Sketches New and Old eBook

“The villain Detzin is gone—­has fled the dukedom!  I could not believe it at first, but alas! it is too true.  And I loved him so.  I dared to love him though I knew the Duke my father would never let me wed him.  I loved him—­but now I hate him!  With all, my soul I hate him!  Oh, what is to become of me!  I am lost, lost, lost!  I shall go mad!”

CHAPTER III.

The plot thickens.

Few months drifted by.  All men published the praises of the young Conrad’s government and extolled the wisdom of his judgments, the mercifulness of his sentences, and the modesty with which he bore himself in his great office.  The old Duke soon gave everything into his hands, and sat apart and listened with proud satisfaction while his heir delivered the decrees of the crown from the seat of the premier.  It seemed plain that one so loved and praised and honored of all men as Conrad was, could not be otherwise than happy.  But strange enough, he was not.  For he saw with dismay that the Princess Constance had begun to love him!  The love of, the rest of the world was happy fortune for him, but this was freighted with danger!  And he saw, moreover, that the delighted Duke had discovered his daughter’s passion likewise, and was already dreaming of a marriage.  Every day somewhat of the deep sadness that had been in the princess’ face faded away; every day hope and animation beamed brighter from her eye; and by and by even vagrant smiles visited the face that had been so troubled.

Conrad was appalled.  He bitterly cursed himself for having yielded to the instinct that had made him seek the companionship of one of his own sex when he was new and a stranger in the palace—­when he was sorrowful 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!”