Page:German Stories (Volumes 2–3).djvu/371

Rh “Afterwards, when we rose from table, the Count drew Marino into a window recess, and though I was at a considerable distance from them, and seemed inattentive, I could yet hear all that they said. ‘My Lord Duke,’ said Globoda, very gravely, ‘what in all the world can have led you to that invention of the scene in the picture gallery, which, as far as I can understand it, will serve no purpose whatever? If you wished only to conceal the cause of your visit here, you might say so at once, and there an end. Or even if you disliked this method, you might have evaded the question in a hundred ways, and it was quite needless to outrage probability with such violence.’—‘My Lord Count,’ answered the Duke, much offended, ‘I was silent at table, because I believed you had private reasons for concealing the circumstance of your daughter’s residence in Paris. I was silent out of mere delicacy. But the situation in which I am now placed, forces me to maintain firmly what I then asserted, and unless you will allow the subject to drop, I must assert before every one, that Paris is the place where I had the happiness of seeing, for the first time, your daughter, the Countess Libussa.’—‘But what if I should