"But that is atrocious!" cried Felix, still running about in the room; "atrocious!" "Don't hollow, Grenwitz; your people might hear you down in the kitchen. Sit down, if you please, and let us talk the matter over like men who know the world." The unconquerable coolness and the cutting irony with which Albert uttered these words acted like a douche upon Felix's violent agitation. He sat down, and said, in a calmer tone: "My aunt will never listen to such a demand." "I should be sorry, for your sake, and for your aunt's sake, if you were not to accept my offer. I can only make you both responsible for the consequences." "You speak as if it depended on no one but yourself who was to have the two estates!" "And on whom else can it depend?" replied Albert, and his lips seemed to grow thinner, his nose more pointed, and his whole face sharper, as he spoke: "I tell you, I have made the net so close and so strong--leaving only a few meshes open on purpose till I should hear your decision--that I can draw it together at any moment, right over your head, and you may struggle as you may; it will not break, but you will die. You know, Grenwitz, that I have rather a good head for such things, and you know also that I have no cause to show you the shadow of generosity." "Me! I have no personal interest whatever in the whole matter." "Do you think I am a child, Grenwitz? Don't you want to marry Miss Helen? and are not the two estates to be the dower of the young lady?" "I marry Helen! Who says so? I don't dream of it." "Well, then, don't marry her; hand the young beauty over to the man whom you have more reason to hate than all other men--who is even now your favored rival--at least evil report has it so--and who will lose nothing, I am sure, in Miss Helen's eyes, if he can present himself a second time as her cousin, and the lawful heir of a very considerable fortune." Felix had turned alternately white and red as his adversary was inexorably punishing him with these words. His vanity, deeply wounded by the allusion to his fatal encounter with Oswald, writhed like a worm on which somebody has trod. He could not but confess that for the moment Albert was by far the stronger of the two, and that he, who was so proud of his cleverness and adroitness, was utterly helpless in the power of an adversary whom he had in reality always despised.