"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 Lira, "for you knew nothing of this at the time I desired you to marry him, and I should have found it out soon enough to prevent mischief. Instead of trusting to my judgment you took the law into your own hands, like a most unnatural daughter, as you are, and disappeared in the night with a man whom I consider totally unfit for you, however superior," he added, glancing at Nino, "he may have proved himself in his own rank of life."
Nino could not hold his tongue any longer. It seemed absurd that there should be a battle of words when all the realities of the affair were accomplished facts; but for his life he could not help speaking.