“Ronsard, be a man!” he said in a kind, firm voice; “This is the first time you have told me your true history--and--I shall respect your confidence! You have suffered much--equally you have loved much! Doubt not that you are forgiven much. But why should you assume, or foresee unhappiness for Gloria? Why talk of a curse where perhaps there is only an intended blessing? Is she unhappy, that you are thus moved?” Ronsard furtively dashed away the tears from his eyes. “She? Gloria unhappy? No,--not yet! The delights of spring and summer have met in her smile,--her eyes, her movements! It was she herself who told me all! If he had told me, I would have killed him!” “Eminently sensible!” said Von Glauben, recovering his usual phlegmatic calm; “You would have killed the man she loves best in the world. And so with perfect certainty you would have killed her as well,--and probably yourself afterwards. A perfect slaughterhouse, like the last scene in Hamlet, by the so admirable Shakespeare! It is better as it is. Life is really very pleasant!” He sniffed the perfumed air,--listened with appreciation to the trilling of a bird swinging on a bough of apple-blossom above him, and began to feel quite easy in his mind. Half his mission was done for him, Prince Humphry having declared himself in his true colours. “I always said,” mused the Professor, “that he was a very honest young man! And I think he will be honest to the end.” Aloud he asked: “When did you know the truth?” “Some days since,” replied Ronsard. “He--Gloria’s husband--I can as yet call him by no other name--came suddenly one evening;--the two went out together as usual, and then--then my child returned alone. She told me all,--of the disguise he had assumed--and of his real identity--and I--well! I think I was mad! I know I spoke and acted like a madman!” “Nay, rather say like a philosopher!” murmured Von Glauben with a humorous smile; “Remember, my good fellow, that there is no human being who loses self-control more easily and rapidly than he who proclaims the advantage of keeping it! And what did Gloria say to you?” Ronsard looked up at the tranquil skies, and was for a moment silent. Then he answered. “Gloria is--just Gloria! There is no woman like her,--there never will be any woman like her! She said nothing at all while I raged and swore;--she stood before me white and silent,--grand and calm, like some great angel. Then when I cursed _him,_--she raised her hand, and like a queen she said: ‘I forbid you to utter one word against him!’ I stood before her mute and foolish. ‘I forbid you!’ She,--the child I reared and nurtured--menaced me with her ‘command’ as though I were her slave and servant! You see I have lost her!--she is not mine any more--she is _his_--to be treated as he wills, and made the toy of his pleasure! She does not know the world, but I know it! I know the misery that is in store for her! But there is yet time--and I will live to avenge her wrong!”