and yearned for a sympathy such as only women can give or feel. He now
began to avoid, his cousin. But this only made matters worse, for,
naturally enough, the more he avoided her, the more she cast herself in
his way. He marveled at this at first; and next it startled him. The
girl haunted him; she hunted him; she happened upon him at all times and
in all places, in the night as well as in the day. She seemed singularly
anxious. There was surely a mystery somewhere.
This could not go on forever. All the world was talking about it. The
Duke was beginning to look perplexed. Poor Conrad was becoming a very
ghost through dread and dire distress. One day as he was emerging from a
private ante-room attached to the picture gallery, Constance confronted
him, and seizing both his hands, in hers, exclaimed:
“Oh, why, do you avoid me? What have I done–what have I said, to lose
your kind opinion of me–for, surely I had it once? Conrad, do not
despise me, but pity a tortured heart? I cannot–cannot hold the words
unspoken longer, lest they kill me–I LOVE you, CONRAD! There, despise
me if you must, but they would be uttered!”
Conrad was speechless. Constance hesitated a moment, and then,
misinterpreting his silence, a wild gladness flamed in her eyes, and she
flung her arms about his neck and said:
“You relent! you relent! You can love me–you will love me! Oh, say you
will, my own, my worshipped Conrad!'”
“Conrad groaned aloud. A sickly pallor overspread his countenance, and
he trembled like an aspen. Presently, in desperation, he thrust the poor
girl from him, and cried:
You know not what you ask! It is forever and ever impossible! “And then
he fled like a criminal and left the princess stupefied with amazement.
A minute afterward she was crying and sobbing there, and Conrad was
crying and sobbing in his chamber. Both were in despair. Both save ruin
staring them in the face.
By and by Constance rose slowly to her feet and moved away, saying:
“To think that he was despising my love at the very moment that I thought
it was melting his cruel heart! I hate him! He spurned me–did this
man–he spurned me from him like a dog!”
CHAPTER IV
THE AWFUL REVELATION.
Time passed on. A settled sadness rested once more upon the countenance
of the good Duke’s daughter. She and Conrad were seen together no more
now. The Duke grieved at this. But as the weeks wore away, Conrad’s
color came back to his cheeks and his old-time vivacity to his eye, and
he administered the government with a clear and steadily ripening wisdom.
Presently a strange whisper began to be heard about the palace. It grew
louder; it spread farther. The gossips of the city got hold-of it. It
swept the dukedom. And this is what the whisper said:
“The Lady Constance hath given birth to a child!”
When the lord of Klugenstein heard it, he swung his plumed helmet thrice
around his head and shouted:
“Long live. Duke Conrad!–for lo, his crown is sure, from this day
forward! Detzin has done his errand well, and the good scoundrel shall
be rewarded!”
And he spread, the tidings far and wide, and for eight-and-forty hours no
soul in all the barony but did dance and sing, carouse and illuminate, to
celebrate the great event, and all at proud and happy old Klugenstein’s
expense.
CHAPTER V.
THE FRIGHTFUL CATASTROPHE.
The trial was at hand. All the great lords and barons of Brandenburgh
were assembled in the Hall of Justice in the ducal palace. No space was
left unoccupied where there was room for a spectator to stand or sit.
Conrad, clad in purple and ermine, sat in the premier’s chair, and on
either side sat the great judges of the realm. The old Duke had sternly
commanded that the trial of his daughter should proceed, without favor,
and then had taken to his bed broken-hearted. His days were numbered.
Poor Conrad had begged, as for his very life, that he might be spared the
misery of sitting in judgment upon his cousin’s crime, but it did not