"With the greatest pleasure; but there is still a good sum in the safe." "Still, I ask them from you. I will certainly repay you." He took the money to her, but said sorrowfully to Hamia: "Now I am sure she is not right in her mind." He was to discover the next morning that she was perfectly sane. CHAPTER X. It was the first day of spring, according to the calendar, but the moors of Podolia were as melancholy and dreary as if sunshine and blue skies were thousands of miles away. Count Baranowski shivered as he drove along the half-frozen roads, through wind and rain, from Borky to the county town, to keep an appointment with his lawyer. But it was not altogether the fault of the weather, for after nearly an hour spent in the well-warmed room of his legal adviser, he was forced to pace up and down and rub his hands, to dispel the chill and heaviness that seemed to paralyze his limbs. "Almost three months," he groaned, "and what has been accomplished?" "If that is intended as a reproach to me," said the lawyer, "I decline to accept it. What I could do, that I have done. I have straightened out your finances, and as economically as possible. Herr Stiegle is reengaged, and I cannot aid you in shaking off Wroblewski. Generosity is of no avail there. If you offered him twenty thousand gulden this year as hush-money, he would take it thankfully, and next year would demand twenty thousand more. If you refused to give them, things would drop back into their old conditions. You can never intimidate the man. His letters show his rascality. But your letters prove you have committed sacrilege, and that you have tried to induce him to bribe the judges. Dare you defy him? I advised you to do so once, but, since I know the man, I withdraw that advice. He is a thorough type of an easy-going scoundrel, extortioner, and spendthrift. All he receives from you is owing to the usurers. Your fear of him is his only resource. If that source of income is shut up, he will be worse off than a beggar, and his words, 'Then I will look to the jail to support me, where I will amuse myself with my fellow-convict, Baranowski,' are pretty true. Ought you to fear his confession? Yes. The deception practised on the girl would not count, but the breaking of the law, especially the act of sacrilege, would lead to the most serious results. I sum them up as they actually stand; morally, perhaps, they should be reversed." "I think so, indeed," said the count, gloomily. "When I think of the poor creature, it pains me to the heart." "Then, possibly, you have thought of what I was about to advise?" "Do you mean that I should confess all and have a real baptism and marriage? I have frequently thought of that, but I fear my repentance comes too late. Once, when she had doubts, I lied to her basely--it was the dirtiest trick of my life--and I am afraid that if she found this out she would die rather than live with me."