A Silver Brand — page 269: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A SILVER BRAND. 961 bert’s mind, he would not have marveled at a little pallor in his face; for the hour had come, and Von Schubert knew it, when the crisis of his life faced him. On the one hand he saw a gulf yawning to swallow all that he had spent his life in building up, his proud reputation, his political success, the brilliant prospects of court advance- ment, his ancestral home, his native land. All this must sink out of his reach, must drop away from him forever, if he turned to the other side, where waited simply eee the dowerless daughter. of a disgraced, proscribed ouse. ‘The man’s nature was fierce, and ambitious, and proud. The glittering rewards that his country’s king had power - to bestow upon his favorite were not for him empty gauds and worthless trifles. He valued them to the full extent of their claims. He had thirsted, and planned, and worked to achieve them. The best part of his lfe had been given to such service. He was no longer a young man—he was not insane enough to cheat himself into be- lieving that he could win new honors in a fresh field. He said to himself it was simply a choice between all that had made his previous happiness and glory, and the love of a brilliant woman—a creature of fire and tears, autocratic, capricious, whimsical, and yet bewitching and charming always and every way to him. A choice! He called himself a fool, fiercely and angrily, a dozen times, that there should be a moment’s hesitation. It was the more ridiculous, the more preposterous, that he had arrived to this age, and never before been moved in the slightest de- gree by any woman’s smile or frown. It seemed indeed that his destiny had met and overmas- tered him there at Schwarzenberg Heights, upon whose | mission he had entered with the zest imparted by a per- sonal enmity against Valentin, Baron Baer. And now here was he laying down everything precious in his life at the feet of this beautiful daughter—laying it down freely. He did not cheat himself into believing that he was coaxed to it. She came out to meet him in the upper hall, her face pale, but never more superbly beautiful than it seemed now to his yearning eyes. Away fled his doubts, his hesi- tation, his self-reproach. A sacrifice! Nay, 1t was a . glorious gain. The jewel he should thus secure out-. weighed all that kings and emperors could bestow. “My friend,” said Theresa, wearily, “can you tell me — what is the next thing on our programme? My father is_ Eomichoo SS