Michael's lips quivered; he saw that the young Countess had not the slightest suspicion of his relations to her family, or of the tragedy that had been enacted in it, and it was not for him to explain it to her; but neither would he listen any longer to that voice so filled with tender sympathy; its tones were more potent to enthrall than ever were the songs of the sirens of old. He knew, indeed, that his next word would open a gulf between them that never could be bridged over. So much the better. It could not be helped, if he would retain his self-control, and in the hardest tone he could command he replied, "No!" "No?" repeated Hertha, recoiling a step in dismay. "It startles you, Countess Steinrück, does it not? But it must be said, nevertheless. I can defend my own honour against all attack, by whomsoever made. Against an assault upon my father I am powerless. I can strike the insulter down. I cannot give him the lie." His voice was calm, although monotonous, but Hertha saw and felt how the man's entire nature was writhing beneath the wound which he thus ruthlessly tore open before her. She could best appreciate his pride,--pride that refused to bow even where he loved. She could estimate what this confession cost him, and, forgetting all else, yielding to the impulse of the moment, she exclaimed, "Good God! How terribly you must have suffered!" Michael started and gazed at her inquiringly. It was the first time that he had heard her speak in this tone which came from her very soul, and vibrated with passionate sympathy, as if she felt his torture in every fibre of her frame. It was like the first glimmer of a bliss of which he had indeed sometimes dreamed, but from which he had turned with all the pride of a man resolved never to be the sport of a caprice. What he now saw and heard was no sport; it was an outburst of entire self-forgetfulness, of reckless frankness. "Can you thus understand and feel for me?" he asked, and his heart beat high. "You, born and bred upon sunny heights of existence, with never a glimpse of the dark depths of human misery? Yes, I have suffered terribly, and I still suffer, when forced to connect the idea of disgrace with what should be sacred and dear to me--my father's memory." Hertha stopped close to his side, and her voice fell on his ear soft and tender as a soothing touch upon a painful wound. "If you could not love your father, you had a mother,--her memory at least is stainless." "Her memory! Yes. But she was a wretched woman, who had given up home and family to follow the man whom she loved, and by whom she believed herself beloved. She paid for her delusion with the misery of a lifetime, and it killed her." "And her family knew this and permitted her thus to die?" "Why not? It had been her free choice, She only expiated her fault. Can you not understand this, Countess Steinrück?"