steinrück name.
"You seem not yet to have entirely forgotten Wolfram's teaching," he said at last. "Do you wish to raise another disturbance, as you did formerly at Steinrück? This looks like it."
He could not have done worse than to evoke this memory. Ten years had passed, but Michael's blood still boiled at the remembrance which goaded him to fresh indignation. "Then you called me thief," he said, in a terrible tone; "without proof, without examination, upon a mere suspicion! You would have allowed any one of your servants to exculpate himself, but your grandson was immediately pronounced a criminal. Yes, I then seized upon the first thing at hand that could serve as a weapon; I did not know that it was my own grandfather that had so disgraced me, but from the hour when I learned it I was filled with a burning desire for retribution."
"Michael!" the general interrupted him, warningly "Not another word in that tone, which is unbecoming both to your superior officer and to your mother's father. I forbid it, and you must obey!"
When Count Steinrück spoke in this tone he was accustomed to implicit obedience; but here, for the first time, his personality failed of its effect. Even Raoul, who was by no means easily daunted, bowed before the angry glance of those eyes, but Michael did not bow. He did, indeed, by an effort recover his self-possession, but if his voice sounded more quiet and controlled, it had lost none of its firmness.
"As your Excellency commands. I did not seek this interview: it was forced upon me; but I imagine you are now entirely relieved of all fear lest I should presume upon any tie of relationship. You fancy yourself, with your ancient pedigree, exalted far above the world around us; you have, with an iron hand, thrust out and blotted from your life the only member of your family who dared to defy your pride of ancestry. But your escutcheon is not, after all, as high as the sun in the heavens; there may come a day when it will wear a stain that you cannot wipe out. Then you will know what it is to be obliged, while a passionate love of honour glows in your heart, to atone for the sin and the disgrace of another, as you now force me to expiate the memory of my father; then you will comprehend what a pitiless judge you have been towards my mother. May I consider myself dismissed, your Excellency?"
He stood erect in stiff military guise. The general did not reply; something like a shudder thrilled through him at Michael's words, sounding as they did almost prophetic; for an instant there rose before his mind something dark and formless, like a foreboding of coming evil, but it faded instantly. He mutely motioned to the young officer to withdraw, and Michael went without one backward glance. In another minute the door was closed behind him.
When Steinrück was alone he began to pace the room restlessly to and fro, but his glance rested again and again upon a portrait on the wall of himself as a young officer. No, there was no resemblance between that handsome head, with its nobly-formed, regular features, and that other characteristic but plain face, not the least! And yet those very eyes had flashed at him from that face; it was his voice that he had heard from Michael's lips, and his was the inflexible pride, the iron resolve which did not shun a strife with whatever life might bring; the resemblance lay, not in the features, but in the look and the air.
This was borne in irresistibly upon the mind of the Count, as he stood still at last, and gazed fixedly and gloomily at his youthful presentment. He was indignant, offended, and yet there was in his soul a glimmer of something which had always been lacking in his thoughts of his son and his grandson,--the consciousness that there existed an heir of his blood, and of his character. He had tried in vain to discover a trace of it in Raoul,--in vain! But the repudiated son of the outcast daughter, the young man who had just left his presence as a stranger, had this blood in his veins, and in spite of all his hatred and indignation his grandfather felt that he was an offshoot of his race.