She listened in silence; then rising from her chair, said, with a
gesture infinitely tragic in its simplicity:

"Then it is finished; before God and man I renounce him. Listen," she
went on, turning to her father-in-law, "I loved your son, he won my
heart; but, though he said he loved me, I suspected him of playing
fast and loose with me, on the one hand, and with my friend, Maria
Lee, on the other. So I determined to go away, and told him so. Then
it was that he offered to marry me at once, if I would change my
purpose. I loved him, and I consented--yes, because I loved him so, I
consented to even more. I agreed to keep the marriage secret from you.
You see what it has led to. I, a Von Holtzhausen, and the last of my
name, stand here a byword and a scorn; my story will be found amusing
at every dinner-table in the country-side, and my shame will even
cling to my unborn child. This is the return he has made me for my
sacrifice of self-respect, and for consenting to marry him at all; to
outrage my love and make me a public mockery."

"We have been accustomed," broke in the old squire, his pride somewhat
nettled, "to consider our own a good family to marry into. You do not
seem to share that view."

"Good; yes, there is plenty of your money for those who care for it;
but, sir, as I told your son, it is not a _family_. He did me no
honour in marrying me, though I was nothing but a German companion,
with no dower but her beauty. I,"--and here she flung her head back
with an air of ineffable pride--"did him the honour. My ancestors,
sir, were princes, when his were plough-boys."

"Well, well," answered the old man, testily, "ten generations of