But it
would be better, in the extreme case, that Greif should learn the truth
first. If Frau von Sigmundskron should be the first to find it out, it
was impossible to foretell what might happen. She would find it hard to
believe that Greif had not known it when he married her daughter; she
would remember how he had done his best to refuse Hilda, and she would
ascribe that to his knowledge that he was illegitimate; his change of
name would look like a piece of deliberate scheming to supply himself
with what he most lacked, a name. She would misunderstand all his
actions and misconstrue all his intentions; he would appear to her in
the light of a clever actor who had made the emotions he really felt
serve the greater ends he had so carefully concealed. Rex thought of
her behaviour with regard to the name, and he understood the immense
value she put upon it; he saw how she had persuaded herself that in
Greif her husband's race was to be revived again, and he could guess
what she would feel when she discovered that she had conferred what she
held most holy on earth, not upon an unfortunate nobleman, but upon a
murderer's bastard, who had cleverly robbed her of what she could no
longer take back.
Rex thought of the strange fatality which pursued himself and his
brother. He himself had been the chief cause of the present situation,
both by his silence concerning the secret and by his constant efforts
to promote the marriage. If he had possessed old Greifenstein's
character, he would have acted very differently.
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