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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Ouida

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most

-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of

-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have

-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

-

-Title: Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3)

-

-Author: Ouida

-

-Release Date: May 23, 2016 [EBook #52136]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: UTF-8

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDA, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by Wanda Lee, Laura Natal Rodriguez and Marc

-D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org (Images

-generouslly made available by the Internet Archive.)

-

-

-

-

-

-WANDA

-

-BY

-

-OUIDA

-

-

-

-    _'Doch!--alles was dazu mich trieb;_

-    _Gott!--war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'_

-                                         Goethe

-

-

-IN THREE VOLUMES

-

-VOL. II.

-

-

-London

-

-CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY

-

-1883

-

-

-

-

-WANDA.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XI.

-

-

-On her return she spoke of her royal friends, of her cousins, of

-society, of her fears for the peace of Europe, and her doubts as to

-the strength of the empire; but she did not speak of the one person of

-whom, beyond all others, Mdme. Ottilie was desirous to hear. When some

-hours had passed, and still she had never alluded to the existence of,

-the Princess could bear silence no longer, and casting prudence to the

-winds, said boldly and with impatience:

-

-'And your late guest? Have you nothing to tell me? Surely you have seen

-him?'

-

-'He called once,' she answered, 'and I heard him speak at the Chamber.'

-

-'And was that all?' cried the Princess, disappointed.

-

-'He speaks very well in public,' added Wanda, 'and he said many tender

-and grateful things of you, and sent you many messages--such grateful

-ones that my memory is too clumsy a tray to hold such eggshell china.'

-

-She was angered with herself as she spoke, but the fragrance of the

-white lilac and the remembrance of its donor pursued her--angered

-with herself, too, because Hohenszalras seemed for the moment sombre,

-solitary, still, almost melancholy, wrapped in that winter whiteness

-and stillness which she had always loved so well.

-

-The next morning she saw all her people, visited her schools and her

-stables, and tried to persuade herself that she was as contented as

-ever.

-

-The aurist came from Paris shortly after her, and consoled the Princess

-by assuring her that the slight deafness she suffered from occasionally

-was due to cold.

-

-'Of course!' she said, with some triumph. 'These mountains, all this

-water, rain whenever there is not snow, snow whenever there is not

-rain; it is a miracle, and the mercy of Heaven, if one saves any of

-one's five senses uninjured in a residence here.'

-

-She had her satin hood trebly wadded, and pronounced the aurist a

-charming person. Herr Greswold in an incautious moment had said to her

-that deafness was one of the penalties of age and did not depend upon

-climate. A Paris doctor would not have earned his fee of two hundred

-napoleons if he had only produced so ungallant a truism. She heard a

-little worse after his visit, perhaps, but if so, she said that was

-caused by the additional wadding in her hood. He had told her to use a

-rose-water syringe, and Herr Greswold was forbidden her presence for a

-week because he averred that you might as well try to melt the glacier

-with a lighted pastille.

-

-The aurist gone, life at Hohenszalras resumed its even tenor; and

-except for, the post, the tea-cups, and the kind of dishes served at

-dinner, hardly differed from what life had been there in the sixteenth

-century, save that there were no saucy pages playing in the court, and

-no destriers stamping in the stalls, and no culverins loaded on the

-bastions.

-

-'It is like living between the illuminated leaves of one of the Hours,'

-thought the Princess, and though her conscience told her that to dwell

-so in a holy book like a pressed flower was the most desirable life

-that could be granted by Heaven to erring mortality, still she felt it

-was dull. A little gossip, a little movement, a little rolling of other

-carriage-wheels than her own, had always seemed desirable to her.

-

-Life here was laid down on broad lines. It was stately, austere,

-tranquil; one day was a mirror of all the rest. The Princess fretted

-for some little _frou-frou_ of the world to break its solemn silence.

-

-When Wanda returned from her ride one forenoon she said a little

-abruptly to her aunt:

-

-'I suppose you will be glad to hear you have convinced me. I have

-telegraphed to Ludwig to open and air the house in Vienna; we will go

-there for three months. It is, perhaps, time I should be seen at Court.'

-

-'It is a very sudden decision!' said Madame Ottilie, doubting that she

-could hear aright.

-

-'It is the fruit of your persuasions, dear mother mine! The only

-advantage in having houses in half a dozen different places is to be

-able to go to them without consideration. You think me obstinate,

-whimsical, barbaric; the Kaiserin thinks so too. I will endeavour to

-conquer my stubbornness. We will go to Vienna next week. You will see

-all your old friends, and I all my old jewels.'

-

-The determination once made, she adhered to it. She had felt a vague

-annoyance at the constancy and the persistency with which regret for

-the lost society of Sabran recurred to her. She had attributed it to

-the solitude in which she lived: that solitude which is the begetter

-and the nurse of thought may also be the hotbed of unwise fancies.

-It was indeed a solitude filled with grave duties, careful labours,

-high desires and endeavours; but perhaps, she thought, the world for a

-while, even in its folly, might be healthier, might preserve her from

-the undue share which the memory of a stranger had in her musings.

-

-Her people, her lands, her animals, would none of them suffer by

-a brief absence; and perhaps there were duties due as well to her

-position as to her order. She was the only representative of the great

-Counts of Szalras. With the whimsical ingratitude to fate common

-to human nature, she thought she would sooner have been obscure,

-unnoticed, free. Her rank began to drag on her with something like the

-sense of a chain. She felt that she was growing irritable, fanciful,

-thankless; so she ordered the huge old palace in the Herrengasse to be

-got ready, and sought the world as others sought the cloister.

-

-In a week's time she was installed in Vienna, with a score of horses,

-two score of servants, and all the stir and pomp that attend a great

-establishment in the most aristocratic city of Europe, and she made her

-first appearance at a ball at the Residenz covered with jewels from

-head to foot; the wonderful old jewels that for many seasons had lain

-unseen in their iron coffers--opals given by Rurik, sapphires taken

-from Kara Mustafa, pearls worn by her people at the wedding of Mary of

-Burgundy, diamonds that had been old when Maria Theresa had been young.

-

-She had three months of continual homage, of continual flattery, of

-what others called pleasure, and what none could have denied was

-splendour. Great nobles laid their heart and homage before her feet,

-and all the city looked after her for her beauty as she drove her

-horses round the Ringstrasse. It left her all very cold and unamused

-and indifferent.

-

-She was impatient to be back at Hohenszalras, amidst the stillness of

-the woods, the sound of the waters.

-

-'You cannot say now that I do not care for the world, because I have

-forgotten what it was like,' she observed to her aunt.

-

-'I wish you cared more,' said the Princess. 'Position has its duties.'

-

-'I never dispute that; only I do not see that being wearied by society

-constitutes one of them. I cannot understand why people are so afraid

-of solitude; the routine of the world is quite as monotonous.'

-

-'If you only appreciated the homage that you receive----'

-

-'Surely one's mind is something like one's conscience: if one can be

-not too utterly discontented with what it says one does not need the

-verdict of others.'

-

-'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with

-your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your

-overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the

-one I possess.'

-

-'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be

-pride--the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely

-better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'

-

-'They are not all simpletons.'

-

-'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very

-stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well

-as of the Wurstel-Prater.'

-

-The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the

-Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw

-the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she

-was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something

-wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up,

-nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.

-

-The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain,

-and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging

-primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of

-the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging

-with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass

-was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale

-sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras,

-and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she

-returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.

-

-'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold,

-as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the

-Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias

-and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between

-the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of

-their stalls.

-

-'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert,

-as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with

-tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with

-'_Willkommen_' written on it.

-

-She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single

-word.

-

-How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that

-day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been

-sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.

-

-'That is the Stanhopea tigrina,' said Herr Greswold, touching one with

-reverent fingers; 'they are all very rare. It is a welcome worthy of

-you, my lady.'

-

-'A very extravagant one,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a certain

-displeasure that mingled with a softened emotion. 'Who brought it?'

-

-'The Marquis de Sabran, by _extra-poste_, himself this morning,'

-answered Hubert--an answer she did not expect. 'But he would not wait;

-he would not even take a glass of tokayer, or let his horses stay for a

-feed of corn.'

-

-'What knight-errantry!' said the Princess well pleased.

-

-'What folly!' said Wanda, but she had the basket of orchids taken to

-her own octagon room.

-

-It seemed as if he had divined how much of late she had thought of him.

-She was touched, and yet she was angered a little.

-

-'Surely she will write to him,' thought the Princess wistfully very

-often: but she did not write. To a very proud woman the dawning

-consciousness of love is always an irritation, an offence, a failure, a

-weakness: the mistress of Hohenszalras could not quickly pardon herself

-for taking with pleasure the message of the orchids.

-

-A little while later she received a letter from Olga Brancka. In it she

-wrote from Paris:

-

-'Parsifal is doing wonders in the Chamber, that is, he is making Paris

-talk; his party will forbid him doing anything else. You certainly

-worked a miracle. I hear he never plays, never looks at an actress,

-never does anything wrong, and when a grand heiress was offered to

-him by her people refused her hand blandly but firmly. What is one to

-think? That he washed his soul white in the Szalrassee?'

-

-It was the subtlest flattery of all, the only flattery to which she

-would have been accessible, this entire alteration in the current

-of a man's whole life; this change in habit, inclination, temper,

-and circumstance. If he had approached her its charm would have been

-weakened, its motive suspected; but aloof and silent as he remained,

-his abandonment of all old ways, his adoption of a sterner and worthier

-career, moved her with its marked, mute homage of herself.

-

-When she read his discourses in the French papers she felt a glow

-of triumph, as if she had achieved some personal success; she felt

-a warmth at her heart as of something near and dear to her, which

-was doing well and wisely in the sight of men. His cause did not,

-indeed, as Olga Brancka had said, render tangible, practical, victory

-impossible for him, but he had the victories of eloquence, of

-patriotism, of high culture, of pure and noble language, and these

-blameless laurels seemed to her half of her own gathering.

-

-'Will you never reward him?' the Princess ventured to say at last,

-overcome by her own impatience to rashness. 'Never? Not even by a word?'

-

-'Hear mother,' said Wanda, with a smile which perplexed and baffled the

-Princess, 'if your hero wanted reward he would not be the leader of a

-lost cause. Pray do not suggest to me a doubt of his disinterestedness.

-You will do him very ill service.'

-

-The Princess was mute, vaguely conscious that she had said something

-ill-timed or ill-advised.

-

-Time passed on and brought beautiful weather in the month of June,

-which here in the High Tauern means what April does in the south.

-Millions of song-birds were shouting in the woods, and thousands of

-nests were suspended on the high branches of the forest trees, or

-hidden in the greenery of the undergrowth; water-birds perched and

-swung in the tall reeds where the brimming streams tumbled; the purple,

-the white, and the grey herons were all there, and the storks lately

-flown home from Asia or Africa were settling in bands by the more

-marshy grounds beside the northern shores of the Szalrassee.

-

-One afternoon she had been riding far and fast, and on her return a

-telegram from Vienna had been brought to her, sent on from Lienz.

-Having opened it, she approached her aunt and said with an unsteady

-voice:

-

-'War is declared between France and Prussia!'

-

-'We expected it; we are ready for it,' said the Princess, with all

-her Teutonic pride in her eyes. 'We shall show her that we cannot be

-insulted with impunity.'

-

-'It is a terrible calamity for the world,' said Wanda, and her face was

-very pale.

-

-The thought which was present to her was that Sabran would be foremost

-amidst volunteers. She did not hear a word of all the political

-exultation with which Princess Ottilie continued to make her militant

-prophecies. She shivered as with cold in the warmth of the midsummer

-sunset.

-

-'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her

-house.

-

-The Princess demurred.

-

-'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all

-the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial.

-You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the

-especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge

-Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'

-

-'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.

-

-She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from

-her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.

-

-In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War

-is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss

-of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I

-shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw

-bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every

-sword she has.'

-

-Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:

-

-'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her

-soil is bound to arm.'

-

-More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her

-grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.

-

-But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,'

-written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were

-filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that

-was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a

-child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian

-campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made

-her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal

-conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she

-became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had

-at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from

-the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the

-shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the

-command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their

-own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was

-congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of

-his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally,

-in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name

-mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That

-was all.

-

-The autumn began to deepen into winter, and complete silence covered

-all his life. She thought with a great remorse--if he were dead?

-Perhaps he was dead? Why had she been always so cold to him? She

-suffered intensely; all the more intensely because it was not a sorrow

-which she could not confess even to herself. When she ceased altogether

-to hear anything of or from him, she realised the hold which he had

-taken on her life.

-

-These months of suspense did more to attach her to him than years

-of assiduous and ardent homage could have done. She, a daughter of

-soldiers, had always felt any man almost unmanly who had not received

-the baptism of fire.

-

-Mdme. Ottilie talked of him constantly, wondered frequently if he were

-wounded, slain, or in prison; she never spoke his name, and dreaded to

-hear it.

-

-Greswold, who perceived an anxiety in her that, he did not dare to

-allude to, ransacked every journal that was published in German to find

-some trace of Sabran's name. At the first he saw often some mention of

-the Cuirassiers d'Orléans, and of their intrepid Colonel Commandant:

-some raid, skirmish, or charge in which they had been conspicuous for

-reckless gallantry. But after the month of November he could find

-nothing. The whole regiment seemed to have been obliterated from

-existence.

-

-Winter settled down on Central Austria with cold silence, with roads

-blocked and mountains impassable. The dumbness, the solitude around

-her, which she had always loved so well, now grew to her intolerable.

-It seemed like death.

-

-Paris capitulated. The news reached her at the hour of a violent

-snowstorm; the postillion of her post-sledge bringing it had his feet

-frozen.

-

-Though her cousins of Lilienhöhe were amongst those who entered the

-city as conquerors, the fate of Paris smote her with a heavy blow. She

-felt as if the cold of the outer world had chilled her very bones, her

-very soul. The Princess, looking at her, was afraid to rejoice.

-

-On the following day she wrote to her cousin Hugo of Lilienhöhe, who

-was in Paris with the Imperial Guard. She asked him to inquire for and

-tell her the fate of a friend, the Marquis de Sabran.

-

-In due time Prince Hugo answered:

-

-'The gentleman you asked for was one of the most dangerous of our

-enemies. He commanded a volunteer cavalry regiment, which was almost

-cut to pieces by the Bavarian horse in an engagement before Orleans.

-Two or three alone escaped; their Colonel was severely wounded in

-the thigh, and had his charger shot dead under him. He was taken

-prisoner by the Bavarians after a desperate resistance. Whilst he

-lay on the ground he shot three of our men with his revolver. He was

-sent to a fortress, I think Ehrenbreitstein, but I will inquire more

-particularly. I am sorry to think that you have any French friends.

-

-By-and-by she heard that he had been confined not at Ehrenbreitstein

-but at a more obscure and distant fortress on the Elbe; that his wounds

-had been cured, and that he would shortly be set free like other

-prisoners of war. In the month of March in effect she received a brief

-letter from his own hand, gloomy and profoundly dejected.

-

-'Our plans were betrayed,' he wrote. 'We were surprised and surrounded

-just as we had hobbled our horses and lain down to rest, after being

-the whole day in the saddle. Bavarian cavalry, outnumbering us four to

-one, attacked us almost ere we could mount our worn-out beasts. My

-poor troopers were cut to pieces. They hunted me down when my charger

-dropped, and I was made a prisoner. When they could they despatched

-me to one of their places on the Elbe. I have been here December and

-January. I am well. I suppose I must be very strong; nothing kills

-me. They are now about to send me back to the frontier. My beautiful

-Paris! What a fate! But I forget, I cannot hope for your sympathy; your

-kinsmen are our conquerors. I know not whether the house I lived in

-there exists, but if you will write me a word at Romaris, you will be

-merciful, and show me that you do not utterly despise a lost cause and

-a vanquished soldier.'

-

-She wrote to him at Romaris, and the paper she wrote on felt her tears.

-In conclusion she said:

-

-'Whenever you will, come and make sure for yourself that both the

-Princess Ottilie and I honour courage and heroism none the less because

-it is companioned by misfortune.'

-

-But he did not come.

-

-She understood why he did not. An infinite pity for him overflowed her

-heart. His public career interrupted, his country ruined, his future

-empty, what remained to him? Sometimes she thought, with a blush on her

-face, though she was all alone: 'I do.' But then, if he never came to

-hear that?

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XII.

-

-

-The little hamlet of Romaris, on the coast of Finisterre, was very dull

-and dark and silent. A few grave peasant women knitted as they walked

-down the beach or sat at their doors; a few children did the same. Out

-on the _landes_ some cows were driven through the heather and broom;

-out on the sea some fishing-boats with rough, red sails were rocking to

-and fro. All was melancholy, silent, poor; life was hard at Romaris for

-all. The weatherbeaten church looked grey and naked on a black rock;

-the ruins of the old _manoir_ faced it amidst sands and surfs; the only

-thing of beauty was the bay, and that for the folk of Romaris had no

-beauty; they had seen it kill so many.

-

-There was never any change at Romaris, unless it were a change in the

-weather, a marriage, a birth, or a death. Therefore the women and

-children who were knitting had lifted up their heads as a stranger,

-accompanied by their priest, had come down over the black rocks, on

-which the church stood, towards the narrow lane that parted the houses

-where they clustered together face to face on the edge of the shore.

-

-Their priest, an old man much loved by them, came slowly towards them,

-conversing in low tones with the stranger, who had been young and

-handsome, and a welcome sight, since a traveller to Romaris always

-needed a sailing-boat or a rowing-boat, a guide over the moors, or a

-drive in an ox-waggon through the deep-cut lanes of the country.

-

-But they had ceased to think of such things as these when the curate,

-with his hands extended as when he blessed them, had said in _bas_

-Breton as he stood beside them:

-

-'My children, this is the last of the Sabrans of Romaris, come back to

-us from the far west that lies in the setting of the sun. Salute him,

-and show him that in Brittany we do not forget--nay, not in a hundred

-years.'

-

-Many years had gone by since then, and of the last of the old race,

-Romaris had scarcely seen more than when he had been hidden from

-their sight on the other side of the heaving ocean. Sabran rarely came

-thither. There was nothing to attract a man who loved the world and

-who was sought by it, in the stormy sea coast, the strip of sea-lashed

-oak forest, that one tall tower with its gaunt walls of stone which

-was all that was left of what had once been the fortress of his race.

-Now and then they saw him, chiefly when he had heard that there was

-wild weather on the western coast, and at such times he would go out

-in their boats to distressed vessels, or steer through churning waters

-to reach a fishing-smack in trouble, with a wild courage and an almost

-fierce energy which made him for the moment one of themselves. But

-such times had been few, and all that Romaris really knew of the last

-marquis was that he was a gay gentleman away there in distant Paris.

-

-He had been a mere name to them. Now and then he had sent fifty

-napoleons, or a hundred, to the old priest for such as were poor or

-sick amongst them. That was all. Now after the war he came hither.

-Paris had become hateful to him; his political career was ended, at

-all events for the time; the whole country groaned in anguish; the

-vices and follies that had accompanied his past life disgusted him

-in remembrance. He had been wounded and a prisoner; he had suffered

-betrayal at unworthy hands; Cochonette had sold him to the Prussians,

-in revenge of his desertion of her.

-

-He was further removed from the Countess von Szalras than ever. In the

-crash with which the Second Empire had fallen and sunk out of sight for

-evermore, his own hopes had gone down like a ship that sinks suddenly

-in a dark night. All his old associations were broken, half his old

-friends were dead or ruined; gay châteaux that he had ever been welcome

-at were smoking ruins or melancholy hospitals; the past had been

-felled to the ground like the poor avenues of the Bois. It affected

-him profoundly. As far as he was capable of an impersonal sentiment

-he loved France, which had been for so many years his home, and which

-had always seemed to smile at him with indulgent kindness. Her vices,

-her disgrace, her feebleness, her fall, hurt him with an intense pain

-that was not altogether selfish, but had in it a nobler indignation, a

-nobler regret.

-

-When he was released by the Prussians and sent across the frontier, he

-went at once to this sad sea village of Romaris, to collect as best

-he might the shattered fragments of his life, which seemed to him as

-though it had been thrown down by an earthquake. He had resigned his

-place as deputy when he had offered his sword to France; he had now no

-career, no outlet for ambition, no occupation. Many of his old friends

-were dead or ruined; although such moderate means as he possessed were

-safe, they were too slender to give him any position adequate to his

-rank. His old life in Paris, even if Paris arose from her tribulations,

-gay and glorious once more, seemed to him altogether impossible. He had

-lost taste for those pleasures and distractions which had before the

-war--or before his sojourn on the Holy Isle--seemed to him the Alpha

-and Omega of a man's existence. '_Que faire?_' he asked himself wearily

-again and again. He did not even know whether his rooms in Paris had

-been destroyed or spared; a few thousands of francs which he had

-made by a successful speculation years before, and placed in foreign

-funds, were all he had to live on. His keen sense told him that the

-opportunity which might have replaced the Bourbon throne had been lost

-through fatal hesitation. His own future appeared to him like a blank

-dead wall that rose up in front of him barring all progress; he was no

-longer young enough to select a career and commence it. With passionate

-self-reproach he lamented all the lost irrevocable years that he had

-wasted.

-

-Romaris was not a place to cheer a disappointed and dejected soldier

-who had borne the burning pain of bodily wounds and the intolerable

-shame of captivity in a hostile land. Its loneliness, its darkness,

-its storms, its poverty, had nothing in them with which to restore his

-spirit to hope or his sinews to ambition. In these cold, bleak, windy

-days of a dreary and joyless spring-time, the dusky moors and the

-gruesome sea were desolate, without compensating grandeur. The people

-around him were all taciturn, dull, stupid; they had not suffered by

-the war, but they understood that, poor as they were, they would have

-to bear their share in the burden of the nation's ransom. They barred

-their doors and counted their hoarded gains in the dark with throbbing

-hearts, and stole out in the raw, wet, gusty dawns to kneel at the

-bleeding feet of their Christ. He envied them their faith; he could not

-comfort them, they could not comfort him; they were too far asunder.

-

-The only solace he had was the knowledge that he had done his duty by

-France, and to the memory of those whose name he bore; that he had

-rendered what service he could; that he had not fled from pain and

-peril; that he had at least worn his sword well and blamelessly; that

-he had not abandoned his discrowned city of pleasure in the day of

-humiliation and martyrdom. The only solace he had was that he felt

-Wanda von Szalras herself could have commanded him to do no more than

-he had done in this the Année Terrible.

-

-But, though his character had been purified and strengthened by the

-baptism of fire, and though his egotism had been destroyed by the

-endless scenes of suffering and of heroism which he had witnessed, he

-could not in a year change so greatly that he could be content with the

-mere barren sense of duty done and honour redeemed. He was deeply and

-restlessly miserable. He knew not where to turn, either for occupation

-or for consolation. Time hung on his hands like a wearisome wallet of

-stones.

-

-When all the habits of life are suddenly rent asunder, they are like a

-rope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or they may be

-thrown altogether aside and a new strand woven, but they will never be

-the same thing again.

-

-Romaris, with its few wind-tortured trees and its leaden-hued dangerous

-seas, seemed to him, indeed, a _champ des trépassés_, as it was called,

-a field of death. The naked, ugly, half-ruined towers, which no ivy

-shrouded and no broken marble ennobled, as one or the other would have

-done had it been in England or in Italy, was a dreary residence for

-a man who was used to all the elegant and luxurious habits of a man

-of the world, who was also a lover of art and a collector of choice

-trifles. His rooms had been the envy of his friends, with all their

-eighteenth century furniture, and their innumerable and unclassified

-treasures; when he had opened his eyes of a morning a pastel of La

-Tour had smiled at him, rose-coloured windows had made even a grey

-sky smile. Without, there had been the sound of wheels going down

-the gay Boulevard Haussmann. All Paris had passed by, tripping and

-talking, careless and mirthful, beneath his gilded balconies bright

-with canariensis and volubilis; and on a little table, heaped in

-their hundreds, had been cards that bade him to all the best and most

-agreeable houses, whilst, betwixt them, slipped coyly in many an

-amorous note, many an unlooked-for declaration, many an eagerly-desired

-appointment.

-

-'_Quel beau temps!_' he thought, as he awoke in the chill, bare,

-unlively chamber of the old tower by the sea; and it seemed to him

-that he must be dreaming: that all the months of the war had been

-a nightmare; that if he fully awakened he would find himself once

-more with the April sunshine shining through the rose glass, and

-the carriages rolling beneath over the asphalt road. But it was no

-nightmare, it was a terrible, ghastly reality to him, as to so many

-thousands. There were the scars on his breast and his loins where

-the Prussian steel had hacked and the Prussian shot had pierced him;

-there was his sword in a corner all dinted, notched, stained; there

-was a crowd of hideous ineffaceable tumultuous memories; it was all

-true enough, only too true, and he was alone at Romaris, with all his

-dreams and ambitions faded into thin air, vanished like the blown burst

-bubbles of a child's sport.

-

-In time to come he might recover power and nerve to recommence his

-struggle for distinction, but at present it seemed to him that all was

-over. His imprisonment had shaken and depressed him as nothing else

-in the trials of war could have done. He had been shut up for months

-alone, with his own desperation. To a man of high courage and impatient

-appetite for action there is no injury so great and in its effect so

-lasting as captivity. Joined to this he had the fever of a strong, and

-now perfectly hopeless, passion.

-

-Pacing to and fro the brick floor of the tower looking down on the

-sands and rocks of the coast, his thoughts were incessantly with Wanda

-von Szalras in her stately ancient house, built so high up amidst the

-mountains and walled in by the great forests and the ice slopes of the

-glaciers. In the heat and stench of carnage he had longed for a breath

-of that mountain breeze, for a glance from those serene eyes; he longed

-for them still.

-

-As he passed to and fro in the wild wintry weather, his heart was sick

-with hope deferred, with unavailing regret and repentance, with useless

-longings.

-

-It was near noonday; there was no sun; a heavy wrack of cloud was

-sweeping up from the west; on the air the odour of rotting fish and

-of fish-oil, and of sewage trickling uncovered to the beach, were too

-strong to be driven away by the pungency of the sea.

-

-The sea was high and moaning loud; the dusk was full of rain; the

-wind-tormented trees groaned and seemed to sigh; their boughs were

-still scarce in bud though May had come. He felt cold, weary, hopeless.

-His walk brought no warmth to his veins, and his thoughts none to

-his heart. The moisture of the air seemed to chill him to the bone,

-and he went within and mounted the broken granite stairs to his

-solitary chamber, bare of all save the simplest necessaries, gloomy

-and cheerless with the winds and the bats beating together at the high

-iron-barred casement. He wearily lighted a little oil lamp, and threw

-a log or two of drift-wood on the hearth and set fire to them with a

-faggot of dried ling.

-

-He dreaded his long lonely evening.

-

-He had set the lamp on a table while he had set fire to the wood; its

-light fell palely on a small white square thing. It was a letter. He

-took it up eagerly; he, who in Paris had often tossed aside, with a

-passing glance, the social invitations of the highest personages and

-the flattering words of the loveliest women.

-

-Here, any letter seemed a friend, and as he took up this his pulse

-quickened; he saw that it was sealed with armorial bearings which he

-knew--a shield bearing three vultures with two knights as supporters,

-and with the motto '_Gott und mein Schwert_;' the same arms, the same

-motto as were borne upon the great red and gold banner floating from

-the keep on the north winds at the Hohenszalrasburg. He opened it with

-a hand which shook a little and a quick throb of pleasure at his heart.

-He had scarcely hoped that she would write again to him. The sight of

-her writing filled him with a boundless joy, the purest he had ever

-known called forth by the hand of woman.

-

-The letter was brief, grave, kind. As he read he seemed to hear the

-calm harmonious voice of the lady of Hohenszalras speaking to him in

-her mellowed and softened German tongue.

-

-She sent him words of consolation, of sympathy, of congratulation, on

-the course of action he had taken in a time of tribulation, which had

-been the touchstone of character to so many.

-

-'Tell me something of Romaris,' she said in conclusion. 'I am sure

-you will grow to care for the place and the people, now that you seek

-both in the hour of the martyrdom of France. Have you any friends near

-you? Have you books? How do your days pass? How do you fill up time,

-which must seem so dull and blank to you after the fierce excitations

-and the rapid changes of war? Tell me all about your present life, and

-remember that we at Hohenszalras know how to honour courage and heroic

-misfortune.'

-

-He laid the letter down after twice reading it. Life seemed no longer

-all over for him. He had earned her praise and her sympathy. It was

-doubtful if years of the most brilliant political successes would have

-done as much as his adversity, his misadventure, and his daring had

-done for him in her esteem. She had the blood of twenty generations of

-warriors in her, and nothing appealed so forcibly to her sympathies and

-her instincts as the heroism of the sword. Those few lines too were

-a permission to write to her. He replied at once, with a gratitude

-somewhat guardedly expressed, and with details almost wholly impersonal.

-

-She was disappointed that he said so little of himself, but she did

-justice to the delicacy of the carefully guarded words from a man

-whose passion appealed to her by its silence, where it would only have

-alienated her by any eloquence. Of Romaris he said nothing, save that,

-had Dante ever been upon their coast, he would have added another canto

-to the 'Purgatorio,' more desolate and more unrelieved in gloom than

-any other.

-

-'Does he regret Cochonette?' she thought, with a jealous

-contemptuousness of which she was ashamed as soon as she felt it.

-

-Having once written to her, however, he thought himself privileged

-to write again, and did so several times. He wrote with ease, grace,

-and elegance: he wrote as he spoke, which gives this charm to

-correspondence, seem close at hand to the reader in intimate communion.

-The high culture of his mind displayed itself without effort, and he

-had that ability of polished expression which is in our day too often

-a neglected one. His letters became welcome to her: she answered them

-briefly, but she let him see that they were agreeable to her. There

-was in them the note of a profound depression, of an unuttered, but

-suggested hopelessness which touched her. If he had expressed it in

-plain words, it would not have appealed to her one half so forcibly.

-

-They remained only the letters of a man of culture to a woman capable

-of comprehending the intellectual movement of the time, but it

-was because of this limitation that she allowed them. Any show of

-tenderness would have both alarmed and alienated her. There was no

-reason after all, she thought, why a frank friendship should not exist

-between them.

-

-Sometimes she was surprised at herself for having conceded so much,

-and angry that she had done so. Happily he had the good taste to take

-no advantage of it. Interesting as his letters were they might have

-been read from the housetops. With that inconsistency of her sex from

-which hitherto she had always flattered herself she had been free, she

-occasionally felt a passing disappointment that they were not more

-personal as regarded himself. Reticence is a fine quality; it is the

-marble of human nature. But sometimes it provokes the impatience that

-the marble awoke in Pygmalion.

-

-Once only he spoke of his own aims. Then he wrote:

-

-'You bade me do good at Romaris. Candidly, I see no way to do it

-except in saving a crew off a wreck, which is not an occasion that

-presents itself every week. I cannot benefit these people materially,

-since I am poor; I cannot benefit them morally, because I have not

-their faith in the things unseen, and I have not their morality in the

-things tangible. They are God-fearing, infinitely patient, faithful

-in their daily lives, and they reproach no one for their hard lot,

-cast on an iron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at risk

-of their lives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What

-should I say to them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience,

-one petulant mutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only

-take them what the world always takes into solitude--discontent. It

-would be a cruel gift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any

-other. It is a homely saying that no blood comes out of a stone; so,

-out of a life saturated with the ironies, the contempt, the disbelief,

-the frivolous philosophies, the hopeless negations of what we call

-society, there can be drawn no water of hope and charity, for the

-well-head--belief--is dried up at its source. Some pretend, indeed,

-to find in humanity what they deny to exist as deity, but I should

-be incapable of the illogical exchange. It is to deny that the seed

-sprang from a root; it is to replace a grand and illimitable theism by

-a finite and vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased

-mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the

-poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a _vibrion_,

-a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere

-bundle of phosphorus and carbon? how can it contain the elements of

-worship; what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the

-weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty.

-It becomes ridiculous. The _carpe diem_ of the classic sensualists, the

-morality of the "Satyricon" or the "Decamerone," are its only natural

-concomitants and outcome; but as yet it is not honest enough to say

-this. It affects the soothsayer's long robe, the sacerdotal frown, and

-is a hypocrite.'

-

-In answer she wrote back to him:

-

-'I do not urge you to have my faith: what is the use? Goethe was

-right. It is a question between a man and his own heart. No one should

-venture to intrude there. But taking life even as you do, it is surely

-a casket of mysteries. May we not trust that at the bottom of it, as

-at the bottom of Pandora's, there may be hope? I wish again to think

-with Goethe that immortality is not an inheritance, but a greatness

-to be achieved like any other greatness, by courage, self-denial, and

-purity of purpose--a reward allotted to the just. This is fanciful, may

-be, but it is not illogical. And without being either a Christian or a

-Materialist, without beholding either majesty or divinity in humanity,

-surely the best emotion that our natures know--pity--must be large

-enough to draw us to console where we can, and sustain where we can, in

-view of the endless suffering, the continual injustice, the appalling

-contrasts, with which the world is full. Whether man be the _vibrion_

-or the heir to immortality, the bundle of carbon or the care of angels,

-one fact is indisputable: he suffers agonies, mental and physical,

-that are wholly out of proportion to the brevity of his life, while he

-is too often weighted from infancy with hereditary maladies, both of

-body and of character. This is reason enough, I think, for us all to

-help each other, even though we feel, as you feel, that we are as lost

-children wandering in a great darkness, with no thread or clue to guide

-us to the end.'

-

-When Sabran read this answer, he mused to himself:

-

-'Pity! how far would her pity reach? How great offences would it cover?

-She has compassion for the evil-doers, but it is easy, since the evil

-does not touch her. She sits on the high white throne of her honour and

-purity, and surveys the world with beautiful but serene compassion.

-If the mud of its miry labyrinths reached and soiled her, would her

-theories prevail? They are noble, but they are the theories of one who

-sits in safety behind a gate of ivory and jasper, whilst outside, far

-below, the bitter tide of the human sea surges and moans too far off,

-too low down, for its sound to reach within. _Tout comprendre, c'est

-tout pardonner._ But since she would never understand, how could she

-ever pardon? There are things that the nature must understand rather

-than the mind; and her nature is as high, as calm, as pure as the snows

-of her high hills.'

-

-And then the impulse came over him for a passing moment to tell her

-what he had never told any living creature; to make confession to

-her and abide her judgment, even though he should never see her face

-again. But the impulse shrank and died away before the remembrance

-of her clear, proud eyes. He could not humiliate himself before her.

-He would have risked her anger; he could not brave her disdain.

-Moreover, straight and open ways were hot natural to him, though he was

-physically brave to folly. There was a subtlety and a reticence in him

-which were the enemies of candour.

-

-To her he was more frank than to any other because her influence

-was great on him, and a strong reverence was awakened in him that

-was touched by a timid fear quite alien to a character naturally

-contemptuously cynical and essentially proud. But even to her he could

-not bring himself to be entirely truthful in revelation of his past.

-Truthfulness is in much a habit, and he had never acquired its habit.

-When he was most sincere there was always some reserve lying behind

-it. This was perhaps one of the causes of the attraction he exercised

-on all women. All women are allured by the shadows and the suggestions

-of what is but imperfectly revealed. Even on the clear, strong nature

-of Wanda von Szalras it had its unconscious and intangible charm. She

-herself was like daylight, but the subtle vague charm of the shadows

-had their seduction for her; Night holds dreams and passions that fade

-and flee before the lucid noon, and who, at noonday wishes not for

-night?

-

-For himself, the letters he received from her seemed the only things

-that bound him to life at all.

-

-The betrayal of him by a base and mercenary woman had hurt him more

-than it was worthy to do; it had stung his pride and saddened him in

-this period of adversity with a sense of degradation. He had been sold

-by a courtezan; it seemed to him to make him ridiculous as Samson was

-ridiculous, and he had no gates of Gaza to pull down upon himself and

-her. He could only be idle, and stare at an unoccupied and valueless

-future. The summer went on, and he remained at Romaris. An old servant

-had sent him word that all his possessions were safe in Paris, and his

-apartments unharmed; but he felt no inclination to go there: he felt no

-sympathy with Communists or Versaillists, with Gambetta or Gallifet. He

-stayed on at the old storm-beaten sea-washed tower, counting his days

-chiefly by the coming to him of any line from the castle by the lake.

-

-She seemed to understand that and pity it, for each week brought him

-some tidings.

-

-At midsummer she wrote him word that she was about to be honoured again

-by a two days' visit of her Imperial friends.

-

-'We shall have, perforce, a large house party,' she said. 'Will you

-be inclined this time to join it? It is natural that you should

-sorrow without hope for your country, but the fault of her disasters

-lies not with you. It is, perhaps, time that you should enter the

-world again; will you commence with what for two days only will be

-worldly--Hohenszalras? Your old friends the monks will welcome you

-willingly and lovingly on the Holy Isle?'

-

-He replied with gratitude, but he refused. He did not make any plea or

-excuse; he thought it best to let the simple denial stand by itself.

-She would understand it.

-

-'Do not think, however,' he wrote, 'that I am the less profoundly

-touched by your admirable goodness to a worsted and disarmed combatant

-in a lost cause.'

-

-'It is the causes that are lost which are generally the noble ones,'

-she said in answer. 'I do not see why you should deem your life at an

-end because a sham empire, which you always despised, has fallen to

-pieces. If it had not perished by a blow from without, it would have

-crumbled to pieces from its own internal putrefaction.'

-

-'The visit has passed off very well,' she continued. 'Every one was

-content, which shows their kindness, for these things are all of

-necessity so much alike that it is difficult to make them entertaining.

-The weather was fortunately fine, and the old house looked bright.

-You did rightly not to be present, if you felt festivity out of tone

-with your thoughts. If, however, you are ever inclined for another

-self-imprisonment upon the island, you know that your friends, both at

-the monastery and at the burg, will be glad to see you, and the monks

-bid me salute you with affection.'

-

-A message from Mdme. Ottilie, a little news of the horses, a few

-phrases on the politics of the hour, and the letter was done. But,

-simple as it was, it seemed to him to be like a ray of sunshine amidst

-the gloom of his empty chamber.

-

-From her the permission to return to the monastery when he would

-seemed to say so much. He wrote her back calm and grateful words of

-congratulation and cordiality; he commenced with the German formality,

-'Most High Lady,' and ended them with the equally formal 'devoted and

-obedient servant;' but it seemed to him as if under that cover of

-ceremony she must see his heart beating, his blood throbbing; she must

-know very well, and if knowing, she suffered him to return to the Holy

-Isle, why then--he was all alone, but he felt the colour rise to his

-face.

-

-'And I must not go! I must not go!' he thought, and looked at his

-pistols.

-

-He ought sooner to blow his brains out, and leave a written confession

-for her.

-

-The hoarse sound of the sea surging amongst the rocks at the base of

-the tower was all that stirred the stillness; evening was spreading

-over all the monotonous inland country; a west wind was blowing and

-rustling amidst the gorse; a woman led a cow between the dolmen,

-stopping for it to crop grass here and there; the fishing-boats were

-far out to sea, hidden under the vapours and the shadows. It was all

-melancholy, sad-coloured, chill, lonesome. As he leaned against the

-embrasure of the window and looked down, other familiar scenes, long

-lost, rose up to his memory. He saw a wide green rolling river, long

-lines of willows and of larches bending under a steel-hued sky, a vast

-dim plain stretching away to touch blue mountains, a great solitude,

-a silence filled at intervals with the pathetic song of the swans,

-chanting sorrowfully because the nights grew cold, the ice began to

-gather, the food became scanty, and they were many in number.

-

-'I must not go!' he said to himself; 'I must never see Hohenszalras.'

-

-And he lit his study lamp, and held her letter to it and burnt it.

-It was his best way to do it honour, to keep it holy. He had the

-letters of so many worthless women locked in his drawers and caskets

-in his rooms in Paris. He held himself unworthy to retain hers. He

-had burned each written by her as it had come to him, in that sort

-of exaggeration of respect with which it seemed to him she was most

-fittingly treated by him. There are less worthy offerings than the

-first scruple of an unscrupulous life. It is like the first pure drops

-that fall from a long turbid and dust-choked fountain.

-

-As he walked the next day upon the windblown, rock-strewn strip of sand

-that parted the old oak wood from the sea, he thought restlessly of her

-in those days of stately ceremony which suited her so well. What did he

-do here, what chance had he to be remembered by her? He chafed at his

-absence, yet it seemed to him impossible that he could ever go to her.

-What had been at first keen calculation with him had now become a finer

-instinct, was now due to a more delicate sentiment, a truer and loftier

-emotion. What could he ever look to her if he sought her but a mere

-base fortune-seeker, a mere liar, with no pride and no manhood in him?

-And what else was he? he thought, with bitterness, as he paced to and

-fro the rough strip of beach, with the dusky heaving waves trembling

-under a cloudy sky, where a red glow told the place of the setting sun.

-

-There were few bolder men living than He, and he was cynical and

-reckless before many things that most men reverence; but at the thought

-of her possible scorn he felt himself tremble like a child. He thought

-he would rather never see her face again than risk her disdain; there

-was in him a vague romantic wishfulness rather to die, so that she

-might think well of his memory, than live in her love through any

-baseness that would be unworthy of her.

