Princess was about to deliver a serious reprimand, when her brother quickly interposed.
"You will allow me to take Wanda with me?" said he. "I feel rather tired from the journey, and should like to go to my room. Good-bye for the present." With this he rose, took his daughter's arm, and left the room with her.
"My uncle seems in raptures at the sight of Wanda," remarked Leo, as the two disappeared.
The Princess looked after them in silence. "He will overlook it," she said at last, under her breath; "he will worship her with blind adoration, such as he lavished formerly on her mother, and Wanda will soon know her power and learn to use it. This was what I feared from a return to her father. The very first hour shows that I was right. What is this story about an adventure in the forest, Leo?"
Leo shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. Probably one of Wanda's teasing jokes. She made me curious at first with all sorts of hints, and then obstinately refused to tell me more, taking great delight in my vexation. You know her way."
"Yes, I know her way." There was a slight frown on the Princess's brow. "Wanda likes to play with every one and everything, to let all who come near her feel her arbitrary humour. You should not make it so easy to her, Leo, at least so far as you yourself are concerned."
The young Prince crimsoned to the temples. "I, mamma? Why, I am always quarrelling with Wanda!"
"And always submitting in the end to be led by her caprices. Do not tell me, my son–I know who invariably triumphs when a contest arises between you two; but, for the present, this is all childishness. I wanted to speak to you of something serious. Shut the balcony door, and come here to me."
Leo obeyed. His face showed that he was offended, less, perhaps, by the reproof administered to him, than by the expression 'childishness.'
The Princess, however, took not the slightest notice of his mood.
"You know," she began, "that I had been married before I bestowed my hand on your father, and that a son of that first marriage still lives. You know, too, that he has been reared and educated in Germany; but up to this time you have never seen him. A meeting between you will now take place. You are to make his acquaintance."
Leo sprang up, his eyes sparkling with eagerness and liveliest surprise.
"My brother Waldemar?"
"Waldemar Nordeck, yes." The emphasis laid on the latter name conveyed a perhaps unintentional, but most decided, protest against this relationship between a Nordeck and a Baratowski. "He lives in this neighbourhood on his guardian's estate. I have sent him word of our presence here, and I expect he will come over one of these days."
Leo's previous ill-humour had vanished. The subject was evidently one of the greatest interest to him. "Mamma," said he, hesitatingly, "may I not hear something more of these sad family affairs? All I know is that your marriage was an unhappy one, that you are at variance with Waldemar's relations, and with his guardian. Even this I have only learned from my uncle's allusions, and from hints dropped by old servants of our house. I have never ventured to ask a question, either of you or of my father. I saw that it would hurt him, and make you angry. You both seemed anxious to banish the remembrance from your mind."
A singularly hard expression came over the Princess's features, and the tone of her voice was hard too, as she replied, "Certainly, old mortifications and humiliations are best hidden from view and forgotten, and that unhappy union was fertile in both. Do not ask me about it now, Leo. You know the events that happened. Let that suffice you. I neither can nor will take you, step by step, through a family drama, of which I cannot think even now without a feeling of hatred for the dead rising up within me. I thought to efface those three years altogether from my life, and little dreamed that I should one day be compelled myself to call up the memory of them."
"And what compels you?" asked Leo, quickly. "Not our return? We are going to my uncle's, at Rakowicz, are we not?"
"No, my son, we are going to Wilicza."
"To Wilicza!" repeated Leo, in surprise. "Why, that is … that is Waldemar's place!"
"It would have been my dower-house, but for the will which ejected me," said the Princess, in a cutting tone; "now it is the property of my son. Room will certainly be found there for his mother."
Leo started back with an impetuous gesture. "What does it mean?" he asked, hotly. "Are you going to lower yourself before this Waldemar, to ask a favour of him? I know that we are poor; but I would bear anything, do without anything, rather than consent that, for my sake, you …"
The Princess rose suddenly. Her look and attitude were so commanding that the boy stopped short in the midst of his passionate protest.
"Do you suppose that your mother is capable of lowering herself? Have you so little knowledge of her? Leave to me the care of upholding my dignity–and yours. It really is not needful that you should point out to me the limits to which I may go. It is for me alone to judge of them."
Leo was silent, and looked down. His mother went up to him, and took his hand.
"Will this hot head of yours never learn to reason quietly?" said she, more gently. "Yet calm reflection will be so necessary to it in life? My plans with regard to Waldemar I shall carry out myself, alone. If there be bitterness attaching to them, you, my Leo, shall feel nothing of it. You must keep your sight unclouded, your spirit fresh and valiant for the future which is in store for you. That is your task. Mine is to assure you that future at any cost. Trust your mother."
With a dumb prayer for forgiveness, her son raised her hand to his lips. She drew him to her; and, as she bent down to kiss the handsome, animated face, it became manifest that this cold, austere woman had a mother's heart, and that, in spite of the severity with which she treated him, Leo was that heart's idol.
CHAPTER II
"Do oblige me by leaving off those everlasting lamentations of yours, Doctor. I tell you, there is no changing the boy. I have tried often enough, and I have had six tutors, one after the other, to help me. We could none of us do anything with him; you can't do anything either, so just let him go his own way."
This speech, delivered in the most vigorous tones, was addressed by Herr Witold, Squire of Altenhof, to the gentleman intrusted with his ward's education. The room in which the two were seated was situated at the end of the house of which it formed a corner. Its windows were thrown open on account of the heat, and its whole appearance seemed to indicate that the dwellers therein held such things as elegance and comfort to be quite superfluous, if not absolutely harmful, indulgences. The plain and, for the most part, antiquated furniture was scattered here and there, without the least regard for tasteful, or even for commodious, arrangement–pushed right and left to serve the convenience of the moment. On the walls hung guns, sporting tackle, and antlers in indiscriminate confusion. Wherever room for a nail had been found, there that nail had been driven in, and the article on hand at the time hung thereon, without the smallest consideration for the figure it made in the place allotted to it. The bureau was loaded with piles of house and farm accounts, together with tobacco pipes, spurs, and half a dozen riding-whips. The newspaper lay on the carpet; for carpet there was, in name at least, though its absence would have proved a better ornament to the room, since it bore but too evident traces of serving the great setter as his daily couch. Not a thing was in the place to which it rightly belonged; but rather there where it had last been made use of, and where it remained ready for any future occasion. One single object in the room testified, and that in a truly appalling manner, to the owner's artistic tastes, namely, a brilliant hunting-piece of most intense and vivid colouring, which hung in the place of honour over the sofa.
The
