to let
you in when you were out late; you have thrust aside the laws as if
they meant nothing; you have trifled with the state papers and caused
the body politic to break up a meeting as a consequence of the
laughter."

The girl, as she recollected this day to which he referred, laughed
long and joyously. He waited patiently till she had done, and I am not
sure that his mouth did not twist under his beard. "Foreign education
is the cause of all this," he said finally. "Those cursed French and
English schools have ruined you. And I was fool enough to send you to
them. This is the end."

"Or the beginning,"--rebelliously.

"Doppelkinn is mild and kind."

"Mild and kind! One would think that you were marrying me to a horse!
Well, I shall not enter the cathedral."

"How will you avoid it?"--calmly.

"I shall find a way; wait and see." She was determined.

"I shall wait." Then, with a sudden softening, for he loved the girl
after his fashion: "I am growing old, my child. If I should die, what
would become of you? I have no son; your Uncle Franz, who is but a
year or two younger than I am, would reign, and he would not tolerate
your madcap ways. You must marry at once. I love you in spite of your
wilfulness. But you have shown yourself incapable of loving.
Doppelkinn is wealthy. You shall marry him."

"I will run away, uncle,"--decidedly.

"I have notified the frontiers,"--tranquilly. "From now on you will be
watched. It is the inevitable, my child, and even I have to bow to
that."

She touched the paper in her bosom, but paused.

"Moreover, I have decided," went on the duke, "to send the Honorable
Betty Moore back to England."

"Betty?"

"Yes. She is a charming young person, but she is altogether too
sympathetic. She abets you in all you do. Her English independence
does not conform with my ideas. After the wedding I shall notify her
father."

"Everything, everything! My friends, my liberty, the right God gives
to every woman--to love whom she will! And you, my uncle, rob me of
these things! What if I should tell you that marriage with me is now
impossible?"--her lips growing thin.

"I should not be very much surprised."

"Please look at this, then, and you will understand why I can not marry
Doppelkinn." She thrust the bogus certificate into his hands.

The duke read it carefully, not a muscle in his face disturbed.
Finally he looked up with a terrifying smile.

"Poor, fooli