He would have told
Greif the truth brutally in order to prevent even the distant
possibility of such mischief as might now arise. And yet Rex's
conscience did not reproach him. He asked himself whether he could
possibly have dealt such a blow upon any human being, especially upon
one who had suffered, like Greif, almost all that a man can suffer and
live. He wondered whether he were amenable to the law for his silence,
though he really cared very little about the legality or illegality of
his actions in the present case. He felt that both he and his brother
were men beyond the pale of common laws, pursued by an evil destiny
that did not quite leave them even in their happiness. He went back to
his own father's story from its first beginning, and beyond that to the
untimely death of the father of old Greifenstein, which had led to the
second marriage of the latter's mother, and so to the birth of
Rieseneck with all his woes and miserable deeds; then to the early
quarrels of the two half-brothers, to their separation, to the singular
state of things in which Greifenstein hardly knew of his brother's
marriage and never saw the face of his brother's wife; then onward to
Rieseneck's surrender of the arsenal guard, to his imprisonment, escape
and exile, followed by his wife's unlawful marriage to the brother of
her living husband, then to the evil fatality which had sent a child in
this false union to inherit so much shame and horror, to be saved from
it, so far at least, by his unknown brother, appearing as his cousin,
Rex, the traitor's son.
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