-

-Sin had always seemed a mere superstitious name to him, and if he had

-abstained from its coarser forms it had been rather from the revolt

-of the fine taste of a man of culture than from any principle or

-persuasion of duty. Men he believed were but ephemera, sporting their

-small hours, weaving their frail webs, and swept away by the great

-broom of destiny as spiders by the housewife. In the spineless doctrine

-of altruism he had had too robust a temperament, too clear a reason,

-to seek a guide for conduct. He had lived for himself, and had seen

-no cause to do otherwise. That he had not been more criminal had been

-due partly to indolence, partly to pride. In his love for Wanda von

-Szalras, a love with which considerable acrimony had mingled at the

-first, he yet, through all the envy and the impatience which alloyed

-it, reached a moral height which he had never touched before. Between

-her and him a great gulf yawned. He abstained from any effort to pass

-it. It was the sole act of self-denial of a selfish life, the sole

-obedience to conscience in a character which obeyed no moral laws, but

-was ruled by a divided tyranny of natural instinct and conventional

-honour.

-

-The long silent hours of thought in the willow-shaded cloisters of

-the Holy Isle had not been wholly without fruit. He desired, with

-passion and sincerity, that she should think well of him, but he did

-not dare to wish for more; love offered from him to her seemed to him

-as if it would be a kind of blasphemy. He remembered in his far-off

-childhood, which at times still seemed so near to him, nearer than all

-that was around him, the vague, awed, wistful reverence with which

-he had kneeled in solitary hours before the old dim picture of the

-Madonna with the lamp burning above it, a little golden flame in the

-midst of the gloom; he remembered so well how his fierce young soul and

-his ignorant yearning child's heart had gone out in a half-conscious

-supplication, how it had seemed to him that if he only knelt long

-enough, prayed well enough, she would come down to him and lay her

-hands on him. It was all so long ago, yet, when he thought of Wanda

-von Szalras, something of that same emotion rose up in him, something

-of the old instinctive worship awoke in him. In thought he prostrated

-himself once more whenever the memory of her came to him. He had no

-religion; she became one to him.

-

-Meanwhile, he was constantly thinking restlessly to himself, 'Did I do

-ill not to go?'

-

-His bodily life was at Romaris, but his mental life was at

-Hohenszalras. He was always thinking of her as she would look in those

-days of the Imperial visit; he could see the stately ceremonies of

-welcome, the long magnificence of the banquets, the great Rittersaal

-with cressets of light blazing on its pointed emblazoned roofs; he

-could see her as she would move down the first quadrille which she

-would dance with her Kaiser: she would wear her favourite ivory-white

-velvet most probably, and her wonderful old jewels, and all her orders.

-She would look as if she had stepped down off a canvas of Velasquez

-or Vandyck, and she would be a little tired, a little contemptuous, a

-little indifferent, despite her loyalty; she would be glad, he knew,

-when the brilliant gathering was broken up, and the old house, and the

-yew terrace, and the green lake were all once more quiet beneath the

-rays of the watery moon. She was so unlike other women. She would not

-care about a greatness, a compliment, a success more or less. Such

-triumphs were for the people risen yesterday, not for a Countess von

-Szalras.

-

-He knew the simplicity of her life and the pride of her temper,

-and they moved him to the stronger admiration because he knew also

-that those mere externals which she held in contempt had for him an

-exaggerated value. He was scarcely conscious himself of how great a

-share the splendour of her position, united to her great indifference

-to it, had in the hold she had taken on his imagination and his

-passions. He did know that there were so much greater nobilities in

-her that he was vaguely ashamed of the ascendency which her mere rank

-took in his thoughts of her. Yet he could not divest her of it, and

-it seemed to enhance both her bodily and spiritual beauty, as the

-golden calyx of the lily makes its whiteness seem the whiter by its

-neighbourhood.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIII.

-

-

-In the Iselthal the summer was more brilliant and warm than usual. The

-rains were less frequent, and the roses on the great sloping lawns

-beneath the buttresses and terraces of Hohenszalras were blooming

-freely.

-

-Their mistress did not for once give them much heed. She rode long and

-fast through the still summer woods, and came back after nightfall. Her

-men of business, during their interviews with her, found her attention

-less perfect, her interest less keen. In stormy days she sat in the

-library, and read Heine and Schiller often, and all the philosophers

-and men of science rarely. A great teacher has said that the Humanities

-must outweigh the Sciences at all times, and he is unquestionably

-true, if it were only for the reason that in the sweet wise lore of

-ages every human heart in pain and perplexity finds a refuge; whilst in

-love or in sorrow the sciences seem the poorest and chilliest of mortal

-vanities that ever strove to measure the universe with a foot-rule.

-

-The Princess watched her with wistful, inquisitive eyes, but dared

-not name the person of whom they both thought most. Wanda was herself

-intolerant of the sense of impatience with which she awaited the coming

-of the sturdy pony that brought the post-bag from Windisch-Matrey.

-He in his loneliness and emptiness of life on the barren sea-shore

-of Romaris did not more anxiously await her letters than did the

-châtelaine of Hohenszalras, amidst all her state, her wealth, and her

-innumerable occupations, await his. She pitied him intensely; there was

-something pathetic to her in the earnestness with which he had striven

-to amend his ways of life, only to have his whole career shattered by

-an insensate and unlooked-for national war. She understood that his

-poverty stood in the path of his ambition, and she divined that his

-unhappiness had broken that spring of manhood in him which would have

-enabled him to construct a new career for himself out of the ruins of

-the old. She understood why he was listless and exhausted.

-

-There were moments when she was inclined to send him some invitation

-more cordial, some bidding more clear; but she hesitated to take a step

-which would bind her in her own honour to so much more. She knew that

-she ought not to suggest a hope to him to which she was not prepared

-to give full fruition. And again, how could he respond? It would be

-impossible for him to accept. She was one of the great alliances of

-Europe, and he was without fortune, without career, without a future.

-Even friendship was only possible whilst they were far asunder.

-

-Two years had gone by since he had come across from the monastery in

-the green and gold of a summer afternoon. The monks had not forgotten

-him; throughout the French war they had prayed for him. When their

-Prior saw her, he said anxiously sometimes: 'And the Markgraf von

-Sabran, will he never come to us again? Were we too dull for him?

-Will your Excellency remember us to him, if ever you can?' And she

-had answered with a strange emotion at her heart: 'His country is

-in trouble, holy father; a good son cannot leave his land in her

-adversity. No: I do not think he was dull with you; he was quite happy,

-I believe. Perhaps he may come again some day, who knows? He shall be

-told what you say.'

-

-Then a vision would rise up to her of herself and him, as they would

-be perhaps when they should be quite old. Perhaps he would retire into

-this holy retreat of the Augustines, and she would be a grave sombre

-woman, not gay and pretty and witty, as the Princess was. The picture

-was gloomy; she chased it away, and galloped her horse long and far

-through the forests.

-

-The summer had been so brilliant that the autumn which followed was

-cold and severe, earlier than usual, and heavy storms swept over the

-Tauern, almost ere the wheat harvest could be reaped. Many days were

-cheerless and filled only with the sound of incessant rains. In the

-Pinzgau and the Salzkammergut floods were frequent. The Ache and the

-Szalzach, with all their tributary streams and wide and lonely lakes,

-were carrying desolation and terror into many parts of the land which

-in summer they made beautiful. Almost every day brought her some

-tidings of some misfortunes in the villages on the farms belonging to

-her in the more distant parts of Austria; a mill washed away, a bridge

-down, a dam burst, a road destroyed, a harvest swept into the water,

-some damage or other done by the swollen river and torrents, she heard

-of by nearly every communication that her stewards and her lawyers made

-to her at this season.

-

-'Our foes the rivers are more insidious than your mighty enemy the

-salt water,' she wrote to Romaris. 'The sea deals open blows, and men

-know what they must expect if they go out on the vasty deep. But here

-a little brook that laughed and chirped at noon-day as innocently as

-a child may become at nightfall or dawn a roaring giant, devouring

-all that surrounds him. We pay heavily for the glory of our mountain

-waters.'

-

-These autumn weeks seemed very dreary to her. She visited her horses

-chafing at inaction in their roomy stalls, and attended to her affairs,

-and sat in the library or the octagon room hearing the rain beat

-against the emblazoned leaded panes, and felt the days, and above all

-the evenings, intolerably dull and melancholy. She had never heeded

-rain before, or minded the change of season.

-

-One Sunday a messenger rode through the drenching storm, and brought

-her a telegram from her lawyer in Salzburg. It said: 'Idrac flooded:

-many lives lost: great distress: fear town wholly destroyed. Please

-send instructions.'

-

-The call for action roused her as a trumpet sounding rouses a cavalry

-charger.

-

-'Instructions!' she echoed as she read. 'They write as if I could bid

-the Danube subside, or the Drave shrink in its bed!'

-

-She penned a hasty answer.

-

-'I will go to Idrac myself.'

-

-Then she sent a message also to S. Johann im Wald for a special train

-to be got in readiness for her, and told one of her women and a trusty

-servant to be ready to go with her to Vienna in an hour. It was still

-early in the forenoon.

-

-'Are you mad?' cried Madame Ottilie, when she was informed of the

-intended journey.

-

-Wanda kissed her hand.

-

-'There is no madness in what I shall do, dear mother, and Bela surely

-would have gone.'

-

-'Can you stay the torrents of heaven? Can you arrest a river in its

-wrath?'

-

-'No; but lives are often lost because poor people lose their senses in

-fright. I shall be calmer than anyone there. Besides, the place belongs

-to us; we are bound to share its danger. If only Egon were not away

-from Hungary!'

-

-'But he is away. You have driven him away.'

-

-'Do not dissuade me, dearest mother. It would be cowardice not to go.'

-

-'What can women do in such extremities?'

-

-'But we of Hohenszalras must not be mere women when we are wanted in

-any danger. Remember Luitgarde von Szalras, the _kuttengeier._'

-

-The Princess sighed, prayed, even wept, but Wanda was gently

-inflexible. The Princess could not see why a precious life should be

-endangered for the sake of a little half barbaric, half Jewish town,

-which was remarkable for nothing except for shipping timber and selling

-_salbling._ The population was scarcely Christian, so many Hebrews were

-there, and so benighted were the Sclavonian poor, who between them made

-up the two thousand odd souls that peopled Idrac. To send a special

-messenger there, and to give any quantity of money that the distress

-of the moment might demand, would be all right and proper; indeed,

-an obligation on the owner of the little feudal river-side town. But

-to go! A Countess von Szalras to go in person where not one out of a

-hundred of the citizens had been properly baptized or confirmed! The

-Princess could not view this Quixotism in any other light than that of

-an absolute insanity.

-

-'Bela lost his life in just such a foolish manner!' she pleaded.

-

-'So did the saints, dear mother,' said his sister, gently.

-

-The Princess coloured and coughed.

-

-'Of course, I am aware that many holy lives have been--have been--what

-appears to our finite senses wasted,' she said, with a little asperity.

-'But I am also aware, Wanda, that the duties most neglected are those

-which lie nearest home and have the least display; consideration for

-_me_ might be better, though less magnificent, than so much heroism for

-Idrac.'

-

-'It pains me that you should put it in that light, dearest mother,'

-said Wanda, with inexhaustible patience. 'Were you in any danger I

-would stay by you first, of course; but you are in none. These poor,

-forlorn, ignorant, cowardly creatures are in the very greatest. I

-draw large revenues from the place; I am in honour bound to share

-its troubles. Pray do not seek to dissuade me. It is a matter not of

-caprice but of conscience. I shall be in no possible peril myself. I

-shall go down the river in my own vessel, and I will telegraph to you

-from every town at which I touch.'

-

-The Princess ceased not to lament, to oppose, to bemoan her own

-powerlessness to check intolerable follies. Sitting in her easy chair

-in her warm blue-room, sipping her chocolate, the woes of a distant

-little place on the Danube, whose population was chiefly Semitic, were

-very bearable and altogether failed to appeal to her.

-

-Wanda kissed her, asked her blessing humbly, and took her way in the

-worst of a blinding storm along the unsafe and precipitous road which

-went over the hills to Windisch-Matrey.

-

-'What false sentiment it all is!' thought the Princess, left alone.

-'She has not seen this town since she was ten years old. She knows that

-they are nearly all Jews, or quite heathenish Sclavonians. She can do

-nothing at all--what should a woman do?--and yet she is so full of her

-conscience that she goes almost to the Iron Gates in quest of a duty in

-the wettest of weather, while she leaves a man like Egon and a man like

-Sabran wretched for want of a word! I must say,' thought the Princess,

-'false sentiment is almost worse than none at all!'

-

-The rains were pouring down from leaden skies, hiding all the sides of

-the mountains and filling the valleys with masses of vapour. The road

-was barely passable; the hill torrents dashed across it; the little

-brooks were swollen to water-courses; the protecting wall on more than

-one giddy height had been swept away; the gallop of the horses shook

-the frail swaying galleries and hurled the loosened stones over the

-precipice with loud resounding noise. The drive to Matrey and thence

-with post-horses to S. Johann im Wald, the nearest railway station, was

-in itself no little peril, but it was accomplished before the day had

-closed in, and the special train she had ordered being in readiness

-left at once for Vienna, running through the low portions of the

-Pinzgau, which were for the most part under water.

-

-All the way was dim and watery, and full of the sound of running

-or of falling water. The Ache and the Szalsach, both always deep

-and turbulent rivers, were swollen and boisterous, and swirled and

-thundered in their rocky beds; in the grand Pass of Lueg the gloom,

-always great, was dense as at midnight, and when they reached Salzburg

-the setting sun was bursting through ink-black clouds, and shed a

-momentary glow as of fire upon the dark sides of the Untersberg, and

-flamed behind the towers of the great castle on its rocky throne. All

-travellers know the grandeur of that scene; familiar as it was to her

-she looked upward at it with awe and pleasure commingled. Salzburg in

-the evening light needs Salvator Rosa and Rembrandt together to portray

-it.

-

-The train only paused to take in water; the station was crowded as

-usual, set as it is between the frontiers of empire and kingdom, but in

-the brief interval she saw one whom she recognised amongst the throng,

-and she felt the colour come into her own face as she did so.

-

-She saw Sabran; he did not see her. Her train moved out of the station

-rapidly, to make room for the express from Munich; the sun dropped down

-into the ink-black clouds; the golden and crimson pomp of Untersberg

-changed to black and grey; the ivory and amber and crystal of the

-castle became stone and brick and iron, that frowned sombrely over a

-city sunk in river-mists and in rain-vapours. She felt angrily that

-there was an affinity between the landscape and herself; that so, at

-sight of him, a light had come into her life which had no reality in

-fact, prismatic colours baseless as a dream.

-

-She had longed to speak to him; to stretch out her hand to him; to

-say at least how her thoughts and her sympathies had been with him

-throughout the war. But her carriage was already in full onward

-movement, and in another moment had passed at high speed out of the

-station into that grand valley of the Szalzach where Hohensalzburg

-seems to tower as though Friederich Barbarossa did indeed sleep there.

-With a sigh she sank backward amongst her furs and cushions, and saw

-the soaring fortress pass, into the clouds.

-

-The night had now closed in; the rain fell heavily. As the little

-train, oscillating greatly from its lightness, swung over the iron

-rails, there was a continual sound of splashing water audible above

-the noise of the wheels and the throb of the engine. She had often

-travelled at night and had always slept soundly; this evening she could

-not sleep. She remained wide awake watching the swaying of the lamp,

-listening to the shrill shriek of the wheels as they rushed through

-water where some hillside brook had broken bounds and spread out in a

-shallow lagoon. The skies were overcast in every direction; the rain

-was everywhere unceasing; the night seemed to her very long.

-

-She pondered perpetually on his presence at Salzburg, and wondered if

-he were going to the Holy Isle. Three months had gone by since she had

-sent him the semi-invitation to her country.

-

-The train sped on; the day dawned; she began to get glimpses of the

-grand blue river, now grey and ochre-coloured and thick with mud, its

-turbid waves heaving sullenly under the stormy October skies. She had

-always loved the great Donau; she knew its cradle well in the north

-land of the Teutons. She had often watched the baby-stream rippling

-over the stones, and felt the charm, as of some magical transformation,

-as she thought of the same stream stretching broadly under the monastic

-walls of Klosterneuberg, rolling in tempest by the Iron Gates, and

-gathering its mighty volume higher and deeper to burst at last into

-the sunlight of the eastern sea. Amidst the levelled monotony of

-modern Europe the Danube keeps something of savage grandeur, something

-of legendary power, something of oriental charm; it is still often

-tameless, a half-barbaric thing, still a Tamerlane amidst rivers: and

-yet yonder at its birthplace it is such a slender thread of rippling

-water! She and Bela had crossed it with bare feet to get forget-me-nots

-in Taunus, talking together of Chriemhilde and her pilgrimage to the

-land of the Huns.

-

-The little train swung on steadily through the water above and below,

-and after a night of no little danger came safely to Vienna as the dawn

-broke. She went straight to her yacht, which was in readiness off the

-Lobau and weighed anchor as the pale and watery morning broadened into

-day above the shores that had seen Aspern and Wagram. The yacht was

-a yawl, strongly built and drawing little water, made on purpose for

-the ascent and descent of the Danube, from Passau up in the north to

-as far south as the Bosphorus if needed. The voyage had been of the

-greatest joys of hers and of Bela's childhood; they had read on deck

-alternately the 'Nibelungen-Lied' and the 'Arabian Nights,' clinging

-together in delighted awe as they passed through the darkness of the

-defile of Kasan.

-

-Idrac was situated between Pesth and Peterwardein, lying low on marshy

-ground that was covered with willows and intersected by small streams

-flowing from the interior to the Danube.

-

-The little town gave its name and its seigneurie to the owner of its

-burg; an ancient place built on a steep rock that rose sheer out of

-the fast-running waves, and dominated the passage of the stream. The

-Counts of Idrac had been exceeding powerful in the old times, when

-they had stopped at their will the right of way of the river; and

-their appanages with their title had come by marriage into the House

-of Szalras some four centuries before, and although the dominion over

-the river was gone, the fortress and the little town and all that

-appertained thereto still formed a considerable possession; it had

-usually been given with its Countship to the second son of the Szalras.

-

-Making the passage to Pesth in fourteen hours, the yacht dropped

-anchor before the Franz Josef Quai as the first stars came out above

-the Blocksburg, for by this time the skies had lightened and the rains

-had ceased. Here she stayed the night perforce, as an accident had

-occurred to the machinery of the vessel. She did not leave the yacht,

-but sent into the inner city for stores of provisions and of the local

-cordial, the _slibowitza_, to distribute to the half-drowned people

-amongst whom she was about to go. It was noonday before the yawl got

-under weigh and left the twin-towns behind her. A little way further

-down the stream they passed a great castle, standing amidst beech woods

-on a rock that rose up from fields covered with the Carlowitz vine. She

-looked at it with a sigh: it was the fortress of Kohacs, one of the

-many possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely.

-

-The weather had now cleared, but the skies were overcast, and the

-plains, which began to spread away monotonously from either shore,

-were covered with white fog. Soon the fog spread also over the river,

-and the yacht was compelled to advance cautiously and slowly, so that

-the voyage was several hours longer than usual. When the light of the

-next day broke they had come in sight of the flooded districts on their

-right: the immense flat fields that bore the flax and grain which make

-the commerce of Baja, of Neusatz, and of other riverain towns, were

-all changed to shallow estuaries. The Theiss, the Drave, and many

-minor streams, swollen by the long autumnal rains, had burst their

-boundaries and laid all the country under water for hundreds of square

-leagues. The granaries, freshly filled with the late abundant harvest,

-had at many places been flooded or destroyed: thousands of stacks of

-grain were floating like shapeless, dismasted vessels. Timber and the

-thatched roofs of the one-storied houses were in many places drifting

-too, like the flotsam and the hulls of wrecked ships.

-

-There are few scenes more dreary, more sad, more monotonous than those

-of a flat country swamped by flood: the sky above them was leaden

-and heavy, the Danube beneath them was turgid and discoloured; the

-shrill winds whistled through the brakes of willow, the water-birds,

-frightened, flew from their osier-beds on the islands, the bells of

-churches and watch-towers tolled dismally.

-

-It was late in the afternoon when she came within sight of her little

-town on the Sclavonian shore, which Ernst von Szalras had fired on

-August 29, 1526, to save it from the shame of violation by the Turks.

-Though he had perished, and most of the soldiers and townsfolk with

-him, the fortress, the _têtes du pont_, and the old water-gates and

-walls had been too strong for the flames to devour, and the town had

-been built up again by the Turks and subsequently by the Hungarians.

-

-The slender minarets of the Ottomans' two mosques still raised

-themselves amidst the old Gothic architecture of the mediæval

-buildings, and the straw-covered roofs and the white-plastered walls

-of the modern houses. As they steamed near it the minarets and the

-castle towers rose above what looked a world of waters, all else seemed

-swallowed in the flood; the orchards, which had surrounded all save the

-river-side of the town; were immersed almost to the summits of their

-trees. The larger vessels could never approach Idrac in ordinary times,

-the creek being too shallow on which it stood; but now the water was

-so high that though it would be too imprudent to anchor there, the

-yacht easily passed in, and hove-to underneath the water-walls, a pilot

-taking careful soundings as they steered. It was about three in the

-afternoon. The short, grey day was near its end; a shout of welcome

-rose from some people on the walls as they recognised the build and the

-ensign of the yawl. Some crowded boats were pulling away from the town,

-laden with fugitives and their goods.

-

-'How soon people run away! They are like rats,' she thought. 'I would

-sooner be like the stork, and not quit my nest if it were in flames.'

-

-She landed at the water-stairs of the castle. Men, women, and children

-came scrambling along the walls, where they were huddled together out

-of temporary reach of the flood, and threw themselves down at her

-feet and kissed her skirts with abject servility. They were half mad

-with terror, and amongst the population there were many hundreds of

-Jews, the most cowardly people in all the world. The boats were quite

-inadequate in number to the work they had to do; the great steamers

-passing up and down did not pause to help them; the flood was so

-general below Pesth that on the right shore of the river each separate

-village and township was busy with its own case and had no help for

-neighbours: the only aid came from those on the opposite shore, but

-that was scanty and unwisely ministered. The chief citizens of Idrac

-had lost their wits, as she had foreseen they would do. To ring the

-bells madly night and day, and fire off the old culverins from the

-water-gate, was all they seemed to know how to do. They told her that

-many lives had been lost, as the inland waters had risen in the night,

-and most of the houses were of only one storey. In the outlying

-flax-farms it was supposed that whole households had perished. In the

-town itself there were six feet of water everywhere, and many of the

-inhabitants were huddled together in the two mosques, which were now

-granaries, in the towers, and in the fortress itself; but several

-families had been enabled to escape, and had climbed upon the roofs,

-clinging to the chimneys for bare life.

-

-Her mere presence brought reviving hope and energy to the primitive

-population. Their Lady had a romantic legendary reputation amongst

-them, and they were ready to cling round the pennon of the yacht as

-their ancestors had rallied round the standard of Ernst von Szalras.

-

-She ascended to the Rittersaal of the fortress, and assembled a few of

-the men about her, who had the most influence and energy in the little

-place. She soon introduced some kind of system and method into the

-efforts made, promised largesse to those who should be the most active,

-and had the provisions she had brought distributed amongst those who

-most needed them. The boats of the yawl took many away to a temporary

-refuge on the opposite shore. Many others were brought in to the

-state-room of the castle for shelter. Houses were constantly falling,

-undermined by the water, and there were dead and wounded to be attended

-to, as well as the hungry and terrified living creatures. Once before,

-Idrac had been thus devastated by flood, but it had been far away in

-the previous century, and the example was too distant to have been a

-warning to the present generation.

-

-She passed a fatiguing and anxious night. It was impossible to

-think of sleep with so much misery around. The yacht was obliged to

-descend, the river for safe anchorage, but the boats remained. She

-went herself, now in one, now in another, to endeavour to inspire the

-paralysed people with some courage and animation. A little wine, a

-little bread, were all she took; food was very scarce. The victuals of

-the yacht's provisioning did not last long amongst so many famishing

-souls. She ordered her skipper at dawn to go down as far as Neusatz

-and purchase largely. There were five thousand people, counting those

-of the neighbourhood, or more, homeless and bereft of all shelter. The

-telegraph was broken, the poles had been snapped by the force of the

-water in many places.

-

-With dawn a furious storm gathered and broke, and renewed rains added

-their quota to the inundation and their discomfort to the exposed

-sufferers. The cold was great, and the chill that made them shudder

-from head to foot was past all cure by cordials. She regretted not

-to have brought Greswold with her. She was indifferent to danger,

-indefatigable in exertion, and strong as Libussa, brave as Chriemhilde.

-Because the place belonged to her in almost a feudal manner, she held

-herself bound to give her life for it if need be. Bela would have done

-what she was doing.

-

-Twice or thrice during the two following days she heard the people

-speak of a stranger who had arrived fifteen hours before her, and had

-wrought miracles of deliverance. Unless the stories told her were

-greatly exaggerated, this foreigner had shown a courage and devotion

-quite unequalled. He had thrown himself into the work at once on his

-arrival there in a boat from Neusatz, and had toiled night and day,

-enduring extreme fatigue and running almost every hour some dire peril

-of his life. He had saved whole families of the poorest and most

-wretched quarter; he had sprung on to roofs that were splitting and

-sinking, on to walls that were trembling and tottering, and had borne

-away in safety men, women, and children, the old, and the sick, and the

-very animals; he had infused some of his own daring and devotedness

-into the selfish and paralysed Hebrew population; priests and rabbis

-were alike unanimous in his praise, and she, as she heard, felt that

-he who had fought for France had been here for her sake. They told

-her that he was now out amongst the more distant orchards and fields,

-amidst the flooded farms where the danger was even greater than in the

-town itself. Some Czechs said that he was S. John of Nepomuc himself.

-She bade them bring him to her, that she might thank him, whenever he

-should enter the town again, and then thought of him no more.

-

-Her whole mind and feeling were engrossed by the spectacle of a misery

-that even all her wealth could not do very much to alleviate. The

-waters as yet showed no sign of abatement. The crash of falling houses

-sounded heavily ever and again through the gloom. The melancholy sight

-of humble household things, of drowned cattle, of dead dogs, borne down

-the discoloured flood out to the Danube renewed itself every hour.

-The lamentations of the ruined people went up in an almost continuous

-wail like the moaning of a winter wind. There was nothing grand,

-nothing picturesque, nothing exciting to redeem the dreariness and the

-desolation. It was all ugly, miserable, dull. It was more trying than

-war, which even in its hideous senselessness lends a kind of brutal

-intoxication to all whom it surrounds.

-

-She was incessantly occupied and greatly fatigued, so that the time

-passed without her counting it. She sent a message each day to the

-Princess at home, and promised to return as soon as the waters had

-subsided and the peril passed. For the first time in her life she

-experienced real discomfort, real privation; she had surrendered nearly

-all the rooms in the burg to the sick people, and food ran short and

-there was none of good quality, though she knew that supplies would

-soon come from the steward at Kohacs and by the yacht.

-

-On the fourth day the waters had sunk an inch. As she heard the good

-tidings she was looking out inland over the waste of grey and yellow

-flood; a Jewish rabbi was beside her speaking of the exertions of the

-stranger, in whom the superstitious of the townsfolk saw a saint from

-heaven.

-

-'And does no one even know who he is?' she asked.

-

-'No one has asked,' answered the Jew. 'He has been always out where the

-peril was greatest.'

-

-'How came he here?'

-

-'He came by one of the big steamers that go to Turkey. He pulled

-himself here in a little boat that he had bought; the boat in which he

-has done such good service.'

-

-'What is he like in appearance?'

-

-'He is very tall, very fair, and handsome; I should think he is

-northern.'

-

-Her pulse beat quicker for a moment; then she rejected the idea as

-absurd, though indeed, she reflected, she had seen him at Salzburg.

-

-'He must at least be a brave man,' she said quietly. 'If you see him

-bring him to me that I may thank him. Is he in the town now?'

-

-'No; he is yonder, where the Rathwand farms are, or were; where your

-Excellency sees those dark, long islands which are not islands at all,

-but only the summits of cherry orchards. He has carried the people

-away, carried them down to Peterwardein; and he is now about to try and

-rescue some cattle which were driven up on to the roof of a tower, poor

-beasts--that tower to the east there, very far away: it is five miles

-as the crow flies.'

-

-'I suppose he will come into the town again?'

-

-'He was here last night; he had heard of your Excellency, and asked for

-her health.'

-

-'Ah! I will see and thank him if he come again.'

-

-But no one that day saw the stranger in Idrac.

-

-The rains fell again and the waters again rose. The maladies which

-come of damp and of bad exhalations spread amongst the people; they

-could not all be taken to other villages or towns, for there was no

-room for them. She had quinine, wines, good food ordered by the great

-steamers, but they were not yet arrived. What could be got at Neusatz

-or Peterwardein the yacht brought, but it was not enough for so many

-sick and starving people. The air began to grow fœtid from the many

-carcases of animals, though as they floated the vultures from the hills

-fed on them. She had a vessel turned into a floating hospital, and

-the most delicate of the sick folk carried to it, and had it anchored

-off the nearest port. Her patience, her calmness, and her courage did

-more to revive the sinking hearts of the homeless creatures than the

-cordials and the food. She was all day long out in her boat, being

-steered from one spot to another. At night she rested little and passed

-from one sick bed to another. She had never been so near to hopeless

-human misery before. At Hohenszalras no one was destitute.

-

-One twilight hour on the ninth day, as she was rowed back to the castle

-stairs, she passed another boat in which were two lads and a man. The

-man was rowing, a dusky shadow in the gloom of the wet evening and the

-uncouthness of his waterproof pilot's dress; but she had a lantern

-beside her, and she flashed its light full on the boat as it passed

-her. When she reached the burg, she said to her servant Anton: 'Herr

-von Sabran is in Idrac; go and say that I desire to see him.'

-

-Anton, who remembered him well, returned in an hour, and said he could

-neither find him nor hear of him.

-

-All the night long, a cheerless tedious night, with the rain falling

-without and the storm that was raging in the Bosphorus sending its

-shrill echoes up the Danube, she sat by the beds of the sick women

-or paced up and down the dimly-lit Rittersaal in an impatience which

-it humiliated her to feel. It touched her that he should be here,

-so silently, so sedulously avoiding her, and doing so much for the

-people of Idrac, because they were her people. The old misgiving that

-she had been ungenerous in her treatment of him returned to her. He

-seemed always to have the finer part--the _beau rôle._ To her, royal

-in giving, imperious in conduct, it brought a sense of failure, of

-inferiority. As she read the psalms in Hungarian to the sick Magyar

-women, her mind perpetually wandered away to him.

-

-She did not see Sabran again, but she heard often of him. The fair

-stranger, as the people called him, was always conspicuous wherever

-the greatest danger was to be encountered. There was always peril in

-almost every movement where the undermined houses, the tottering walls,

-the stagnant water, the fever-reeking marshes presented at every turn a

-perpetual menace to life. 'He is not vainly _un fils des preux_,' she

-thought, with a thrill of personal pride, as if someone near and dear

-to her were praised, as she listened to the stories of his intrepidity

-and his endurance. Whole nights spent in soaked clothes, in half

-swamped boats; whole days lost in impotent conflict with the ignorance

-or the poltroonery of an obstinate populace, continual risk encountered

-without counting its cost to rescue some poor man's sick beast, or pull

-a cripple from beneath falling beams, or a lad from choking mud; hour

-on hour of steady laborious rowing, of passage to and fro the sullen

-river with a freight of moaning, screaming peasantry--this was not

-child's play, nor had it any of the animation and excitation which in

-war or in adventure make of danger a strong wine that goes merrily and

-voluptuously to the head. It was all dull, stupid, unlovely, and he

-had come to it for her sake. For her sake certainly, though he never

-approached her; though when Anton at last found and took her message

-to him he excused himself from obedience to it by a plea that he was

-at that moment wet and weary, and had come from a hut where typhoid

-raged. She understood the excuse; she knew that he knew well she was no

-more afraid than he of that contagion. She admired him the more for his

-isolation; in these grey, rainy, tedious, melancholy days his figure

-seemed to grow into a luminous heroic shape like one of the heroes of

-the olden time. If he had once seemed to seek a guerdon for it the

-spell would have been broken. But he never did. She began to believe

-that such a knight deserved any recompense which she could give.

-

-'Egon himself could have done no more,' she said in her own thoughts,

-and it was the highest praise that she could give to any man, for

-her Magyar cousin was the embodiment of all martial daring, of all

-chivalrous ardour, and had led his glittering hussars down on to the

-French bayonets, as on to the Prussian Krupp guns, with a fury that

-bore all before it, impetuous and irresistible as a stream of fired

-naphtha.

-

-On the twelfth morning the river had sunk so much lower that the yacht

-arriving with medicines and stores of food from Neusatz signalled that

-she could not enter the creek on which Idrac stood, and waited orders.

-It had ceased to rain, but the winds were still strong and the skies

-heavy. She descended to her boat at the water-gate, and told the men to

-take her out to the yacht. It was early, the sun behind the clouds had

-barely climbed above the distant Wallachian woods, and the scene had

-lost nothing of its melancholy. A man was standing on the water-stairs

-as she descended them, and turned rapidly away, but she had seen him

-and stretched out her long staff and touched him lightly.

-

-'Why do you avoid me?' she said, as he uncovered his head; 'my men

-sought you in all directions; I wished to thank you.'

-

-He bowed low over the hand she held out to him. 'I ventured to be near

-at hand to be of use,' he answered. 'I was afraid the exposure, and,

-the damp, and all this pestilence would make you ill: you are not ill?'

-

-'No; I am quite well. I have heard of all your courage and endurance.

-Idrac owes you a great debt.'

-

-'I only pay my debt to Hohenszalras.'

-

-They were both silent; a certain constraint was upon them both.

-

-'How did you know of the inundation? It was unkind of you not to come

-to me,' she said, and her voice was unsteady as she spoke. 'I want so

-much to tell you, better than letters can do, all that we felt for you

-throughout that awful war.'

-

-He turned away slightly with a shudder. 'You are too good. Thousands of

-men much better than I suffered much more.'

-

-The tears rose to her eyes as she glanced at him. He was looking pale

-and worn. He had lost the graceful _insouciance_ of his earlier manner.

-He looked grave, weary, melancholy, like a man who had passed through

-dire disaster, unspeakable pain, and had seen his career snapped in

-two like a broken wand. But there was about him instead something

-soldierlike, proven, war-worn, which became him in her eyes, daughter

-of a race of warriors as she was.

-

-'You have much to tell me, and I have much to hear,' she said, after

-a pause. 'You should have come to the monastery to be cured of your

-wounds. Why were you so mistrustful of our friendship?'

-

-He coloured and was silent.

-

-'Indeed,' she said gravely, 'we can honour brave men in the Tauern and

-in Idrac too. You are very brave. I do not know how to thank you for my

-people or for myself.'

-

-'Pray do not speak so,' he said, in a very low voice. 'To see you again

-would be recompense for much worthier things than any I have done.'

-

-'But you might have seen me long ago,' she said, with a certain

-nervousness new to her, 'had you only chosen to come to the Isle. I

-asked you twice.'

-

-He looked at her with eyes of longing and pathetic appeal.

-

-'Do not tempt me,' he murmured. 'If I yielded, and if you despised

-me----'

-

-'How could I despise one who has so nobly saved the lives of my people?'

-

-'You would do so.'

-

-He spoke very low: he was silent a little while, then he said very

-softly:

-

-'One evening, when we spoke together on the terrace at Hohenszalras,

-you leant your hand upon the ivy there. I plucked the leaf you touched;

-you did not see. I had the leaf with me all through the war. It was

-a talisman. It was like a holy thing. When your cousin's soldiers

-stripped me in their ambulance, they took it from me.'

-

-His voice faltered. She listened and was moved to a profound emotion.

-

-'I will give you something better,' she said very gravely. He did not

-ask her what she would give.

-

-She looked away from him awhile, and her face flushed a little. She was

-thinking of what she would give him; a gift so great that the world

-would deem her mad to bestow it, and perhaps would deem him dishonoured

-to take it.

-

-'How did you hear of these floods along the Danube?' she asked him,

-recovering her wonted composure.

-

-'I read about them in telegrams in Paris,' he made answer. 'I had

-mustered courage to revisit my poor Paris; all I possess is there.

-Nothing has been injured; a shell burst quite close by but did not

-harm my apartments. I went to make arrangements for the sale of my

-collections, and on the second day that I arrived there I saw the news

-of the inundations of Idrac and the lower Danubian plains. I remembered

-the name of the town; I remembered it was yours. I remembered your

-saying once that where you had feudal rights you had feudal duties, so

-I came on the chance of being of service.'

-

-'You have been most devoted to the people.'

-

-'The people! What should I care though the whole town perished? Do not

-attribute to me a humanity that is not in my nature.'

-

-'Be as cynical as you like in words so long as you are heroic in

-action. I am going out to the yacht; will you come with me?'

-

-He hesitated. 'I merely came to hear from the warder of your health. I

-am going to catch the express steamer at Neusatz; all danger is over.'

-

-'The yacht can take you to Neusatz. Come with me.'

-

-He did not offer more opposition; he accompanied her to the boat and

-entered it.

-

-The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing more, but she could not

-forget that scores of her own people here had owed their lives to his

-intrepidity and patience, and that he had never hesitated to throw his

-life into the balance when needed. And it had been done for her sake

-alone. The love of humanity might have been a nobler and purer motive,

-but it would not have touched her so nearly as the self-abandonment of

-a man by nature selfish and cold.

-

-In a few moments they were taken to the yawl. He ascended the deck with

-her.

-

-The tidings the skipper brought, the examination of the stores, the

-discussion of ways and means, the arrangements for the general relief,

-were air dull, practical matters that claimed careful attention and

-thought. She sat in the little cabin that was brave with marqueterie

-work and blue satin and Dresden mirrors, and made memoranda and

-calculations, and consulted him, and asked his advice on this, on

-that. The government official, sent to make official estimates of the

-losses in the township, had come on board to salute and take counsel

-with her. The whole forenoon passed in these details. He wrote, and

-calculated, and drew up reports for her. No more tender or personal

-word was spoken between them; but there was a certain charm for them

-both in this intimate intercourse, even though it took no other shape

-than the study of how many boatloads of wheat were needed for so many

-hundred people, of how many florins a day might be passed to the head

-of each family, of how many of the flooded houses would still be

-serviceable with restoration, of how many had been entirely destroyed,

-of how the town would best be rebuilt, and of how the inland rivers

-could best be restrained in the future.

-

-To rebuild it she estimated that she would have to surrender for five

-years the revenues from her Galician and Hungarian mines, and she

-resolved to do it altogether at her own cost. She had no wish to see

-the town figure in public prints as the object of public subscription.

-

-'I am sure all my woman friends,' she said, 'would kindly make it

-occasion for a fancy fair or a lottery (with new costumes) in Vienna,

-but I do not care for that sort of thing, and I can very well do what

-is needed alone.'

-

-He was silent. He had always known that her riches were great, but

-he had never realised them as fully as he now did when she spoke of

-rebuilding an entire town as she might have spoken of building a

-carriage.

-

-'You would make a good prime minister,' she said, smiling; 'you have

-the knowledge of a specialist on so many subjects.'

-

-At noon they served her a little plain breakfast of Danubian

-_salbling_, with Carlowitzer wine and fruit sent by the steward of

-Mohacs. She bade him join her in it.

-

-'Had Egon himself been here he could not have done more for Idrac than

-you have done,' she said.

-

-'Is this Prince Egon's wine?' he said abruptly, and on hearing that it

-was so, he set the glass down untasted.

-

-She looked surprised, but she did not ask him his reason, for she

-divined it. There was an exaggeration in the unspoken hostility more

-like the days of Arthur and Lancelot than their own, but it did not

-displease her.

-

-They were both little disposed to converse during their meal; after the

-dreary and terrible scenes they had been witness of, the atmosphere

-of life seems grave and dark even to those whom the calamity had not

-touched. The most careless spirit is oppressed by a sense of the

-precariousness and the cruelty of existence.

-

-When they ascended to the deck the skies were lighter than they had

-been for many weeks; the fog had cleared, so that, in the distance, the

-towers of Neusatz and the fortress of Peterwardein were visible; vapour

-still hung over the vast Hungarian plain, but the Danube was clear and

-the affluents of it had sunk to their usual level.

-

-'You really go to-night?' she said, as they looked down the river.

-

-'There is no need for me to stay; the town is safe, and you are well,

-you say. If there be anything I can still do, command me.'

-

-She smiled a little and let her eye meet his for a moment.

-

-'Well, if I command you to remain then, will you do so as my viceroy?

-I want to return home; Aunt Ottilie grows daily more anxious, more

-alarmed, but I cannot leave these poor souls all alone with their

-priests, and their rabbi, who are all as timid as sheep and as stupid.

-Will you stay in the castle and govern them, and help them till they

-recover from their fright? It is much to ask, I know, but you have

-already done so much for Idrac that I am bold to ask you to do more?'

-

-He coloured with a mingled emotion.

-

-'You could ask me nothing that I would not do,' he said in a low tone.

-'I could wish you asked me something harder.'

-

-'Oh, it will be very hard,' she said, with an indifference she did not

-feel. 'It will be very dull, and you will have no one to speak to that

-knows anything save how to grow flax and cherries. You will have to

-talk the Magyar tongue all day, and you will have nothing to eat save

-_kartoffeln_ and _salbling_; and I do not know that I am even right,'

-she added, more gravely, 'to ask you to incur the risks that come from

-all that soaked, ground, which will be damp so long.'

-

-'The risks that you have borne yourself! Pray do not wound me by any

-such scruple as that. I shall be glad, I shall be proud, to be for ever

-so short or so long a time as you command, your representative, your

-servant.'

-

-'You are very good.'

-

-'No.'

