“Ninety thousand florins,” repeated the elder brother, as if not heeding the other’s passion. “You were mad. You _never_ could have raised the money till father’s death. What a speculation!”
“Who knows,” replied Gerard, stung to the quick. “At this moment, but for you, the sum might have seemed to me a trifle. Do not you, of all persons, reproach me with my poverty. I should have been a rich man at this moment but for you.”
“But for me?” exclaimed Otto, in blank amazement.
“Yes, but for you,” Gerard continued, wildly. “It was you who told Ursula about Adeline, as if any man ever betrayed another, even his enemy, to a woman! But your ideas about honor and dishonor, which you bring forward so frequently, are certainly not mine.” Gerard stopped, eying his brother curiously. “Is it possible you don’t know,” he said, “that Ursula told Helena?”
“As you allude to the disgraceful story yourself,” replied Otto, in a dull voice, “I may as well assure you that I have never spoken of it to any one. Ursula knows nothing about it. Nor am _I_ to blame if Helena does.”
However Gerard might have misunderstood his brother, he implicitly believed him. All his anger turned against the woman who had ruined his matrimonial prospects, while herself grabbing, by any means, even including advertisement, at the first husband she could catch.
“Then it was Ursula, and Ursula alone,” he said, “who would not let me marry Helena.” He forcibly curbed himself on the brink of accusation, true to the chivalry he had just enunciated; but his brow grew dark with meaning. And, seeking sudden relief in permissible insult, “My Lady Nobody!” he cried, with an impudent laugh.
Otto rose. “Our discussion ends here,” he said. “Leave the room. I will get you the money somehow.”
He sank back a moment later, listening to Gerard’s retreating footsteps. Gerard, then, had been about to marry Helena, and Ursula had told Helena something which had prevented the match. It must have been something very serious indeed.
He shook off the thought. How should he meet his brother’s claim. It is easy enough to say, “I shall pay.”
Why not sell a large part of the land, which, after all, was Gerard’s and not his? Let Gerard do what he liked with his own. Theoretically, that was plain enough. But when it came to deciding what to abandon--and a good deal would have to go--common sense began to look strangely impossible in the new Baron’s eyes. He _could_ not cut up the property. He wished his father had not made him executor.