“Father,” said Ethel, trying by every means to rouse him, “my lord and father, I dreamed last night of a happy future. Look, dear father; raise your eyes, and see that bright, cloudless sky.”
“I can only see the sky,” the old man replied, “through my prison-bars, as I can only see your future, Ethel, through my misfortunes.”
Then his head, for an instant lifted, fell back upon his hands, and both were silent.
“Father,” rejoined the young girl, a moment later, in a timid voice, “are you thinking of Lord Ordener?”
“Ordener?” said the old man, as if striving to recall the name. “Ah, I know whom you mean! What of him?”
“Do you think that he will soon return, father? He has been gone so long!--this is the fourth day.”
“I think that when four years have passed, his return will be as close at hand as it is to-day.”
“Heavens! Then you think that he will not come back?”
Schumacker made no answer. The young girl repeated her question in an anxious and beseeching tone.
“Did he not promise to return?” said the old man, curtly.
“Yes, to be sure!” eagerly answered Ethel.
“Well, how can you reckon upon his coming, then? Is he not a man? I believe that the vulture will return to a dead body, but I have no faith in the return of spring when the year is on the wane.”
Ethel, seeing that her father had relapsed into his wonted melancholy, took courage; the voice of her young and virginal soul proudly denied the old man’s morbid philosophy.
“Father,” she said firmly, “Lord Ordener will return; he is not like other men.”
“What you know yourself, my lord and father.”
“I know nothing,” said the old man. “I heard words from a man, and they promised the actions of a god.” Then he added, with a bitter smile: “I have weighed them well, and I see that they are too beautiful to be true.”
“And I, sir, believe them because they are so beautiful.”
“Oh, girl, if you were what you should be, Countess of Tönsberg and Princess of Wollin, surrounded, as you would be, by a swarm of handsome traitors and selfish adorers, such credulity would be most dangerous.”
“It is not credulity, my lord and father, but confidence.”
“It is easy to see, Ethel, that there is French blood in your veins.”
This idea led the old man, by an imperceptible transition, to a different train of thought, and he added, with a certain complacency:--