-

-His eyes looked at hers with a quick flash, in which all the passion

-he dared not express was spoken. She averted her glance and continued

-calmly: 'You are very good indeed to Idrac. It will be a great

-assistance and comfort to me to know that you are here. The poor people

-already love you, and you will write to me and tell me all that may

-need to be done. I will leave you the yacht and Anton. I shall return

-by land with my woman; and when I reach home I will send you Herr

-Greswold. He is a good companion, and has a great admiration for you,

-though he wishes that you had not forsaken the science of botany.'

-

-'It is like all other dissection or vivisection; it spoils the artistic

-appreciation of the whole. I am yet unsophisticated enough to feel the

-charm of a bank of violets, of a cliff covered with alpen-roses. I may

-write to you?'

-

-'You must write to me! It is you who will know all the needs of Idrac.

-But are you sure that to remain here will not interfere with your own

-projects, your own wishes, your own duties?'

-

-'I have none. If I had any I would throw them away, with pleasure, to

-be of use to one of your dogs, to one of your birds.'

-

-She moved from his side a little.

-

-'Look how the sun has come out. I can see the sparkle of the brass on

-the cannon down yonder at Neusatz. We had better go now. I must see my

-sick people and then leave as soon as I can. The yacht must take me to

-Mohacs; from there I will send her back to you.'

-

-'Do as you will. I can have no greater happiness than to obey you.'

-

-'I am sure that I thank you in the way that you like best, when I say

-that I believe you.'

-

-She said the words in a very low tone, but so calmly that the calmness

-of them checked any other words he might have uttered. It was a royal

-acceptance of a loyal service; nothing more. The boat took them back

-to the fortress. Whilst she was occupied in her farewell to the sick

-people, and her instructions to those who attended on them, he, left

-to himself in the apartment she had made her own, instinctively went

-to an old harpsichord that stood there and touched the keys. It had a

-beautiful case, rich with the varnish of the Martins. He played with

-it awhile for its external beauty, and then let his fingers stray over

-its limited keyboard. It had still sweetness in it, like the spinet

-of Hohenszalras. It suited certain pathetic quaint old German airs he

-knew, and which he half unconsciously reproduced upon it, singing them

-as he did so in a low tone. The melody, very soft and subdued, suited

-to the place where death had been so busy and nature so unsparing, and

-where a resigned exhaustion had now succeeded to the madness of terror,

-reached the ears of the sick women in the Rittersaal and of Wanda von

-Szalras seated beside their beds.

-

-'It is like the saints in Heaven sighing in pity for us here,' said one

-of the women who was very feeble and old, and she smiled as she heard.

-The notes, tremulous from age but penetrating in their sweetness, came

-in slow calm movements of harmony through the stillness of the chamber;

-his voice, very low also, but clear, ascended with them. Wanda sat

-quite still, and listened with a strange pleasure. 'He alone,' she

-thought, 'can make the dumb strings speak.

-

-It was almost dusk when she descended to the room which she had made

-her own. In the passages of the castle oil wicks were lighted in the

-iron lamps and wall sconces, but here it was without any light, and

-in the gloom she saw the dim outline of his form as he sat by the

-harpsichord. He had ceased playing; his head was bent down and rested

-on the instrument; he was lost in thought, and his whole attitude was

-dejected. He did not hear her approach, and she looked at him some

-moments, herself unseen. A great tenderness came over her: he was

-unhappy, and he had been very brave, very generous, very loyal: she

-felt almost ashamed. She went nearer, and he raised himself abruptly.

-

-'I am going,' she said to him. 'Will you come with me to the yacht?'

-

-He rose, and though it was dusk, and in this chamber so dark that his

-face was indistinct to her, she was sure that tears had been in his

-eyes.

-

-'Your old harpsichord has the vernis Martin,' he said, with effort.

-'You should not leave it buried here. It has a melody in it too, faint

-and simple and full of the past, like the smell of dead rose-leaves.

-Yes, I will have the honour to come with you. I wish there were a full

-moon. It will be a dark night on the Danube.'

-

-'My men know the soundings of the river well. As for the harpsichord,

-you alone have found its voice. It shall go to your rooms in Paris.'

-

-'You are too good, but I would not take it. Let it go to Hohenszalras.'

-

-'Why would you not take it?

-

-'I would take nothing from you.'

-

-He spoke abruptly, and with some sternness.

-

-'I think there is such a thing as being too proud? she said, with

-hesitation.

-

-'Your ancestors would not say so,' he answered, with an effort; she

-understood the meaning that underlay the words. He turned away and

-closed the lid of the harpsichord, where little painted cupids wantoned

-in a border of metal scroll-work.

-

-All the men and women well enough to stand crowded on the water-stairs

-to see her departure; little children were held up in their mother's

-arms and bidden remember her for evermore; all feeble creatures lifted

-up their voices to praise her; Jew and Christian blessed her; the

-water-gate was cumbered with sobbing people, trying to see her face,

-to kiss her skirt for the last time. She could not be wholly unmoved

-before that unaffected, irrepressible emotion. Their poor lives were

-not worth much, but such as they were she, under Heaven, had saved them.

-

-'I will return and see you again,' she said to them, as she made a slow

-way through the eager crowd. 'Thank Heaven, my people, not me. And I

-leave my friend with you, who did much more for you than I. Respect him

-and obey him.'

-

-They raised with their thin trembling voices a loud _Eljén_! of homage

-and promise, and she passed away from their sight into the evening

-shadows on the wide river.

-

-Sabran accompanied her to the vessel, which was to take her to the town

-of Mohacs, thence to make her journey home by railway.

-

-'I shall not leave until you bid me, even though you should forget to

-call me all in my life!' he said, as the boat slipped through the dark

-water.

-

-'Such oblivion would be a poor reward.'

-

-'I have had reward enough. You have called me your friend.'

-

-She was silent. The boat ran through the dusk and the rippling rays of

-light streaming from the sides of the yacht, and they went on board. He

-stood a moment with uncovered head before her on the deck, and she gave

-him her hand.

-

-'You will come to the Holy Isle?' she said, as she did so.

-

-'If you bid me,' he said, as he bowed and kissed her hand. His lips

-trembled as he did so, and by the lamplight she saw that he was very

-pale.

-

-'I shall bid you,' she said, very softly, by-and-by. Farewell!'

-

-He bowed very low once more, then he dropped over the yacht's side into

-the boat waiting below; the splash of the oars told her he was gone

-back to Idrac. The yawl weighed anchor and began to go up the river,

-a troublesome and tedious passage at all seasons. She sat on deck

-watching the strong current of the Danube as it rolled on under the bow

-of the schooner. For more than a league she could see the beacon that

-burned by the water-gate of the fortress. When the curve of the stream

-hid it from her eyes she felt a pang of painful separation, of wistful

-attachment to the old dreary walls where she had seen so much suffering

-and so much courage, and where she had learned to read her own heart

-without any possibility of ignoring its secrets. A smile came on her

-mouth and a moisture in her eyes as she sat alone in the dark autumn

-night, while the schooner made her slow ascent through the swell that

-accompanies the influx of the Drave.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIV.

-

-

-In two days' time Hohenszalras received its mistress home.

-

-She was not in any way harmed by the perils she had encountered, and

-the chills and fever to which she had been exposed. On the contrary,

-her eyes had a light and her face had a bloom which for many months had

-not been there.

-

-The Princess heard a brief sketch of what had passed in almost

-total silence. She had disapproved strongly, and she said that her

-disapproval could not change, though a merciful heavenly host had

-spared her the realisation of her worst fears.

-

-The name of Sabran was not spoken. Wanda was of a most truthful temper,

-but she could not bring herself to speak of his presence at Idrac; the

-facts would reveal themselves inevitably soon enough.

-

-She sent Greswold to the Danube laden with stores and medicines.

-She received a letter every morning from her delegate; but he wrote

-briefly, and with scrupulous care, the statements of facts connected

-with the town and reports of what had been done. Her engineer had

-arrived from the mines by Kremnitz, and the builders estimated that

-the waters would have subsided and settled enough, if no fresh rising

-took place, for them to begin the reconstruction of the town with the

-beginning of the new month. Ague and fever were still very common, and

-fresh cases were brought in every hour to the hospital in the fortress.

-He wrote on the arrival of Herr Greswold, that, with her permission, he

-himself would still stay on, for the people had grown used to him, and

-having some knowledge of hydraulics he would be interested to see the

-plans proposed by her engineers for preserving the town from similar

-calamities.

-

-Three weeks passed; all that time she spoke but little either of him or

-of any other subject. She took endless rides, and she sat many hours

-doing nothing in the white room, absorbed in thought. The Princess,

-who had learned what had passed, with admirable exercise of tact and

-self-restraint made neither suggestion nor innuendo, and accepted the

-presence of a French Marquis at a little obscure town in Sclavonia as

-if it were the most natural circumstance in the world.

-

-'All the Szalras have been imperious, arrogant, and of complicated

-character,' she thought; 'she has the same temper, though it is

-mitigated in her by great natural nobility of disposition and strong

-purity of motives. She will do as she chooses, let all the world do

-what it may to change her. If I say a word either way it may take

-effect in some wholly unforeseen manner that I should regret. It is

-better to abstain. In doubt do nothing, is the soundest of axioms.'

-

-And Princess Ottilie, who on occasion had the wisdom of the serpent

-with the sweetness of the dove, preserved a discreet silence, and

-devoured her really absorbing curiosity in her own heart.

-

-At the end of the fourth week she heard that all was well at Idrac,

-so far as it could be so in a place almost wholly destroyed. There

-was no sign of renewed rising of the inland streams. The illness was

-diminished, almost conquered; the people had begun to take heart and

-hope, and, being aided, wished to aid themselves. The works for new

-embankments, water-gates, and streets were already planned, though

-they could not be begun until the spring. Meanwhile, strong wooden

-houses were being erected on dry places, which which could shelter

-_ad interim_ many hundreds of families; the farmers were gradually

-venturing to return to their flooded lands. The town had suffered

-grievously and in much irreparably, but it began to resume its trade

-and its normal life.

-

-She hesitated a whole day when she heard this. Though Sabran did not

-hint at any desire of his own to leave the place, she knew it, was

-impossible to bid him remain longer, and that a moment of irrevocable

-decision was come. She hesitated all the day, slept little all the

-night, then sent him a brief telegram: 'Come to the Island.'

-

-Obey the summons as rapidly as he might, he could not travel by Vienna

-and Salzburg more quickly than in some thirty hours or more. The time

-passed to her in a curious confusion and anxiety. Outwardly she was

-calm enough; she visited the schools, wrote some letters, and took her

-usual long ride in the now leafless woods, but at heart she was unquiet

-and ill at ease, troubled more than by anything else at the force of

-the desire she felt to meet him once more. It was but a month since

-they had parted on the deck, and it seemed ten years. She had known

-what he had meant when he had said that he would come if she bade him;

-she had known that she would only do the sheerest cruelty and treachery

-if she called him thither only to dismiss him. It had not been a visit

-of the moment, but all his life that she had consented to take when she

-had written 'Come to the Island.'

-

-She would never have written it unless she had been prepared to fulfil

-all to which it tacitly pledged her. She was incapable of wantonly

-playing with any passion that moved another, least of all with his. The

-very difference of their position would have made indecision or coyness

-in her seem cruelty, humiliation. The decision hurt her curiously with

-a sense of abdication, mortification, and almost shame. To a very proud

-woman in whom the senses have never asserted their empire, there is

-inevitably an emotion of almost shame, of self-surrender, of loss of

-self-respect, in the first impulses of love. It made her abashed and

-humiliated to feel the excitation that the mere touch of his hand, the

-mere gaze of his eyes, had power to cause her. 'If this be love,' she

-thought, 'no wonder the world is lost for it.'

-

-Do what she would, the time seemed very long; the two evenings that

-passed were very tedious and oppressive. The Princess seemed to

-observe nothing of what she was perfectly conscious of, and her

-flute-like voice murmured on in an unending stream of commonplaces to

-which her niece replied much at random.

-

-In the afternoon of the third day she stood on the terrace looking down

-the lake and towards the Holy Isle, with an impatience of which she was

-in turn impatient. She was dressed in white woollen stuff with silver

-threads in it; she had about her throat an old necklace of the Golden

-Fleece, of golden shells enamelled, which had been a gift from Charles

-the Fifth to one of her house; over her shoulders, for the approach

-of evening was cold, she had thrown a cloak of black Russian sables.

-She made a figure beautiful, stately, patrician, in keeping with the

-background of the great donjon tower, and the pinnacled roofs, and the

-bronze warriors in their Gothic niches.

-

-When she had stood there a few minutes looking down the lake towards

-the willows of the monastery island, a boat came out from the willow

-thickets, and came over the mile-and-half of green shadowy water. There

-was only one person in it. She recognised him whilst he was still far

-off, and a smile came on her mouth that it was a pity he could not see.

-

-He was a bold man, but his heart stood still with awe of her, and his

-soul trembled within him at this supreme moment of his fate. For he

-believed that she would not have bidden him there unless her hand were

-ready to hold out destiny to him--the destiny of his maddest, of his

-sweetest, dreams.

-

-She came forward a few paces to meet him; her face was grave and pale,

-but her eyes had a soft suppressed light.

-

-'I have much for which to thank you,' she said, as she held out her

-hand to him. Her voice was tremulous though calm.

-

-He kissed her hand, then stood silent. It seemed to him that there was

-nothing to say. She knew what he would have said if he had been king,

-or hero, or meet mate for her. His pulses were beating feverishly, his

-self-possession was gone, his eyes did not dare to meet hers. He felt

-as if the green woods, the shining waters, the rain-burdened skies were

-wheeling round him. That dumbness, that weakness, in a man so facile

-of eloquence, so hardy and even cynical in courage, touched her to a

-wondering pitifulness.

-

-'After all,' she thought once more, 'if we love one another what is it

-to anyone else? We are both free.'

-

-If the gift she would give would be so great that the world would blame

-him for accepting it, what would that matter so long as she knew him

-blameless?

-

-They were both mute: he did not even look at her, and she might have

-heard the beating of his heart. She looked at him and the colour came

-back into her face, the smile back upon her mouth.

-

-'My friend,' she said very gently,'did never you think that I also----'

-

-She paused: it was very hard to her to say what she must say, and he

-could not help her, dared not help her, to utter it.

-

-They stood thus another moment mute, with the sunset glow upon the

-shining water, and upon the feudal majesty of the great castle.

-

-Then she looked at him with a straight, clear, noble glance, and with

-the rich blood mounting in her face, stretched out her hand to him with

-a royal gesture.

-

-'They robbed you of your ivy leaf, my cruel Prussian cousins. Will

-you--take--this--instead?'

-

-Then Heaven itself opened to his eyes. He did not take her hand. He

-fell at her feet and kissed them.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XV.

-

-

-Is it wisest after all to be very unwise, dear mother mine?' she said a

-little later, with a smile that was tender and happy.

-

-The Princess looked up quickly, and so looking understood.

-

-'Oh, my beloved, is it indeed so? Yes, you are wise to listen to your

-heart; God speaks in it!'

-

-With tears in her eyes she stretched out her pretty hands in solemn

-benediction.

-

-'Be His Spirit for ever with you,' she said with great emotion. 'I

-shall be so content to know that I leave you not alone when our Father

-calls me, for I think your very greatness and dominion, my dear, but

-make you the more lonely, as sovereigns are, and it is not well to be

-alone, Wanda; it is well to have human love close about us.'

-

-'It is to lean on a reed, perhaps,'murmured Wanda, in that persistent

-misgiving which possessed her. 'And when the reed breaks, then though

-it has been so weak before, it becomes of iron, barbed and poisoned.'

-

-'What gloomy thoughts! And you have made me so happy, and surely you

-are happy yourself?'

-

-'Yes. My reed is in full flower, but--but--yes, I am happy; I hope that

-Bela knows.'

-

-The Princess kissed her once again.

-

-'Ah! he loves you so well.'

-

-'That I am sure of; yet I might never have known it but for you.'

-

-'I did for the best.'

-

-'I will send him to you. I want to be alone a little. Dear mother, he

-cares for you as tenderly as though he were your son.'

-

-'I have been his friend always,' said the Princess, with a smile,

-whilst the tears still stood in her eyes. 'You cannot say so much,

-Wanda; you were very harsh.'

-

-'I know it. I will atone to him.'

-

-The eyes of the Princess followed her tenderly.'

-

-'And she will make her atonement generously, grandly,' she thought.

-'She is a woman of few protestations, but of fine impulses and of

-unerring magnanimity. She will be incapable of reminding him that

-their kingdom is hers. I have done this thing; may Heaven be with it!

-If she had loved no one, life would have grown so pale, so chill, so

-monotonous to her; she would have tired of herself, having nothing

-but herself for contemplation. Solitude has been only grand to her

-hitherto because she has been young, but as the years rolled on she

-would have died without ever having lived; now she will live. She may

-have to bear pains, griefs, infidelities, calamities that she would

-have escaped; but even so, how much better the summer day, even with

-the summer storm, than the dull, grey, quiet, windless weather! Of

-course, if she could have found sanctuary in the Church----But her

-faith is not absolute and unwavering enough for that; she has read too

-many philosophies; she requires, too, open-air and vigorous life; the

-cloister would have been to her a prison. She is one of those whose

-religion lies in activity; she will worship God through her children.'

-

-Sabran entered as she mused, and knelt down before her.

-

-'You have been my good angel, always,' he murmured. 'How can I thank

-you? I think she would never have let her eyes rest on me but for you.'

-

-The Princess smiled.

-

-'My friend, you are one of those on whom the eyes of women willingly

-rest, perhaps too willingly. But you--you will have no eyes for any

-other now? You must deserve my faith in you. Is it not so?'

-

-'Ah, madame,' he answered with deep emotion, 'all words seem so trite

-and empty; any fool can make phrases, but when I say that my life

-shall be consecrated to her, I mean it, in the uttermost royalty, the

-uttermost gratitude.'

-

-'I believe you,' said the Princess, as she laid her hand lightly

-on his bent head. 'Perhaps no man can understand entirely all that

-she surrenders in admitting that she loves you; for a proud woman

-to confess so much of weakness is very hard: but I think you will

-comprehend her better than any other would. I think you will not force

-her to pass the door of disillusion; and remember that though she will

-leave you free as air--for she is not made of that poor stuff which

-would enslave what it loves--she would not soon forgive too great abuse

-of freedom. I mean if you were ever--ever unfaithful----

-

-'For what do you take me?' he cried, with indignant passion. 'Is there

-another woman in the world who could sit beside her, and not be

-dwarfed, paled, killed, as a candle by the sun?'

-

-'You are only her betrothed,' said the Princess, with a little sigh.

-'Men see their wives with different eyes; so I have been told, at

-least. Familiarity is no courtier, and time is always cruel.'

-

-'Nay, time shall be our dearest friend,' said Sabran, with a tenderness

-in his voice that spoke more constancy than a thousand oaths. 'She will

-be beautiful when she is old, as you are; age will neither alarm nor

-steal from her; her bodily beauty is like her spiritual, it is cast

-in lines too pure and clear not to defy the years. Oh, mother mine!

-(let me call you that) fear nothing; I will love her so well that, all

-unworthy now, I will grow worthy her, and cause her no moment's pain

-that human love can spare her.'

-

-'Her people shall be your people, and her God your God,' murmured the

-Princess, with her hand still lying lightly on his head, obediently

-bent.

-

-When late that night he went across the lake the monks were at their

-midnight orisons; their voices murmured as one man's the Latin words of

-praise and prayer, and made a sound like that of a great sea rolling

-slowly on a lonely shore.

-

-He believed naught that they believed. Deity was but a phrase to him;

-faith and a future life were empty syllables to him. Yet, in the

-fulness of his joy and the humiliation of his spirit, he felt his heart

-swell, his pride sink subdued. He knelt down in the hush and twilight

-of that humble place of prayer, and for the first moment in many years

-he also praised God.

-

-No one heeded him; he knelt behind them in the gloom unnoticed; he rose

-refreshed as men in barren lands in drought are soothed by hearing the

-glad fall of welcome rain. He had no place there, and in another hour

-would have smiled at his own weakness; but now he remembered nothing

-except that he, utterly beyond his deserts, was blessed. As the monks

-rose to their feet and their loud chanting began to vibrate in the air,

-he went out unheard, as he had entered, and stood on the narrow strip

-of land that parted the chapel from the lake. The green waters were

-rolling freshly in under a strong wind, the shadows of coming night

-were stealing on; in the south-west a pale yellow moonlight stretched

-broadly in a light serene as dawn, and against it there rose squarely

-and darkly with its many turrets the great keep of Hohenszalras.

-

-He looked, but it was not of that great pile and all which it

-represented and symbolised that he thought now.

-

-It was of the woman he loved as a woman, not as a great possessor of

-wealth and lands.

-

-'Almost I wish that she were poor as the saints she resembles!' he

-thought, with a tender passion that for the hour was true. It seemed

-to him that had he seen her standing in her shift in the snow, like

-our Lady of Hungary, discrowned and homeless, he would have been glad.

-He was honest with the honesty of passion. It was not the mistress of

-Hohenszalras that he loved, but his own wife.

-

-Such a marriage could not do otherwise than arouse by its announcement

-the most angry amazement, the most indignant protests from all the

-mighty houses with which for so many centuries the house of Szalras

-had allied itself. In a few tranquil sentences she made known her

-intentions to those of her relations whom she felt bound thus to

-honour; but she gave them clearly to understand that it was a formula

-of respect not an act of consultation. When they received her letters

-they knew that her marriage was already quite as irrevocable as though

-it had already taken place in the Hof-Kapelle of Vienna.

-

-All her relatives and all her order were opposed to her betrothal;

-a cold sufferance was the uttermost which any of them extended to

-Sabran. A foreigner and poor, and, with a troubled and uncertain

-past behind him, he was bitterly unwelcome to the haughty Prussian,

-Austrian, and Hungarian nobilities to which she belonged; neither his

-ancient name nor his recent political brilliancy and military service

-could place him on an equality with them in their eyes. Her trustees,

-the Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe and the Cardinal Vàsàrhely, with her

-cousin Kaulnitz, hurried in person as swiftly as special trains could

-bring them to the Iselthal, but they were too late to avert the blow.

-

-'It is not a marriage for her,' said Kaulnitz, angrily.

-

-'Why not? It is a very old family,' said the Princess, with no less

-irritation.

-

-'But quite decayed, long ruined,' he returned. 'This man was himself

-born in exile.'

-

-'As they exile everybody twice in every ten years in France!

-

-'And there have been stories----'

-

-'Of whom are there not stories? Calumny is the parasite of character;

-the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler.'

-

-'I never heard him accused of any strength, except of the wrist in

-_l'escrime!_'

-

-'Do you know anything dishonourable of him? If you do you are bound to

-say it.'

-

-'Dishonourable is a grave word. No, I cannot say that I do; the society

-he frequents is a guarantee against that; but his life has been

-indifferent, complicated, uncertain, not a life to be allied with that

-of such a woman as Wanda. My dear Princess, it has been a life _dans le

-milieu parisien_; what more would you have me say?'

-

-'Prince Archambaud's has been that. Yet three years since you earnestly

-pressed his suit on Wanda.'

-

-'Archambaud! He is one of the first alliances in Europe; he is of blood

-royal, and he has not been more vicious than other men.'

-

-'It would be better he should have been less so, since he lives so near

-'the fierce light that beats upon the throne;' an electric light which

-blackens while it illumines! My good Kaulnitz, you wander very far

-afield. If you know anything serious against M. de Sabran it is your

-duty to say it.'

-

-'He is a gambler.'

-

-'He has renounced gambling.'

-

-'He is a duellist.'

-

-'Society was of much better constitution when the duel was its habitual

-phlebotomy.'

-

-'He has been the lover of many women.'

-

-'I am afraid that is nothing singular.'

-

-'He is hardly more than an adventurer.'

-

-'He counts his ancestry in unbroken succession from the clays of

-Dagobert.

-

-'He has nothing but a _pignon sur rue_ in Paris, and a league or two of

-rocks and sand in Brittany; yet, though so poor, he made money enough

-by cards and speculation to be for three years the _amant en titre_ of

-Cochonette.'

-

-Madame Ottilie rose with a little frown.

-

-'I think we will say no more, my dear Baron; the matter is, after all,

-not yours or mine to decide. Wanda will assuredly do as she likes.'

-

-'But you have so much influence with her.'

-

-'I have none; no one has any: and I think you do not understand her in

-the least. It may cost her very much to avow to him that she loves him,

-but once having done that, it will cost her nothing at all to avow it

-to the world. She is much too proud a woman to care for the world.'

-

-'He is _gentilhomme de race_, I grant,' admitted with reluctance the

-Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe.

-

-'When has a noble of Brittany been otherwise?' asked the Princess

-Ottilie.

-

-'I know,' said the Prince; 'but you will admit that he occupies a

-difficult position--an invidious one.'

-

-'And he carries himself well through it. It is a difficult position

-which is the test of breeding,' said the Princess, triumphantly, 'and

-I deny entirely that it is what you call an invidious one. It is you

-who have the idea of the crowd when you lay so much stress on the mere

-absence of money.'

-

-'It is the idea of the crowd that dominates in this age.'

-

-'The more reason for us to resist it, if it be so.'

-

-'I think you are in love with him yourself, my sister!'

-

-'I should be were I forty years younger.'

-

-The Countess Brancka alone wrote with any sort of sympathy and pleasure

-to congratulate them both.

-

-'I was sure that Parsifal would win soon or late,' she said. 'Only

-remember that he is a Parsifal _doublé_ by a de Morny.'

-

-Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than

-the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of

-the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied.

-De Morny!--a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The

-comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!

-

-She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or

-remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had

-so much of the '_éternel féminin_' in her that she was only the more

-resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and

-exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was

-natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All

-the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those

-who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances

-produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as

-Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again

-Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had

-no power of persuasion.

-

-The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more

-graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as

-might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were

-present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that

-he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The

-sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man,

-whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of

-many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had

-they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her

-hand.

-

-'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of

-this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of

-birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere

-difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or

-the inches of one's stature.'

-

-The Princess shook her head.

-

-'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he

-is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always

-be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at

-large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'

-

-'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what

-matters the opinion of others?'

-

-'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt

-those motives?'

-

-Wanda did not reply.

-

-'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has

-been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him

-as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to

-him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the

-power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'

-

-As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was

-listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ

-within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of

-grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous

-years to come.

-

-When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:

-

-'I want you to promise me one thing.'

-

-'I promise you all things. What is this one?'

-

-'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those

-great fortunes which form the _acte d'accusation_ of socialists against

-society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of

-Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It

-is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed

-by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious

-barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one

-of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!--Promise me that

-you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may

-enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'

-

-He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to

-speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still

-remained silent.

-

-'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is

-too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against

-me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a

-few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too

-much!'

-

-He stooped and kissed her hand.

-

-'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with

-passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that

-I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be

-right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away

-from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'

-

-A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her

-hands as he held them clasped in his.

-

-'We will drink that wafer together, and as long as we are together it

-will never be bitter, I think,' she said very softly.

-

-Her voice seemed to sink into his very soul, so much it said of faith,

-so much it aroused of remorse.

-

-Then the great joy which had entered his life, like a great dazzling

-flood of light suddenly let loose into a darkened chamber, so blinded

-consumed, and intoxicated him, that he forgot all else; all else save

-this one fact--she would be his, body and soul, night and day, in life

-and in death for ever; his children borne by her, his life spent with

-her, her whole existence surrendered to him.

-

-For some days after that she mused upon the possibility of rendering

-him entirely independent of herself, without insulting him by a direct

-offer of a share in her possessions. At last a solution occurred

-to her. The whole of the fiefs of Idrac constituted a considerable

-appanage apart; its title went with it. When it had come into the

-Szalras family by marriage, as far back as the fifteenth century, it

-had been a principality; it was still a seigneurie, and many curious

-feudal privileges and distinctions went with it.

-

-It was Idrac now that she determined to abandon to her lover.

-

-'He will be seigneur of Idrac,' she thought, 'and I shall be so glad

-for him to bear an Austrian name.'

-

-'She herself would always retain her own name, and would take no other.

-

-'We will go and revisit it together,' she thought, and though she

-was all alone' at that moment, a soft warmth came into her face, and

-a throb of emotion to her heart, as she remembered all that would lie

-in that one word 'together,' all the tender and intimate union of the

-years to come.

-

-Her trustees were furious, and sought the aid of the men of law to

-enable them to step in and arrest her in what they deemed a course

-of self-destruction, but the law could not give them so much power;

-she was her own mistress, and as sole inheritrix had received her

-possessions singularly untrammelled by restrictions. In vain Prince

-Lilienhöhe spent his severe and chilly anger, Kaulnitz his fine

-sarcasm and delicate insinuations, and the Cardinal his stately and

-authoritative wrath. She was not to be altered in her decision.

-

-Austrian law allowed her to give away an estate to her husband if she

-chose, and there was nothing in the private settlements of her property

-to prevent her availing herself of the law.

-

-Strenuous opposition was encountered by her to this project, by every

-one of her relatives, hardly excluding the Princess Ottilie; 'for,'

-said that sagacious recluse, 'your horses may show you, my dear, the

-dangers of a rein too loose.'

-

-'I want no rein at all,' said Wanda. 'You forget that, to my thinking,

-marriage should never be bondage; two people with independent wills,

-tastes, and habits should mutually concede a perfect independence of

-action to each other. When one must yield, it must be the woman.'

-

-'Those are very fine theories,' the Princess remarked with caution.

-

-'I hope we shall put them in practice,' said Wanda, with unruffled good

-humour. 'Dear mother, I am sure you can understand that I want him

-to feel he is wholly independent of me. To what I love best on earth

-shall I dole out a niggard largesse from my wealth? If I were capable

-of doing so he would grow in time to hate me, and his hatred would be

-justified.'

-

-'I never should have supposed you would become so romantic,' said the

-Princess.

-

-'It will make him independent of you,' objected Prince Lilienhöhe.

-

-'That is what, beyond all, I desire him to be,' she answered.

-

-'It is an infatuation,' sighed Cardinal Vàsàrhely, out of her hearing,

-'when Egon would have brought to her a fortune as large as her own.'

-

-'You think water should always run to the sea,' said Princess Ottilie;

-'surely that is great waste sometimes?'

-

-'I think you are as infatuated as she is,' murmured the Cardinal. 'You

-forget that had she not been inspired with this unhappy sentiment she

-would have most probably left Hohenszalras to the Church.'

-

-'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,'

-answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else,

-had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'

-

-That would have been better than to an adventurer.'

-

-'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest

-aristocracies of the world, if poor.'

-

-'_Ce que femme veut_,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the

-Church had been worsted by women.

-

-The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the

-marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any

-possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband,

-and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of

-action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the

-deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself,

-as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud

-to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your

-hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he

-will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always

-will. If not--if not--well, he must go!'

-

-One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment

-emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She

-spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He

-looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush

-that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow

-tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires.

-She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of

-the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before

-him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.

-

-'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you

-to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of

-Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their

-feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been

-lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the

-reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary

-passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'

-

-'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with

-those roses.'

-

-'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced

-flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment.

-It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'

-

-'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your

-coronet, to which I can add none!'

-

-But to please her he bent over the crabbed black letter and the antique

-blazonings of the great roll to which the great dead men had set their

-sign and seal. She watched him as he read it, then after a little time

-she put her hand with a caressing movement on his shoulder.

-

-'My love, I can do just as I will with Idrac. The lawyers are agreed on

-that, and the Kaiser will confirm whatever I do. Now I want to give you

-Idrac, make you wholly lord of it; indeed, the thing is already done. I

-have signed all the documents needful, and, as I say, the Emperor will

-confirm any part of them that needs his assent. My Réné, you are a very

-proud man, but you will not be too proud to take Idrac and its title

-from your wife. But for that town who can say that our lives might not

-have been passed for ever apart? Why do you look so grave? The Kaiser

-and I both want you to be Austrian. When I transfer to you the fief of

-Idrac you are its Count for evermore.'

-

-He drew a quick deep breath as if he had been struck a blow, and stood

-gazing at her. He did not speak, his eyes darkened as with pain. For

-the moment she was afraid that she had wounded him. With exquisite

-softness of tone and touch she took his hand and said to him tenderly:

-

-'Why will you be so proud? After all, what are these things? Since

-we love one another, what is mine is yours; a formula more or less

-is no offence. It is my fancy that you should have the title and the

-fief. The people know you there, and your heroic courage will be for

-ever amongst their best traditions. Dear! once I read that it needs a

-greater soul to take generously than to give. Be great so, now, for my

-sake!'

-

-'Great!' he echoed the word hoarsely, and a smile of bitter irony

-passed for a moment over his features. But he controlled the passionate

-self-contempt that rose in him. He knew that whatever else he was,

-he was her lover, and her hero in her sight. If the magnitude and

-magnanimity of her gifts overwhelmed and oppressed him, he was recalled

-to self-control by the sense of her absolute faith in him. He pressed

-her hands against his heavily-beating heart.

-

-'All the greatness is with you, my beloved,' he said with effort.

-'Since you delight to honour me, I can but strive my utmost to deserve

-your honour. It is like your beautiful and lavish nature to be prodigal

-of gifts. But when you give yourself, what need is there for aught

-else?'

-

-'But Idrac is my caprice. You must gratify it.'

-

-'I will take the title gladly at your hands then. The revenues--No.'

-

-'You must take it all, the town and the title, and all they bring,' she

-insisted. 'In truth, but for you there would possibly be no town at

-all. Nay, my dear, you must do me this little pleasure; it will become

-you so well that Countship of Idrac: it is as old a place as Vindobona

-itself.'

-

-'Do you not understand?' she added, with a flush on her face. 'I want

-you to feel that it is wholly yours; that if I die, or if you leave me,

-it remains yours still. Oh, I do not doubt you; not for one moment. But

-liberty is always good. And Idrac will make you an Austrian noble in

-your own right. If you persist in refusing it I will assign it to the

-Crown; you will pain me and mortify me.'

-

-'That is enough! Never wittingly in my life will I hurt you. But if you

-wish me to be lord of Idrac, invest me with the title, my Empress. I

-will take it and be proud of it; and as for the revenues--well, we will

-not quarrel for them. They shall go to make new dykes and new bastions

-for the town, or pile themselves one on another in waiting for your

-children.'

-

-She smiled and her face grew warm as she turned aside and took up one

-of the great swords with jewelled hilts and damascened scabbards, which

-were ranged along the wall of the Rittersaal with other stands of arms.

-

-She drew the sword, and as he fell on his knee before her smote him

-lightly on the shoulder with its blade.

-

-'Rise, Graf von Idrac!' she said, stooping and touching his forehead

-with the bouquet that she wore at her breast. He loosened one of the

-roses and held it to his lips.

-

-'I swear my fealty now and for ever,' he said with emotion, and his

-face was paler and his tone was graver than the playfulness of the

-moment seemed to call for in him.

-

-'Would to Heaven I had had no other name than this one you give me,'

-he murmured as he rose. 'Oh, my love, my lady, my guardian angel!

-Forget that ever I lived before, forget all my life when I was unworthy

-you; let me live only from the day that will make me your vassal and

-your----'

-

-'That will make you my lord!' she said softly; then she stooped, and

-for the first time kissed him.

-

-What caused her the only pain that disturbed the tranquillity of these

-cloudless days was the refusal of her cousin Egon to be present at

-her marriage. He sent her, with some great jewels that had come from

-Persia, a few words of sad and wistful affection.

-

-'My presence,' he added in conclusion, 'is no more needed for your

-happiness than are these poor diamonds and pearls needed in your

-crowded jewel-cases. You will spare me a trial, which it could be of no

-benefit to you for me to suffer. I pray that the Marquis de Sabran may

-all his life be worthy of the immense trust and honour which you have

-seen fit to give to him. For myself, I have been very little always in

-your life. Henceforth I shall be nothing. But if ever you call on me

-for any service--which it is most unlikely you ever will do--I entreat

-you to remember that there is no one living who will more gladly or

-more humbly do your bidding at all cost than I, your cousin Egon.'

-

-The short letter brought tears to her eyes. She said nothing of it to

-Sabran. He had understood from Mdme. Ottilie that Prince Vàsàrhely had

-loved his cousin hopelessly for many years, and could not be expected

-to be present at her marriage.

-

-In a week from that time their nuptials were celebrated in the Court

-Chapel of the Hofburg at Vienna, with all the pomp and splendour that

-a brilliant and ceremonious Court could lend to the espousal of one of

-the greatest ladies of the old Duchy of Austria.

-

-Immediately after the ceremony they left the capital for Hohenszalras.

-

-At the signing of the contract on the previous night, when he had taken

-up the pen he had grown very pale; he had hesitated a moment, and

-glanced around him on the magnificent crowd, headed by the Emperor and

-Empress, with a gleam of fear and of anxiety in his eyes, which Baron

-Kaulnitz, who was intently watching him, had alone perceived.

-

-'There is something. What is it?' had mused the astute German.

-

-It was too late to seek to know. Sabran had bent down over the

-parchment, and with a firm hand had signed his name and title.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVI.

-

-

-It was midsummer once more in the Iselthal, five years and a half after

-the celebration at the Imperial palace of those nuptials which had been

-so splendid that their magnificence had been noticeable even at that

-magnificent Court. The time had seemed to her like one long, happy,

-cloudless day, and if to him there had come any fatigue, any satiety,

-any unrest, such as almost always come to the man in the fruition of

-his passion, he suffered her to see none of them.

-

-It was one of those rare marriages in which no gall of a chain is felt,

-but a quick and perfect sympathy insures that harmony which passion

-alone is insufficient to sustain. He devoted himself with ardour to the

-care of the immense properties that belonged to his wife; he brought

-to their administration a judgment and a precision that none had looked

-for in a man of pleasure; he entered cordially into all her schemes for

-the well-being of her people dependent on her, and carried them out

-with skill and firmness. The revenues of Idrac he never touched; he

-left them to accumulate for his younger son, or expended them on the

-township itself, where he was adored.

-

-If he were still the same man who had been the lover of Cochonette,

-the terror of Monte Carlo, the hero of night-long baccara and frontier

-duels, he had at least so banished the old Adam that it appeared wholly

-dead. Nor was the death of it feigned. He had flung away the slough

-of his old life with a firm hand, and the peace, the dignity of his

-present existence were very precious to him. He was glad to steep

-himself in them, as a tired and fevered wayfarer was glad to bathe his

-dusty and heated limbs in the cool, clear waters of the Szalrassee. And

-he loved his wife with a great love, in which reverence, and gratitude,

-and passion were all blent. Possession had not dulled, nor familiarity

-blunted it. She was still to him a sovereign, a saint, a half divine

-creature, who had stooped to become mortal for his sake, and his

-children's.

-

-The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls

-and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the

-Szalrassee.

-

-'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath

-the great yews beside the keep.

-

-'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but

-watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as

-ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty

-amphitheatre.

-

-She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of

-whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy

-with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The

-other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months

-of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were

-all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.

-

-'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the

-world called so proud.

-

-'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near

-her wicker chair.

-

-'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it,

-at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you

-it will be he who will be dearest to me.'

-

-As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.

-

-She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.

-

-'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that

-we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all

-the world who have passed five years and more together without once

-disagreeing?'

-

-'In all the world there is not another Countess Wanda!'

-

-'Ah! that is your only defect; you will always avoid argument by

-escaping through the side-door of compliment. It is true, to be sure,

-that your flattery is a very high and subtle art.'

-

-'It is like all high art then, based on what is eternally true.'

-

-'You will always have the last word, and it is always so graceful a

-one that it is impossible to quarrel with it. But, Réné, I want you

-to speak without compliment to me for once. Tell me, are you indeed

-never--never--a little weary of being here?'

-

-He hesitated a moment and a slight flush came on his face.

-

-She observed both signs, slight as they were, and sighed; it was the

-first sigh she had ever breathed since her marriage.

-

-'Of course you are, of course you must be,' she said quickly. 'It has

-been selfish and blameable of me never to think of it before. It is

-paradise to me, but no doubt to you, used as you have been to the stir

-of the world, there, must be some tedium, some dulness in this mountain

-isolation. I ought to have remembered that before.'

-

-'You need do nothing of the kind, now,' he said. 'Who has been talking

-to you? Who has brought this little snake into our Eden?'

-

-'No one; and it is not a snake at all, but a natural reflection.

-Hohenszalras and you are the world to me, but I cannot expect that

-Hohenszalras and I can be quite as much to yourself. It is always the

-difference between the woman and the man. You have great talents; you

-are ambitious.'

-

-'Were I as ambitious as Alexander, surely I have gained wherewithal to

-be content!'

-

-'That is only compliment again, or if truth it is only a side of the

-truth. Nay, love, I do not think for a moment you are tired of me;

-I am too self-satisfied for that! But I think it is possible that

-this solitude may have grown, or may grow, wearisome to you; that you

-desire, perhaps without knowing it, to be more amidst the strife,

-the movement, and the pleasures of men. Aunt Ottilie calls this

-"confinement to a fortress;" now that is a mere pleasantry, but if ever

-you should feel tempted to feel what she feels, have confidence enough

-in my good sense and in my affection to say so to me, and then----.'

-

-'And then? We will suppose I have this ingratitude and bad taste, what

-then?'

-

-'Why then, my own wishes should not stand for one instant in the way

-of yours, or rather I would make yours mine. And do not use the word

-ingratitude, my dearest; there can be no question of that betwixt you

-and me.'

-

-'Yes,' said Sabran, as he stooped towards her and touched her hair

-with his lips. 'When you gave me yourself, you made me your debtor

-for all time; would have made me so had you been as poor as you are

-rich. When I speak of gratitude it is of _that_ gift, I think, not of

-Hohenszalras.'

-

-A warmth of pleasure flushed her cheek for a moment, and she smiled

-happily.

