ghter," said Von Lira at last, and with evident effort, "I wish
to have a word with you. These two gentlemen--the younger of whom is
now, as I understand it, your husband--may well hear what I wish to
say."

I moved a chair so that he might sit down, but he stood up to his full
height, as though not deigning to be older than the rest. I watched
Hedwig, and saw how with both hands she clung to Nino's arm, and her
lip trembled, and her face wore the look it had when I saw her in
Fillettino.

As for Nino, his stern, square jaw was set, and his brow bent, but he
showed no emotion, unless the darkness in his face and the heavy
shadows beneath his eyes foretold ready anger.

"I am no trained, reasoner, like Signor Grandi," said Lira, looking
straight at Hedwig, "but I can say plainly what I mean, for all that.
There was a good old law in Sparta, whereby disobedient children were
put to death without mercy. Sparta was a good country,--very like
Prussia, but less great. You know what I mean. You have cruelly
disobeyed me,--cruelly, I say, because you have shown me that all my
pains and kindness and discipline have been in vain. There is nothing
so sorrowful for a good parent as to discover that he has made a
mistake."

(The canting old proser, I thought, will he never finish?)

"The mistake I refer to is not in the way I have dealt with you," he
went on, "for on that score I have nothing to reproach myself. But I
was mistaken in supposing you loved me. You have despised all I have
done for you."

"Oh, father! How can you say that?" cried poor Hedwig, clinging closer
to Nino.

"At all events, you have acted as though you did. On the very day when
I promised you to take signal action upon Baron Benoni you left me by
stealth, saying in your miserable letter that you had gone to a man
who could both love and protect you."

"You did neither the one nor the other, sir," said Nino, boldly, "when
you required of your daughter to marry such a man as Benoni."

"I have just seen Benoni; I saw him also on the night you left me,
madam,"--he looked severely at Hedwig,--"and I am reluctantly forced
to confess that he is not sane, according to the ordinary standard of
the mind."

We had all known from the paper of the suspicion that rested on
Benoni's sanity, yet somehow there was a little murmur in the room
when the old count so clearly stated his opinion.

"That does not, however, alter the position in the least," continued
L