Steinrück seemed speechless at the young officer's incredible audacity, but it was not that alone that silenced him. Once before, years previously, he had heard similar words; the same reproach had been uttered by a priest. Now they were hurled in his face with fiery energy, and the accusation came from the lips of him whom he certainly had hoped to make harmless by a 'peasant life.' Count Michael was not the man to receive an offence or an insult in silence; but now he had no reply to make, for he felt the truth of what the young officer had said. If he had formerly refrained from any clear analysis of his mode of action, it was distinctly revealed to him now as in a mirror, and it was an ugly sight,--one quite unworthy the proud wearer of the Steinrück name. "You seem not yet to have entirely forgotten Wolfram's teaching," he said at last. "Do you wish to raise another disturbance, as you did formerly at Steinrück? This looks like it." He could not have done worse than to evoke this memory. Ten years had passed, but Michael's blood still boiled at the remembrance which goaded him to fresh indignation. "Then you called me thief," he said, in a terrible tone; "without proof, without examination, upon a mere suspicion! You would have allowed any one of your servants to exculpate himself, but your grandson was immediately pronounced a criminal. Yes, I then seized upon the first thing at hand that could serve as a weapon; I did not know that it was my own grandfather that had so disgraced me, but from the hour when I learned it I was filled with a burning desire for retribution." "Michael!" the general interrupted him, warningly "Not another word in that tone, which is unbecoming both to your superior officer and to your mother's father. I forbid it, and you must obey!" When Count Steinrück spoke in this tone he was accustomed to implicit obedience; but here, for the first time, his personality failed of its effect. Even Raoul, who was by no means easily daunted, bowed before the angry glance of those eyes, but Michael did not bow. He did, indeed, by an effort recover his self-possession, but if his voice sounded more quiet and controlled, it had lost none of its firmness.