-

-'You shall not beg the question so,' she said, with gentle insistence

-after a moment's pause. 'I have not forgotten your eloquence in the

-French Chamber.' You are that rare thing a born orator. You are

-not perhaps fitted to be a statesman, for I doubt if you would have

-the application or bear the tedium necessary, but you have every

-qualification for a diplomatist, a foreign minister.'

-

-'I have not the first qualification, I have no country!'

-

-She looked at him, in surprise--he spoke with bitterness and

-self-contempt; but in a moment he had added quickly:--

-

-'France is nothing to me now, and though I am Austrian by all ties and

-affections, I am not an Austrian before the law.'

-

-'That is hardly true,' she answered, satisfied with the explanation.

-'Since France is little to you you could be naturalised here whenever

-you chose, even if Idrac have not made you a Croat noble, as I believe

-the lawyers would say it had; and the Emperor, who knows and admires

-you, would, I think, at once give you gladly any mission you preferred;

-you would make so graceful, so perfect, so envied an ambassador!

-Diplomacy has indeed little force now, yet tact still tells wherever

-it be found, and it is as rare as blue roses in the unweeded garden of

-the world. I do not speak for myself, dear; that you know. Hohenszalras

-is my beloved home, and it was enough for me before I knew you, and

-nowhere else could life ever seem to me so true, so high, so simple,

-and so near to God as here. But I do remember that men weary even of

-happiness when it is unwitnessed, and require the press and stir of

-emulation and excitation; and, if you feel that want, say so. Have

-confidence enough in me to believe that your welfare will be ever my

-highest law. Promise me this.'

-

-He changed colour slightly at her generous and trustful words, but he

-answered without a moment's pause:

-

-'Whenever I am so thankless to fate I will confess it. No; the world

-and I never valued one another much. I am far better here in the heart

-of your mountains. Here only have I known peace and rest.'

-

-He spoke with a certain effort and emotion, and he stooped over his

-little son and raised him on her knees.

-

-'These children shall grow up at Hohenszalras,' he continued, 'and you

-shall teach them your love of the open air, the mountain solitudes, the

-simple people, the forest creatures, the influences and the ways of

-nature. You care for all those things, and they make up true wisdom,

-true contentment. As for myself, if you always love me I shall ask no

-more of fate.'

-

-'If! Can you be afraid?'

-

-'Sometimes. One always fears to lose what one has never merited.'

-

-'Ah, my love, do not be so humble! If you saw yourself as I see you,

-you would be very proud.'

-

-She smiled as she spoke, and stretched her hand out to him over the

-golden head of her child.

-

-He took it and held it against his heart, clasped in both his own.

-Bela, impatient, slipped off his mother's lap to pursue his capture of

-the daisies; the butterflies were forbidden joys, and he was obedient,

-though in his own little way he was proud and imperious. But there

-was a blue butterfly just in front of him, a Lycœna Adonis, like a

-little bit of the sky come down and dancing about; he could not resist,

-he darted at it. As he was about to seize it she caught his fingers.

-

-'I have told you, Bela, you are never to touch anything that flies or

-moves. You are cruel.'

-

-He tried to get away, and his face grew very warm and passionate.

-

-'Bela will be cruel, if he like,' he said, knitting his pretty brows.

-

-Though he was not more than four years old he knew very well that he

-was the Count Bela, to whom all the people gave homage, crowding to

-kiss his tiny hand after Mass on holy-days. He was a very beautiful

-child, and all the prettier for his air of pride and resolution; he had

-been early put on a little mountain pony, and could ride fearlessly

-down the forest glades with Otto. All the imperiousness of the great

-race which had dealt out life and death so many centuries at their

-caprice through the Hohe Tauern seemed to have been inherited by him,

-coupled with a waywardness and a vanity that were not traits of the

-house of Szalras. It was impossible, even though those immediately

-about him were wise and prudent, to wholly prevent the effects of the

-adulation with which the whole household was eager to wait on every

-whim of the little heir.

-

-'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his

-desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that

-to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it

-his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition,

-and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very

-affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.

-

-With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he

-said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'

-

-Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very

-frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been

-four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.

-

-Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.

-

-'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'

-

-Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.

-

-'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'

-

-Then he burst into tears.

-

-'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his

-father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his

-nurse, who came for him.

-

-'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him

-more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give

-you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'

-

-It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil

-qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son,

-and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was

-unworthy to beget _her_ children,' he thought, with the self-reproach

-that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his

-satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what

-trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years

-to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his

-blood?

-

-'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to

-see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It

-hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own

-little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill;

-do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is

-your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud

-of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'

-

-'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows

-older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to

-enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy

-that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry

-passions, of my degraded humanity?'

-

-'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think

-me.'

-

-'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'

-

-'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a _beau défaut_,

-and I would not have you lose it.'

-

-'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and

-passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'

-

-She looked at him surprised, and vaguely troubled at the self-reproach

-and the self-scorn of his passionate utterance. Seeing that surprise

-and trouble in her glance, he controlled the emotion that for the

-moment mastered him.

-

-'Ah, love!' he said quickly and truly, 'if you could but guess how

-gross and base a man's life seems to him contrasted with the life of

-a pure and noble woman! Being born of you, those children, I think,

-should be as faultless and as soilless as those pearls that lie on your

-breast. But then they are mine also; so already on that boy's face one

-sees the sins of revolt, of self-will, of cruelty--being mine also,

-your living pearls are dulled and stained!'

-

-A greater remorse than she dreamed of made his heart ache as he said

-these words; but she heard in them only the utterance of that extreme

-and unwavering devotion to her which he had shown in all his acts and

-thoughts from the first hours of their union.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVII.

-

-

-The Princess Ottilie was scarcely less happy than they in the

-realisation of her dreams and prophecies. Those who had been most

-bitterly opposed to her alliance with him could find no fault in his

-actions and his affections.

-

-'I always said that Wanda ought to marry, since she had plainly no

-vocation for the cloister,' she said a hundred times a year. 'And I was

-certain that M. de Sabran was the person above all others to attract

-and to content her. She has much more imagination than she would be

-willing to allow and he is capable at once of fascinating her fancy

-and of satisfying her intellect. No one can be dull where he is; he is

-one of those who make _la pluie et le beau temps_ by his absence or

-presence; and, besides that, no commonplace affection would have ever

-been enough for her. And he loves her like a poet, which he is at once

-whenever he leaves the world for Beethoven and Bach. I cannot imagine

-why you should have opposed the marriage, merely because he had not two

-millions in the Bank of France.'

-

-'Not for that,' answered the Grand Duke; 'rather because he broke the

-bank of Monte Carlo, and other similar reasons. A great player of

-baccara is scarcely the person to endow with the wealth of the Szalras.'

-

-'The wealth is tied up tightly enough at the least, and you will admit

-that he was yet more eager than you that it should be so.'

-

-'Oh, yes! he behaved very well. I never denied it. But she has placed

-it in his power to make away with the whole of Idrac, if he should ever

-choose. That was very unwise, but we had no power to oppose.'

-

-'You may be quite sure that Idrac will go intact to the second son, as

-it has always done; and I believe but for his own exertions Idrac would

-now be beneath the Danube waters. Perhaps you never heard all that

-story of the flood?'

-

-'I only hope that if I have detractors you will defend me from them,'

-said Prince Lilienhöhe, giving up argument.

-

-Fair weather is always especially fair in the eyes of those who have

-foretold at sunset that the morrow would be fine; and so the married

-life of Wanda von Szalras was especially delightful as an object of

-contemplation, as a theme of exultation, to the Princess, who alone had

-been clear-sighted enough to foresee the future. She really also loved

-Sabran like a son, and took pride and pleasure in the filial tenderness

-he showed her, and in his children, with the beautiful blue eyes that

-had gleams of light in them like sapphires. The children themselves

-adored her; and even the bold and wilful Bela was as quiet as a

-startled fawn beside this lovely little lady, with her snow-white hair

-and her delicate smile, whose cascades of lace always concealed such

-wonderful bon-bon boxes, and gilded cosaques, and illuminated stories

-of the saints.

-

-Almost all their time was spent at Hohenszalras. A few winter months

-in Vienna was all they had ever passed away from it, except one visit

-to Idrac and the Hungarian estates. The children never left it for

-a day. He shared her affection for the place, and for the hardy and

-frank mountain people around them. He seemed to her to entirely forget

-Romaris, and beyond the transmission of moneys to its priest, he

-took no heed of it. She hesitated to recall it to him, since to do

-so might have seemed to remind him that it was she, not he, who was

-suzerain in the Hohe Tauern. Romaris was but a bleak rock, a strip of

-sea-swept sand; it was natural that it should have no great hold on his

-affections, only recalling as it did all that its lords had lost.

-

-'I hate its name,' he said impetuously once; and seeing the surprise

-upon her face, he added: 'I was very lonely and wretched there; I

-tried to take interest in it because you bade me, but I failed; all

-I saw, all I thought of, was yourself, and I believed you as far and

-for ever removed from me as though you had dwelt in some other planet.

-No! perhaps I am superstitious: I do not wish you to go to Romaris. I

-believe it would bring us misfortune. The sea is full of treachery, the

-sands are full of graves.'

-

-She smiled.

-

-'Superstition is a sort of parody of faith; I am sure you are not

-superstitious. I do not care to go to Romaris; I like to cheat myself

-into the belief that you were born and bred in the Iselthal. Otto said

-to me the other day, "My lord must be a son of the soil, or how could

-he know our mountains so well as he does, and how could he anywhere

-have learned to shoot like that?"'

-

-'I am very glad that Otto does me so much honour. When he first met

-me, he would have shot me like a fox, if you had given the word. Ah, my

-love! how often I think of you that day, in your white serge, with your

-girdle of gold, and your long gold-headed staff, and your little ivory

-horn. You were truly a châtelaine of the old mystical German days.

-You had some _Schlüsselblumen_ in your hand. They were indeed the key

-flower to my soul, though, alas! treasures, I fear, you found none on

-your entrance there.'

-

-'I shall not answer you, since to answer would be to flatter you, and

-Aunt Ottilie already, does that more than is good for you,' she said

-smiling, as she passed her fingers over the waves of his hair. 'By the

-way, whom shall we invite to meet the Lilienhöhe? Will you make out a

-list?'

-

-'The Grand Duke does not share Frau Ottilie's goodness for me.'

-

-'What would you? He has been made of buckram and parchment; besides

-which; nothing that is not German has, to his mind, any right to exist.

-By the way, Egon wrote to me this morning; he will be here at last.'

-

-He looked up quickly in unspoken alarm: 'Your cousin Egon? Here?'

-

-'Why are you so surprised? I was sure that sooner or later he would

-conquer that feeling of being unable to meet you. I begged him to come

-now; it is eight whole years since I have seen him. When once you have

-met you will be friends--for my sake.'

-

-He was silent; a look of trouble and alarm was still upon his face.

-

-'Why should you suppose it any easier to him now than then?' he said at

-length. 'Men who love _you_ do not change. There are women who compel

-constancy, _sans le vouloir_. The meeting can but be painful to Prince

-Vàsàrhely.'

-

-'Dear Réné,' she answered in some surprise, 'my nearest male relative

-and I cannot go on for ever without seeing each other. Even these years

-have done Egon a great deal of harm. He has been absent from the Court

-for fear of meeting us. He has lived with his hussars, or voluntarily

-confined to his estates, until he grows morose and solitary. I am

-deeply attached to him. I do not wish to have the remorse upon me of

-having caused the ruin of his gallant and brilliant life. When he

-has been once here he will like you: men who are brave have always

-a certain sympathy. When he has seen you here he will realise that

-destiny is unchangeable, and grow reconciled to the knowledge that I am

-your wife.'

-

-Sabran gave an impatient gesture of denial, and began to write the list

-of invitations for the autumn circle of guests who were to meet the

-Prince and Princess of Lilienhöhe.

-

-Once every summer and every autumn Hohenszalras was filled with a

-brilliant house-party, for she sacrificed her own personal preferences

-to what she believed to be for the good of her husband. She knew that

-men cannot always live alone; that contact with the world is needful to

-their minds and bracing for it. She had a great dread lest the ghost

-_ennui_ should show his pale face over her husband's shoulder, for

-she realised that from the life of the asphalte of the Champs-Élysées

-to the life amidst the pine forests of the Iselthal was an abrupt

-transition that might easily bring tedium in its train. And tedium is

-the most terrible and the most powerful foe love ever encounters.

-

-Sabran completed the list, and when he had corrected it into due

-accordance with all Lilienhöhe's personal and political sympathies and

-antipathies, despatched the invitations, 'for eight days,' written on

-cards that bore the joint arms of the Counts of Idrac and the Counts of

-Szalras. He had adopted the armorial bearings of the countship of Idrac

-as his own, and seemed disposed to abandon altogether those of the

-Sabrans of Romaris.

-

-When they were written he went out by himself and rode long and fast

-through the mists of a chilly afternoon, through dripping forest ways

-and over roads where little water-courses spread in shining shallows.

-The coming of Egon Vàsàrhely troubled him and alarmed him. He had

-always dreaded his first meeting with the Magyar noble; and as the

-years had dropped by one after another, and her cousin had failed

-to find courage to see her again, he had begun to believe that they

-and Vàsàrhely would remain always strangers. His wish had begotten

-his thought. He knew that she wrote at intervals to her cousin, and

-he to her; he knew that at the birth of each of their children some

-magnificent gift, with a formal letter of felicitation, had come from

-the Colonel of the White Hussars; but as time had gone on and Prince

-Egon had avoided all possibility of meeting them, he had grown to

-suppose that the wound given her rejected lover was too profound ever

-to close; nor did he wonder that it was so: it seemed to him that any

-man who loved her must do so for all eternity, if eternity there should

-be. To learn suddenly that within another month Vàsàrhely would be his

-guest, distressed and alarmed him in a manner she never dreamed. They

-had been so happy. On their cloud less heaven there seemed to him to

-rise a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but bearing with it disaster

-and a moonless night.

-

-'Perhaps he will have forgotten,' he thought, as he strove to shake off

-his forebodings. 'We were so young then. He was not even as old as I!'

-

-And he rode fast and furiously homewards as the day drew in, and the

-lighted windows of the great castle seemed to smile at him as lie saw

-it high up above the darkness of the woods and of the evening mists,

-his home, beloved, sacred, infinitely dear to him; dear as the soil of

-the mother country which the wrecked mariner reaches after facing death

-on the deep sea.

-

-'God save her from suffering by me!' he said, in an unconscious prayer,

-as he drew rein before the terrace of Hohenszalras. Almost he believed

-in God through her.

-

-When, after dressing, he went into, the Saxe room, the peace and

-beauty of the scene had never struck him so strongly as it did now,

-coming out of the shadows of the wet woods and the gloom of his own

-anxieties; anxieties the heavier and the more wearing because they

-could be shared by no one. The soft, full light of the wax candles fell

-on the Louis Seize embroideries and the white woodwork of the panelling

-and the china borders of the mirrors. The Princess Ottilie sat making

-silk-netting for the children's balls; his wife was reading, and Bela

-and Gela, who were there for their privileged half-hour before dinner,

-were fitting together on a white bearskin, playing with the coloured

-balls of the game of solitaire. The soft light from the chandeliers

-and sconces of the Saxe Royale china fell on the golden heads and the

-velvet frocks of the children, on the old laces and the tawny-coloured

-plush of their mothers skirts, on the great masses of flowers in the

-Saxe bowls, and on the sleeping forms of the big dogs Donau and Neva.

-It was an interior that would have charmed Chardin, that would have

-been worthy of Vandyck.

-

-As he looked at it he thought with a sort of ecstasy, 'All that is

-mine;' and then his heartstrings tightened as he thought again, 'If she

-knew----?'

-

-She looked up at his entrance with a welcome on her face that needed no

-words.

-

-'Where have you been in the rain all this long afternoon?' You see we

-have a fire, even though it is midsummer. Bela, rise, and make your

-obeisance, and push that chair nearer the hearth.'

-

-The two little boys stood up and kissed his hand, one after another,

-with the pretty formality; of greeting on which she always insisted;

-then they went back to their coloured glass balls, and he sank into a

-low chair beside his wife with a sigh half of fatigue, half of content.

-

-'Yes, I have been riding all the time,' he said to her. 'I am not sure

-that Siegfried approved it. But it does one good sometimes, and after

-the blackness and the wetness of that forest how charming it is to come

-home!'

-

-She looked at him with wistfulness.

-

-'I wish you were not vexed that Egon is coming! I am sure you have been

-thinking of it as you rode.'

-

-'Yes, I have; but I am ashamed of doing so. He is your cousin, that

-shall be enough for me. I will do my best to make him welcome. Only

-there is this difficulty; a welcome from me to him will seem in itself

-an insult.'

-

-'An insult! when you are my husband? One would think you were my

-_jägermeister._ Dear mother mine, help me to scold him.'

-

-'I am a stranger,' he said, under his breath.

-

-She smiled a little, but she said with a certain hauteur:

-

-'You are master of Hohenszalras, as your son will be when our places

-shall know us no more. Do not let the phantom of Egon come between us,

-I beseech you. His real presence never will do so, that is certain.'

-

-'Nothing shall come between us,' said Sabran, as his hand took and

-closed upon hers. 'Forgive me if I have brought some gloomy _nix_ out

-of the dark woods with me; he will flee away in, the light of this

-beloved white-room. No evil spirits could dare stay by your hearth.'

-

-'There are _nixes_ in the forests,' said Bela in a whisper to his

-brother.

-

-'Ja!' said Gela, not comprehending.

-

-'We will kill them all when we are big,' said Bela.

-

-'Ja! ja!' said Gela.

-

-Bela knew very well what a _nix_ was. Otto had told him all about

-kobolds and sprites, as his pony trotted down the drives.

-

-'Or we will take them prisoners,' he added, remembering that his mother

-never allowed anything to be killed, not even butterflies.

-

-'Ja!' said Gela again, rolling the pretty blue and pink and amber balls

-about in the white fur of the bearskin.

-

-Gela's views of life were simplified by the disciple's law of

-imitation; they were restricted to doing whatever Bela did, when that

-was possible, when it was not possible he remained still adoring Bela,

-with his little serious face as calm as a god's.

-

-She used to think that when they should grow up Bela would be a great

-soldier like Wallenstein or Condé, and Gela would stay at home and

-take care of his people here in the green, lone, happy Iselthal.

-

-Time ran on and the later summer made the blooming hay grow brown on

-all the alpine meadows, and made the garden of Hohenszalras blossom

-with a million autumnal glories; it brought also the season of the

-first house-party. Egon Vàsàrhely was to arrive one day before the

-Lilienhöhe and the other guests.

-

-'I want Egon so much to see Bela!' she said, with the thoughtless

-cruelty of a happy mother forgetful of the pain of a rejected lover.

-

-'I fear Bela will find little favor in your cousin's eyes, since he is

-mine too,' said Sabran.

-

-'Oh, Egon is content to be only our cousin by this----'

-

-'You think so? You do not know yourself if you imagine that.'

-

-'Egon is very loyal. He would not come here if he could not greet you

-honestly.'

-

-Sabran's face flushed a little, and he turned away. He vaguely dreaded

-the advent of Egon Vàsàrhely, and there were so many innocent words

-uttered in the carelessness of intimate intercourse which stabbed him

-to the quick; she had so wounded him all unconscious of her act.

-

-'Shall we have a game of billiards?' he asked her as they stood in the

-Rittersaal, whilst the rain fell fast without. She played billiards

-well, and could hold her own against him, though his game was one that

-had often been watched by a crowded _galerie_ in Paris with eager

-speculation and heavy wager. An hour afterwards they were still playing

-when the clang of a great bell announced the approach of the carriage

-which had been sent to Windisch-Matrey.

-

-'Come!' she said joyously, as she put back her cue in its rest; but

-Sabran drew back.

-

-'Receive your cousin first alone,' he said. 'He must resent my presence

-here. I will not force it on him on the threshold of your house.'

-

-'Of our house! Why will you use wrong pronouns? Believe me, dear, Egon

-is too generous to bear you the animosity you think.'

-

-'Then he never loved you,' said Sabran, somewhat impatiently, as he

-sent one ball against another with a sharp collision. 'I will come if

-you wish it,' he added; 'but I think it is not in the best taste to so

-assert myself.'

-

-'Egon is only my cousin and your guest. You are the master of

-Hohenszalras. Come! you were not so difficult when you received the

-Emperor.'

-

-'I had done the Emperor no wrong,' said Sabran, controlling the

-impatience and the reluctance he still felt.

-

-'You have done Egon none. I should not have been his wife had I never

-been yours.'

-

-'Who knows?' murmured Sabran, as he followed her into the entrance

-hall. The stately figure of Egon Vàsàrhely enveloped in furs was just

-passing through the arched doorway.

-

-She went towards him with a glad welcome and both hands outstretched.

-

-Prince Egon bowed to the ground: then took both her hands in his and

-kissed her on the cheek.

-

-Sabran, who grew very pale, advanced and greeted him with ceremonious

-grace.

-

-'My wife has bade me welcome you, Prince, but it would be presumptuous

-in me, a stranger, to do that. All her kindred must be dear and sacred

-here.'

-

-Egon Vàsàrhely, with an effort to which he had for years been vainly

-schooling himself, stretched out his hand to take her husband's; but

-as he did so, and his glance for the first time dwelt on Sabran, a

-look surprised and indefinitely perplexed came on his own features.

-Unconsciously he hesitated a moment; then, controlling himself, he

-replied with a few fitting words of courtesy and friendship. That

-there should be some embarrassment, some constraint, was almost

-inevitable, and did not surprise her: she saw both, but she also saw

-that both were hidden under the serenity of high breeding and worldly

-habit. The most difficult moment had passed: they went together into

-the Rittersaal, talked together a little on a few indifferent topics,

-and in a little space Prince Egon withdrew to his own apartments to

-change his travelling clothes. Sabran left him on the threshold of his

-chamber.

-

-Vàsàrhely locked the doors, locking out even his servant, threw off

-his furs and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. The meeting had

-cost him even more than he had feared that it would do. For five years

-he had dreaded this moment, and its pain was as sharp and as fresh to

-him as though it had been unforeseen. To sleep under the same roof

-with the husband of Wanda von Szalras! He had overrated his power of

-self-control, underrated his power of suffering, when to please her he

-had consented after five years to visit Hohenszalras. What were five

-years?--half a century would not have changed him.

-

-Under the plea of fatigue, he, who had sat in his saddle eighteen hours

-at a stretch, and was braced to every form of endurance in the forest

-chase and in the tented field, sent excuses to his host for remaining

-in his own rooms until the Ave Maria rung. When he at length went

-down to the blue-room where she was, he had recovered, outwardly at

-least, his tranquillity and his self-possession, though here, in this

-familiar, once beloved chamber, where every object had been dear to him

-from his boyhood, a keener trial than any he had passed through awaited

-him, as she led forward to meet him a little boy clad in white velvet,

-with a cloud of light golden hair above deep blue luminous eyes, and

-said to him:

-

-'Egon, this is my Bela. You will love him a little, for my sake?'

-

-Vàsàrhely felt a chill run through him like the cold of death as he

-stooped towards the child; but he smiled and touched the boy's forehead

-with his lips.

-

-'May the spirit of our lost Bela be with him and dwell in his heart,'

-he murmured; 'better I cannot wish him.'

-

-With an effort he turned to Sabran.

-

-'Your little son is a noble child; you may with reason be proud of him.

-He is very like you in feature. I see no trace of the Szalras.'

-

-'The other boy is more like Wanda,' replied Sabran, sensible of a

-certain tenacity of observation with which Vàsàrhely was gazing at

-him. 'As for my daughter, she is too young for anyone to say whom she

-will resemble. All I desire is that she should be like her mother,

-physically and spiritually.'

-

-'Of course,' said the Prince, absently, still looking from Sabran to

-the child, as if in the endeavour to follow some remembrance that

-eluded-him. The little face of Bela was a miniature of his father's,

-they were as alike as it is possible for a child and a man to be so,

-and Egon Vàsàrhely perplexedly mused and wondered at vague memories

-which rose up to him as he gazed on each.

-

-'And what do you like best to do, my little one?' he asked of Bela, who

-was regarding him with curious and hostile eyes.

-

-'To ride,' answered Bela at once, in his pretty uncertain German.

-

-'There you are a true Szalras at least. And your brother Gela, can he

-ride yet? Where is Gela, by the way?'

-

-'He is asleep,' said Bela, with some contempt. 'He is a little thing.

-Yes; he rides, but it is in a chair-saddle. It is not real riding.'

-

-'I see. Well, when you come and see me you shall have some real riding,

-on wild horses if you like;' and he told the child stories of the great

-Magyar steppes, and the herds of young horses, and the infinite delight

-of the unending gallop over the wide hushed plain; and all the while

-his heart ached bitterly, and the sight of the child--who was her

-child, yet had that stranger's face--was to him like a jagged steel

-being turned and twisted inside a bleeding wound. Bela, however, was

-captivated by the new visions that rose before him.

-

-'Bela will come to Hungary,' he said with condescension, and then with

-an added thought, continued: 'I think Bela has great lands there. Otto

-said so.'

-

-'Bela has nothing at all,' said Sabran, sternly. 'Bela talks great

-nonsense sometimes, and it would be better he should go to sleep with

-his brother.'

-

-Bela looked up shyly under his golden cloud of hair. 'Folko is Bela's,'

-he said under his breath. Folko was his pony.

-

-'No,' said Sabran; 'Folko belongs to your mother. She only allows you

-to have him so long as you are good to him.'

-

-'Bela is always good to him,' he said decidedly.

-

-'Bela is faultless in his own estimation,' said his mother, with a

-smile. 'He is too little to be wise enough to see himself as he is.'

-

-This view made Bela's blue eyes open very wide and fill very

-sorrowfully. It was humiliating. He longed to get back to Gela, who

-always listened to him dutifully, and never said anything in answer

-except an entirely acquiescent 'Ja! ja!' which was indeed about the

-limitation of Gela's lingual powers. In a few moments, indeed, his

-governess came for him and took him away, a little dainty figure in his

-ivory velvet and his blue silk stockings, with his long golden curls

-hanging to his waist.

-

-'It is so difficult to keep him from being spoilt,' she said, as the

-door closed on him. 'The people make a little prince, a little god, of

-him. He believes himself to be something wonderful. Gela, who is so

-gentle and quiet, is left quite in the shade.'

-

-'I suppose Gela takes your title?' said Vàsàrhely to his host. 'It

-is usual with the Austrian families for the second son to have some

-distant appellation?'

-

-'They are babies,' said Sabran, impatiently.

-

-'It will be time enough to settle those matters when they are old

-enough to be court-pages or cadets. They are Bela and Gela at present.

-The only real republic is childhood.'

-

-'I am afraid Bela is the _tyrannus_ to which all republics succumb,'

-said Wanda, with a smile. He is extremely autocratic in his notions,

-and in his family. In all his "make believe" games he is crowned.'

-

-'He is a beautiful child,' said her cousin, and she answered, still

-smiling:

-

-'Oh, yes: he is so like Réné!'

-

-Egon Vàsàrhely turned his face from her. The dinner was somewhat dull,

-and the evening seemed tedious, despite the efforts of Sabran to

-promote conversation, and the _écarté_ which he and his guest played

-together. They, were all sensible that some chord was out of tune, and

-glad that on the morrow a large house-party would be there to spare

-them a continuation of this difficult intercourse.

-

-'Your cousin will never forgive me,' said Sabran to her when they were

-alone. 'I think, beside his feeling that I stand for ever between you

-and him there is an impatience of me as a stranger and one unworthy

-you.'

-

-'You do yourself and him injustice,' she answered. 'I shall be unhappy

-if you and he be not friends.'

-

-'Then unhappy you will be, my beloved. We both adore you.'

-

-'Do not say that. He would not be here if it were so.'

-

-'Ah! look at him when he looks at Bela!'

-

-She sighed; she had felt a strong emotion on the sight of her cousin,

-for Egon Vàsàrhely was much changed by these years of pain. His grand

-carriage and his martial beauty were unaltered, but all the fire and

-the light of earlier years were gone out of his face, and a certain

-gloom and austerity had come there. To all other women he would have

-been the more attractive for the melancholy which was in such apt

-contrast with the heroic adventures of his life, but to her the change

-in him was a mute reproach which filled her with remorse though she had

-done no wrong.

-

-Meantime Prince Egon, throwing open his window, leaned out into the

-cold rainy night, as though a hand were at his throat and suffocating

-him. And amidst all the tumult of his pain and revolt, one dim thought

-was incessantly intruding itself; he was always thinking, as he

-recalled the face of Sabran and of Sabran's little son, 'Where have I

-seen those blue eyes, those level brows, those delicate curved lips?'

-

-They were so familiar, yet so strange to him. When he would have given

-a name to them they receded into the shadows of some far away past of

-his own, so far away he could not follow them. He sat up half the night

-letting the wind beat and the rain fall on him. He could not sleep.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVIII.

-

-

-In the morrow thirty or forty people arrived, amongst them Baron

-Kaulnitz _en congé_ from his embassy.

-

-'What think you of Sabran?' he asked of Egon Vàsàrhely, who answered:

-

-'He is a perfect gentleman. He is a charming companion. He plays

-admirably at _écarté._

-

-'_Écarté_! I spoke of his moral worth: what is your impression of that?'

-

-'If he had not satisfied her as to that, Wanda would not be his wife,'

-answered the Prince gravely. 'He has given her beautiful children, and

-it seems to me that he renders her perfectly happy. We should all be

-grateful to him.'

-

-'The children are certainly very beautiful,' said Baron Kaulnitz, and

-said no more.

-

-'The people all around are unfeignedly attached to him,' Vàsàrhely

-continued with generous effort. 'I hear nothing but his praise. Nor do

-I think it the conventional compliment which loyalty leads them to pay

-the husband of their Countess; it is very genuine attachment. The men

-of the old Archduchy are not easily won; it is only qualities of daring

-and manliness which appeal to their sympathies. That he has gained

-their affections is as great testimony to his character in one way as

-that he has gained Wanda's is in another. At Idrac also the people

-adore him, and Croats are usually slow to see merit in strangers.'

-

-'In short, he is a paragon,' said the ambassador, with a little dubious

-smile. 'So much the better, since he is irrevocably connected with us.'

-

-Sabran was at no time seen to greater advantage than when he was

-required to receive and entertain a large house-party. Always graceful,

-easily witty, endowed with that winning tact which is to society as

-cream is to the palate, the charm he possessed for women and the

-ascendency he could, at times, exercise over men--even men who were

-opposed to him--were never more admirably displayed than when he was

-the master of Hohenszalras, with crowned heads, and princes, and

-diplomatists, and beauties gathered beneath his roof. His mastery,

-moreover, of all field sports, and his skill at all games that demanded

-either intelligence or audacity, made him popular with a hardy and

-brilliant nobility; his daring in a boar hunt at noon was equalled by

-his science at whist in the evening. Strongly prejudiced against him at

-the onset, the great nobles who were his guests had long ceased to feel

-anything for him except respect and regard; whilst the women admired

-him none the less for that unwavering devotion to his wife which made

-even the conventionalities of ordinary flirtation wholly impossible to

-him. With all his easy gallantry and his elegant homage to them, they

-all knew that, at heart, he was as cold as the rocks to all women save

-one.

-

-'It is really the knight's love for his lady,' said the Countess

-Brancka once; and Sabran, overhearing, said: 'Yes, and, I think that if

-there were more like my lady on earth, knighthood might revive on other

-scenes than Wagner's.'

-

-Between him and the Countess Brancka there was a vague intangible

-enmity, veiled under the perfection of courtesy. They could ill have

-told why they disliked each other; but they did so. Beneath their

-polite or trivial or careless speech they often aimed at each other's

-feelings or foibles with accuracy and malice. She had stayed at

-Hohenszalras more or less time each year in the course of her flight

-between France and Vienna, and was there now. He admired his wife's

-equanimity and patience under the trial of Mdme. Olga's frivolities,

-but he did not himself forbear from as much sarcasm as was possible

-in a man of the world to one who was his guest, and by marriage his

-relative, and he was sensible of her enmity to himself, though she

-paid him many compliments, and sometimes too assiduously sought his

-companionship. '_Elle fait le ronron, mais gare à ses pattes!_' he said

-once to his wife concerning her.

-

-Sabran appraised her indeed with unflattering accuracy. He knew

-by heart all the wiles and wisdom of such a woman as she was. Her

-affectations did not blind him to her real danger, and her exterior

-frivolity did not conceal from him the keen and subtle self-interest

-and the strong passions which laboured beneath it.

-

-She felt that she had an enemy in him, and partly in self-protection,

-partly in malice, she set herself to convert a foe into a friend,

-perhaps, without altogether confessing it to herself, into a lover as

-well.

-

-The happiness that prevailed at Hohenszalrasburg annoyed her for

-no other reason than that it wearied her to witness it. She did

-not envy it, because she did not want happiness at all; she wanted

-perpetual change, distraction, temptation, passion, triumph--in a word,

-excitement, which becomes the drug most unobtainable to those who have

-early exhausted all the experiences and varieties of pleasure.

-

-Mdme. Brancka had always an unacknowledged resentment against her

-sister-in-law, for being the owner of all the vast possessions of the

-Szalras. 'If Gela had lived!' she thought constantly. 'If I had only

-had a son by him before he died, this woman would have had her dower

-and nothing more.' That his sister should possess all, whilst she had

-by her later marriage lost her right even to a share in that vast

-wealth, was a perpetual bitterness to her.

-

-Stefan Brancka was indeed rich, but he was an insensate gambler. She

-was extravagant to the last degree, with all the costly caprices of

-a _cocodette_ who reigned in the two most brilliant capitals of the

-world. They were often troubled by their own folly, and again and again

-the generosity of his elder brother had rescued them from humiliating

-embarrassments. At such moments she had almost hated Wanda von Szalras

-for these large possessions, of which, according to her own views,

-her sister-in-law made no use whatever. Meantime, she wished Egon

-Vàsàrhely to die childless, and to that end had not been unwilling

-for the woman he loved to marry anyone else. She had reasoned that the

-Szalras estates would go to the Crown or the Church if Wanda did not

-marry; whilst all the power and possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely must, if

-he had no sons, pass in due course to his brother. She had the subtle

-acuteness of her race, and she had the double power of being able at

-once to wait very patiently and to spring with swift rage on what she

-needed. To her sister-in-law she always appeared a mere flutterer on

-the breath of fashion. The grave and candid nature of the one could not

-follow or perceive the intricacies of the other.

-

-'She is a cruel woman and a perilous one,' Sabran said one day to his

-wife's surprise.

-

-She answered him that Olga Brancka had always seemed to her a mere

-frivolous _mondaine_, like so many others of their world.

-

-'No,' he persisted. 'You are wrong; she is not a butterfly. She has too

-much energy. She is a profoundly immoral woman also. Look at her eyes.'

-

-'That is Stefan's affair,' she answered, 'not ours. He is indifferent.'

-

-'Or unsuspicious? Did your brother care for her?'

-

-'He was madly in love with her. She was only sixteen when he married

-her. He fell at Solferino half a year later. When she married my

-cousin it shocked and disgusted me. Perhaps I was foolish to take it

-thus, but it seemed such a sin against Gela. To die _so_, and not to be

-even remembered!'

-

-'Did your cousin Egon approve this second marriage?'

-

-'No,' he opposed it; he had our feeling about it. But Stefan, though

-very young, was beyond any control. He had the fortune as he had the

-title of his mother, the Countess Brancka, and Olga bewitched him as

-she had done my brother.'

-

-'She _is_ a witch, a wicked witch,' said Sabran.

-

-The great autumn party was brilliant and agreeable. All things went

-well, and the days were never monotonous. The people were well

-assorted, and the social talent of their host made their outdoor sports

-and their indoor pastimes constantly varied, whilst Hungarian musicians

-and Viennese comedians played waltzes that would have made a statue

-dance, and represented the little comedies for which he himself had

-been famous at the Mirlitons.

-

-He was not conscious of it, but he was passionately eager for Egon

-Vàsàrhely to be witness, not only of his entire happiness, but of his

-social powers. To Vàsàrhely he seemed to put forward the perfection

-of his life with almost insolence; with almost exaggeration to exhibit

-the joys and the gifts with which nature and chance had so liberally

-dowered him. The stately Magyar soldier, sitting silent and melancholy

-apart, watched him with a curious pang, that in a lesser nature would

-have been a consuming envy. Now and then, though Sabran and his wife

-spoke rarely to each other in the presence of others, a glance, a

-smile, a word passed between them that told of absolute unuttered

-tenderness, profound and inexhaustible as the deep seas; in the very

-sound of their laughter, in the mere accent of their voices, in a

-careless caress to one of their children, in a light touch of the hand

-to one another as they rode, or as they met in a room, there was the

-expression of a perfect joy, of a perfect faith between them, which

-pierced the heart of the watcher of it. Yet would he not have had it

-otherwise at her cost.

-

-'Since she has chosen him as the companion of her life, it is well

-that he should be what she can take pride in, and what all men can

-praise,' he thought, and yet the happiness of this man seemed to him an

-audacity, an insolence. What human lover could merit her?

-

-Between himself and Sabran there was the most perfect courtesy, but no

-intimacy. They both knew that if for fifty years they met continually

-they would never be friends. All her endeavours to produce sympathy

-between them failed. Sabran was conscious of a constant observation of

-him by her cousin, which seemed to him to have a hostile motive, and

-which irritated him extremely, though he did not allow his irritation

-any visible vent. Olga Brancka perceived, and with the objectless

-malice of women of her temperament, amused herself with fanning, the

-slumbering enmity, as children play at fire.

-

-'You cannot expect Egon to love you,' she said once to her host. 'You

-know he was the betrothed of Wanda from her childhood--at least in his

-own hopes, and in the future sketched for them by their families.'

-

-'I was quite aware of that before I married,' he answered her

-indifferently. 'But those family arrangements are tranquil disposals of

-destiny which, if they be disturbed, leave no great trace of trouble.

-The Prince is young still, and a famous soldier as well as a great

-noble. He has no lack of consolation if he need it, and I cannot

-believe that he does.'

-

-Mdme. Olga laughed.

-

-'You know as well as I do that Egon adores the very stirrup your wife's

-foot touches!'

-

-'I know he is her much beloved cousin,' said Sabran, in a tone which

-admitted of no reply.

-

-To Vàsàrhely his sister-in-law said confidentially:

-

-'Dear Egon, why did you not stay on the _pusztas_ or remain with your

-hussars? You make _le beau_ Sabran jealous.'

-

-'Jealous!' asked Vàsàrhely, with a bitter smile. 'He has much cause,

-when she has neither eye nor ear, neither memory nor thought of any

-kind for any living thing except himself and those children who are

-all his very portraits! Why do you say these follies, Olga? You know

-that my cousin Wanda chose her lord out of all the world, and loves

-him as no one would have supposed she had it in her to love any mortal

-creature.'

-

-He spoke imperiously, harshly, and she was silenced.

-

-'What do you think of him?' she said with hesitation.

-

-'Everyone asks me that question. I am not his keeper!'

-

-'But you must form some opinion. He is virtual lord of Hohenszalras,

-and I believe she has made over to him all the appanages of Idrac, and

-his children will have everything.'

-

-'Are they not her natural heirs? Who should inherit from her if not her

-sons?'

-

-'Of course, of course they will inherit, only they inherit nothing

-from him. It was certainly a great stroke of fortune for a landless

-gentleman to make. Why does the _gentilhomme pauvre_ always so

-captivate women?'

-

-'What do you mean to insinuate, Olga?' he asked her, with a stern

-glance of his great black eyes.'

-

-'Oh, nothing; only his history was peculiar. I remember his arrival

-in France, his first appearance in society; it is many years ago now.

-All the Faubourg received him, but some said at the time that it was

-too romantic to be true--those Mexican forests, that long exile of the

-Sabran, the sudden appearance of this beautiful young marquis; you

-will grant it was romantic. I suppose it was the romance that made

-even Wanda's clear head turn a little. It is a _vin capiteux_ for many

-women. And then such a life in Paris after it--duels, baccara, bonnes

-fortunes, clever comedies, a touch like Liszt's, a sudden success in

-the Chamber--it was all so romantic; it was bound to bring him at

-last to his haven, the Prince Charmant of an enchanted castle! Only

-enchanted castles sometimes grow dull, and Princes Charmants are not

-always amusable by the same châtelaine!'

-

-Egon Vàsàrhely, with his eyes sombre under their long black lashes,

-listened to the easy bantering phrases with the vague suspicion of an

-honest and slow-witted man that a woman is trying to drop poison into

-his ear which she wishes to pass as _eau sucrée._ He did not altogether

-follow her insinuation, but he understood something of her drift. They

-were alone in a corner of the ball-room, whilst the cotillon was at its

-height, conducted by Sabran, who had been famous for its leadership in

-Paris and Vienna. He stooped his head and looked her full in her eyes.

-

-'Look here, Olga. I am not sure what you mean, but I believe you are

-tired of seeing my cousin's happiness, merely because it is something

-with which you cannot interfere. For myself I would protect her

-happiness as I would her honour if I thought either endangered. Whether

-you or I like the Marquis de Sabran is wholly beyond the question. She

-loves him, and she has made him one of us. His honour is now ours.

-For myself I would defend him in his absence as though he were my own

-brother. Not for his sake at all--for hers. I do not express myself

-very well, but you know what I mean. Here is Max returning to claim

-you.'

-

-Silenced and a little alarmed the Countess Brancka rose and went off to

-her place in the cotillon.

