at your omniscience
has not penetrated?"

"There may be some that your frankness has not avowed, my dear Count."

"If you refer to what you have called Ida's secret--"

"No," broke she in. "I was now alluding to what might be called _your_
secret."

"Mine! _my_ secret!" exclaimed he. But though the tone was meant to
convey great astonishment, the confusion of his manner was far more
apparent.

"Your secret, Count," she repeated slowly, "which has been just as safe
in my keeping as if it had been confided to me on honor."

"I was not aware how much I owed to your discretion, madam," said he,
scoffingly.

"I am but too happy when any services of mine can rescue the fame of
a great family from reproach, sir," replied she, proudly; for all the
control she had heretofore imposed upon her temper seemed at last
to have yielded to offended dignity. "Happily for that illustrious
house--happily for you, too--I am one of a very few who know of Count
Wahnsdorf's doings. To have suffered your antagonist in a duel to be
tracked, arrested, and imprisoned in an Austrian fortress, when a word
from you had either warned him of his peril or averted the danger, was
bad enough; but to have stigmatized his name with cowardice, and to have
defamed him because he was your rival, was far worse."

Wahnsdorf struck the table with his clenched fist till it shook beneath
the blow, but never uttered a word, while with increased energy she
continued,--

"Every step of this bad history is known to me; every detail of it,
from your gross and insulting provocation of this poor friendless youth
to the last scene of his committal to a dungeon."

"And, of course, you have related your interesting narrative to Ida?"
cried he.

"No, sir; the respect which I have never lost for those whose name
you bear had been quite enough to restrain me, had I not even other
thoughts."

"And what may they be?" asked he.

"To take the first opportunity of finding myself alone with you, to
represent how nearly it concerns your honor that this affair should
never be bruited abroad; to insist upon your lending every aid to obtain
this young man's liberation; to show that the provocation came from
yourself; and, lastly, all-painful though it be, to remove from him the
stain you have inflicted, and to reinstate him in the esteem that your
calumny may have robbed him of. These were the other thoughts I alluded
to."

"And you fancy that I am to engage in this s