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Updated: June 10, 2025
It was more like a thoughtful reflexion than a question. Though he had written to his brother more than once, the latter's answers when he vouchsafed any, had been curt and businesslike in the extreme. 'I have been married five and twenty years, Greifenstein replied. It was strange to be informing his brother of the fact. Rieseneck sat down upon a high chair and rested his elbow upon the table.
In her nervous state he feared lest the sudden appearance of a stranger might agitate her, and although he had long abandoned the idea that she knew anything of Rieseneck, his cautious mind admitted the pure possibility of their having been previously acquainted.
Why should Hilda's young life be wrecked, condemned, perhaps, to perpetual poverty, ruined, most assuredly, by the overthrow of its only happiness? Could they not marry and live here, as Greif's father and mother had lived for years? Could they not be everything to each other, and nothing to the world? Why had Greifenstein and Rieseneck killed Clara?
Perhaps it is the student of whom you have spoken often to me lately. He is your brother as Rieseneck is mine, and he is rich by his father's death. But you will accept nothing from him, nor from any one else except your sovereign, who, if he learns your story, may help you if he be graciously pleased to do so. 'My son, I am about to die.
Deep lines furrowed the high forehead, and descended in broad curves from beneath the eyes till they lost themselves in the beard. Kuno von Rieseneck was evidently a man of strong feelings and passions, of energetic temperament, clever, unscrupulous, but liable to go astray after strange ideas, and possibly capable of something very like fanaticism.
She was a brave woman, and though she was profoundly horrified and grieved by what had happened she was conscious that she had not suffered any great personal loss. She had never known Rieseneck, she had never liked Clara, and her friendship for Greifenstein had not been great.
Rieseneck was in South America, but Greifenstein had no reason for supposing that the person whose possible return so greatly disturbed Clara had betaken himself to so distant a country. He might be in Italy, in France, in England, anywhere within eight and forty hours' journey. He might therefore arrive at any moment after the proclamation.
Rieseneck, however, determined that before going to rest he would follow the passage to the end and ascertain whether it really afforded a means of escape, or whether his brother had contrived a trap for him. In the meanwhile the ordeal of dinner was before him, and it was necessary that he should assume the part of the visitor, lest Greifenstein's wife should suspect anything.
Greifenstein looked at him curiously for a moment, and then rose from his place and went deliberately to a huge, dark piece of furniture that stood between the windows. He brought back a polished mahogany case, unlocked it and set it beside his brother upon the table, under the light of the lamp. Rieseneck knew what he meant well enough, but he did not wince.
He went back to his own father's story from its first beginning, and beyond that to the untimely death of the father of old Greifenstein, which had led to the second marriage of the latter's mother, and so to the birth of Rieseneck with all his woes and miserable deeds; then to the early quarrels of the two half-brothers, to their separation, to the singular state of things in which Greifenstein hardly knew of his brother's marriage and never saw the face of his brother's wife; then onward to Rieseneck's surrender of the arsenal guard, to his imprisonment, escape and exile, followed by his wife's unlawful marriage to the brother of her living husband, then to the evil fatality which had sent a child in this false union to inherit so much shame and horror, to be saved from it, so far at least, by his unknown brother, appearing as his cousin, Rex, the traitor's son.
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