-

-Vàsàrhely, sitting where she had left him, watched the mazes of the

-cotillon, the rhythm of the tzigane musicians coming to his ear

-freighted with a thousand familiar memories of the czardas danced madly

-in the long Hungarian nights. Time had been when the throb of the

-tzigane strings had stirred all his pulses like magic, but now all his

-bold bright life seemed numb and frozen in him.

-

-His eyes rested on his cousin, where she stood conversing with a crown

-prince, who was her chief guest, and passed from her to follow the

-movements of Sabran, who with supreme ease and elegance was leading a

-new intricate measure down the ball-room.

-

-She was happy, that he could not doubt. Every action, every word, every

-glance said so with a meaning not to be doubted. He thought she had

-never looked so handsome as she did to-night since that far away day

-in her childhood when he had seen her with the red and white roses in

-her lap and the crown upon her curls. She had the look of her childhood

-in her eyes, that serene and glad light which had been dimmed by her

-brothers' death, but now shone there again tranquil, radiant, and pure

-as sunlight is. She wore white velvet and white brocade; her breast

-was hidden in white roses; she wore her famous pearls and the ribbons

-of the Starred Cross of Austria and of the Prussian Order of Merit;

-she held in her hand a large painted fan which had belonged to Maria

-Theresa. Every now and then, as she talked with her royal guest, her

-glance strayed down the room to where her husband was, and lingered

-there a moment with a little smile.

-

-Vàsàrhely watched her for awhile, then rose abruptly, and made his way

-out of the ball-room and the state apartments down the corridors of the

-old house he knew so well towards his own chamber. He thought he would

-write to her and leave upon the morrow. What need was there for him to

-stay on in this perpetual pain? He had done enough for the world, which

-had seen him under the roof of Hohenszalras.

-

-As he took his way through the long passages, tapestry-hung or

-oak-panelled, which led across the great building to his own set of

-rooms in the clock tower, he passed an open door out of which a light

-was streaming. As he glanced within he saw it was the children's

-sleeping apartment, of which the door was open because the night was

-warm, unusually warm for the heart of the Gross Glöckner mountains. An

-impulse he could not have explained made him pause and enter. The three

-little white beds of carved Indian work, with curtains of lace, looked

-very snowy and peaceful in the pale light from a hanging lamp. The

-children were all asleep; the one nearest the door was Bela.

-

-Vàsàrhely stood and looked at him. His head was thrown back on his

-pillow and his arms were above his head. His golden hair, which was

-cut straight and low over his forehead, had been pushed back in his

-slumber; he looked more like his father than in his waking hours,

-for as he dreamed there was a look of coldness and of scorn upon his

-childish face, which made him so resemble Sabran that the man who

-looked on him drew his breath hard with pain.

-

-The night-nurse rose from her seat, recognising Prince Egon, whom she

-had known from his childhood.

-

-'The little Count is so like the Marquis,' she said, approaching; 'so

-is Herr Gela. Ah, my Prince, you remember the noble gentlemen whose

-names they bear? God send they may be like them in their lives and not

-their deaths!'

-

-'An early death is good,' said Vàsàrhely, as he stood beside the

-child's bed. He thought how good it would have been if he had fallen

-at Sadowa or Königsgrätz, or earlier by the side of Gela and Victor,

-charging with his White Hussars.

-

-The old nurse rambled on, full of praise and stories of the children's

-beauty, and strength, and activity, and intelligence. Vàsàrhely did not

-hear her; he stood lost in thought looking down on the sleeping figure

-of Bela, who, as if conscious of strange eyes upon him, moved uneasily

-in his slumber, and ruffled his golden hair with his hands, and thrust

-off his coverings from his beautiful round white limbs.

-

-'Count Bela is not like our saint who died,' said the old nurse. 'He

-is always masterful, and loves his own way. My lady is strict with

-him, and wisely so, for he is a proud rebellious child. But he is very

-generous, and has noble ways. Count Gela is a little angel; he will be

-like the Heilige Graf.'

-

-Vàsàrhely did not hear anything she said. His gaze was bent on the

-sleeping child, studying the lines of the delicate brows, of the

-curving lips, of the long black lashes. It was so familiar, so

-familiar! Suddenly as he gazed a light seemed to leap out of the

-darkness of long forgotten years, and the memory which had haunted him

-stood out clear before him.

-

-'He is like Vassia Kazán!' he cried, half aloud. The face of the child

-had recalled what in the face of the man had for ever eluded his

-remembrance.

-

-He thrust a gold coin in the nurse's hand, and hurried from the

-chamber. A sudden inconceivable, impossible suspicion had leaped up

-before him as he had gazed on the sleeping loveliness of Sabran's

-little son.

-

-The old woman saw his sudden pallor, his uncertain gesture, and

-thought, 'Poor gallant gentleman! He wishes these pretty boys were his

-own. Well, it might have been better if he had been master here, though

-there is nothing to say against the one who is so. Still, a stranger is

-always a stranger, and foreign blood is bad.'

-

-Then she drew the coverings over Bela's naked little limbs, and passed

-on to make sure that the little Ottilie, who had been born when the

-primroses where first out in the Iselthal woods, was sleeping soundly,

-and wanted nothing.

-

-Vàsàrhely made his way to his own chamber, and there sat down heavily,

-mechanically, like a man waking out from a bad dream.

-

-His memory went back to twenty years before, when he, a little lad, had

-accompanied his father on a summer visit to the house of a Russian,

-Prince Paul Zabaroff. It was a house, gay, magnificent, full of idle

-men and women of facile charm; it was not a house for youth; but

-both the Prince Vàsàrhely and the Prince Zabaroff were men of easy

-morals--_viveurs_, gamesters, and philosophers, who at fifteen years

-old themselves had been lovers and men of the world. At that house

-had been present a youth, some years older than he was, who was known

-as Vassia Kazán: a youth whose beauty and wit made him the delight of

-the women there, and whose skill at games and daring in sports won him

-the admiration of the men. It was understood without even being said

-openly that Vassia Kazán was a natural son of the Prince Zabaroff. The

-little Hungarian prince, child as he was, had wit enough and enough

-knowledge of life to understand that this brilliant companion, of his

-was base-born. His kind heart moved him to pity, but his intense pride

-curbed his pity with contempt. Vassia Kazán had resented the latter too

-bitterly to even be conscious of the first. The gentlemen assembled had

-diverted themselves by the unspoken feud that had soon risen between

-the boys, and the natural intelligence of the little Magyar noble had

-been no match for the subtle and cultured brain of the Parisian Lycéen.

-

-One day one of the lovely ladies there, who plundered Zabaroff and

-caressed his son, amused herself with a war of words between the lads,

-and so heated, stung, spurred and tormented the Hungarian boy that,

-exasperated by the sallies and satires of his foe, and by the presence

-of this lovely goddess of discord, he so far forgot his chivalry that

-he turned on Vassia with a taunt. 'You would be a serf if you were in

-Russia!' he said, with his great black eyes flashing the scorn of the

-noble on the bastard. Without a word, Vassia, who had come in from

-riding and had his whip in his hand, sprang on him, held him in a grip

-of steel, and thrashed him. The fiery Magyar, writhing under the blows

-of one who to him was as a slave, as a hound, freed his right arm,

-snatched from a table near an oriental dagger lying there with other

-things of value, and plunged it into the shoulder of his foe. The

-cries of the lady, alarmed at her own work, brought the men in from

-the adjoining room; the boys were forced apart and carried to their

-chambers.

-

-Prince Vàsàrhely left the house that evening with his son, still

-furious and unappeased. Vassia Kazán remained, made a hero of and

-nursed by the lovely woman who had thrown the apple of strife. His

-wound was healed in three weeks' time; soon after his father's

-house-party was scattered, and he himself returned to his college. Not

-a syllable passed between him and Zabaroff as to his quarrel with the

-little Hungarian magnate. To the woman who had wrought the mischief

-Zabaroff said: 'Almost I wish he were my lawful son. He is a true wolf

-of the steppes. Paris has only combed his hide and given him a silken

-coat; he is still a wolf, like all true Russians.'

-

-Looking on the sleeping child of Sabran, all that half-forgotten scene

-had risen up before the eyes of Egon Vàsàrhely. He seemed to see the

-beautiful fair face of Vassia Kazán, with the anger on the knitted

-brows, and the ferocity on the delicate stern lips as he had raised his

-arm to strike. Twenty years had gone by; he himself, whenever he had

-remembered the scene, had long grown ashamed of the taunt he had cast,

-not of the blow he had given, for the sole reproof his father had ever

-made him was to say: 'A noble, only insults his equals. To insult an

-inferior is ungenerous, it is derogatory; whom you offend you raise for

-the hour to a level with yourself. Remember to choose your foes not

-less carefully than you choose your friends.'

-

-Why with the regard, the voice, the air of Sabran had some vague

-intangible remembrance always come before him?'

-

-Why, as he had gazed on the sleeping child had the vague uncertainty

-suddenly resolved itself into distinct revelation?

-

-'He is Vassia Kazán! He is Vassia Kazán!' he said to himself a score

-of times stupidly, persistently, as one speaks in a dream. Yet he knew

-he must be a prey to delusion, to phantasy, to accidental resemblance.

-He told himself so. He resisted his own folly, and all the while a

-subtler inner consciousness seemed to be speaking in him, and saying to

-him:

-

-'That man is Vassia Kazán. Surely he is Vassia Kazán.'

-

-And then the loyal soul of him strengthened itself and made him think:

-

-'Even if he be Vassia Kazán he is her husband. He is what she loves; he

-is the father of those children that are hers.'

-

-He never went to his bed that night. When the music ceased at an hour

-before dawn, and the great house grew silent, he still sat there by

-the open casement, glad of the cold air that blew in from over the

-Szalrassee, as with daybreak a fine film of rain began to come down the

-mountain sides.

-

-Once he heard the voice of Sabran, who passed the door on his way to

-his own apartment. Sabran was saying in German with a little laugh:

-

-'My lady!' I am jealous of your crown prince. When I left him now in

-his chamber I was disposed to immortalise myself by regicide. He adores

-you!'

-

-Then he heard Wanda laugh in answer, with some words that did not

-reach his ear as they passed on further down the corridor. Vàsàrhely

-shivered, and instinctively rose to his feet. He felt as if he must

-seek him out and cry out to him:

-

-'Am I mad or is it true? Let me see your shoulder--have you the mark of

-the wound that I gave? Your little child has the face of Vassia Kazán.

-Are you Vassia Kazán? Are you the bastard of Zabaroff? Are you the wolf

-of the steppes?'

-

-He had desired to go from Hohenszalras, where every hour was pain to

-him, but now he felt an irresistible fascination in the vicinity of

-Sabran. His mind was in that dual state which at once rejects a fact as

-incredible, and believes in it absolutely. His reason told him that his

-suspicion was a folly; his instinct told him that it was a truth.

-

-When in the forenoon the castle again became animated, and the guests

-met to the mid-day breakfast in the hall of the knights, he descended,

-moved by an eagerness that made him for the first time in his life

-nervous. When Sabran addressed him he felt himself grow pale; he

-followed the movements, he watched the features, he studied the tones

-of his successful rival, with an intense absorption in them. Through

-the hunting breakfast, at which only men were present, he was conscious

-of nothing that was addressed to him; he only seemed to hear a voice in

-his ear saying perpetually----'Yonder is Vassia Kazán.'

-

-The day was spent in sport, sport rough and real, that gave fair play

-to the beasts and perilous exposure to the hunters. For the first time

-in his life, Egon Vàsàrhely let a brown bear go by him untouched,

-and missed more than one roebuck. His eyes were continually seeking

-his host; a mile off down a forest glade the figure of Sabran seemed

-to fill his vision, a figure full of grace and dignity, clad in a

-hunting-dress of russet velvet, with a hunting-horn slung at his side

-on a broad chain of gold, the gift of his wife in memory of the fateful

-day when he had aimed at the _kuttengeier_ in her woods.

-

-Sabran of necessity devoted himself to the crown prince throughout

-the day's sport; only in the twilight as they returned he spoke to

-Vàsàrhely.

-

-'Wanda is so full of regret that you wish to leave us,' he said, with

-graceful cordiality; 'if only I can persuade you to remain, I shall

-take her the most welcome of all tidings from the forest. Stay at the

-least another week, the weather has cleared.'

-

-As he spoke he thought that Vàsàrhely looked at him strangely; but

-he knew that he could not be much loved by his wife's cousin, and

-continued with good humour to persist in his request. Abruptly, the

-other answered him at last.

-

-'Wanda wishes me to stay? Well, I will stay then. It seems strange to

-hear a stranger invite _me_ to Hohenszalras.'

-

-Sabran coloured; he said with hauteur:

-

-'That I am a stranger to Prince Vàsàrhely is not my fault. That I have

-the right to invite him to Hohenszalras is my happiness, due to his

-cousin's goodness, which has been far beyond my merit.'

-

-Vàsàrhely's eyes dwelt on him gloomily; he was sensible of the dignity,

-the self-command, and the delicacy of reproof which were blent in the

-answer he had received; he felt humbled and convicted of ill-breeding.

-He said after a pause:

-

-'I should ask your pardon. My cousin would be the first to condemn my

-words; they sounded ill, but I meant them literally. Hohenszalras has

-been one of my homes from boyhood; it will be your son's when we are

-both dead. How like he is to you; he has nothing of his mother.'

-

-Sabran, somewhat surprised, smiled as he answered:

-

-'He is very like me. I regret it; but you know the poets and the

-physiologists are for once agreed as to the cause of that. It is a

-truth proved a million times: _l'enfant de l'amour ressemble toujours

-au père._'

-

-Egon Vàsàrhely grew white under the olive hue of his sun-bronzed

-cheek. The _riposte_ had been made with a thrust that went home. Otto

-at that moment approached his master for orders for the morrow. They

-were no more alone. They entered the house; the long and ceremonious

-dinner succeeded. Vàsàrhely was silent and stern. Sabran was the most

-brilliant of hosts, the happiest of men; all the women present were in

-love with him, his wife the most of all.

-

-'Réné tells me you will stay, Egon. I am so very glad,' his cousin said

-to him during the evening, and she added with a little hesitation, 'If

-you would take time to know him well, you would find him so worthy of

-your regard; he has all the qualities that most men esteem in each

-other. It would make me so happy if you were friends at heart, not only

-in mere courtesy.'

-

-'You know that can never be,' said Vàsàrhely, almost rudely. 'Even you

-cannot work miracles. He is your husband. It is a reason that I should

-respect him, but it is also a reason why I shall for ever hate him.'

-

-He said the last words in a tone scarcely audible, but low as it was,

-there was a force in it that affected her painfully.

-

-'What you say there is quite unworthy of you,' she said with gentleness

-but coldness. 'He has done you no wrong. Long ere I met him I told you

-that what you wished was not what I wished, never would be so. You are

-too great a gentleman, Egon, to nourish an injustice in your heart.'

-

-He looked down; every fibre in him thrilled and burned under the sound

-of her voice, the sense of her presence.

-

-'I saw your children asleep last night,' he said abruptly. 'They have

-nothing of you in them; they are his image.'

-

-'Is it so unusual for children to resemble their father?' she said with

-a smile, whilst vaguely disquieted by his tone.

-

-'No, I suppose not; but the Szalras have always been of one type. How

-came your husband by that face? I have seen it amongst the Circassians,

-the Persians, the Georgians; but you say he is a Breton.'

-

-'The Sabrans of Romaris are Bretons; you have only to consult history.

-Very beautiful faces like his have seldom much impress of nationality;

-they always seem as though they followed the old Greek laws, and were

-cast in the divine heroic mould of another time than ours.'

-

-'Who was his mother?'

-

-'A Spanish Mexican.'

-

-Vàsàrhely was silent.

-

-His cousin left him and went amongst her guests. A vague sense of

-uneasiness went with her at her consciousness of his hostility to

-Sabran. She wished she had not asked him to remain.

-

-'You have never offended Egon?' she asked Sabran anxiously that night.

-'You have always been forbearing and patient with him?'

-

-'I have obeyed you in that as all things, my angel,', he answered her

-lightly. 'What would you? He is in love with you still, and I have

-married you! It is even a crime in his eyes that my children resemble

-me! One can never argue with a passion that is unhappy. It is a kind of

-frenzy.'

-

-She heard with some impatience.

-

-'He has no right to cherish such a resentment. He keeps it alive by

-brooding on it. I had hoped that when he saw you here, saw how happy

-you render me, saw your children too, he would grow calmer, wiser, more

-reconciled to the inevitable.'

-

-'You did not know men, my love,' said Sabran, with a smile.

-

-To him the unhappiness and the ill-will of Egon Vàsàrhely were matters

-of supreme indifference; in a manner they gratified him, they even

-supplied that stimulant of rivalry which a man's passion needs to keep

-at its height in the calm of safe possession. That Egon Vàsàrhely saw

-his perfect happiness lent it pungency and a keener sense of victory.

-When he kissed his wife's hand in the sight of her cousin, the sense

-of the pain it dealt to the spectator gave the trivial action to him

-all the sweetness and the ardour of the first caresses of his accepted

-passion.

-

-Of that she knew nothing. It would have seemed to her ignoble, as so

-much that makes up men's desire always does seem to a woman of her

-temperament, even whilst it dominates and solicits her, and forces her

-to share something of its own intoxication.

-

-'Egon is very unreasonable,' said Mdme. Ottilie. 'He believes that

-if you had not met Réné you would have in time loved himself. It is

-foolish. Love is a destiny. Had you married him you would not have

-loved him. He would soon have perceived that and been miserable, much

-more miserable than he is now, for he would have been unable to release

-you. I think he should not have come here at all if he could not have

-met M. de Sabran with at least equanimity.'

-

-'I think so, too,' said Wanda, and an impatience against her cousin

-began to grow into anger; without being conscious of it, she had placed

-Sabran so high in her own esteem that she could forgive none who did

-not adore her own idol. It was a weakness in her that was lovely and

-touching in a character that had had before hardly enough of the usual

-foibles of humanity. Every error of love is lovable.

-

-Vàsàrhely could not dismiss from his mind the impression which haunted

-him.

-

-'I conclude you knew the Marquis de Sabran well in France?' he said one

-day to Baron Kaulnitz, who was still there.

-

-Kaulnitz demurred.

-

-'No, I cannot say that I did. I knew him by repute; that was not very

-pure. However, the Faubourg always received and sustained him; the

-Comte de Chambord did the same; they were the most interested. One

-cannot presume to think they could be deceived.'

-

-'Deceived!' echoed Prince Egon. 'What a singular word to use. Do you

-mean to imply the possibility of--of any falsity on his part--any

-intrigue to appear what he is not?'

-

-'No,' said Kaulnitz, with hesitation. 'Honestly, I cannot say so much.

-An impression was given me at the moment of his signing his marriage

-contract that he concealed something; but it was a mere suspicion. As I

-told you, the whole Legitimist world, the most difficult to enter, the

-most incredulous of assumption, received him with open arms. All his

-papers were of unimpeachable regularity. There was never a doubt hinted

-by anyone, and yet I will confess to you, my dear Egon, since we are

-speaking in confidence, that I have had always my own doubts as to his

-marquisate of Sabran.'

-

-'_Grosser Gott!_' exclaimed Vàsàrhely, as he started from his seat.

-'Why did you not stop the marriage?'

-

-'One does not stop a marriage by a mere baseless suspicion,' replied

-Kaulnitz. 'I have not one shadow of reason for my probably quite

-unwarranted conjecture. It merely came into my mind also at the

-signing of the contracts. I had already done all I could to oppose

-the marriage, but Wanda was inflexible--you are witness of the charm

-he still possesses for her--and even the Princess was scarcely

-less infatuated. Besides, it must be granted that few men are more

-attractive in every way; and as he _is_ one of us, whatever else he be,

-his honour is now our honour, as you said yourself the other day.'

-

-'One could always kill him,' muttered Vàsàrhely, 'and set her free so,

-if one were sure.'

-

-'Sure of what?' said Kaulnitz, rather alarmed at the effect of his own

-words. 'You Magyar gentlemen always think that every knot can be cut

-with a sword. If he were a mere adventurer (which is hardly possible)

-it would not mend matters for you to run him through the heart; there

-are his children.'

-

-'Would the marriage be legal if his name were assumed?'

-

-'Oh, no! She could have it annulled, of course, both by Church and Law.

-All those pretty children would have no rights and no name. But we are

-talking very wildly and in a theatrical fashion. He is as certainly

-Marquis de Sabran as I am Karl von Kaulnitz.'

-

-Vàsàrhely said nothing; his mind was in tumult, his heart oppressed by

-a sense of secrecy and of a hope that was guilty and mean.

-

-He did not speak to his companion of Vassia Kazán, but his conjecture

-seemed to hover before his sight like a black cloud which grew bigger

-every hour.

-

-He remained at Hohenszalras throughout the autumnal festivities. He

-felt as if he could not go away with that doubt still unsolved, that

-suspicion either confirmed or uprooted. His cousin grew as uneasy at

-his presence there as she had before been uneasy at his absence. Her

-instinct told her that he was the foe of the one dearest to her on

-earth. She felt that the gallant and generous temper of him had changed

-and grown morose; he was taciturn, moody, solitary.

-

-He spent almost all his time out of doors, and devoted himself to the

-hardy sport of the mountains and forests with a sort of rage. Guests

-came and went at the castle; some were imperial, some royal people;

-there was always a brilliant circle of notable persons there, and

-Sabran played his part as their host, with admirable tact, talent, and

-good humour. His wit, his amiability, his many accomplishments, and

-his social charm were in striking contrast to the sombre indifference

-of Vàsàrhely, whom men had no power to amuse and women no power to

-interest. Prince Egon was like a magnificent picture by Rembrandt,

-as he sat in his superb uniform in a corner of a ball-room with the

-collars of his orders blazing with jewels, and his hands crossed on

-the diamond-studded hilt of his sword; but he was so mute, so gloomy,

-so austere, that the vainest, coquette there ceased to hope to please

-him, and his most cordial friends found his curt contemptuous replies

-destroy their desire for his companionship.

-

-Wanda, who was frankly and fondly attached to him, began to long for

-his departure. The gaze of his black eyes, fixed in their fire and

-gloom on the little gay figures of her children, filled her with a

-vague apprehension.

-

-'If he would only find some one and be happy,' she thought, with anger

-at this undesired and criminal love which clung to her so persistently.

-

-'Am I made of wax?' he said to her with scorn, when she ventured to

-hint at her wishes.

-

-'How I wish I had not asked him to remain here!' she said to herself

-many times. It was not possible for her to dismiss her cousin, who had

-been from his infancy accustomed to look on the Hohenszalrasburg as his

-second home. But as circle after circle of guests came, went, and were

-replaced by others, and Egon Vàsàrhely still retained the rooms in the

-west tower that had been his from boyhood, his continual presence grew

-irksome and irritating to her.

-

-'He forgets that it is now my husband's house!' she thought.

-

-There was only one living creature in all the place to whom Vàsàrhely

-unbent from his sullen and haughty reserve, and that one was the child

-Bela.

-

-Bela was as beautiful as the morning, with his shower of golden hair,

-and his eyes like sapphires, and his skin like a lily. With curious

-self-torture Vàsàrhely would attract the child to him by tales of

-daring and of sport, and would watch with intent eyes every line of

-the small face, trying therein to read the secret of the man by whom

-this child had been begotten. Bela, all unconscious, was proud of this

-interest displayed in him by this mighty soldier, of whose deeds in war

-Ulrich and Hubert and Otto told such Homeric tales.

-

-'Bela will fight with you when he is big,' he would say, trying to

-inclose the jewelled hilt of Vàsàrhely's sword in his tiny fingers, or

-trotting after him through the silence of the tapestried corridors.

-When she saw them thus together she felt that she could understand the

-superstitious fear of oriental women when their children are looked at

-fixedly.

-

-'You are very good to my boy,' she said once to Vàsàrhely, when he had

-let the child chatter by his side for hours.

-

-Vàsàrhely turned away abruptly.

-

-'There are times when I could kill your son, because he is his,' he

-muttered, 'and there are times when I could worship him, because he is

-yours.'

-

-'Do not talk so, Egon,'she said, gravely. 'If you will feel so, it is

-best--I must say it--it is best that you should see neither my child

-nor me.'

-

-He took no notice of her words.

-

-'The children would always be yours,' he muttered. 'You would never

-leave him, never disgrace him for their sake; even if one knew--it

-would be of no use.'

-

-'Dear Egon,' she said in real distress, 'what strange things are you

-saying? Are you mad? Whose disgrace do you mean?'

-

-'Let us suppose an extreme case,' he said, with a hard laugh. 'Suppose

-their father were base, or vile, or faithless, would you hate the

-children? Surely you would.'

-

-'I have not imagination enough to suppose any such thing,'she said very

-coldly. 'And you do not know what a mother's love is, my cousin.'

-

-He walked away, leaving her abruptly.

-

-'How strange he grows!' she thought. 'Surely his mind must be touched;

-jealousy is a sort of madness.'

-

-She bade the children's attendants keep Count Bela more in the

-nurseries; she told them that the child teased her guests, and must

-not be allowed to run so often at his will and whim over the house.'

-She never seriously feared that Egon would harm the child: his noble

-and chivalrous nature could not have changed so cruelly as that; but

-it hurt her to see his eyes fixed on the son of Sabran with such

-persistent interrogation and so strange an intensity of observation. It

-made her think of old Italian tales of the evil eye.

-

-She did not know that Vàsàrhely had come thither with a sincere and

-devout intention to conquer his jealous hatred of her husband, and

-to habituate himself to the sight of her in the new relations of her

-life. She did not know that he would probably have honestly tried to

-do his duty, and honestly striven to feel at least esteem for one so

-near to her, if the suspicion which had become almost certainty in his

-own mind had not made him believe that he saw in Sabran a traitor,

-a bastard, and a criminal whose offences were the deepest of all

-possible offences, and whose degradation was the lowest of all possible

-degradation, in the sight of the haughty magnate of Hungary, steeped

-to the lips in all the traditions and the convictions of an unsullied

-nobility. If what he believed were, indeed, the truth, he would hold

-Sabran lower than any beggar crouching at the gate of his palace in

-Buda, than any gipsy wandering in the woods of his mountain fortress

-of Taróc. If what he believed were the truth, no leper would seem to

-him so loathsome as this brilliant and courtly gentleman to whom his

-cousin had given her hand, her honour, and her life.

-

-'Doubt, like a raging tooth,' gnawed at his heart, and a hope, which

-he knew was dishonourable to his chivalry, sprang up in him, vague,

-timid, and ashamed. If, indeed, it were as he believed, would not such

-crime, proven on the sinner, part him for ever from the pure, proud

-life of Wanda von Szalras? And then, as he thought thus, he groaned in

-spirit, remembering the children--the children with their father's face

-and their father's taint in them, for ever living witnesses of their

-mother's surrender to a lying hound.

-

-'Your cousin cannot be said to contribute to the gaiety of your

-house parties, my love,' Sabran observed with a smile one day, when

-they received the announcement of an intended visit from one of the

-archdukes. Egon Vàsàrhely was still there, and even his cousin, much

-as she longed for his departure, could not openly urge it upon him;

-relationship and hospitality alike forbade.

-

-'He is sadly changed,' she answered. 'He was always silent, but he is

-now morose. Perhaps he lives too much at Taróc, where all is very wild

-and solitary.'

-

-'He lives too much in your memory,' said Sabran, with no compassion.

-'Could he determine to forgive my marriage with you, there would be a

-chance for him to recover his peace of mind. Only, my Wanda, it is not

-possible for any man to be consoled for the loss of you.'

-

-'But that is nothing new,' she answered, with impatience. 'If he felt

-so strongly against you, why did he come here? It was not like his

-high, chivalrous honour.'

-

-'Perhaps he came with the frank will to be reconciled to his fate,'

-said Sabran, not knowing how closely he struck the truth, 'and at the

-sight of you, of all that he lost and that I gained, he cannot keep his

-resolution.'

-

-'Then he should go away,' she said, with that indifference to all

-others save the one beloved which all love begets.

-

-'I think he should. But who can tell him so?'

-

-'I did myself the other day. I shall tell him so more plainly, if

-needful. Who cannot honour you shall be no friend of mine, no guest of

-ours.'

-

-'Oh, my love!' said Sabran, whose conscience was touched. 'Do not have

-feud with your relatives for my sake. They are worthier than I.'

-

-The Archduke, with his wife, arrived there on the following day, and

-Hohenszalras was gorgeous in the September sun, with all the pomp with

-which the lords of it had always welcomed their Imperial friends.

-Vàsàrhely looked on as a spectator at a play when he watched its

-present master receive the Imperial Prince with that supreme ease,

-grace, and dignity which were so admirably blent in him.

-

-'Can he be but a marvellous comedian?' wondered the man, to whom a

-bastard was less even than a peasant.

-

-There was nothing of vanity, of effort, of assumption visible in the

-perfect manner of his host. He seemed to the backbone, in all the

-difficult subtleties of society, as in the simple, frank intercourse

-of man and man, that which even Kaulnitz had conceded that he was,

-_gentilhomme de race._ Could he have been born a serf--bred from the

-hour's caprice of a voluptuary for a serving-woman?

-

-Vàsàrhely sat mute, sunk so deeply in his own thoughts that all the

-festivities round him went by like a pageantry on a stage, in which he

-had no part.

-

-'He looks like the statue of the Commendatore,' said Olga Brancka, who

-had returned for the archducal visit, as she glanced at the sombre,

-stately figure of her brother-in-law, Sabran, to whom she spoke,

-laughed with a little uneasiness. Would the hand of Egon Vàsàrhely ever

-seize him and drag him downward like the hand of the statue in _Don

-Giovanni?_

-

-'What a pity that Wanda did not marry him, and that I did not marry

-you!' said Mdme. Brancka, saucily, but with a certain significance of

-meaning.

-

-'You do me infinite honour!' he answered. 'But, at the risk of seeming

-most ungallant, I must confess the truth. I am grateful that the gods

-arranged matters as they are. You are enchanting, Madame Olga, as a

-guest, but as a wife--alas! who can drink _kümmel_ every day?'

-

-She smiled enchantingly, showing her pretty teeth, but she was bitterly

-angered. She had wished for a compliment at the least. 'What can these

-men see in Wanda?' she thought savagely. 'She is handsome, it is true;

-but she has no coquetry, no animation, no passion. She is dressed by

-Worth, and has a marvellous quantity of old jewels; but for that no one

-would say anything of her except that she was much too tall and had a

-German face!' And she persuaded herself that it was so; if the Venus

-de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her

-waist was large.

-

-Mdme. Olga was still very lovely, and took care to be never seen except

-at her loveliest. She always treated Sabran with a great familiarity,

-which his wife was annoyed by, though she did not display her

-annoyance. Mdme Brancka always called him _mon cousin_ or _beau cousin_

-in the language she usually used, and affected much more previous

-knowledge of him than their acquaintance warranted, since it had been

-merely such slight intimacy as results from moving in the same society.

-She was small and slight, but of great spirit; she shot, fished, rode,

-and played billiards with equal skill; she affected an adoration of

-the most dangerous sports, and even made a point of sharing the bear

-and the boar hunt. Wanda, who, though a person of much greater real

-courage, abhorred all the cruelties and ferocities that perforce

-accompany sport, saw her with some irritation go out with Sabran on

-these expeditions.

-

-'Women are utterly out of place in such sport as that, Olga,' she urged

-to her; 'and indeed are very apt to bring the men into peril, for of

-course no man can take care of himself whilst he has the safety of a

-woman to attend to; she must of necessity distract and trouble him.'

-

-But the Countess Stefan only laughed, and slipped with affectation her

-jewelled hunting-knife into its place in her girdle.

-

-Throughout the Archduke's visit, and after the Prince's departure,

-Vàsàrhely continued to stay on, whilst a succession of other guests

-came and went, and the summer deepened into autumn. He felt that he

-could not leave his cousin's house with that doubt unsolved; yet he

-knew that he might stay on for ever with no more certainty to reward

-him and confirm his suspicions than he possessed now. His presence

-annoyed his host, but Sabran was too polished a gentleman to betray

-his irritation; sometimes Vàsàrhely shunned his presence and his

-conversation for days together, at other times he sought them and rode

-with him, shot with him, and played cards with him, in the vain hope of

-gathering from some chance admission or allusion some clue to Sabran's

-early days. But a perfectly happy man is not given at any time to

-retrospection, and Sabran less than most men loved his past. He would

-gladly have forgotten everything that he had ever done or said before

-his marriage at the Hofburg.

-

-The intellectual powers and accomplishments of Sabran dazzled Vàsàrhely

-with a saddened sense of inferiority. Like most great soldiers he

-had a genuine humility in his measurement of himself. He knew that he

-had no talents except as a leader of cavalry. 'It is natural that she

-never looked at me,' he thought, 'when she had once seen this man, with

-his wit, his grace, his facility.' He could not even regard the skill

-of Sabran in the arts, in the salon, in the theatre with the contempt

-which the 'Wild Boar of Taróc' might have felt for a mere maker of

-music, a squire of dames, a writer of sparkling little comedies, a

-painter of screens, because he knew that both at Idrac and in France

-Sabran had showed himself the possessor of those martial and virile

-qualities, by the presence or the absence of which the Hungarian noble

-measured all men. He himself could only love well and live well: he

-reflected sadly that honesty and honour are not alone enough to draw

-love in return.

-

-As the weeks passed on, his host grew so accustomed to his presence

-there that it ceased to give him offence or cause him anxiety.

-

-'He is not amusing, and he is not always polite,' he said to his

-wife, 'but if he likes to consume his soul in gazing at you, I am not

-jealous, my Wanda; and so taciturn a rival would hardly ever be a

-dangerous one.'

-

-'Do not jest about it,' she answered him, with some real pain. 'I

-should be very vexed at his remaining here, were it not that I feel

-sure he will in time learn to live down his regrets, and to esteem and

-appreciate you.'

-

-'Who knows but his estimation of me may not be the right one?' said

-Sabran, with a pang of sad self-knowledge. And although he did not

-attach any significance to the prolonged sojourn of the lord of Taróc

-and Mohacs, he began to desire once more that his guest would return

-to the solitudes of the Carlowitz vineyards, or of the Karpathian

-mountains and gorges of snow.

-

-When over seven weeks had passed by, Vàsàrhely himself began to think

-that to stay in the Iselthal was useless and impossible, and he had

-heard from Taróc tidings which annoyed him--that his brother Stefan

-and his wife, availing themselves of his general permission to visit

-any one of his places when they chose had so strained the meaning of

-the permission that they had gone to his castle, with a score of their

-Parisian friends, and were there keeping high holiday and festival,

-to the scandal of his grave old stewards, and their own exceeding

-diversion. Hospitable to excess as he was, the liberty displeased him,

-especially as his, men wrote him word that his favourite horses; were

-being ruined by over-driving, and in the list of the guests which they

-sent him were the names of more than one too notorious lady, against

-whose acquaintance he had repeatedly counselled Olga Brancka. He would

-not have cared much what they had done at any other of his houses, but

-at Taróc, his mother, whom he had adored, had lived and died, and the

-place was sacred to him.

-

-He determined to tear himself away from Hohenszalras, and go and

-scatter these gay unbidden revellers in the dusky Karpathian ravines.

-'I cannot stay here for ever,' he thought, 'and I might be here for

-years without acquiring any more certainty than my own conviction.

-Either I am wrong, or he has nothing to conceal, or if I be right he is

-too wary to betray himself. If only I could see his shoulder where I

-struck the dagger--but I cannot go into his bath-room and say to him,

-"You are Vassia Kazán!"'

-

-He resolved to leave on the day after the morrow. For the next day

-there was organised on a large scale a hunting party, to which the

-nobility of the Tauern had been bidden. There were only some half-dozen

-men then staying in the Burg, most of them Austrian soldiers. The delay

-gave him the chance he longed for, which but for an accident he might

-never have had, though he had tarried there half a century.

-

-Early in the morning there was a great breakfast in the Rittersaal,

-at which Wanda did not appear. Sabran received the nobles and gentry

-of the province, and did the honours of his table with his habitual

-courtliness and grace. He was not hospitable in Vàsàrhely's sense of

-the word: he was too easily wearied by others, and too contemptuous of

-ordinary humanity; but he was alive to the pleasure of being lord of

-Hohenszalras, and sensible of the favour with which he was looked upon

-by a nobility commonly so exclusive and intolerant of foreign invasion.

-

-Breakfast over, the whole party went out and up into the high woods.

-The sport at Hohenszalras always gave fair play to beast and bird. In

-deference to the wishes of his wife, Sabran would have none of those

-battues which make of the covert or the forest a slaughterhouse. He

-himself disdained that sort of sport, and liked danger and adventure

-to mingle with his out-of-door pastimes. Game fairly found by the

-spaniel or the pointer; the boar, the wolf, the bear, honestly started

-and given its fair chance of escape or revenge; the steinbock stalked

-in a long hard day with peril and effort--these were all delightful

-to him on occasion; but for the crowded drive, the horde of beaters,

-the terrified bewildered troop of forest denizens driven with sticks

-on to the very barrels of the gunners, for this he had the boundless

-contempt of a man who had chased the buffalo over the prairie, and

-lassoed the wild horse and the wild bull leaning down from the saddle

-of his mustang. The day passed off well, and his guests were all

-content: he alone was not, because a large brown bear which he had

-sighted and tired at twice had escaped him, and roused that blood-lust

-in him which is in the hearts of all men.

-

-'Will you come out alone with me to-morrow and try for that grand

-brute?' he said to Vàsàrhely, as the last of his guests took their

-departure.

-

-Vàsàrhely hesitated.

-

-'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since

-you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'

-

-He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught

-at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of

-Sabran.

-

-'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had

-suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had

-intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving

-directions to the _jägermeister_ for the next day.

-

-Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is

-impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance

-resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a

-child.

-

-In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where

-the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a

-rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and

-mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in

-the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with

-no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their

-rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went

-through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a

-mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and

-capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big

-game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting

-and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and

-drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper

-woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian

-pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above

-some underground.

-

-'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper

-to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should

-be his host's.

-

-'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my

-guest.'

-

-Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him

-to contrive to sting and wound him.

-

-Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not

-observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed

-upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both

-in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron,

-good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about

-a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low

-hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and

-would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached.

-The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.

-

-'Well done,' cried Sabran, but scarcely were the words off his lips

-when another bear burst through the boughs ahead of him by fifty yards.

-He levelled his rifle and received its approach with two bullets in

-rapid succession. But neither had entered a vital part, and the animal,

-only rendered furious by pain, reared and came towards him with

-deadliest intent, its great fangs grinning. He fired again, and this

-shot struck home. The poor brute fell with a crash, the blood pouring

-from its mouth. It was not dead and its agony was great.

-

-'I will give it the _coup de grâce_,' said Sabran, who, for his wife's

-sake', was as humane as any hunter ever can be to the beasts he slew.

-

-'Take care,' said Vàsàrhely. 'It is dangerous to touch a wounded bear.

-I have known one that looked stone dead rise up and kill a man.'

-

-Sabran did not heed. He went up to the poor, panting, groaning mass of

-fur and flesh, and drew his hunting-knife to give it the only mercy

-that it was now possible for it to receive. But as he stooped to

-plunge the knife into its heart the bear verified the warning he had

-been given. Gathering all its oozing strength in one dying effort to

-avenge its murder, it leaped on him, dashed him to the earth, and clung

-to him with claw and tooth fast in his flesh. He freed his right arm

-from its ponderous weight, its horrible grip, and stabbed it with his

-knife as it clung to and lacerated him where he lay upon the grass.

-In an instant, Vàsàrhely and the jäger who was with them were by his

-side, freed him from the animal, and raised him from the ground. He

-was deluged with its blood and his own. Vàsàrhely, for one moment of

-terrible joy, for which he loathed himself afterwards, thought, 'Is he

-dead?' Men had died of lesser things than this.

-

-He stood erect and smiled, and said that it was nothing, but even as he

-spoke a faintness came over him, and his lips turned grey.

-

-The jäger supported him tenderly, and would have had him sit down upon

-a boulder of rock, but he resisted.

-

-'Let me get to that water, he said feebly, looking to a spot a few

-yards off, where one of the many torrents of the Hohe Tauern tumbled

-from the wooded cliff above through birch and beechwood, and rushing

-underground left a clear round brown pool amongst the ferns. He took a

-draught from the flask of brandy; tendered him by the lad, and leaning

-on the youth, and struggling against the sinking swoon that was coming

-on him, walked to the edge of the pool, and dropped down there on one

-of the mossy stones which served as a rough chair.

-

-'Strip me, and wash the blood away, he said to the huntsman, whilst the

-green wood and the daylight, and the face of the man grew dim to him,

-and seemed to recede further and further in a misty darkness. The youth

-obeyed, and cut away the velvet coat, the cambric shirt, till he was

-naked to his waist; then, making sponges of handkerchiefs, the jäger

-began to wash the blood from him and staunch it as best he could.

-

-Egon Vàsàrhely stood by, without offering any aid; his eyes were

-fastened on the magnificent bust of Sabran, as the sunlight fell on the

-fair blue-veined flesh, the firm muscles, the symmetrical throat, the

-slender, yet sinewy arms, round one of which was clasped a bracelet of

-fair hair. He had the chance he needed.

-

-He approached and told the lad roughly to leave the Marquis to him,

-he was doing him more harm than good; he himself had seen many

-battle-fields, and many men bleeding to death upon their mother earth.

-By this time Sabran's eyes were closed; he was hardly conscious of

-anything, a great numbness and infinite exhaustion had fallen upon him;

-his lips moved feebly. 'Wanda!' he said once or twice,'Wanda!'

-

-The face of the man who leaned above him grew dark as night; he gnashed

-his teeth as he begun his errand of mercy.

