"My dear," said the elder lady, with calm superiority, "will you not allow me to be the judge of my son's character; or do you imagine that, at twenty years of age, you possess greater powers of discernment than any I am endowed with? Waldemar is a Nordeck--that is saying everything."
"I know you have always summed up your judgment of him in those words. He may be the exact image of his father in every other feature; but that forehead, with its sharply defined blue vein, he has from you. Does it seem to you a thing impossible that he may one day show himself his mother's son?"
"Utterly impossible," the Princess declared in a harsh tone, as though the notion were really insulting to her. "All of myself I have had power to transmit, Leo alone has inherited. Do not be foolish, Wanda. You are irritated at Waldemar's behaviour to yourself, and I admit it was not very flattering; but you really must take his susceptibility into some account. How you manage to discover strength of character in this tenacious clinging to an old grudge, I cannot understand--to me it proves just the contrary. Any one else would have felt grateful to you for endeavouring to put aside a painful half-forgotten souvenir, and would have met you with an ease of manner equal to your own. As his brother's betrothed ..."
"Does Waldemar know already?" the young Countess interrupted.
"With the most perfect indifference, although I never gave him a hint of it in my letters. That is precisely it. He soon got over his old romantic feeling for you--we have proof of that--but he clings to the fancied offence with all the obstinacy of his boyhood. Do you wish me to take that as the mark of a strong mind?"
Wanda rose in unmistakable anger. "Certainly not; but I feel no inclination to expose myself further to his obstinacy, and you will therefore excuse us, dear aunt, if we leave Wilicza at once. Nothing would induce me to remain, and papa will hardly let me set out alone. We shall start within the hour."
The Princess protested in vain. Once again she had experience of the fact that her niece owned a will as resolute as her own, and that, where his daughter was concerned, 'there were no limits to Count Morynski's weakness.' In spite of his sister's wishes repeatedly expressed, in spite of Leo's most evident vexation, the plan decided on by Wanda was carried out, and half an hour later the carriage which was to convey her and her father to Rakowicz drove up to the door.