“Then about half what he demands?”
“He demands nothing.”
“A man does not demand under those circumstances; he lets it be offered to him. Authorise the Count to double it, and I bet you anything the business is done.”
“We cannot go so far as that,” answered the Councillor, rubbing his closely-cropped head; “our means do not allow it. Besides the rest of us—and then Count Golm himself is satisfied with fifty thousand for the present, we cannot offer the President twice as much without offending Golm. He is not particularly pleased with us as it is, and that is the point I want to talk to you about before he comes. Is it really impossible for you—I mean for the Warnow trustees—to sell the property directly to us, the provisional board?”
“Over the Count’s head!” exclaimed Giraldi. “Why I fancy, Councillor, that you are bound to the Count in that matter by the most positive promises.”
“True, true, unfortunately! But Lübbener, our financial adviser and—”
“The Count’s banker—I know.”
“You know everything! Lübbener thinks we might find some pretext in the case of a gentleman who, like the Count, is always getting into fresh difficulties and is always inclined or forced to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage. At the same time we do not wish or intend to act contrary to your intentions, and if you insist—”
“I insist upon nothing, Councillor,” answered Giraldi; “I simply obey the wishes of my client, which are on this point identical with those of Herr von Wallbach.”
“Good heavens!” said the Councillor impatiently. “I can quite understand that for the sake of appearances you would prefer to sell to a man of position rather than to a provisional board, although the man of position in question is a member of that very board; but you must not forget that we should pay you as much, or nearly as much, directly as we must afterwards pay to the Count.”
“The Count will not get off so cheaply either as you seem to think.”
“Then he will sell so much the dearer to us,” said the Councillor; “and it will be so much the worse for us.”
“Nevertheless I must refuse my support in this matter, to my great regret,” answered Giraldi decidedly.
The Councillor looked very much disgusted. “The best of it is,” he said sulkily, “that he cannot find the money—not even a hundred thousand, and still less the million or whatever sum we decide upon as the price of the land. He must come to us then; I know nobody else who would advance him so much at once, or even in instalments. I can tell him, however, beforehand, without being Merlin the Wise, that we shall not let him have the money cheap, so it will come to the same thing in the end. But now, my honoured patron, I must make room for the Count and take leave of you. Give my best regards to the lady, whom unfortunately I have not yet the honour of knowing, but for whom I have always had the deepest respect, and for whom I have broken many a lance in knightly fashion. And not in vain, for this family visit—I met Fräulein Sidonie in the hall, Fräulein Elsa had hastened on in front—is a concession which I may, without vanity, look upon as the result of my powers of persuasion. Apropos of my dear old friend Sidonie, you wished to know yesterday what it was that had actually decided the matter of the betrothal and put an end to Ottomar’s obstinate resistance.”
“Well?” asked Giraldi, with unfeigned curiosity.
“I do not know,” said the Councillor, with his finger on his long nose; “that is to say, my dear friend does not know, or she was sure to have told me. According to the servant’s evidence—that was all she could tell me—an interview took place the night before between the father and son; but I have every reason to suspect that the subject was no romantic one, but on the contrary, the equally prosaic and inexhaustible one of Ottomar’s debts. Farewell, my dear and honoured patron!—You will keep me informed?”
“Be assured of it.”
The Councillor was gone. Giraldi’s dark eyes were still fixed on the door; a smile of the deepest contempt played upon his lips. “Buffone!” he murmured.
IV
He stood sunk in the deepest thought, his slender white fingers stroking his dark beard.
“It is amusing to be the only well-informed man amongst the ignorant; amusing and sad. I feel it for the first time, now that I can no longer share my thoughts and plans with her. She has brought it on herself, and she is heaping wrong upon wrong. A little while ago and the measure was nearly full. If a spark of the old love remained in her she must have taken it differently. That pallor, that terror, that ‘no!’ at the mere vision of what formerly her soul thirsted for, as the thirsty traveller in the desert longs for the stream of water in the oasis. Only because it was a vision? Because it was not the truth? And if it were made truth?” Giraldi slowly paced the apartment. “His parents are dead, the monk may be disposed of, and the handsome youth can have no objection; he is vain and false, and in love; any one of the three would suffice to induce him to play the part. And then the likeness—it is not very striking, but she cannot convict me of falsehood when she sees him; and she must see him.”
In the anteroom was a stir as of several people moving; Giraldi, who was near the door, advanced a step nearer and listened; doubtless the visit announced in the niece’s note. They were all pressing round her now; they who had formerly avoided Valerie as an outcast and castaway hastened to her now that she was their equal and doubly as powerful. They would try to make up by the flatteries and caresses of one