-

-Leave me with your lord,' he said to the young jäger. 'Go you to the

-castle. Find Herr Greswold, bring him; do not alarm the Countess, and

-say nothing to the household.'

-

-The huntsman went, fleet as a roe. Vàsàrhely remained alone with

-Sabran, who only heard the sound of the rushing water magnified a

-million times on his dulled ear.

-

-Vàsàrhely tore the shirt in shreds, and laved and bathed the wounds,

-and then began to bind them with the skill of a soldier who had often

-aided his own wounded troopers. But first of all, when he had washed

-the blood away, he searched with keen and eager eyes for a scar on the

-white skin--and found it.

-

-On the right shoulder was a small triangular mark; the mark of what,

-to a soldier's eyes, told of an old wound. When he saw it he smiled a

-cruel smile, and went on with his work of healing.

-

-Sabran leaned against the rock behind him; his eyes were still closed,

-the pulsations of his heart were irregular. He had lost a great

-quantity of blood, and the pool at his feet was red. They were but

-flesh wounds, and there was no danger in them themselves, but great

-veins had been severed, and the stream of life had hurried forth in

-torrents. Vàsàrhely thrust the flask between his lips, but he could not

-swallow.

-

-All had been done that could be for the immediate moment. The stillness

-of the deep woods was around them; the body of the brown bear lay on

-the soaked grass; a vulture scenting death, was circling above against

-the blue sky. Over the mind of his foe swept at the sight of them one

-of those hideous temptations which assail the noblest natures in an

-hour of hatred. If he tore the bandages he had placed there off the

-rent veins of the unconscious man whom he watched, the blood would

-leap out again in floods, and so weaken the labouring heart that in

-ten minutes more its powers would fall so low that all aid would be

-useless. Never more would the lips of Sabran meet his wife! Never

-more would his dreams be dreamed upon her breast! For the moment the

-temptation seemed to curl about him like a flame; he shuddered, and

-crossed himself. Was he a soldier to slay in cold blood by treachery a

-powerless rival?

-

-He leaned over Sabran again, and again tried to force the mouthpiece

-of his wine-flask through his teeth. A few drops passed them, and

-he revived a little, and swallowed a few drops more. The blood was

-arrested in its escape, and the pulsations of the heart were returning

-to their normal measure; after a while he unclosed his eyes, and looked

-up at the green leaves, at the blue sky.

-

-'Do not alarm Wanda,' he said feebly. 'It is a scratch; it will be

-nothing. Take me home.'

-

-With his left hand he felt for the hair bracelet on his right arm,

-between the shoulder and the wrist. It was stiff with his own blood.

-

-Then Vàsàrhely leaned over him and met his upward gaze, and said in his

-ear, that seemed still filled with the rushing of many waters, 'You are

-Vassia Kazán!'

-

-When a little later the huntsman returned, bringing the physician, whom

-he had met a mile nearer the house in the woods, and some peasants

-bearing a litter made out of pine branches and wood moss, they found

-Sabran stretched insensible beside the water-pool; and Egon Vàsàrhely,

-who stood erect beside him, said in a strange tone:

-

-'I have stanched the blood, and he has swooned, you see. I commit him

-to your hands. I am not needed.'

-

-And, to their surprise, he turned and walked away with swift steps into

-the green gloom of the dense forest.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIX.

-

-

-Sabran was still insensible when he was carried to the house.

-

-When he regained consciousness he was on his own bed, and his wife was

-bending over him. A convulsion of grief crossed his face as he lifted

-his eyelids and looked at her.

-

-'Wanda,' he murmured feebly, 'Wanda, you will forgive----'

-

-She kissed him passionately, while her tears fell like rain upon his

-forehead. She did not hear his words distinctly; she was only alive to

-the intense joy of his recovered consciousness, of the sound of his

-voice, of the sense of his safety. She kneeled by his bed, covering his

-hands with caresses, prodigal of a thousand names of love, given up to

-an abandonment of terror and of hope which broke down all the serenity

-and self-command of her habitual temper. She was not even aware of the

-presence of others. The over-mastering emotions of anguish and of joy

-filled her soul, and made her seem deaf, indifferent to all living

-things save one.

-

-Sabran lay motionless. He felt her lips, he heard her voice; he did not

-look up again, nor did he speak again. He shut his eyes, and slowly

-remembered all that had passed. Greswold approached him and held his

-fingers on his wrist, and held a little glass to his mouth. Sabran put

-it away. 'It is an opiate,' he said feebly; 'I will not have it.'

-

-He was resolute; he closed his teeth, he thrust the calming draught

-away.

-

-He was thinking to himself: 'Sometimes in unconsciousness one speaks.'

-

-'You are not in great pain?' asked the physician. He made a negative

-movement of his head. What were the fire and the smart of his lacerated

-flesh, of his torn muscles, to the torments of his fears, to the agony

-of his long stifled conscience?

-

-'Do not torment him, let him be still,' she said to the physician; she

-held his hand in both her own and pressed it to her heart. His languid

-eyes thanked her, then closed again.

-

-Herr Greswold withdrew to a little distance and waited. It seemed to

-him strange that a man of the high courage and strong constitution of

-Sabran should be thus utterly broken down by any wound that was not

-mortal; should be thus sunk into dejection and apathy, making no effort

-to raise himself, even to console and reassure his wife. It was not

-like his careless and gallant temper, his virile and healthful strength.

-

-It was true, the doctor reflected, that he had lost a great amount of

-blood. Such a loss he knew sometimes affects the heart and shatters the

-nervous system in many unlooked-for ways. Yet, he thought, there was

-something beyond this; the attitude and the regard of Egon Vàsàrhely

-had been unnatural at such an hour of peril. 'When he said just now

-"forgive," what did he mean?' reflected the old man, whose ear had

-caught the word which had escaped that of Wanda, who had been only

-alive to the voice she adored.

-

-The next four days were anxious and terrible. Sabran did not recover as

-the physician expected that he would, seeing the nature of his wounds

-and the naturally elastic and sanguine temperament he possessed. He

-slept little, had considerable fever, woke from the little rest he

-had, startled, alarmed, bathed in cold sweats; at other times he lay

-still in an apathy almost comatose, from which all the caresses and

-entreaties of his wife failed to rouse him. They began to fear that the

-discharge from the arteries had in some subtle and dangerous manner

-affected the action of the heart, the composition of the blood, and

-produced aneurism or pyæmia. 'The hero of Idrac to be prostrated by a

-mere flesh wound!' thought Herr Greswold in sore perplexity. He sent

-for a great man of science from Vienna, who, when he came, declared the

-treatment admirable, the wounds healthy, the heart in a normal state,

-but added it was evident the nervous system had received a severe

-shock, the effects of which still remained.

-

-'But it is that which I cannot understand,' said the old man in

-despair. 'If you only knew the Marquis de Sabran as I know him; the

-most courageous, the most gay, the most resolute of men! A man to laugh

-at death in its face! A man absolutely without fear!'

-

-The other assented.

-

-'Every one knows what he did in the floods at Idrac,' he answered; 'but

-he has a sensitive temperament for all that. If you did not tell me it

-is impossible, I should say that he had had some mental shock, some

-great grief. The prostration seems to me more of the mind than the

-body. But you have assured me it is impossible?'

-

-'Impossible! There does not live on earth a man so happy, so fortunate,

-so blessed in all the world as he.'

-

-'Men have a past that troubles them sometimes,' said the Vienna

-physician. 'Nay, I mean nothing, but I believe that M. de Sabran was a

-man of pleasure. The cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must

-drink long afterwards. I do not mean anything; I merely suggest. The

-prostration has to my view its most probable origin in mental trouble;

-but it would do him more harm than good to excite him by any effort to

-certify this. To the Countess von Szalras I have merely said, that his

-state is the result of the large loss of blood, and, indeed, after all

-it may be so.'

-

-On the fifth day, Sabran, still lying in that almost comatose silence

-which had been scarcely broken since his accident, said in a scarce

-audible voice to his wife:

-

-'Is your cousin here?'

-

-She stooped towards him and answered:

-

-'Yes; he is here, love. All the others went immediately, but Egon

-remained. I suppose he thought it looked kinder to do so. I have

-scarcely seen him, of course.'

-

-The pallor of his face grew greyer; he turned his head away restlessly.

-

-'Why does he not go?' he muttered in his throat. 'Does he wait for my

-death?'

-

-'Oh, Réné! hush, hush!' she said, with horror and amaze. 'My love, how

-can you say such things? You are in no danger; the doctor assures me

-so. In a week or two you will be well, you will be yourself.'

-

-'Send your cousin away.'

-

-She hesitated; troubled by his unreasoning, restless jealousy, which

-seemed to be the only consciousness of life remaining with him. 'I will

-obey you, love; you are lord here,' she said softly; 'but will it not

-look strange? No guest can well be told to go.'

-

-'A guest!--he is an enemy!'

-

-She sighed, knowing how hopelessly reason can struggle against the

-delusions of a sick bed. 'I will tell him to go to-morrow,' she said,

-to soothe him. 'To-night it is too late.'

-

-'Write to him--do not leave me.'

-

-There was a childlike appeal in his voice, that from a man so strong

-had a piteous pathos. Her eyes swam with tears as she heard.

-

-'Oh, my dearest, I will not leave you!' she said passionately, 'not for

-one moment whilst I live; and oh, my beloved! what could death ever

-change in _me_? Have you so little faith?'

-

-'You do not know,' he said, so low that his breath scarcely stirred the

-air.

-

-She thought that he was tormented by a doubt that she would not be

-faithful to him if he died. She stooped and kissed him.

-

-'My own, I would sooner be faithless to you in your life than after

-death. Surely you know me well enough to know that at the least?'

-

-He was silent. A great sigh struggled from his breast and escaped his

-pale lips like a parting breath.

-

-'Kiss me again,' he murmured; 'kiss me again, whilst----That gives me

-life,' he said, as he drew her head down upon his bosom, where his

-heart throbbed labouredly. A little while later he fell asleep. He

-slept some hours. When he awoke he was consumed by a nameless fear.

-

-'Is your cousin gone?' he asked.

-

-She told him that it was one o'clock in the same night; she had not

-written yet.

-

-'Let him stay,' he said feverishly. 'He shall not think I fear him. Do

-you hear me? Let him stay.'

-

-The words seemed to her the causeless caprice of a jealousy magnified

-and distorted by the weakness of fever. She strove to answer him

-calmly. 'He shall go or stay as you please,' she assured him. 'What

-does it matter, dear, what Egon does? You always speak of Egon. You

-have never spoken of the children once.'

-

-She wanted to distract his thoughts. She was pained to think how deep,

-though unspoken, his antagonism to her cousin must have been, that now

-in his feebleness it--was the one paramount absorbing thought.

-

-A great sadness came upon his face as she spoke; his lips trembled a

-little.

-

-'Ah! the children,' he repeated. 'Yes, bring them to me to-morrow. Bela

-is too like me. Poor Bela, it will be his curse.'

-

-'It is my joy of joys,' she murmured, afraid to see how his mind seemed

-astray.

-

-A shudder that was almost a spasm passed over him. He did not reply. He

-turned his face away from her, and seemed to sleep.

-

-The day following he was somewhat calmer, somewhat stronger, though his

-fever was high.

-

-The species of paralysis that had seemed to; fall on all his faculties

-had in a great measure left him. 'You wish, me to recover,' he said to

-her. 'I will do so, though perhaps it were, better not?'

-

-'He says strange things,' she said to Greswold. 'I cannot think why he

-has such thoughts.'

-

-'It is not he, himself, that has them, it is his fever,' answered the

-doctor. 'Why, in fever, do people often hate what they most adore when

-they are in health?'

-

-She was reassured, but not contented.

-

-The children were brought to see him. Bela had with him an ivory

-air-gun, with which he was accustomed to blow down his metal soldiers;

-he looked at his father with awed, dilated eyes, and said that he would

-go out with the gun and kill the brothers of the bear that had done the

-harm.

-

-'The bear was quite right,' said Sabran. 'It was I who was wrong to

-take a life not my own.'

-

-'That is beyond Bela,' said his wife. 'But I will translate it to him

-into language he shall understand, though I fear very much, say what I

-will, he will be a hunter and a soldier one day.'

-

-Bela looked from one to the other, knitting, his fair brows as he sat

-on the edge of the bed.

-

-'Bela will be like Egon,' he said, 'with all gold and fur to dress up

-in, and a big jewelled sword, and ten hundred men and horses, and Bela

-will be a great killer of things!'

-

-Sabran smiled languidly, but she saw that he flinched at her cousin's

-name.

-

-'I shall not love you, Bela, if you are a killer of things that are

-God's dear creatures,' she said, as she sent the child away.

-

-His blue eyes grew dark with anger.

-

-'God only cares about Bela,' he said in innocent profanity, with

-a profound sense of his own vastness in the sight of heaven, 'and

-Gela,' he added, with the condescending tenderness wherewith he always

-associated his brother and himself.

-

-'Where could he get all that overwhelming pride?' she said, as he was

-led away. 'I have tried to rear him so simply. Do what I may he will

-grow arrogant and selfish.'

-

-'My dear,' said Sabran, very bitterly, 'what avails that he was borne

-in your bosom? He is my son!'

-

-'Gela is your son, and he is so different,' she answered, not seeking

-to combat the self-censure to which she was accustomed in him, and

-which she attributed to faults or follies of a past life, magnified by

-a conscience too sensitive.

-

-'He is all yours then,' he said, with a wan smile. 'You have prevailed

-over evil.'

-

-In a few days later his recovery had progressed so far that he had

-regained his usual tone and look; his wounds were healing, and his

-strength was returning. He seemed to the keen eyes of Greswold to have

-made a supreme effort to conquer the moral depression into which he had

-sunk, and to have thrust away his malady almost by force of will. As he

-grew better he never spoke of Egon Vàsàrhely.

-

-On the fifteenth day from his accident he was restored enough to health

-for apprehension to cease. He passed some hours seated at an open

-window in his own room. He never asked if Vàsàrhely were still there or

-not.

-

-Wanda, who never left him, wondered at that silence, but she forbore to

-bring forward a name which had had such power to agitate him. She was

-troubled at the nervousness which still remained to him. The opening of

-a door, the sound of a step, the entrance of a servant made him start

-and turn pale. When she spoke of it with anxiety to Herr Joachim, he

-said vague sentences as to the nervousness which was consequent on

-great loss of blood, and brought forward instances of soldiers who had

-lost their nerve from the same cause. It did not satisfy her. She was

-the descendant of a long line of warriors; she could not easily believe

-that her husband's intrepid and careless courage could have been

-shattered by a flesh wound.

-

-'Did you really mean,' he said abruptly to her that afternoon, as he

-sat for the first time beside the open panes of the oriel; 'did you

-really mean that were I to die you would never forget me for any other?'

-

-She rose quickly as if she had been stung, and her face flushed.

-

-'Do I merit that doubt from you? she said. 'I think not.'

-

-She spoke rather in sadness than in anger. He had hurt her, he could

-not anger her. He felt the rebuke.

-

-'Even if I were dead, should I have all your life?' he murmured, in

-wonder at that priceless gift.

-

-'You and your children,' she said gravely. 'Ah! what can death do

-against great love? Make its bands stronger perhaps, its power purer.

-Nothing else.'

-

-'I thank you,' he said very low, with great humility, with intense

-emotion. For a moment he thought----should he tell her, should he trust

-this deep tenderness which could brave death; and might brave even

-shame unblenching? He looked at her from under his drooped eyelids, and

-then--he dared not. He knew the pride which was in her better than she

-did----her pride, which was inherited by her firstborn, and had been

-the sign manual of all her imperious race.

-

-He looked at her where she stood with the light falling on her through

-the amber hues of painted glass; worn, wan, and tired by so many days

-and nights of anxious vigil, she yet looked a woman whom a nation

-might salute with the _pro rege nostro!_ that Maria Theresa heard. All

-that a great race possesses and rejoices in of valour, of tradition,

-of dignity, of high honour, and of blameless truth were expressed in

-her; every movement, attitude, and gesture spoke of the aristocracy of

-blood. All that potent and subtle sense of patrician descent which had

-most allured and intoxicated him in other days now awed and daunted

-him. He dared not tell her of his treason. He dared not. He was as a

-false conspirator before a great queen he has betrayed.

-

-'Are you faint, my love?' she asked him, alarmed to see the change upon

-his face and the exhaustion with which he sunk, backward against the

-cushions of his chair.

-

-'Mere weakness; it will pass,' he said, smiling as best he might, to

-reassure her. He felt like a man who slides down a crevasse, and has

-time and consciousness enough to see the treacherous ice go by him,

-the black abyss yawning below him, the cold, dark death awaiting him

-beyond, whilst on the heights the sun is shining.

-

-That night he entreated her to leave him and rest. He assured her he

-felt well; he feigned a need of sleep. For fifteen nights she had not

-herself lain down. To please him she obeyed, and the deep slumber of

-tired nature soon fell upon her. When he thought she slept, he rose

-noiselessly and threw on a long velvet coat, sable-lined, that was by

-his bedside, and looked at his watch. It was midnight.

-

-He crossed the threshold of the open door into his wife's chamber and

-stood beside her bed for a moment, gazing at her as she slept. She

-seemed like the marble statue of some sleeping saint; she lay in the

-attitude of S. Cecilia on her bier at Home. The faint lamplight made

-her fair skin white as snow. Bound her arm was a bracelet of his hair

-like the one which he wore of hers. He stood and gazed on her, then

-slowly turned away. Great tears fell down his cheeks as he left her

-chamber. He opened the door of his own room, the outer one which led

-into the corridor, and walked down the long tapestry-hung gallery

-leading to the guest-chambers. It was the first time that he had walked

-without assistance; his limbs felt strange and broken, but he held on,

-leaning now and then to rest against the arras. The whole house was

-still.

-

-He took his way straight to the apartments set aside for guests. All

-was dark. The little lamp he carried shed a circle of light about his

-steps but none beyond him. When he reached the chamber which he knew

-was Egon Vàsàrhely's he did not pause. He struck on its panels with a

-firm hand.

-

-The voice of Vàsàrhely asked from within, 'Who is there? Is there

-anything wrong?'

-

-'It is I! Open,' answered Sabran.

-

-In a moment more the door unclosed. Vàsàrhely stood within it; he was

-not undressed. There were a dozen wax candles burning in silver sconces

-on the table within. The tapestried figures on the walls grew pale and

-colossal in their light. He did not speak, but waited.

-

-Sabran entered and closed the door behind him. His face was bloodless,

-but he carried himself erect despite the sense of faintness which

-assailed him.

-

-'You know who I am?' he said simply, without preface or supplication.

-

-Vàsàrhely gave a gesture of assent.

-

-'How did you know it?'

-

-'I remembered,' answered the other.

-

-There was a moment's silence. If Vàsàrhely could have withered to the

-earth by a gaze of scorn the man before him, Sabran would have fallen

-dead. As it was his eyes dropped beneath the look, but the courage and

-the dignity of his attitude did not alter. He had played his part of

-a great noble for so long that it had ceased to be assumption and had

-become his nature.

-

-'You will tell her?' he said, and his voice did not tremble, though his

-very soul seemed to swoon within him.

-

-'I shall not tell her!'

-

-Vàsàrhely spoke with effort; his words were hoarse and stern.

-

-'You will not?'

-

-An immense joy, unlooked for, undreamed of, sprang up in him, checked

-as it rose by incredulity.

-

-'But you loved her!' he said, on an impulse which he regretted even

-as the exclamation escaped him. Vàsàrhely threw his head back with a

-gesture of fine anger.

-

-'If I loved' her what is that to you?' he said, with a restrained

-violence vibrating in his words. 'It is, perhaps, because I once loved

-her that your foul secret is safe with me now. I shall not tell her. I

-waited to say this to you. I could not write it lest it should meet her

-eyes. You came to ask me this? Be satisfied and go.'

-

-'I came to ask you this because, had you said otherwise, I would have

-shot myself ere she could have heard.'

-

-Vàsàrhely said nothing; a great scorn was still set like the grimness

-of death upon his face. He looked far away at the dim figures on the

-tapestries; he shrunk from the sight of his boyhood's enemy as from

-some loathly unclean thing he must not kill.

-

-'Suicide!' he thought, 'the Slav's courage, the serf's refuge!

-

-Before the sight of Sabran the room went round, the lights grew dull,

-the figures on the walls became, fantastic and unreal. His heart beat

-with painful effort, yet his ears, his throat, his brain seemed full

-of blood. The nerves of his whole body seemed to shrink and thrill and

-quiver, but the force of habit kept him composed and erect before this

-man who was his foe, yet did for him what few friends would have done.

-

-'I do not thank you,' he said at last. 'I understand; you spare me for

-her sake, not mine.'

-

-'But for her, I would treat you so.'

-

-As he spoke he broke in two a slender agate ruler which lay on the

-writing-table at his elbow.

-

-'Go,' he added, 'you have had my word; though we live fifty years you

-are safe from me, because----because----God forgive you! you are hers.'

-

-He made a gesture towards the door. Sabran shivered under the insult

-which his conscience could not resent, his hand dared not avenge.

-

-Hearing this there fell away from him the arrogance that had been his

-mask, the courage that had been his shield. He saw himself for the

-first time as this man saw him, as all the world would see him if once

-it knew his secret. For the first time his past offences rose up like

-ghosts naked from their graves. The calmness, the indifference, the

-cynicism, the pride which had been so long in his manner and in his

-nature deserted him. He felt base-born before a noble, a liar before a

-gentleman, a coward before a man of honour.

-

-Where he stood, leaning on a high caned chair to support himself

-against the sickly weakness which still came on him from his scarce

-healed wounds, he felt for the first time to cower and shrink before

-this man who was his judge, and might become his accuser did he choose.

-Something in the last words of Egon Vàsàrhely suddenly brought home

-to him the enormity of his own sin, the immensity of the other's

-forbearance. He suddenly realised all the offence to honour, all the

-outrage to pride, all the ineffaceable indignity which he had brought

-upon a great race: all that he had done, never to be undone by any

-expiation of his own, in making Wanda von Szalras the mother of his

-sons. Submissive, he turned without a word of gesture or of pleading,

-and felt his way out of the chamber through the dusky mists of the

-faintness stealing on him.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XX.

-

-

-He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against

-the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his

-clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.

-

-She was still asleep.

-

-When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever.

-He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a

-moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his

-desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.

-

-But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.

-

-Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned

-to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had

-left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person,

-as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no

-importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said

-nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental

-impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian

-mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use

-to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife

-attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial

-always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength

-returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a

-gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened

-upon her with a strange appeal.

-

-One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was

-certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following

-words to his foe and his judge:

-

-'Sir,----You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I

-send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical

-weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time

-or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof

-absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that

-the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue

-it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but

-shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of

-action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present

-permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have

-governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or

-chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern

-both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse

-at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia

-Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to

-nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the

-great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was

-taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never

-saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years

-old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I

-remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you,

-and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then

-returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him.

-One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the

-Prince Zabaroff was dead--my protector, as they termed him--and that

-I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make

-you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always

-been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family,

-could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts,

-the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then,

-thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father.

-I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my

-fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother

-Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year

-after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You

-see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things

-or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had

-a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices,

-like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the

-love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit

-which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of

-me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive

-tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in

-my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those

-three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me

-with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be

-rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did

-me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a

-word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis

-with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold

-some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque

-going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down

-with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone

-reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe,

-and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread,

-fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I

-neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me

-popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name

-of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went

-there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the

-moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I

-liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely

-more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his

-fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior.

-Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left

-for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his

-hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the

-Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the

-solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts

-the hiss of an Indian's arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he

-lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of

-him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows

-of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher

-in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been

-subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having

-wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died

-of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to

-think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life

-with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed

-me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the

-dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history

-of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was

-glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike

-as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on

-the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the

-steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men

-I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I

-loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican _ranch_ near,

-within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us

-and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost

-inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps

-covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it

-all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be

-gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies

-which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight

-whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector

-and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose

-heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he

-died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything

-he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would

-collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France.

-For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss.

-I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and

-his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of

-cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave.

-I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the

-temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all

-those which had been brought with him from France by his Jesuit tutors,

-and the certificates of his own and his father's births and marriages,

-with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper

-containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and

-patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden

-in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had

-desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great

-sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine:

-he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human

-being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed

-to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots

-not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had

-the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was

-born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible

-reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years

-I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and

-purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris,

-yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in

-many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong

-which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that

-I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it

-seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had

-deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and

-had given me all he held most dear----the fruits of his researches.

-To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation.

-I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as

-the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew

-that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke

-no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was

-recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned

-to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance

-with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to

-me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not

-having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I

-went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had

-been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The

-priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the

-name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing----Bretons

-never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead

-men who had gone down when the _Estelle_ had foundered off the Pinos.

-I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so

-much during my seven years' absence from Paris that I did not suppose

-anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran.

-And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known

-me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred

-of me as your cousin's husband; and had you even had suspicions you

-could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in

-the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down

-the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me

-take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune

-involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have

-done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and

-some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What

-was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over

-with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is

-my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious

-and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense

-perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it

-as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying

-ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to

-justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware

-that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true

-that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed

-me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to

-me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I

-had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely

-closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became

-almost by necessity a _fainéant_, and fate smiled upon me more than I

-merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all

-his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me.

-I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I

-can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so

-natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made

-me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to

-act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and

-irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call

-_flair._ I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on

-the Bourse. I was also, famous for _la main heureuse_ in all forms of

-gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept

-always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed

-to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded

-the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should

-not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was

-a man of honour until----I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to

-defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware

-of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied

-your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her.

-You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It

-is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions

-of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to

-me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia,

-but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am

-base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting

-elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and

-mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten

-by a great lord's momentary _ennui_ and caprice! But if you will stoop

-so far----if you will consider me ennobled by _her_ enough to meet

-you as an equal would do----we can find with facility some pretext

-of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me.

-You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are

-the only male champion--what her brothers would surely have taken had

-they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have

-passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your

-commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to

-their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet

-you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother's

-than their father's, and she will rear them in all noble ways.'

-

-Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed

-it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return

-of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace

-with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his

-own cowardice and shame.

-

-It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of

-Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief:----

-

-'I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for

-she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.

-

-(Signed) 'PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.'

-

-To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:

-

-'Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did

-not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has

-seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return.

-It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a

-prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go

-to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If

-ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope

-this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen

-you.' Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to

-be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name.

-Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your

-husband, and give me a remembrance in your prayers.

-

-(Signed) 'EGON.'

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXI.

-

-

-The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn

-shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and

-to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of

-her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to

-play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and

-eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this

-unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it

-plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian

-world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it

-was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman,

-which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon

-her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and

-what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at

-Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of

-it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation.

-If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again

-paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and

-her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.

-

-'Wanda has ruined him!' she always thought angrily. 'He always expects

-every other woman to have a soul above _chiffons_ and to bury herself

-in the country with children and horses.'

-

-Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which

-his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to

-her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the

-pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him.

-Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed

-measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to

-entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and

-was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law.

-She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only

-came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild

-forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely,

-and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope,

-which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for

-her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the

-post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and

-soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was

-called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish

-literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race

-of Vàsàrhely.

-

-What was in that letter?

-

-She attended to none of her own, so absorbed was she in the impression

-which gained upon her that the packet which had brought so much

-surprise and even emotion upon his face came from the hand of Wanda.

-'If even she should be no saint at all?' she thought, with a malicious

-amusement. She did not see Egon Vàsàrhely for many hours, but she

-did not lose her curiosity nor cease to cast about for a method of

-gratifying it. At the close of the day when she came back from hunting

-she went into the library, which was then empty. She did not seriously

-expect to see anything that would reward her enterprise, but she knew

-he read his letters there and wrote the few he was obliged to write:

-like most soldiers he disliked using pen and ink. It was dusk, and

-there were a few lights burning in the old silver sconces fixed upon

-the horns of forest animals against the walls. With a quick, calm

-touch, she moved all the litter of papers lying on the huge table

-where he was wont to do such business as he was compelled to transact.

-She found nothing that gratified her inquisitiveness. She was about

-to leave the room in baffled impatience----impatience of she knew not

-what----when her eyes fell upon a pile of charred paper lying on the

-stove.

-

-It was one of those monumental polychrome stoves of fifteenth-century

-work in which the country-houses of Central Europe are so rich; a

-grand pile of fretted pottery, towering half way to the ceiling, with

-the crown and arms of the Vàsàrhely princes on its summit. There was

-no fire in it, for the weather was not cold, and Vàsàrhely, who alone

-used the room, was an ascetic in such matters; but upon its jutting

-step, which was guarded by lions of gilded bronze, there had been some

-paper burned: the ashes lay there in a little heap. Almost all of

-it was ash, but a few torn pieces were only blackened and coloured.

-With the eager curiosity of a woman who is longing to find another

-woman at fault, she kneeled down by the stove and patiently examined

-these pieces. Only one was so little burned that it had a word or two

-legible upon it; two of those words were Vassia Kazán. Nothing else was

-traceable; she recognised the handwriting of Sabran. She attached no

-importance to it, yet she slipped the little scrap, burnt and black as

-it was, within one of her gauntlets; then, as quickly as she had come

-there, she retreated and in another half hour, smiling and radiant,

-covered with jewels, and with no trace of fatigue or of weather, she

-descended the great banqueting-hall, clad as though the heart of the

-Greater Karpathians was the centre of the Boulevard S. Germain.

-

-Who was Vassia Kazán?

-

-The question floated above all her thoughts all that evening. Who was

-he, she, or it, and what could Sabran have to say of him, or her, or

-it to Egon Vàsàrhely? A less wise woman might have asked straightway

-what the unknown name might mean, but straight ways are not those

-which commend themselves to temperaments like hers. The pleasure and

-the purpose of her life was intrigue. In great things she deemed

-it necessity; in trifles it was an amusement; without it life was

-flavourless.

-

-The next day her brother-in-law abandoned Taróc, to join his hussars

-and prepare for the autumn manœuvres in the plains, and left her and

-Stefan in possession of the great place, half palace, half fortress,

-which had withstood more than one siege of Ottoman armies, where it

-stood across a deep gorge with the water foaming black below. But she

-kept the charred, torn, triangular scrap of paper; and she treasured

-in her memory the two words Vassia Kazán; and she said again and again

-and again to herself: 'Why should he write to Egon? Why should Egon

-burn what he writes?' Deep down in her mind there was always at work

-a bitter jealousy of Wanda von Szalras; jealousy of her regular and

-perfect beauty, of her vast possessions, of her influence at the Court,

-of her serene and unspotted repute, and now of her ascendency over the

-lives of Sabran and of Vàsàrhely.

-

-'Why should they both love that woman so much?' she thought very often.

-'She is always alike. She has no temptations. She goes over life as if

-it were frozen snow. She did one senseless thing, but then she was rich

-enough to do it with impunity. She is so habitually fortunate that she

-is utterly uninteresting; and yet they are both her slaves!'

-

-She went home and wrote to a cousin of her own who had been a member

-of the famous Third Section at Petersburg. She said in her letter: 'Is

-there anyone known in Russia as Vassia Kazán? I want you to learn for

-me to what or to whom this name belongs. It is certainly Russian, and

-appears to me to have been taken by some one who has been named _more

-hebrœo_ from the city of Kazán. You, who know everything past,

-present, and to come, will be able to know this.'

-

-In a few days she received an answer from Petersburg. Her cousin wrote:

-'I cannot give you the information you desire. It must be a thing of

-the past. But I will keep it in mind, and sooner or later you shall

-have the knowledge you wish. You will do us the justice to admit that

-we are not easily baffled.'

-

-She was not satisfied, but knew how to be patient.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXII.

-

-

-Strangely enough the consciousness that one person lived who knew

-his secret unnerved him. He had said truly that so much were all his

-instincts and temper those of an aristocrat that he had long ceased to

-remember that he was not the true Marquis de Sabran. The admiration men

-frankly gave him, and the ascendency he exercised over women, had alike

-concurred in fostering his self-delusion. Since his recognition by the

-foe of his boyhood a vivid sense of his own shamefulness, however, had

-come upon him; a morbid consciousness that he was not what he seemed,

-and what all the world believed him, had returned to him. Egon would

-never speak, but he himself could never forget. He said to himself in

-his solitude, 'I am Vassia Kazán! and what he had done appeared to him

-intolerable, infamous, beyond all expiation.

-

-It was like an impalpable but impassable wall built up between himself

-and her. Nothing was changed except that one man knew his secret, but

-this one fact seemed to change the face of the world. For the first

-time all the deference, all the homage with which the people of the

-Tauern treated him seemed to him a derision. Naturally of proud temper,

-and of an intellect which gave him ascendency over others, he had from

-the first moment he had assumed the marquisate of Sabran received

-all the acknowledgments of his rank with an honest unconsciousness

-of imposture. After all he had in his veins blood as patrician as

-that of the Sabrans; but now that Egon Vàsàrhely knew the truth he

-was perpetually conscious of not being what he seemed. The mere sense

-that about the world there was another living being who knew what he

-knew, shook down all the self-possession and philosophy which had so

-long made him assure himself that the assumption of a name was an

-immaterial circumstance, which, harming no one, could concern no one.

-Egon Vàsàrhely seemed to have seized his sophisms in a rude grasp, and

-shaken them down as blossoms fall in wind. He thought with bitter

-self-contempt how true the cynic was who said that no sin exists so

-long as it is not found out; that discovery is the sole form which

-remorse takes.

-

-At times his remorse made him almost afraid of Wanda, almost shrink

-from her, almost tremble at her regard; at other times it intensified

-his passion and infused into his embraces a kind of ferocity of

-triumph. He would show an almost brutal ardour in his caresses, and

-would think with an almost cruel exultation, 'I was born a serf, and I

-am her lover, her lord! Strangely enough, she began to lose something

-of her high influence upon him, of her spiritual superiority in his

-sight. She was so entirely, so perpetually his, that she became in a

-manner tainted with his own degradation. She could no longer check him

-with a word, calm him with a gesture of restraint. She was conscious of

-a change in him which she could not explain to herself. His sweetness

-of temper was broken by occasional irritability that she had never seen

-before. He was at times melancholy and absorbed; he at times displayed

-a jealousy which appeared unworthy of herself and him; at other moments

-he adored her, submitted to her with too great a humility. They were

-still happy, but their happiness was more uncertain, more disturbed by

-passing shadows. She told herself that it was always so in marriage,

-that in the old trite phrase nothing mortal was ever perfect long. But

-this philosophy failed to reconcile her. She found herself continually

-pondering on the alteration that she perceived in him, without being

-able to explain it to herself in any satisfactory manner.

-

-One day he announced to her without preface that he had decided to

-renounce the name of Sabran; that he preferred to any other the title

-which she had given him in the Countship of Idrac. She was astonished,

-but on reflection only saw, in his choice, devotion and deference to

-herself. Perhaps, too, she reflected with a pang, he desired some

-foreign mission such as she had once proposed to him; perhaps the life

-at Hohenszalras was monotonous and too quiet for a man so long used

-to the movement and excitation of Paris. She suggested the invitation

-of a circle of guests more often, but he rejected the idea with some

-impatience. He, who had previously amused himself so well with the

-part of host to a brilliant society, now professed that he saw nothing

-but trouble and _ennui_ in a house full of people, who changed every

-week, and of royal personages who exacted ceremonious observances

-that were tedious and burdensome. So they remained alone, for even

-the Princess Ottilie had gone away to Lilienslust. For her own part

-she asked nothing better. Her people, her lands, her occupations, her

-responsibilities, were always interest enough. She loved the stately,

-serene tread of Time in these mountain solitudes. Life always seemed

-to her a purer, graver, more august thing when no echo of the world

-without jarred on the solemnity of the woods and hills. She wanted her

-children to grow up to love Hohenszalras, as she had always done, far

-above all pomps and pleasures of courts and cities.

-

-The winter went by, and he spent most of the days out of doors in

-violent exercise, sledging, skating, wolf hunting. In the evenings he

-made music for her in the white room: beautiful, dreamy music, that

-carried her soul from earth. He played for hours and hours far into the

-night; he seemed more willing to do anything than to converse. When he

-talked to her she was sensible of an effort of constraint; it was no

-longer the careless, happy, spontaneous conversation of a man certain

-of receiving sympathy in all his opinions, indulgence in all his

-errors, comprehension in even his vaguest or most eccentric ideas: a

-certain charm was gone out of their intercourse. She thought sometimes

-humbly enough, was it because a man always wearies of a woman? Yet

-she could scarcely think that, for his reverential deference to her

-alternated with a passion that had lost nothing of its voluptuous

-intensity.

-

-So the winter passed away. Madame Ottilie was in the South for her

-health, with her relatives of Lilienhöhe; they invited no one, and so

-no one could approach them. The children grew and throve. Bela and his

-brother had a little sledge of their own, drawn by two Spanish donkeys,

-white as the snows that wrapped the Iselthal in their serenity and

-silence. In their little sable coats and their sable-lined hoods the

-two little boys looked like rosebuds wrapped in brown moss. They were a

-pretty spectacle upon the ice, with their stately Heiduck, wrapped in

-his scarlet and black cloak, walking by the gilded shell-shaped sledge.

-

-'Bela loves the ice best. Bela wishes the summer never was!' said the

-little heir of the Counts of Szalras one day, as he leaped out from

-under the bearskin of his snow-carriage. His father heard him, and

-smiled a little bitterly.

-

-'You have the snow in your blood,' he thought. 'I, too, know how I

-loved the winter with all its privations, how I skimmed like a swallow

-down the frozen Volga, how I breasted the wind of the North Sea, sad

-with the dying cries of the swans! But I had an empty stomach and

-naked limbs under my rough goatskin, and you ride there in your sables

-and velvets, a proud little prince, and yet you are my son!'

-

-Was he almost angered against his own child for the great heirship to

-which he was born, as kings are often of their dauphins? Bela looked up

-at him a little timidly, always being in a certain awe of his father.

-

-'May Bela go with you some day with the big black horses, one day when

-you go very far?'

-

-'Ask your mother,' said Sabran.

-

-'She will like it,' said the child. 'Yesterday she said you never do

-think of Bela. She did not say it _to_ Bela, but he heard.'

-

-'I will think of him,' said Sabran, with some emotion: he had a certain

-antagonism to the child, of which he was vaguely ashamed; he was sorry

-that she should have noticed it. He disliked him because Bela so

-visibly resembled himself that he was a perpetual reproach; a living

-sign of how the blood of a Russian lord and of a Persian peasant had

-been infused into the blood of the Austrian nobles.

-

-The next day he took the child with him on a drive of many leagues,

-through the frozen highways winding through the frosted forests under

-the huge snow-covered range of the Glöckner mountains. Bela was in

-raptures; the grand black Russian horses, whose speed was as the wind,

-were much more to his taste than the sedate and solemn Spanish asses.

-When they returned, and Sabran lifted him out of the sledge in the

-twilight, the child kissed his hand.

-

-'Bela loves you,' he said timidly.

-

-'Why do you?' said his father, surprised and touched. 'Because you are

-your mother's child?'

-

-Bela did not understand. He said, after a moment of reflection:

-

-'Bela is afraid, when you are angry; very afraid. But Bela does love

-you.'

-

-Sabran laid his hand on the child's shoulder. 'I shall never be angry

-if Bela obey his mother, and never pain her. Remember that.'

-

-'He will remember,' said Bela. 'And may he go with the big black horses

-very soon again?'

-

-'Your mother's horses are just as big, and just as black. Is it not the

-same thing to go with her?'

-

-'No. Because she takes Bela often; you never.'

-

-'You are ungrateful,' said Sabran, in the tone which always alarmed and

-awed the bold, bright spirit of his child. 'Your mother's love beside

-mine is like the great mountain beside the speck of dust. Can you

-understand? You will when you are a man. Obey her and adore her. So you

-will best please me.'

-

-Bela looked at him with troubled suffused eyes; he went within doors a

-little sadly, led away by Hubert, and when he reached his nursery and

-had his furs taken from off him he was still serious, and for once he

-did not tell his thoughts to Gela, for they were too many for him to

-be able to master them in words. His father was a beautiful, august,

-terrible, magnificent figure in his eyes; with the confused fancies

-of a child's scarce-opened mind he blended together in his admiration

-Sabran and the great marble form of S. Johann of Prague which stretched

-its arm towards the lake from the doors of the great entrance, and, as

-Bela always understood, controlled the waters and the storms at will.

-Bela feared no one else in all the world, but he feared his father,

-and for that reason loved him as he loved nothing else in his somewhat

-selfish and imperious little life.

-

-'It is so good of you to have given Bela that pleasure,' his wife said

-to him when he entered the white room. 'I know you cannot care to hear

-a child chatter as I do. It can only be tiresome to you.'

-

-'I will drive him every day if it please _you_,' said Sabran.

-

-'No, no; that would be too much to exact from you. Besides, he would

-soon despise his donkeys, and desert poor Gela. I take him but seldom

-myself for that reason. He has an idea that he is immeasurably older

-than Gela. It is true a year at their ages is more difference than are

-ten years at ours.'

-

-'The child said something to me, as if he had heard you say I do not

-care for him?'

-

-'You do not, very much. Surely you are inclined to be harsh to him?'

-

-'If I be so, it is only because I see so much of myself in him.'

-

-He looked at her, assailed once more by the longing which at times came

-over him to tell her the truth of himself, to risk everything rather

-than deceive her longer, to throw himself upon her mercy, and cut short

-this life which had so much of duplicity, so much of concealment, that

-every year added to it was a stone added to the mountain of his sins.

