“Oh, sir!” exclaimed Dumiger, seizing the Count’s hand with effusion, “you are so kind but I can assure you that we are quite happy here.  When one is truly attached to another, the little sacrifices of life become a pleasure,” and Dumiger’s eyes so filled with tears, that he did not perceive the quiet, cold sneer on the Count’s upper lip; but Marguerite remarked it.  Moreover, she knew the Count well—­his vast ambition, his supercilious pride; she had caught the inflection of his tone when he spoke to Dumiger, and she knew that when he affected that winning, cajoling manner, he was always the most dangerous, and most to be suspected.  So her only answer or acknowledgment was a low courtesy, and the blood mantled in her cheek, but whether from gratitude or some sterner feeling the Count was unable to divine.

He looked at her for some time under his long gray eyelash; Marguerite met the look calmly and composedly.  Dumiger was bustling about quite in an ecstacy of delight, and for the time entirely forgot the clock and the Dom.  Not so the Count, he was curiously scanning all the various parts of the complicated machinery which were lying round him.  He waited until Marguerite should retire before he judged it right to commence speaking to Dumiger on the subject that was next his heart, but Marguerite did not seem at all disposed to give him the opportunity.

Woman’s prescience of danger for those she loves is wonderful.  Without being able to assign any definite reason, Marguerite felt that the man’s presence boded her no good; and it was therefore with a troubled spirit that she heard the Count, after looking several times at his watch, suggest that he wished to speak to Dumiger alone.

Dumiger looked at Marguerite, who thought it wiser at once to take the hint than to allow the Count to suppose that she at all questioned the sincerity of the kind interest which he affected to take in her.  He waited until the door was fairly closed, and then drew his chair near to Dumiger’s.  The latter, quite unaccustomed to the neighborhood of so great a man, immediately withdrew his seat to a more deferential distance; but the dimensions of the room speedily put a stop to the retrogression and his modesty by arresting his chair.

“Don’t be afraid,” said the Count to Dumiger, in a somewhat harsher tone than he had yet used, for he was an impatient and testy old man.  “Don’t draw your chair back in that way.  I wish to speak to you privately and confidentially.”

Dumiger held his breath.  What could the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights have to say to him? for, whatever might be his future greatness, at all events its promise could be known but to few others.

“You were out last night,” continued the Count.  “You went to a wine-shop—­you spoke loudly—­you drank deeply.”

As the Count continued Dumiger’s cheeks glowed.  The Count must have heard all that he said.  His heart sank within him as he recalled his weakness; but his mind was soon settled on that point by the Count.