-But when he looked at her he dared not. The very grace and serenity

-of her daunted him; all the signs of nobility in her, from the repose

-of her manner to the very beauty of her hands, with their great rings

-gleaming on the long and slender fingers, seemed to awe him into

-silence. She was so proud a woman, so great a lady, so patrician in

-all her prejudices, her habits, her hereditary qualities, he dared not

-tell her that he had betrayed her thus. An infidelity, a folly, even

-any other crime he thought he could have summoned courage to confess

-to her; but to say to her, the daughter of a line of princes: 'I, who

-have made you the mother of my children, I was born a bastard and a

-serf!' How could he dare say that? Anything else she might forgive,

-he thought, since love is great, but never that. Nay, a cold sickness

-stole over him as he thought again that she came of great lords who had

-meted justice out over whole provinces for a thousand years; and he

-had wronged her so deeply that the human tongue scarcely held any word

-of infamy enough to name his crime. The law would set her free, if she

-chose, from a man who had so betrayed her, and his children would be

-bastards like himself.

-

-He had stretched himself on a great couch, covered with white

-bear-skins. He was in shadow; she was in the light that came from the

-fire on the wide hearth, and from the oriel window near, a red warm

-dusky light, that fell on the jewels on her hands, the furs on her

-skirts, the very pearls about her throat.

-

-She glanced at him anxiously, seeing how motionless he lay there, with

-his head turned backward on the cushions.

-

-'I am afraid you are weak still from that wound,' she said, as she rose

-and approached him. 'Greswold assures me it has left no trace, but I am

-always afraid. And you look often so pale. Perhaps you exert yourself

-too much? Let the wolves be. Perhaps it is too cold for you? Would you

-like to go to the south? Do not think of me; my only happiness is to do

-whatever you wish.'

-

-He kissed her hand with deep unfeigned emotion. 'I believe in angels

-since I knew you,' he murmured. 'No; I will not take you away from the

-winter and the people that you love. I am well enough. Greswold is

-right. I could not master those horses if I were not strong; be sure of

-that.'

-

-'But I always fear that it is dull here for you?'

-

-'Dull! with you? "Custom cannot stale her infinite variety." That was

-written in prophecy of your charm for me.'

-

-'You will always flatter me! And I am not "various" at all; I am too

-grave to be entertaining. I am just the German house-mother who cares

-for the children and for you.'

-

-He laughed.

-

-'Is that your portrait of yourself? I think Carolus Duran's is truer,

-my grand châtelaine. When you are at Court the whole circle seems to

-fade to nothing before your presence. Though there are so many women

-high-born and beautiful there, you eclipse them all.'

-

-'Only in your eyes! And you know I care nothing for courts. What I like

-is the life here, where one quiet day is the pattern of all the other

-days. If I were sure that you were content in it----'

-

-'Why should you think of that?'

-

-'My love, tell me honestly, do you never miss the world?'

-

-He rose and walked to the hearth. He, whose life was a long lie, never

-lied to her if he could avoid it; and he knew very well that he did

-miss the world with all its folly, stimulant, and sin. Sometimes the

-moral air here seemed to him too pure, too clear.

-

-'Did I do so I should be thankless indeed--thankless as madmen are who

-do not know the good done to them. I am like a ship that has anchored

-in a fair haven after press of weather. I infinitely prefer to see

-none but yourself: when others are here we are of necessity so much

-apart. If the weather,' he added more lightly, 'did not so very often

-wear Milton's grey sandals, there would be nothing one could ever

-wish changed in the life here. For such great riders as we are, that

-is a matter of regret. Wet saddles are too often our fate, but in

-compensation our forests are so green.'

-

-She did not press the question.

-

-But the next day she wrote a letter to a relative who was a great

-minister and had preponderating influence in the council chamber of the

-Austrian Empire. She did not speak to Sabran of the letter that she

-sent.

-

-She had not known any of that disillusion which befalls most women in

-their love. Her husband had remained her lover, passionately, ardently,

-jealously; and the sincerity of his devotion to her had spared her

-all that terrible consciousness of the man's satiety which usually

-confronts a woman in the earliest years of union. She shrank now with

-horror from the fear which came to her that this passion might, like so

-many others, alter and fade under the dulness of habit. She had high

-courage and clear vision; she met half-way the evil that she dreaded.

-

-In the spring a Foreign Office despatch from Vienna came to him and

-surprised and moved him strongly. With it in his hand he sought her at

-once.

-

-'You did this!' he said quickly. 'They offer me the Russian mission.'

-

-She grew a little pale, but had courage to smile. She had seen by a

-glance at his face the pleasure the offer gave him.

-

-'I only told my cousin Kunst that I thought you might be persuaded to

-try public life, if he proposed it to you.'

-

-'When did you say that?'

-

-'One day in the winter, when I asked you if you did not miss the world.'

-

-'I never thought I betrayed that I did so.'

-

-'You were only over eager to deny it. And I know your generosity, my

-love. You miss the world; we will go back to it for a little. It will

-only make our life here dearer--I hope.'

-

-He was silent; emotion mastered him. 'You have the most unselfish

-nature that was!' he said brokenly. 'It will be a cruel sacrifice to

-you, and yet you urge it for my sake.'

-

-'Dear, will you not understand? What is for your sake is what is most

-for mine. I see you long, despite yourself, to be amidst men once more,

-and use your rare talents as you cannot use them here. It is only right

-that you should have the power to do so. If our life here has taken

-the hold on your heart then, I think you will come back to it all the

-more gladly. And then I too have my vanity; I shall be proud for the

-world to see how you can fill a great station, conduct a difficult

-negotiation, distinguish yourself in every way. When they praise you,

-I shall be repaid a thousand times for any sacrifice of my own tastes

-that there may be.'

-

-He heard her with many conflicting emotions, of which a passionate

-gratitude was the first and highest.

-

-'You make me ashamed,' he said in a low voice. 'No man can be worthy of

-such goodness as yours; and I----'

-

-Once more the avowal of the truth rose to his lips, but stayed

-unuttered. His want of courage took refuge in procrastination.

-

-'We need not decide for a day or two,' he added; 'they give me time; we

-will think well. When do you think I must reply?'

-

-'Surely soon; your delay would seem disrespect. You know we Austrians

-are very ceremonious.'

-

-'And if I accept, it will not make you unhappy?'

-

-'My love, no, a thousand times, no; your choice is always mine.'

-

-He stooped and kissed her hand.

-

-'You are ever the same,' he murmured. 'The noblest, the most

-generous----'

-

-She smiled bravely. 'I am quite sure you have decided already. Go to my

-table yonder, and write a graceful acceptance to my cousin Kunst. You

-will be happier when it is posted.'

-

-'No, I will think a little. It is not a thing to be done in haste. It

-will be irrevocable.'

-

-'Irrevocable? A diplomatic mission? You can throw it up when you

-please. You are not bound to serve longer than you choose.'

-

-He was silent: what he had thought himself had been of the irrevocable

-insult he would be held to have offered to the emperor, the nation, and

-the world, if ever they knew.

-

-'It will not be liked if I accept for a mere caprice. One must never

-treat a State as Bela treats his playthings,' he said as he rang, and

-when the servant answered the summons ordered them to saddle his horse.

-

-'No; there is no haste. Glearemberg is not definitely recalled, I

-think.'

-

-But as she spoke she knew very well that, unknown to himself, he had

-already decided; that the joy and triumph the offer had brought to him

-were both too great for him eventually to resist them. He sat down and

-re-read the letter.

-

-She had said the truth to him, but she had not said all the truth. She

-had a certain desire that he should justify her marriage in the eyes of

-the world by some political career brilliantly followed; but this was

-not her chief motive in wishing him to return to the life of cities.

-She had seen that he was in a manner disquieted, discontented, and

-attributed it to discontent at the even routine of their lives. The

-change in his moods and tempers, the arbitrary violence of his love

-for her, vaguely alarmed and troubled her; she seemed to see the germ

-of much that might render their lives far less happy. She realised

-that she had given herself to one who had the capacity of becoming a

-tyrannical possessor, and retained, even after six years of marriage,

-the irritable ardour of a lover. She knew that it was better for them

-both that the distraction and the restraint of the life of the world

-should occupy some of his thoughts, and check the over-indulgence of

-a passion which in solitude grew feverish and morbid. She had not the

-secret of the change in him, of which the result alone was apparent to

-her, and she could only act according to her light. If he grew morose,

-tyrannical, violent, all the joy of their life would be gone. She knew

-that men alter curiously under the sense of possession. She felt that

-her influence, though strong, was not paramount as it had been, and she

-perceived that he no longer took much interest in the administration

-of the estates, in which he had shown great ability in the first years

-of their marriage. She had been forced to resume her old governance

-of all those matters, and she knew that it was not good for him to

-live without occupation. She feared that the sameness of the days, to

-her so delightful, to him grew tiresome. To ride constantly, to hunt

-sometimes, to make music in the evenings----this was scarcely enough to

-fill up the life of a man who had been a _viveur_ on the bitumen of the

-boulevards for so long.

-

-A woman of a lesser nature would have been too vain to doubt the

-all-sufficiency of her own presence to enthral and to content him; but

-she was without vanity, and had more wisdom than most women. It did

-not even once occur to her, as it would have done incessantly to most,

-that the magnificence of all her gifts to him were title-deeds to his

-content for life.

-

-Public life would be her enemy, would take her from the solitudes she

-loved, would change her plans for her children's education, would bring

-the world continually betwixt herself and her husband; but since he

-wished it that was all she thought of, all her law.

-

-'Surely he will accept?' said Mdme. Ottilie, who had returned from the

-south of France.

-

-'Yes, he will accept,' said his wife. 'He does not know it, but he

-will.'

-

-'I cannot imagine why he should affect to hesitate. It is the career

-he is made for, with his talents, his social graces.'

-

-'He does not affect; he hesitates for my sake. He knows I am never

-happy away from Hohenszalras.'

-

-'Why did you write then to Kunst?'

-

-'Because it will be better for him; he is neither a poet nor a

-philosopher, to be able to live away from the world.'

-

-'Which are you?'

-

-'Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the

-people she----'

-

-'Reigns over,' added the Princess. 'Admit, my beloved, that a part of

-your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be

-quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!'

-

-Wanda von Szalras smiled. 'Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed

-with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.'

-

-'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural

-life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.'

-

-At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great

-avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before

-coming into his wife's presence. He would no more have gone to her with

-the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in

-such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.

-

-When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with

-vivacity:

-

-'Well! you accept, of course?

-

-'I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.'

-

-The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the

-carpet.

-

-'Wanda is a hermit,' she said; 'she should have dwelt in a cave, and

-lived on berries with S. Scholastica. What is the use of leaving it to

-her? She will say No. She loves her mountains.'

-

-'Then she shall stay amidst her mountains.'

-

-'And you will throw all your future away?'

-

-'Dear mother, I have no future----should have had none but for her.'

-

-'All that is very pretty, but after nearly six years of marriage it is

-not necessary to _faire des madrigaux._'

-

-The Princess sat a little more erect, angrily, and continued to tap her

-foot upon the floor. His wife was silent for a little while; then she

-went over to her writing-table, and wrote with a firm hand a few lines

-in German. She rose and gave the sheet to Sabran.

-

-'Copy that,' she said, 'or give it as many graces of style as you like.'

-

-His heart beat, his sight seemed dim as he read what she had written.

-

-It was an acceptance.

-

-'See, my dear Réné!' said the Princess, when she understood;

-'never combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon--

-unselfishness! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort.'

-

-The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her----

-

-'Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of

-_faisant des madrigaux!_'

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXIII.

-

-

-A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna,

-and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called

-her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who

-showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and

-welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the

-most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the

-prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified

-and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware

-that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands

-for _finesse_ and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make

-upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his

-wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and

-splendour it required.

-

-He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when

-the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his

-nerve, his self-command, his _insouciance_; he was once more capable of

-honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman

-he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of

-his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates

-a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must

-always exist, _sub rosa_, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance

-with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for

-every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul

-Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen

-politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The

-prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of

-a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff

-as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle

-projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social

-honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the

-minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in

-all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the

-purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of

-Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked _moujik_ in the

-_isba_ of a Persian peasant.

-

-Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like

-all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify

-his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort

-that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and

-perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men

-was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public

-career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to

-be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor

-had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.

-

-'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition

-that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which

-had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from

-circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of

-his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the

-social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better

-moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess

-von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;'

-and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless

-and ill at ease.

-

-He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold

-by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more

-prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if

-ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate,

-dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him

-with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed

-to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he

-been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his

-own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have

-always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion

-of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his

-own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any

-such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly,

-that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a

-suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always

-reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.

-

-This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life;

-not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a

-jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his

-ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it

-touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the

-felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the

-contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and

-witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and

-too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on

-his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed

-of constancy.

-

-'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of

-dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly

-degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is

-always hers and my love.'

-

-Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of

-her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty

-life led there under the show summits of her hills.

-

-He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's

-caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not

-infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most

-use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the

-daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.

-

-As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the

-Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and

-a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour

-and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he

-had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world

-beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had

-beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He

-went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now

-and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some

-portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some

-quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.

-

-On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:

-

-'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.

-

-(Signed) 'WANDA.'

-

-No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches

-could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful

-affection.

-

-'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.

-

-The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the

-season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the

-sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and

-the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and

-magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present

-at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation,

-as the ambassador-designate to Russia.

-

-Court dress became him, and his great height and elegance of manner

-made him noticeable even in that brilliant crowd of notables. All the

-greatest ladies distinguished him with their smiles, but he gave them

-no more than courtesy. He saw only before the 'eye of memory' his wife

-as he had seen her at the last court ball, with the famous pearls about

-her throat, and her train of silver tissue sown with pearls and looped

-up with white lilac.

-

-'It is the flower I like best,' she had said to him. 'It brought me

-your first love-message in Paris, do you remember? It said little; it

-was very discreet, but it said enough!'

-

-'You are always thinking of Wanda!' said the Countess Brancka to him

-now, with a tinge of impatience in her tone.

-

-He coloured a little, and said with that hauteur with which he always

-repressed any passing jest at his love for his wife:

-

-'When both one's duty and joy point the same way it is easy to follow

-them in thought.'

-

-'I hope you follow them in action too,' said Mdme. Brancka.

-

-'If I do not, I am at least only responsible to Wanda.'

-

-'Who would be a lenient judge you mean? said the Countess, with a

-certain smile that displeased him. 'Do not be too sure; she is a von

-Szalras. They are not agreeable persons when they are angered.'

-

-'I have not been so unhappy as to see her so,' said Sabran coldly,

-with a vague sense of uneasiness. As much as it is possible for a man

-to dislike a woman who is very lovely, and young enough to be still

-charming in the eyes of the world, he disliked Olga Brancka. He had

-known her for many years in Paris, not intimately, but by force of

-being in the same society, and, like many men who do not lead very

-decent lives themselves, he frankly detested _cocodettes._

-

-'If we want these manners we have our _lionnes_,' he was wont to say,

-at a time when Cochonette was seen every day behind his horses by the

-Cascade, and it had been the height of the Countess Olga's ambition at

-that time to be called like Cochonette. A certain resemblance there

-was between the great lady and the wicked one; they had the same small

-delicate sarcastic features, the same red gold curls, the same perfect

-colourless complexion; but where Cochonette had eyes of the slightest

-blue, the wife of Count Stefan had the luminous piercing black eyes of

-the Muscovite physiognomy. Still the likeness was there, and it made

-the sight of Mdme. Brancka distasteful to him, since his memories of

-the other were far from welcome. It was for Cochonette that he had

-broken the bank at Monte Carlo, and into her lap that he had thrown

-all the gold rouleaux at a time when in his soul he had already adored

-Wanda von Szalras, and had despised himself for returning to the slough

-of his old pleasures. It was Cochonette who had sold his secrets to

-the Prussians, and brought them down upon him in the farmhouse amongst

-the orchards of the Orléannais, whilst she passed safely through, the

-German lines and across the frontier, laden with her jewels and her

-_valeurs_ of all kinds, saying in her teeth as she went: 'He will

-never see that Austrian woman again!' That had been the end of all he

-had known of Cochonette, and a presentiment of perfidy, of danger, of

-animosity always came over him whenever he saw the _joli petit minois_

-which in profile was so like Cochonette's, looking up from under the

-loose auburn curls that Mdme. Olga had copied from her.

-

-Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more

-admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds;

-and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette

-would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels

-flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams.

-There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her

-breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.

-

-Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an _étourdissement_

-that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.

-

-'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda,

-_mon beau_ cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are

-really going to Russia?'

-

-'I believe so.'

-

-'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in

-paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'

-

-'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'

-

-'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy

-enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money

-that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'

-

-'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played

-since my marriage.'

-

-'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A

-saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature,

-though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by

-marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean

-nothing.'

-

-'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he

-was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.

-

-'Call me at least _cousinette_,' said Mdme. Olga; 'we are cousins, you

-know, thanks to Wanda. Oh! she will be very unhappy in St. Petersburg;

-she will not amuse herself, she never does. She is incapable of a

-flirtation; she never touches a card. When she dances it is only

-because she must, and then it is only a quadrille or a contre-dance.

-She always reminds me of Marie Thérèse's "In our position nothing is a

-trifle." You remember the Empress's letters to Versailles?'

-

-Sabran was very much angered, but he was afraid to express his anger

-lest it should seem to make him absurd.

-

-'Madame,' he said, with ill-repressed irritation, 'I know you speak

-only in jest, but I must take the liberty to tell you----however

-bourgeois it appear----that I do not allow a jest even from you upon my

-wife. Anything she does is perfect in my sight, and if she be imbued

-with the old traditions of gentle blood, too many ladies desert them in

-these days for me not to be grateful to her for her loyalty.'

-

-She listened, with her bright black eyes fixed on him; then she leaned

-a little more closely on his arm.

-

-'Do you know that you said that very well? Most men are ridiculous

-when they are in love with their wives, but it becomes you, Wanda is

-perfect, we all know that; you are not alone in thinking so. Ask Egon!'

-

-The face of Sabran changed as he heard that name. As she saw the

-change she thought: 'Can it be possible that he is jealous?'

-

-Aloud she said with a little laugh: 'I almost wonder Egon did not

-run you through the heart before you married. Now, of course, he

-is reconciled to the inevitable; or, if not reconciled, he has to

-submit to it as we all have to do. He grows very _farouche_; he lives

-between his troopers and his castle of Taróc, like a barbaric lord

-of the Middle Ages. Were you ever at Taróc? It is worth seeing----a

-huge fortress, old as the days of Ottokar, in the very heart of the

-Karpathians. He leads a wild, fierce life enough there. If he keep the

-memory of Wanda with him it is as some men keep an idolatry for what is

-dead.'

-

-Sabran listened with a sombre irritation. 'Suppose we leave my wife's

-name in peace,' he said coldly. 'The _grosser cotillon_ is about to

-begin; may I aspire to the honour?'

-

-As he led her out, and the light fell on her red gold curls, on her

-dazzling butterflies, her armour of diamonds, her snow-white skin, a

-thousand memories of Cochonette came over him, though the scene around

-him was the ball-room of the Hofburg, and the woman whose great bouquet

-of _rêve d'or_ roses touched his hand was a great lady who had been the

-wife of Gela von Szalras, and the daughter of the Prince Serriatine.

-He distrusted her, he despised her, he disliked her so strongly that

-he was almost ashamed of his own antagonism; and yet her contact, her

-grace of movement, the mere scent of the bouquet of roses had a sort of

-painful and unwilling intoxication for the moment for him.

-

-He was glad when the long and gorgeous figures of the cotillon had

-tired out even her steel-like nerves, and he was free to leave the

-palace and go home to sleep. He looked at a miniature of his wife as

-he undressed; the face of it, with its tenderness and its nobility,

-seemed to him, after the face of this other woman, like the pure high

-air of the Iselthal after the heated and unhealthy atmosphere of a

-gambling-room.

-

-The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence

-was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which

-had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was

-brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural

-gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the

-sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some

-with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the

-empire.

-

-As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way

-slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through

-the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and

-odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After

-all, I may do her some honour before I die.'

-

-When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached

-him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said

-that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought

-it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.

-

-Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the

-staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants

-away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.

-

-There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:

-

-'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to

-him, under secrecy, what I know.'

-

-They were fully signed----'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a

-courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph.

-They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the

-Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXIV.

-

-

-As the carriage of the Countess Olga rolled home through the Graben

-after the military spectacle, she stopped it suddenly, and signed to an

-old man in the crowd who was waiting to cross the road until a regiment

-of cuirassiers had rolled by. He was eyeing them critically, as only an

-old soldier does look at troops.

-

-'Is it you, Georg?' said Madame Olga. 'What brings you here?'

-

-'I came from Taróc with a letter from the Prince, my master,' answered

-the man, an old hussar who had carried Vàsàrhely in his arms off the

-field of Königsgrätz, after dragging him from under a heap of dead men

-and horses.

-

-'A letter! To whom?' asked Olga, who always was curious and persistent

-in investigation of all her brother-in-law's movements and actions.

-

-Vàsàrhely had not laid any injunction as to secrecy, only as to speed,

-upon his faithful servant; so that Georg replied, unwitting of harm,

-'To the Markgraf von Sabran, my Countess.'

-

-'A letter that could not go by post--how strange! And from Egon to

-Wanda's husband!' she thought, with her inquisitive eagerness awakened.

-Aloud she bade the old trooper call at her palace for a packet for

-Taróc, to make excuse for having stopped and questioned him, and drove

-onward lost in thought.

-

-'Perhaps it is a challenge late in the day!' she thought, with a laugh;

-but she was astonished and perplexed that any communication should take

-place between these men; she perplexed her mind in vain in the effort

-to imagine what tie could connect them, what mystery mutually affecting

-them could lie beneath the secret of Vassia Kazán.

-

-When, on the morrow, she heard at Court that the Emperor was deeply

-incensed at the caprice and disrespect of the Count von Idrac, as

-he was called at Court, who, at the eleventh hour, had declined a

-mission already accepted by him, and of which the offer had been in

-itself an unprecedented mark of honour and confidence, her swift

-sagacity instantly associated the action, apparently so excuseless and

-inexcusable, with the letter sent up from Taróc. It was still as great

-a mystery to her as it had been before what the contents of the letter

-could have been, but she had no doubt that in some way or another it

-had brought about the resignation of the appointment. It awakened a

-still more intense curiosity in her, but she was too wise to whisper

-her suspicion to anyone. To her friends at the Court she said, with

-laughter: 'A night or two ago I chanced to tell Sabran that his wife

-would be wretched at St. Petersburg. That is sure to have been enough

-for him. He is such a devoted husband.'

-

-No one of course believed her, but they received the impression that

-she knew the real cause of his resignation, though she could not be

-induced to say it.

-

-What did it matter to her? Nothing, indeed. But the sense of a secret

-withheld from her was to Mdme. Olga like the slot of the fox to a young

-hound. She might have a thousand secrets of her own if it pleased her,

-but she could not endure anyone else to guard one. Besides, in a vague,

-feverish, angry way, she was almost in love with the man who was so

-faithful to his wife that he had looked away from her as from some

-unclean thing when she had wished to dazzle him. She had no perception

-that the secret could concern him himself very nearly, but she thought

-it was probably one which he and Egon Vàsàrhely, for reasons of their

-own, chose to share and keep hidden. And if it were a secret that

-prevented Sabran from going to the Court of Russia? Then, surely, it

-was one worth knowing? And if she gained a knowledge of it, and his

-wife had none?----what a superiority would be hers, what a weapon

-always to hand!

-

-She did not intend any especial cruelty or compass any especial end:

-she was actuated by a vague desire to interrupt a current of happiness

-that flowed on smoothly without her, to interfere where she had no

-earthly title or reason to do so, merely because she was disregarded

-by persons content with each other. It is not always definite motives

-which have the most influence; the subtlest poisons are those which

-enter the system we know not how, and penetrate it ere we are aware.

-The only thing which had ever held her back from any extremes of evil

-had been the mere habit of good-breeding and an absolute egotism which

-had saved her from all strong passions. Now something that was like

-passion had touched her under the sting of Sabran's indifference, and

-with it she became tenacious, malignant, and unsparing: adroit she had

-always been. Instinct is seldom at fault when we are conscious of an

-enemy, and Sabran's had not erred when it had warned him against the

-wife of Stefan Brancka as the serpent who would bring woe and disaster

-to his paradise.

-

-In some three months' time she received a more explicit answer from her

-cousin in St. Petersburg. Giving the precise dates, he told her that

-Vassia Kazán was the name given to the son of Count Paul Ivanovitch

-Zabaroff by a wayside amour with one of his own serfs at a village

-near the border line of Astrachan. He narrated the early history of

-the youth, and said that he had been amongst the passengers on board a

-Havre ship, which had foundered with all hands. So far the brief record

-of Vassia Kazán was clear and complete. But it told her nothing. She

-was unreasonably enraged, and looked at the little piece of burnt paper

-as though she would wrench the secret out of it.

-

-'There must be so much more to know,' she thought. 'What would a mere

-drowned boy be to either of those men----a boy dead too all these years

-before?'

-

-She wrote insolently to her cousin, that the Third Section, with

-its eyes of Argus and its limbs of Vishnoo, had always been but an

-overgrown imbecile, and set her woman's wits to accomplish what the

-Third Section had failed to do for her. So much she thought of it that

-the name seemed forced into her very brain; she seemed to hear every

-one saying----'Vassia Kazán.' It was a word to conjure with, at least:

-she could at the least try the effect of its utterance any day upon

-either of those who had made it the key of their correspondence. Russia

-had written down Vassia Kazán as dead, and the mystery which enveloped

-the name would not open to her. She knew her country too well not to

-know that this bold statement might cover some political secret, some

-story wholly unlike that which was given her. Vassia Kazán might have

-lived and have incurred the suspicions of the police, and be dwelling

-far away in the death in life of Siberian mines, or deep sunk in some

-fortress, like a stone at the bottom of a well. The reply not only

-did not beget her belief in it, but gave her range for the widest and

-wildest conjectures of imagination. 'It is some fault, some folly, some

-crime, who can tell? And Vassia Kazán is the victim or the associate,

-or the confidant of it. But what is it? And how does Egon know of it?'

-

-She passed the summer in pleasures of all kinds, but the subject did

-not lose its power over her, nor did she forget the face of Sabran as

-he had turned it away from her in the ball-room of the Hofburg.

-

-He himself had left the capital, after affirming to the minister that

-private reasons, which he could not enter into, had induced him to

-entreat the Imperial pardon for so sudden a change of resolve, and to

-solicit permission to decline the high honour that had been vouchsafed

-to him.

-

-'What shall I say to Wanda?' he asked himself incessantly, as the

-express train swung through the grand green country towards Salzburg.

-

-She was sitting on the lake terrace with the Princess, when a telegram

-from her cousin Kunst was brought to her. Bela and Gela were playing

-near with squadrons of painted cuirassiers, and the great dogs were

-lying on the marble pavement at her feet. It was a golden close to a

-sunless but fine day; the snow peaks were growing rosy as the sun shone

-for an instant behind the Venediger range, and the lake was calm and

-still and green, one little boat going noiselessly across it from the

-Holy Isle to the further side.

-

-'What a pity to leave it all!' she thought as she took the telegram.

-

-The Minister's message was curt and angered:

-

-'Your husband has resigned; he makes himself and me ridiculous. Unable

-to guess his motive, I am troubled and embarrassed beyond expression.'

-

-The other, from Sabran, said simply: 'I am coming home. I give up

-Russia.'

-

-'Any bad news?' the Princess asked, seeing the seriousness of her face.

-Her niece rose and gave her the papers.

-

-'Is Réné mad!' she exclaimed as she read. His wife, who was startled

-and dismayed at the affront to her cousin and to her sovereign, yet had

-been unable to repress a movement of personal gladness, hastened to say

-in his defence:

-

-'Be sure he has some grave, good reason, dear mother. He knows the

-world too well to commit a folly. Unexplained, it looks strange,

-certainly; but he will be home to-night or in the early morning; then

-we shall know; and be sure we shall find him right.'

-

-'Right!' echoed the Princess, lifting the little girl who was her

-namesake off her knee, a child white as a snowdrop, with golden curls,

-who looked as if she had come out of a band of Correggio's baby angels.

-

-'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who

-had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard

-suspended in the air.

-

-'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme

-displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when

-through him you are probably _brouillée_ with your Sovereign for life.'

-

-She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a

-caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon.

-I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible

-excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such

-vast importance.'

-

-'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would

-condemn Réné unheard?'

-

-'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'

-

-'Perhaps none. I know it is a very grave offence that he has committed,

-and yet I cannot help being happy,' said his wife with a smile, as she

-lifted up the little Ottilie, and murmured over the child's fair curls,

-'Ah, my dear little dove! We are not going to Russia after all. You

-little birds will not leave your nest!'

-

-'Bela is not going to the snow palace?' said he, whose ears were very

-quick, and to whom his attendants had told marvellous narratives of an

-utterly imaginary Russia.

-

-'No; are not you glad, my dear?'

-

-He thought very gravely for a moment.

-

-'Bela is not sure. Marc says Bela would have slaves in Russia, and

-might beat them.'

-

-'Bela would be beaten himself if he did, and by my own hand, said his

-mother very gravely. 'Oh, child! where did you get your cruelty?'

-

-'He is not cruel,' said the Princess. 'He is only masterful.'

-

-'Alas! it is the same thing.'

-

-She sent the children indoors, and remained after the sun-glow had all

-faded, and Mdme. Ottilie had gone away to her own rooms, and paced

-to and fro the length of the terrace, troubled by an anxiety which

-she would have owned to no one. What could have happened to make

-him so offend alike the State and the Court? She tormented herself

-with wondering again and again whether she had used any incautious

-expression in her letters which could have betrayed to him the poignant

-regret the coming exile gave her. No! she was sure she had not done

-so. She had only written twice, preferring telegrams as quicker, and,

-to a man, less troublesome than letters. She knew courts and cabinets

-too well not to know that the step her husband had taken was one which

-would wholly ruin the favour he enjoyed with the former, and wholly

-take away all chance of his being ever called again to serve the

-latter. Personally she was indifferent to that kind of ambition; but

-her attachment to the Imperial house was too strong, and her loyalty

-to it too hereditary, for her not to be alarmed at the idea of losing

-its good-will. Disquieted and afraid of all kinds of formless unknown

-ills, she went with a heavy heart into the Rittersaal to a dinner for

-which she could find no appetite. The Princess also, so talkative and

-vivacious at other times, was silent and pre-occupied. The evening

-passed tediously. He did not come.

-

-It was past midnight, and she had given up all hope of his arrival,

-when she heard the returning trot of the horses, who had been sent over

-to Matrey in the evening on the chance of his being there. She was in

-her own chamber, having dismissed her women, and was trying in vain to

-keep her thoughts to nightly prayer. At the sound of the horses' feet

-without, she threw on a _négligé_ of white satin and lace, and went,

-out on to the staircase to meet him. As he came up the broad stairs,

-with Donau and Neva gladly leaping on him, he looked up and saw her

-against the background of oak and tapestry and old armour, with the

-light of a great Persian lamp in metal that swung above shed full upon

-her. She had never looked more lovely to him than as she stood so, her

-eyes eagerly searching the dim shadow for him, and the loose white

-folds embroidered in silk with pale roses flowing downward from her

-throat to her feet. He drew her within her chamber, and took her in his

-arms with a passionate gesture.

-

-'Let us forget everything,' he murmured, 'except that we have been

-parted nearly a month!'

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXV.

-

-

-In the morning, after breakfast in the little Saxe room, she said to

-him with gentle firmness: 'Réné, you must tell me now--why have you

-refused Russia?'

-

-He had known that the question must come, and all the way on his

-homeward journey he had been revolving in his mind the answer he would

-give to it. He was very pale, but otherwise he betrayed no agitation as

-he turned and looked at her.

-

-'That is what I cannot tell you,' he replied.

-

-She could not believe she heard aright.

-

-'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'I have had a message from Kunst;

-he is deeply angered. I understand that, after all was arranged, you

-abruptly resigned the Russian mission. I ask your reasons. It is a very

-grave step to have taken. I suppose your motives must be very strong

-ones?'

-

-'They are so,' said Sabran; and he continued in the forced and measured

-tone of one who recites what he has taught himself to say: 'It is quite

-natural that your cousin Kunst should be offended; the Emperor also.

-You perhaps will be the same when I say to you that I cannot tell you,

-as I cannot tell them, the grounds of my withdrawal. Perhaps you, like

-them, will not forgive it.'

-

-Her nostrils dilated and her breast heaved: she was startled,

-mortified, amazed. 'You do not choose to tell _me_!' she said in

-stupefaction.

-

-'I cannot tell you.'

-

-'She gazed at him with the first bitterness of wrath that he had ever

-seen upon her face. She had been used to perfect submission of others

-all her life. She had the blood in her of stern princes, who had meted

-out rule and justice against which there had been no appeal. She was

-accustomed even in him to deference, homage, consideration, to be

-consulted always, deferred to often. His answer for the moment seemed

-to her an unwarrantable insult.

-

-Her influence, her relatives, her sovereign, had given him one of the

-highest honours conceivable, and he did not choose to even say why he

-was thankless for it! Passionate and withering words rose to her lips,

-but she restrained their utterance. Not even in that moment could she

-bring herself to speak what might seem to rebuke him with the weight

-of all his debt to her. She remained silent, but he understood all the

-intense indignation that held her speechless there. He approached her

-more nearly, and spoke with emotion, but with a certain sternness in

-his voice----

-

-'I know very well that I must offend and even outrage you. But I

-cannot tell you my motives. It is the first time that I have ever

-acted independently of you or failed to consult your wishes. I only

-venture to remind you that marriage does give to the man the right to

-do so, though I have never availed myself of it. Nay, even now, I owe

-you too much to be ingrate enough to take refuge in my authority as

-your husband. I prefer to owe more, as I have owed so much, to your

-tenderness. I prefer to ask of you, by your love for me, not to press

-me for an answer that I am not in a position to make; to be content

-with what I say--that I have relinquished the Russian mission because I

-have no choice but to do so.'

-

-He spoke firmly, because he spoke only the truth, although not all the

-truth.

-

-A great anger rose up in her, the first that she had ever been moved to

-by him. All the pride of her temper and all her dignity were outraged

-by this refusal to have confidence in her. It seemed incredible

-to her. She still thought herself the prey of some dream, of some

-hallucination. Her lips parted to speak, but again she withheld the

-words she was about to utter. Her strong justice compelled her to admit

-that he was but within his rights, and her sense of duty was stronger

-than her sense of self-love.

-

-She did not look at him, nor could she trust her voice. She turned

-from him without a syllable, and left the room. She was afraid of the

-violence of the anger that she felt.

-

-'If it had been only to myself I would pardon it,' she thought; 'but an

-insult to my people, to my country, to my sovereign!--an insult without

-excuse, or explanation, or apology----'

-

-She shut herself alone within her oratory and passed the most bitter

-hour of her life. The imperious and violent temper of the Szalras

-was dormant in her character, though she had chastened and tamed it,

-and the natural sweetness and serenity of her disposition had been a

-counterpoise to it so strong that the latter had become the only thing

-visible in her. But all the wrath of her race was now aroused and in

-arms against what she loved best on earth.

-

-'If it had been anything else,' she thought; 'but a public act like

-this--an ingratitude to the Crown itself! A caprice for all the world

-to chatter of and blame!'

-

-It would have been hard enough to bear, difficult enough to explain

-away to others, if he had told her his reasons, however captious,

-unwise, or selfish they might be; but to have the door of his soul

-thus shut upon her, his thoughts thus closed to her, hurt her with

-intolerable pain, and filled her with a deep and burning indignation.

-

-She passed all the early morning hours alone in her little temple of

-prayer, striving in vain against the bitterness of her heart; above

-her the great ivory Crucifixion, the work of Angermayer, beneath which

-so many generations of the women of the House of Szalras had knelt in

-their hours of tribulation or bereavement.

-

-When she left the oratory she had conquered herself. Though she could

-not extinguish the human passions that smarted and throbbed within her,

-she knew her duty well enough to know that it must lie in submission

-and in silence.

-

-She sought for him at once. She found him in the library: he was

-playing to himself a long dreamy concerto of Schubert's, to soothe the

-irritation of his own nerves and pass away a time of keen suspense. He

-rose as she came into the room, and awaited her approach with a timid

-anxiety in his eyes, which she was too absorbed by her own emotions to

-observe. He had assumed a boldness that he had not, and had used his

-power to dominate her rather in desperation than in any sense of actual

-mastery. In his heart it was he who feared her.

-

-'You were quite right,' she said simply to him. 'Of course, you are

-master of your own actions, and owe no account of them to me. We will

-say no more about it. For myself, you know I am content enough to

-escape exile to any embassy.'

-

-He kissed her hand with an unfeigned reverence and humility.

-

-'You are as merciful as you are great,' he murmured. 'If I be silent it

-is my misfortune.' He paused abruptly.

-

-A sudden thought came over her as he spoke.

-

-'It is some State secret that he knows and cannot speak of, and that

-has made him unwilling to go. Why did I never think of that before?'

-

-An explanation that had its root in honour, a reticence that sprang

-from conscience, were so welcome to her, and to her appeared so

-natural, that they now consoled her at once, and healed the wounds to

-her own pride.

-

-'Of course, if it be so, he is right not to speak even to me,' she

-mused, and her only desire was now to save him from the insistence and

-the indignation of the Princess, and the examination which these were

-sure to entail upon him when he should meet her at the noon breakfast

-now at hand.

-

-To that end she sought out her aunt in her own apartments, taking

-with her the tiny Ottilie, who always disarmed all irritation in her

-godmother by the mere presence of her little flower-like face.

-

-'Dear mother,' she said softly, when the child had made her morning

-obeisance, 'I am come to ask of you a great favour and kindness to me.

-Réné returned last night. He has done what he thought right. I do not

-even ask his reasons. He has acted from _force majeure_ by dictate of

-his own honour. Will you do as I mean to do? Will you spare him any

-interrogation? I shall be so grateful to you, and so will he.'

-

-Mdme. Ottilie, opening her bonbonnière for her namesake, drew up her

-fragile figure with a severity unusual to her.

-

-'Do I hear you aright? You do not even know the reasons of the insult

-M. de Sabran has passed upon the Crown and Cabinet, and you do not even

-mean to ask them?'

-

-'I do mean that; and what I do not ask I feel sure you will admit no

-one else has any right to ask of him.'

-

-'No one certainly except His Majesty.'

-

-'I presume His Majesty has had all information due to him as our

-Imperial master. All I entreat of you, dearest mother, is to do as

-I have done; assume, as we are bound to assume, that Réné has acted

-wisely and rightly, and not weary him with questions to which it will

-be painful to him not to respond.'

-

-'Questions! I never yet indulged in anything so vulgar as curiosity,

-that you should imagine I shall be capable of subjecting your husband

-to a cross-examination. If you be satisfied, I can have no right to

-be more exacting than yourself. The occurrence is to me lamentable,

-inexcusable, unintelligible; but if explanation be not offered me you

-may rest assured I shall not intrude my request for it.'

-

-'Of that I am sure; but I am not contented only with that. I want you

-to feel no dissatisfaction, no doubt, no anger against him. You may be

-sure that he has acted from conviction, because he was most desirous to

-go to Russia, as you saw when you urged him to accept the mission.'

-

-'I have said the utmost that I can say,' replied the Princess, with a

-chill light in her blue eyes. 'This little child is no more likely to

-ask questions than I am, after what you have stated. But you must not

-regard my silence as any condonation of what must always appear to me a

-step disrespectful to the Crown, contrary to all usages of etiquette,

-and injurious to his own future and that of his children. His scruples

-of conscience came too late.'

-

-'I did not say they were exactly that. I believe he learned something

-which made him consider that his honour required him to withdraw.'

-

-'That may be,' said the Princess, frigidly. 'As I observed, it came

-lamentably late. You will excuse me if I breakfast in my own rooms this

-morning.'

-

-Wanda left her, gave the child to a nurse who waited without, and

-returned to the library. She had offended and pained Mdme. Ottilie,

-but she had saved her husband from annoyance. She knew that though

-the Princess was by no means as free from curiosity as she declared

-herself, she was too high-bred and too proud to solicit a confidence

-withheld from her.

-

-Sabran was seated at the piano where she had left him, but his forehead

-rested on the woodwork of it, and his whole attitude was suggestive

-of sad and absorbed thought and abandonment to regrets that were

-unavailing.

-

-'It has cost him so much,' she reflected as she looked at him. 'Perhaps

-it has been a self-sacrifice, a heroism even; and I, from mere wounded

-feeling, have been angered against him and almost cruel!'

-

-With the exaggeration in self-censure of all generous natures, she was

-full of remorse at having added any pain to the disappointment which

-had been his portion; a disappointment none the less poignant, as she

-saw, because it had been voluntarily, as she imagined, accepted.

-

-As he heard her approach he started and rose, and the expression of his

-face startled her for a moment; it was so full of pain, of melancholy,

-almost (could she have believed it) of despair. What could this matter

-be to affect him thus, since being of the State it could be at its

-worst only some painful and compromising secret of political life which

-could have no personal meaning for him? It was surely impossible that

-mere disappointment----a disappointment self-inflicted----could bring

-upon him such suffering? But she threw these thoughts away. In her

-great loyalty she had told herself that she must not even think of this

-thing, lest she should let it come between them once again and tempt

-her from her duty and obedience. Her trust in him was perfect.

-

-The abandonment of a coveted distinction was in itself a bitter

-disappointment, but it seemed to him as nothing beside the sense of

-submission and obedience compelled from him to Vàsàrhely. He felt as

-though an iron hand, invisible, weighed on his life, and forced it into

-subjection. When he had almost grown secure that his enemy's knowledge

-was a buried harmless thing, it had risen and barred his way, speaking

-with an authority which it was not possible to disobey. With all his

-errors he was a man of high courage, who had always held his own with

-all men. How the old forgotten humiliation of his earliest years

-revived, and enforced from him the servile timidity of the Slav blood

-which he had abjured. He had never for an instant conceived it possible

-to disregard the mandate he received; that an apparently voluntary

-resignation was permitted to him was, his conscience acknowledged, more

-mercy than he could have expected. That Vàsàrhely would act thus had

-not occurred to him; but before the act he could not do otherwise than

-admit its justice and obey.

-

-But the consciousness of that superior will compelling him, left in him

-a chill tremor of constant fear, of perpetual self-abasement. What was

-natural to him was the reckless daring which many Russians, such as

-Skobeleff, have shown in a thousand ways of peril. He was here forced

-only to crouch and to submit; it was more galling, more cruel to him

-than utter exposure would have been. The sense of coercion was always

-upon him like a dragging chain. It produced on him a despondency, which

-not even the presence of his wife or the elasticity of his own nature

-could dispel.

-

-He had to play a part to her, and to do this was unfamiliar and hateful

-to him. In all the years before he had concealed a fact from her, but

-he had never been otherwise false. Though to his knowledge there had

-been always between them the shadow of a secret untold, there had

-never been any sense upon him of obligation to measure his words, to

-feign sentiments he had not, to hide behind a carefully constructed

-screen of untruth. Now, though he had indeed not lied with his lips,

-he had to sustain a concealment which was a thousand times more trying

-to him than that concealment of his birth and station to which he had

-been so long accustomed that he hardly realised it as any error. The

-very nobility with which she had accepted his silence, and given it,

-unasked, a worthy construction, smote him with a deeper sense of shame

-than even that which galled him when he remembered the yoke laid on him

-by the will of Egon Vàsàrhely.

-

-He roused himself to meet her with composure.

-

-She rested her hand caressingly on his.

-

-'We will never speak of Russia any more. I should be sorry were the

-Kaiser to think you capricious or disloyal, but you have too much

-ability to have incurred this risk. Let it all be as though there had

-never arisen any question of public life for you. I have explained

-to Aunt Ottilie; she will not weary you with interrogation; she

-understands that you have acted as your honour bade you. That is enough

-for those who love you as do she and I.'

-

-Every word she spoke entered his very soul with the cruellest irony,

-the sharpest reproach. But of these he let her see nothing. Yet he

-was none the less abjectly ashamed, less passionately self-condemned,

-because he had to consume his pain in silence, and had the self-control

-to answer, still with a smile, as he touched a chord or two of music:

-

-'When the Israelites were free they hankered after the flesh-pots of

-Egypt. They deserved eternal exile, eternal bondage. So do I, for

-having ever been ingrate enough to dream of leaving Hohenszalras for

-the world of men!'

-

-Then he turned wholly towards the Erard keyboard, and with splendour

-and might there rolled forth under his touch the military march of

-Rákóczi: he was glad of the majesty and passion of the music which

-supplanted and silenced speech.

-

-'That is very grand,' she said, when the last notes had died away.

-'One seems to hear the _Eljén!_ of the whole nation in it. But play me

-something more tender, more pathetic----some _lieder_ half sorrow and

-half gladness, you know so many of all countries.'

-

-He paused a moment; then his hands wandered lightly across the notes,

-and called up the mournful folk-songs that he had heard so long, so

-long, before; songs of the Russian peasants, of the maidens borne off

-by the Tartar in war, of the blue-eyed children carried away to be

-slaves, of the homeless villagers beholding their straw-roofed huts

-licked up by the hungry hurrying flame lit by the Kossack or the Kurd;

-songs of a people without joy, that he had heard in his childish days,

-when the great rafts had drifted slowly down the Volga water, and

-across the plains the lines of chained prisoners had crept as slowly

-through the dust; or songs that he had sung to himself, not knowing

-why, where the winter was white on all the land, and the bay of the

-famished wolves afar off had blent with the shrill sad cry of the wild

-swans dying of cold and of hunger and of thirst on the frozen rivers,

-and the reeds were grown hard as spears of iron, and the waves were

-changed to stone.

-

-The intense melancholy penetrated her very heart. She listened with

-the tears in her eyes, and her whole being stirred and thrilled by a

-pain not her own. A kind of consciousness came to her, borne on that

-melancholy melody, of some unspoken sorrow which lived in this heart

-which beat so near her own, and whose every throb she had thought she

-knew. A sudden terror seized her lest all this while she who believed

-his whole life hers was in truth a stranger to his deepest grief, his

-dearest memories.

-

-When the last sigh of those plaintive songs without words had died

-away, she signed to him to approach her.

-

-'Tell me,' she said very gently, 'tell me the truth. Réné, did you ever

-care for any woman, dead or lost, more than, or as much as, you care

-for me? I do not ask you if you loved others. I know all men have many

-caprices, but was any one of them so dear to you that you regret her

-still? Tell me the truth; I will be strong to bear it.'

-

-He, relieved beyond expression that she but asked him that on which his

-conscience was clear and his answer could be wholly sincere, sat down

-at her feet and leaned his head against her knee.

-

-'Never, so hear me God!' he said simply. 'I have loved no woman as I

-love you.'

-

-'And there is not one that you regret?'

-

-'There is not one.'

-

-'Then what is it that you do regret? Something more weighs on you than

-the mere loss of diplomatic life, which; after all, to you is no more

-than the loss of a toy to Bela.'

-

-'If I do regret,' he said, with a smile, 'it is foolish and thankless.

-The happiness you give me here is worth all the fret and fever of

-the world's ambitions. You are so great and good to be so little

-angered with me for my reticence. All my life, such as it is, shall be

-dedicated to my gratitude.'

-

-Once more an impulse to tell her all passed over him----a sense that

-he might trust her absolutely for all tenderness and all pity came

-upon him; but with the weakness which so constantly holds back human

-souls from their own deliverance, his courage once again failed him.

-He once more looking at her thought: 'Nay! I dare not. She would never

-understand, she would never pardon, she would never listen. At the

-first word she would abhor me.'

-

-He did not dare; he bent his face down on her knees as any child might

-have done.

-

-'What I ever must regret is not to be worthy of you!' he murmured; and

-the subterfuge was also a truth.

-

-She looked down at him wistfully with doubt and confusion mingled. She

-sighed, for she understood that buried in his heart there was some pain

-he would not share, perchance some half involuntary unfaithfulness he

-did not dare confess. She thrust this latter thought away quickly; it

-hurt her as the touch of a hot iron hurts tender flesh; she would not

-harbour it. It might well be, she knew.

-

-She was silent some little time, then she said calmly:

-

-'I think you worthy. Is not that enough? Never say to me what you do

-not wish to say. But----but----if there be anything you believe that I

-should blame, be sure of this, love: I am no fair weather friend. Try

-me in deep water, in dark storm!'

-

-And still he did not speak.

-

-His evil angel held him back and said to him, 'Nay! she would never

-forgive.'

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXVI.

-

-

-One day in this winter time she sat alone in her octagon-room whilst he

-was out driving in the teeth of a strong wind blowing from the north

-and frequent bursts of snowstorm. Rapid exercise, eager movements, were

-necessary to him at once as tonic and as anodyne, and the northern

-blood that was in him made the bitter cold, the keen and angry air, the

-conflict with the frantic horses tearing at their curbs welcome and

-wholesome to him. Paul Zabaroff had many a day driven so over the hard

-snows of Russian plains.

-

-She sat at home as the twilight drew on, her feet buried in the furs

-before her chair, the fragrance shed about her from a basket of forced

-narcissus and bowls full of orange flowers and of violets, the light

-of the burning wood shining on the variegated and mellow hues of the

-tiles of the hearth. The last poems of Coppée were on her lap, but

-her thoughts had wandered away from those to Sabran, to her children,

-to a thousand happy trifles connected with one or the other. She was

-dreaming idly in that vague reverie which suits the last hour of the

-reclining day in the grey still winter of a mountain-land. She was

-almost sorry when Hubert entered and brought her the mail-bag, which

-had just come through the gloomy defiles and the frosted woods which

-stretched between them and Matrey.

-

-'It grows late,' she said to him. 'I fear it will be a stormy night.

-Have you heard the Marquis return?

-

-He told her that Sabran had not yet driven in, and ventured to add

-his hope that his master would not be out long; then he asked if she

-desired the lamps lit, and on being told she did not, withdrew, leaving

-the leather bag on a table close to one of the Saxe bowls of violets.

-There was plenty of light from the fire, and even from the windows, to

-read her letters by; she went first to one of the casements and looked

-at the night, which was growing very wild and dark. Though day still

-lingered, she could hear the wind go screaming down the lake, and

-the rush of the swollen water swirling against the terrace buttresses

-below. All beyond, woods, hills, mountains, were invisible under the

-grey mist.

-

-'I hope he will not be late,' she thought, but she was too keen a

-mountaineer to be apprehensive. Sabran now knew every road and path

-through all the Tauern as well as she did. She returned to her seat and

-unlocked the leather bag; there were several newspapers, two letters

-for the Princess, three or four for Sabran, and one only for herself.

-She laid his aside for him, sent those of the Princess to her room,

-and opened her own. The writing of it she did not recognise; it was

-anonymous, and was very brief.

-

-

-'If you wish to know why the Marquis de Sabran did not go to Russia,

-ask Egon Vàsàrhely.'

-

-

-That was all: so asps are little.

-

-She sat quite still, and felt as if a bolt had fallen on her from the

-leaden skies without. Vàsàrhely knew, the writer of the letter knew,

-and she----_she----_ did not know! That was her first distinct thought.

-

-If Sabran had entered the room at that instant she would have held to

-him this letter, and would have said, 'I ask you, not him.' He was

-absent, and she sat motionless, keeping the unsigned note in her hand,

-and staring down on it. Then she turned and looked at the post-mark.

-It was 'Vienna,' A city of a million souls! What clue to the writer

-was there? She read it again and again, as even the wisest will read

-such poisonous things, as though by repeated study that mystery would

-be compelled to stand out clearly revealed. It did not say enough to

-have been the mere invention of the sender; it was not worded as an

-insinuation, but as a fact. For that reason it took a hold upon her

-mind which would at once have rejected a fouler or a darker suggestion.

-Although free from any baseness of suspicion there was yet that in the

-name of her cousin, in juxtaposition with her husband's, which could

-not do otherwise than startle and carry with it a corroboration of the

-statement made. A wave of the deep anger which had moved her on her

-husband's first refusal swept over her again. Her hand clenched, her

-eyes hashed, where she sat alone in the gathering shadows.

-

-There came a sound at the door of the room and a small golden head came

-from behind the tapestry.

-

-'May we come in?' said Bela; it was the children's hour.

-

-She rose, and put him backward.

-

-'Not now, my darling; I am occupied. Go away for a little while.'

-

-The women who were with them took the children back to their

-apartments. She sat down with the note still in her hand. What could

-it mean? No good thing was ever said thus. She pondered long, and was

-unable to imagine any sense or meaning it could have, though all the

-while memories thronged upon, her of words, and looks, and many trifles

-which had told her of the enmity that was existent between her cousin

-and Sabran. That she saw; but there her knowledge ceased, her vision

-failed. She could go no further, conjecture nothing more.

-

-'Ask Egon!' Did they think she would ask him or any living being that

-which Sabran had refused to confide in her? Whoever wrote this knew her

-little, she thought. Perhaps there were women who would have done so.

-She was not one of them.

-

-With a sudden impulse of scorn she cast the sheet of paper into the

-fire before her. Then she went to her writing-table and enclosed the

-envelope in another, which she addressed to her lawyers in Salzburg.

-She wrote with it: 'This is the cover to an anonymous letter which I

-have received. Try your uttermost to discover the sender.'

-

-Then she sat down again and thought long, and wearily, and vainly. She

-could make nothing of it. She could see no more than a wayfarer whom a

-blank wall faces as he goes. The violets and orange blossoms were close

-at her elbow; she never in after time smelt their perfume without a

-sick memory of the stunned, stupefied bewilderment of that hour.

-

-The door unclosed again, a voice again spoke behind as a hand drew back

-the folds of the tapestry.

-

-'What, are you in darkness here? I am very cold. Have you no tea for

-me?' said Sabran, as he entered, his eyes brilliant; his cheeks warm,

-from the long gallop against the wind. He had changed his clothes, and

-wore a loose suit of velvet; the servants, entering behind him, lit the

-candelabra, and brought in the lamps; warmth, and gladness, and light

-seemed to come with him; she looked up and thought, 'Ah! what does any

-thing matter? He is home in safety!'

-

-The impulse to ask of him what she had been bidden to ask of Egon

-Vàsàrhely had passed with the intense surprise of the first moment. She

-could not ask of him what she had promised never to seek to know; she

-could not reopen a long-closed wound. But neither could she forget the

-letter lying burnt there amongst the flames of the wood. He noticed

-that her usual perfect calm was broken as she welcomed him, gave him

-his letters, and bade the servants bring tea; but he thought it mere

-anxiety, and his belated drive; and being tired with a pleasant fatigue

-which made rest sweet, he stretched his limbs out on a low couch beside

-the hearth, and gave himself up to that delicious dreamy sense of

-_bien-être_ which a beautiful woman, a beautiful room, tempered warmth

-and light, and welcome repose, bring to any man after some hours effort

-and exposure in wild weather and intense cold and increasing darkness.

-

-'I almost began to think I should not see you to-night,' he said

-happily, as he took from her hand the little cup of Frankenthal china

-which sparkled like a jewel in the light. 'I had fairly lost my way,

-and Josef knew it no better than I; the snow fell with incredible

-rapidity, and it seemed to grow night in an instant. I let the horses

-take their road, and they brought us home; but if there be any poor

-pedlars or carriers on the hills to-night I fear they will go to their

-last sleep.'

-

-She shuddered and looked at him with dim, fond eyes, 'He is here; he is

-mine,' she thought; 'what else matters?'

-

-Sabran stretched out his fingers and took some of the violets from the

-Saxe bowl and fastened them in his coat as he went on speaking of the

-weather, of the perils of the roads whose tracks were obliterated, and

-of the prowess and intelligence of his horses, who had found the way

-home when he and his groom, a man born and bred in the Tauern, had both

-been utterly at a loss. The octagon-room had never looked lovelier and

-gayer to him, and his wife had never looked more beautiful than both

-did now as he came to them out of the darkness and the snowstorm and

-the anxiety of the last hour.

-

-'Do not run those risks,' she murmured. 'You know all that your life is

-to me.'

-

-The letter which lay burnt in the fire, and the dusky night of ice

-and wind without, had made him dearer to her than ever. And yet the

-startled, shocked sense of some mystery, of some evil, was heavy upon

-her, and did not leave her that evening nor for many a day after.

-

-'You are not well?' he said to her anxiously later, as they left the

-dinner-table. She answered evasively.

-

-'You know I am not always quite well now. It is nothing. It will pass.'

-

-'I was wrong to alarm you by being out so late in such weather,' he

-said with self-reproach. 'I will go out earlier in future.'

-

-'Do not wear those violets,' she said, with a trivial caprice wholly

-unlike her, as she took them from his coat. 'They are Bonapartist

-emblems--_fleurs de malheur_.'

-

-He smiled, but he was surprised, for he had never seen in her any one

-of those fanciful whims and vagaries that are common to women.

-

-'Give me any others instead,' he said; 'I wear but your symbol, O my

-lady!'

-

-She took some myrtle and lilies of the valley from one of the large

-porcelain jars in the Rittersaal.

-

-'These are our flowers,' she said as she gave them to him. 'They mean

-love and peace.'

-

-He turned from her slightly as he fastened them where the others had

-been.

-

-All the evening she was pre-occupied and nervous. She could not forget

-the intimation she had received. It was intolerable to her to have

-anything of which she could not speak to her husband. Though they had

-their own affairs apart one from the other, there had been nothing

-of moment in hers that she had ever concealed from him. But here it

-was impossible for her to speak to him, since she had pledged herself

-never to seek to know the reason of an action which, however plausibly

-she explained it to herself, remained practically inexplicable and

-unintelligible. It was terrible to her, too, to feel that the lines

-of a coward who dared not sign them had sunk so deeply into her mind

-that she did not question their veracity. They had at once carried

-conviction to her that Egon Vàsàrhely did know what they said he did.

-She could not have told why this was, but it was so. It was what hurt

-her most----others knew; she did not.

-

-She felt that if she could have spoken to Sabran of it, the matter

-would have become wholly indifferent to her; but the obligation of

-reticence, the sense of separation which it involved, oppressed her

-greatly. She was also haunted by the memory of the enmity which existed

-between these men, whose names were so strangely coupled in the

-anonymous counsel given her.

-

-She stayed long in her oratory that night, seeking vainly for calmness

-and patience under this temptation; seeking beyond all things for

-strength to put the poison of it wholly from her mind. She dreaded lest

-it should render her irritable and suspicious. She reproached herself

-for having been guilty of even so much insinuation of rebuke to him

-as her words with the flower had carried in them. She had ideas of

-the duties of a woman to her husband widely different to those which

-prevail in the world. She allowed herself neither irritation nor irony

-against him. 'When the thoughts rebel, the acts soon revolt,' she was

-wont to say to herself, and even in her thoughts she would never blame

-him.

-

-Prayer, even if it have no other issue or effect, rarely fails to

-tranquillise and fortify the heart which is lifted up ever so vaguely

-in search of a superhuman aid. She left her oratory strengthened and

-calmed, resolved in no way to allow such partial success to their

-unknown foe as would be given if the treacherous warning brought any

-suspicion or bitterness to her mind. She passed through the open

-archway in the wall which divided his rooms from hers, and looked at

-him where he lay already asleep upon his bed, early fatigued by the

-long cold drive from which he had returned at nightfall. He was never

-more handsome than sleeping calmly thus, with the mellow light of a

-distant lamp reaching the fairness of his face. She looked at him with

-all her heart in her eyes; then stooped and kissed him without awaking

-him.

-

-'Ah! my love,' she thought, 'what should ever come between us? Hardly

-even death, I think, for if I lost you I should not live long without

-you.'

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXVII.

-

-

-The Salzburg lawyers employed all the resources of the Viennese police

-to discover the sender of the envelope, but vainly; nothing was

-learned by all the efforts made. But the letter constantly haunted her

-thoughts. It produced in her an uneasiness and an apprehensiveness

-wholly foreign to her temper. The impossibility also of saying anything

-about it increased the weight of it on her memory. Yet she never once

-thought of asking Vàsàrhely. She wrote to him now and then, as she had

-always done, to give him tidings of her health or of her movements,

-but she never once alluded in the most distant terms to the anonymous

-information she had received. If he had been there beside her she would

-not have spoken of it. Of the two, she would sooner have reopened the

-subject to her husband. But she never did so. She had promised him

-to be silent, and to her creed a promise was inviolate, never to be

-retracted, be the pressure or the desire to do so what it would.

-

-It was these grand lines on which her character and her habits were

-cast that awed him, and made him afraid to tell her his true history.

-Had he revered her less he would probably have deceived her less. Had

-she been of a less noble temperament she would also probably have been

-much less easy to deceive.

-

-Her health was at this time languid, and more uncertain than usual,

-and the two lines of the letter were often present to her thoughts,

-tormenting her with idle conjecture, painful doubt, none the less

-painful because it could take no definite shape. Sometimes when she

-was not well enough to accompany him out of doors or drive her own

-sleigh through the keen clear winter air, she sat doing nothing, and

-thinking only of this thing, in the same room, with the same smell of

-violets about her, musing on what it might by any possibility mean. Any

-secret was safe with Egon, but then since the anonymous writer was in

-possession of it the secret was not only his. She wondered sometimes in

-terror whether it could be anything that might in after years affect

-her children's future, and then as rapidly discarded the bare thought

-as so much dishonour to their father. 'It is only because I am now

-nervous and impressionable,' she said to herself,'that this folly takes

-such a hold upon me. When I am well again I shall not think of it. Who

-is it says of anonymous letters that they are like "_les immondices des

-rues: il faut boucher le nez, tourner la tête et passer outre?_"'

-

-But '_les immondices_' spoiled the odours of the new year violets to

-her.

-

-In the early spring of the year she gave birth to another son. She

-suffered more than she had ever done before, and recovered less

-quickly. The child was like all the others, fair, vigorous, and full

-of health. She wished to give him her husband's name, but Sabran so

-strenuously opposed the idea that she yielded, and named him after her

-brother Victor, who had fallen at Magenta.

-

-There were the usual rejoicings throughout the estates, rejoicings

-that were the outcome of genuine affection and fealty to the race of

-Szalras, whose hold on the people of the Tauern had resisted all the

-revolutionary movements of the earlier part of the century, and had

-fast root in the hearts of the staunch and conservative mountaineers.

-But for the first time as she heard the hearty '_Hoch!_' of the

-assembled peasantry echoing beneath her windows, and the salvos fired

-from the old culverins on the keep, a certain fear mingled with her

-maternal pride, and she thought: 'Will the people love them as well

-twenty years hence, fifty years hence, when I shall be no more? Will my

-memory be any shield to them? Will the traditions of our race outlast

-the devouring changes of the world?'

-

-Meantime the Princess, happy and smiling, showed the little new-born

-noble to the stalwart chamois hunters, the comely farmers and

-fishermen, the clear-eyed stout-limbed shepherds and labourers gathered

-bareheaded round the Schloss.

-

-Bela stood by contemplating the crowd he knew so well; he did not see

-why they should cheer any other child beside himself. He stood with his

-little velvet cap in his hand, because he was always told to do so, but

-he felt very inclined to put it on; if his father had not been present

-there he would have done so.

-

-'If I have ever so many brothers,' he said at last thoughtfully to

-Greswold, who was by his side, 'it will not make any difference, will

-it? I shall always be _the_ one?'

-

-'What do you mean?' asked the physician.

-

-'They will none of them be like me? They will none of them be as great

-as I am? Not if I have twenty?'

-

-'You will be always the eldest son, of course,' said the old man,

-repressing a smile. 'Yes; you will be their head, their chief, their

-leading spirit; but for that reason you will have much more expected of

-you than will be expected of them; you will have to learn much more,

-and try to be always good. Do you follow me, Count Bela?'

-

-Bela's little rosy mouth shut itself up contemptuously. 'I shall be

-always the eldest, and I shall do whatever I like. I do not see why

-they want any others than me.'

-

-'You will not do always what you like, Count Bela.'

-

-'Who shall prevent me?'

-

-'The law, which you will have to obey like everyone else.'

-

-'I shall make the laws when I am a little older,' said Bela. 'And they

-will be for my brothers and all the people, but not for me. I shall do

-what I like.'

-

-'That will be very ungenerous,' said Greswold, quietly. 'Your mother,

-the Countess, is very different. She is stern to herself, and indulgent

-to all others. That is why she is beloved. If you will think of

-yourself so much when you are grown up, you will be hated.'

-

-Bela flushed a little guiltily and angrily.

-

-'That will not matter,' he said sturdily. 'I shall please myself

-always.'

-

-'And be unkind to your brothers?'

-

-'Not if they do what I tell them; I will be very kind if they are good.

-Gela always does what I tell him,' he added after a little pause; 'I do

-not want any but Gela.'

-

-'It is natural you should be fondest of Gela, as he is nearest your

-age, but you must love all the brothers you may have, or you will

-distress your mother very greatly.'

-

-'Why does she want any but me?' said Bela, clinging to his sense of

-personal wrong. And he was not to be turned from that.

-

-'She wants others beside you,' said the physician, adroitly, 'because

-to be happy she needs children who are tender-hearted, unselfish, and

-obedient. You are none of those things, my Count Bela, so Heavens ends

-her consolation.'

-

-Bela opened his blue eyes very wide, and he coloured with mortification.

-

-'She always loves me best!' he said haughtily. 'She always will!'

-

-'That will depend on yourself, my little lord,' said Greswold, with a

-significance which was not lost on the quick intelligence of the child;

-and he never forgot this day when his brother Victor was shown to the

-people.

-

-'There will be no lack of heirs to Hohenszalras,' said the Princess

-meanwhile to his father.

-

-He thought as he heard:

-

-'And if ever she know she can break her marriage like a rotten thread!

-Those boys can all be made as nameless as I was! Would she do it?

-Perhaps not, for the children's sake. God knows----she might change

-even to them; she might hate them as she loves them now, because they

-are mine.'

-

-Even as he sat beside her couch with her hand in his these thoughts

-pursued and haunted him. Remorse and fear consumed him. When she looked

-at the blue eyes of her new-born son, and said to him with a happy

-smile: 'He will be just as much like you as the others are,' he could

-only think with a burning sense of shame, 'Like me! like a traitor!

-like a liar! like a thief!'----and the faces of these children seemed

-to him like those of avenging angels.

-

-He thought with irrepressible agony of the fact that her country's

-laws would divorce her from him if she chose, did ever the truth come

-to her ear. He had always known this indeed, as he had known all the

-other risks he ran in doing what he did. Put it had been far away,

-indistinct, unasserted; whenever the memory of it had passed over him

-he had thrust it away. Now when another knew his secret, he could

-not do so. He had a strange sensation of having fallen from some

-great height; of having all his life slide away like melting ice out

-of his hands. He never once doubted for an instant the good faith of

-Egon Vàsàrhely. He knew that his lips would no more unclose to tell

-his secret than the glaciers yonder would find human voice. But the

-consciousness that one man lived, moved, breathed, rose with each day,

-and went amongst other men, bearing with him that fatal knowledge,

-made it now impossible for himself ever to forget it. A dull remorse,

-a sharp apprehension, were for ever his companions, and never left him

-for long even in his sweetest hours. He did justice to the magnificent

-generosity of the one who spared him. Egon Vàsàrhely knew, as he knew,

-that she, hearing the truth, could annul the marriage if she chose.

-His children would have no rights, no name, if their mother chose to

-separate herself from him. The law would make her once more as free

-as though she had never wedded him. He knew that, and the other man

-who loved her knew it too. He could measure the force of Vàsàrhely's

-temptation as that simple and heroic soldier could not stoop to measure

-his.

-

-He was deeply unhappy, but he concealed it from her. Even when his

-heart beat against hers it seemed to him always that there was an

-invisible wall between himself and her. He longed to tell the whole

-truth to her, but he was afraid; if the whole pain and shame had been

-his own that the confession would have caused, he would have dared it;

-but he had not the heart to inflict on her such suffering, not the

-courage to destroy their happiness with his own hand. Egon Vàsàrhely

-alone knew, and he for her sake would never speak. As for the reproach

-of his own conscience, as for the remorse that the words of his

-children might at any moment call up in him, these lie must bear. He

-was a man of cool judgment and of ready resource, and though he had

-never foreseen the sharp repentance which his better nature now felt,

-he knew that he would be able to live it down as he had crushed out so

-many other scruples. He vowed to himself that as far as in him lay he

-would atone for his act. The moral influence of his wife had not been

-without effect on him. Not altogether, but partially, he had grown to

-believe in what she believed in, of the duty of human life to other

-lives; he had not her sympathy for others, but he had admired it, and

-in his own way followed it, though without her faith.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXVIII.

-

-

-Life went on in its old pathways at Hohenszalras. Nothing more, was

-said by him, or to him, as to his rejection of the Russian mission. She

-was niggard in nothing, and when she offered her faith or pledged her

-silence, gave both entirely and ungrudgingly. Sabran to her showed an

-increase of devotion, an absolute adoration which would in themselves

-have sufficed to console any woman; and if the most observant member

-of their household, Greswold, perceived in him a preoccupation, a

-languor, a gloom, which boded ill for their future peace, the old man

-was too loyal in his attachment not to endeavour to shake off his own

-suspicions and discredit his own penetration.

-

-The Princess had been favoured by a note from Olga Brancka, in which

-that lady wrote: 'Have you discovered the nature of his refusal of

-Russia? Myself, I believe that I was to blame. I hinted to him that

-he would be tempted to his old sins in St. Petersburg, and that Wanda

-would be very miserable there. It seems that this was enough for the

-tender heart of this devoted lover, and too much for his wisdom and

-his judgment; he rejected the mission after accepting it. I believe

-the Court is furious. I am not _de service_ now, so that I have no

-opportunity of endeavouring to restore him to favour; but I imagine the

-Emperor will not quarrel for ever with the Hohenszalrasburg.

-

-The letter restored him at least to the favour of Mdme. Ottilie.

-Exaggerated as such a scruple appeared it did not seem to her

-impossible in a man whose devotion to his wife she daily witnessed,

-shown in a hundred traits. She blamed him still severely in her own

-thoughts for what she held an inexcusable disrespect to the Crown, but

-she kept her word scrupulously and never spoke to him on the subject.

-

-'Where else in the wide world would any man have found such

-forbearance?' he thought with gratitude, and he knew that nowhere

-would such delicate sentiment have existed outside the pale of that

-fine patrician dignity which is as incapable of the vulgarity of

-inquisitiveness and interrogation as was the Spartan of lament.

-

-The months went by. They did not leave home; he seemed to have lost

-all wish for any absence, and even repulsed the idea of inviting the

-usual house parties of the year. She supposed that he was averse to

-meeting people who might recur to his rejection of the post he had

-once accepted. The summer passed and the autumn came; he spent his

-time in occasional sport, the keen and perilous sport of the Austrian

-mountains, and more often and more faithfully beguiled himself with

-those arts of which he was a brilliant master, though he would call

-himself no more than a mere amateur. From the administration of the

-estates he had altogether withdrawn himself.

-

-'You are so much wiser than I,' he always said to her; and when she

-would have referred to him, replied: 'You have your lawyers; they are

-all honest men. Consult them rather than me.'

-

-With the affairs of Idrac only he continued to concern himself a

-little, and was persistent in setting aside all its revenues to

-accumulate for his second son.

-

-'I wish you cared more about all these things,' she said to him one

-day, when she had in her hand the reports from the mines of Galicia.

-He answered angrily, 'I have no right to them. They are not mine. If

-you chose to give them all away to the Crown I should say nothing.'

-

-'Not even for the children's sake?'

-

-'No: you would be entirely justified if you liked to give the children

-nothing.'

-

-'I really do not understand you,' she said in great surprise.

-

-'Everything is yours,' he said abruptly.

-

-'And the children too, surely!' she said, with a smile: but the

-strangeness of the remark disquieted her. 'It is over-sensitiveness,'

-she thought; 'he can never altogether forget that he was poor. It is

-for that reason public life would have been so good for him; dignities

-which he enjoyed of his own, honours that he arrived at through his own

-attainments.'

-

-Chagrined to have lost, the opportunity of winning personal honours

-in a field congenial to him, the sense that everything was hers could

-hardly fail to gall him sometimes constantly, though she strove to

-efface any remembrance or reminder that it was so.

-

-In the midsummer of that year, whilst they were quite alone, they were

-surprised by another letter from Mdme. Brancka, in which she proposed

-to take Hohenszalras on her way from France to Tsarköe Selo, where she

-was about to pay a visit which could not be declined by her.

-

-When in the spring he had written with formality to her to announce the

-birth of his son Victor, she had answered with a witty coquettish reply

-such as might well have been provocative of further correspondence.

-But he had not taken up the invitation. Mortified and irritated, she

-had compared his writing with the piece of burnt paper, and been more

-satisfied than ever that he had penned the name of Vassia Kazán. But

-even were it so, what, she wondered, had it to do with Russia? He

-and Egon Vàsàrhely were not friends so intimate that they had any

-common interests one with the other. The mystery had interested her

-intensely when her rapid intuition had connected the resignation of

-Sabran's appointment with the messenger sent to him from Taróc. Her

-impatience to be again in his presence grew intense. She imagined a

-thousand stories, to cast each aside in derision as impossible. All her

-suppositions were built upon no better basis than a fragment of charred

-paper; but her shrewd intuition bore her into the region of truth,

-though the actual truth of course never suggested itself to her even in

-her most fantastic and dramatic visions. Finally she thus proposed to

-visit Hohenszalras in the midsummer months.

-

-'Last year you had such a crowd about you,' she wrote, 'that I

-positively saw nothing of you, _liebe_ Wanda. You are alone now, and

-I venture to propose myself for a fortnight. You cannot exactly be

-said to be in the way to anywhere, but I shall make you so. When one

-is going to Russia, a matter of another five hundred miles or so is a

-bagatelle.'

-

-'We must let her come,' said Wanda, as she gave the letter to Sabran,

-who, having read it, said with much sincerity----

-

-'For heaven's sake, do not. A fortnight of Madame Olga! as well

-have----a century of "Madame Angot!"'

-

-'Can I prevent her?'

-

-'You can make some excuse. I do not like Mdme. Brancka.'

-

-'Why?'

-

-He hesitated; he could not tell her what he had felt at the ball of

-the Hofburg. 'She reminds me of a woman who drew me into a thousand

-follies, and to cap her good deeds betrayed me to the Prussians. If you

-must let her come I will go away. I will go and see your haras on the

-Pusztas.'

-

-'Are you serious?'

-

-'Quite serious. Were I not ashamed of such a weakness, I should use a

-feminine expression. I should say "_elle me donne des nerfs._"'

-

-'I think she has a great admiration for you, and she does not conceal

-it.'

-

-'Merely because she is sensible that I do not like her. Such women as

-she are discontented if only one person fail to admit their charm. She

-is accustomed to admiration, and she is not scrupulous as to how she

-obtains it.'

-

-'My dear! pray remember that she is our guest, and doubly our relative.'

-

-'I will try and remember it; but, believe me, all honour is wholly

-wasted upon Mdme. Olga. You offer her a coin of which the person and

-the superscription are alike unknown to her.'

-

-'You are very severe,' said his wife.

-

-She looked at him, and perceived that he was not jesting, that he

-was on the contrary disturbed and annoyed, and she remembered the

-persistence with which Olga Brancka had sought his companionship and

-accompanied him on his sport in the summer of her visit there.

-

-'If she had not married first my brother and then my cousin, she would

-never have been an intimate friend of mine,' she continued. 'She is of

-a world wholly opposed to all my tastes. For you to be absent, if she

-came, would be too marked, I think; but we can both leave, if you like.

-I am well enough for any movement now, and I can leave the child with

-his nurse. Shall we make a tour in Hungary? The haras will interest

-you. There are the mines, too, that one ought to visit.'

-

-He received her assent with gratitude and delight. He felt that he

-would have gone to the uttermost ends of the earth rather than run the

-risk of spending long lonely summer days in the excitation of Mdme.

-Brancka's presence. He detested her, he would always detest her; and

-yet when he shut his eyes he saw her so clearly, with the malicious

-light in her dusky glance, and the jewelled butterfly trembling about

-her breasts.

-

-'She shall never come under Wanda's roof if I can prevent it,' he

-thought, remembering her as she had been that night.

-

-A few days later the Countess Brancka, much to her rage, had a note

-from the Hohenszalrasburg, which said that they were on the point of

-leaving for Hungary and Galicia, but that if she would come there in

-their absence, the Princess Ottilie, who remained, would be charmed to

-receive her. Of course she excused herself, and did not go. A visit to

-the solitudes of the Iselthal, where she would, see no one but a lady

-of eighty years old and four little children, had few attractions for

-the adventurous and vivacious wife of Stefan Brancka.

-

-'It is only Wanda's jealousy,' she thought, and was furious; but she

-looked at herself in the mirror, and was almost consoled as she thought

-also, 'He avoids me. Therefore he is afraid of me!'

-

-She went to her god, _le monde_, and worshipped at all its shrines and

-in all its fashions; but in the midst of the turmoil and the triumphs,

-the worries and the intoxications of her life, she did not lose her

-hold on her purpose, nor forget that he had slighted her. His beautiful

-face, serene and scornful, was always before her. He might have been at

-her feet, and he chose to dwell beside his wife under those solitary

-forests, amongst those solitary mountains of the High Tauern!

-

-'With a woman he has lived with all these eight years!' she thought,

-with furious impatience. 'With a woman who has grafted the Lady of La

-Garaye on Libussa, who never gives him a moment's jealousy, who is

-as flawless as an ivory statue or a marble throne, who suckles her

-children and could spin their clothes if she wanted, who never cares

-to go outside the hills of her own home----the Teuton _Hausfrau_ to

-her finger-tips.' And she was all the more bitter and the more angered

-because, always as she tried to think thus, the image of Wanda rose up

-before her, as she had seen her so often at Vienna or Hohenszalras,

-with the great pearls on her hair and on her breast.

-

-/$

-A planet at whose passing, lo!

-All lesser stars recede, and night

-Grows clear as day thus lighted up

-By all her loveliness, which burns

-With pure white flame of chastity;

-And fires of fair thought....

-$/

-

-

-END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

-

-

-

-

-

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-

+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52136 ***
+WANDA
+
+BY
+
+OUIDA
+
+
+
+    _'Doch!--alles was dazu mich trieb;_
+    _Gott!--war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'_
+                                         Goethe
+
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES
+
+VOL. II.
+
+
+London
+
+CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
+
+1883
+
+
+
+
+WANDA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+On her return she spoke of her royal friends, of her cousins, of
+society, of her fears for the peace of Europe, and her doubts as to
+the strength of the empire; but she did not speak of the one person of
+whom, beyond all others, Mdme. Ottilie was desirous to hear. When some
+hours had passed, and still she had never alluded to the existence of,
+the Princess could bear silence no longer, and casting prudence to the
+winds, said boldly and with impatience:
+
+'And your late guest? Have you nothing to tell me? Surely you have seen
+him?'
+
+'He called once,' she answered, 'and I heard him speak at the Chamber.'
+
+'And was that all?' cried the Princess, disappointed.
+
+'He speaks very well in public,' added Wanda, 'and he said many tender
+and grateful things of you, and sent you many messages--such grateful
+ones that my memory is too clumsy a tray to hold such eggshell china.'
+
+She was angered with herself as she spoke, but the fragrance of the
+white lilac and the remembrance of its donor pursued her--angered
+with herself, too, because Hohenszalras seemed for the moment sombre,
+solitary, still, almost melancholy, wrapped in that winter whiteness
+and stillness which she had always loved so well.
+
+The next morning she saw all her people, visited her schools and her
+stables, and tried to persuade herself that she was as contented as
+ever.
+
+The aurist came from Paris shortly after her, and consoled the Princess
+by assuring her that the slight deafness she suffered from occasionally
+was due to cold.
+
+'Of course!' she said, with some triumph. 'These mountains, all this
+water, rain whenever there is not snow, snow whenever there is not
+rain; it is a miracle, and the mercy of Heaven, if one saves any of
+one's five senses uninjured in a residence here.'
+
+She had her satin hood trebly wadded, and pronounced the aurist a
+charming person. Herr Greswold in an incautious moment had said to her
+that deafness was one of the penalties of age and did not depend upon
+climate. A Paris doctor would not have earned his fee of two hundred
+napoleons if he had only produced so ungallant a truism. She heard a
+little worse after his visit, perhaps, but if so, she said that was
+caused by the additional wadding in her hood. He had told her to use a
+rose-water syringe, and Herr Greswold was forbidden her presence for a
+week because he averred that you might as well try to melt the glacier
+with a lighted pastille.
+
+The aurist gone, life at Hohenszalras resumed its even tenor; and
+except for, the post, the tea-cups, and the kind of dishes served at
+dinner, hardly differed from what life had been there in the sixteenth
+century, save that there were no saucy pages playing in the court, and
+no destriers stamping in the stalls, and no culverins loaded on the
+bastions.
+
+'It is like living between the illuminated leaves of one of the Hours,'
+thought the Princess, and though her conscience told her that to dwell
+so in a holy book like a pressed flower was the most desirable life
+that could be granted by Heaven to erring mortality, still she felt it
+was dull. A little gossip, a little movement, a little rolling of other
+carriage-wheels than her own, had always seemed desirable to her.
+
+Life here was laid down on broad lines. It was stately, austere,
+tranquil; one day was a mirror of all the rest. The Princess fretted
+for some little _frou-frou_ of the world to break its solemn silence.
+
+When Wanda returned from her ride one forenoon she said a little
+abruptly to her aunt:
+
+'I suppose you will be glad to hear you have convinced me. I have
+telegraphed to Ludwig to open and air the house in Vienna; we will go
+there for three months. It is, perhaps, time I should be seen at Court.'
+
+'It is a very sudden decision!' said Madame Ottilie, doubting that she
+could hear aright.
+
+'It is the fruit of your persuasions, dear mother mine! The only
+advantage in having houses in half a dozen different places is to be
+able to go to them without consideration. You think me obstinate,
+whimsical, barbaric; the Kaiserin thinks so too. I will endeavour to
+conquer my stubbornness. We will go to Vienna next week. You will see
+all your old friends, and I all my old jewels.'
+
+The determination once made, she adhered to it. She had felt a vague
+annoyance at the constancy and the persistency with which regret for
+the lost society of Sabran recurred to her. She had attributed it to
+the solitude in which she lived: that solitude which is the begetter
+and the nurse of thought may also be the hotbed of unwise fancies.
+It was indeed a solitude filled with grave duties, careful labours,
+high desires and endeavours; but perhaps, she thought, the world for a
+while, even in its folly, might be healthier, might preserve her from
+the undue share which the memory of a stranger had in her musings.
+
+Her people, her lands, her animals, would none of them suffer by
+a brief absence; and perhaps there were duties due as well to her
+position as to her order. She was the only representative of the great
+Counts of Szalras. With the whimsical ingratitude to fate common
+to human nature, she thought she would sooner have been obscure,
+unnoticed, free. Her rank began to drag on her with something like the
+sense of a chain. She felt that she was growing irritable, fanciful,
+thankless; so she ordered the huge old palace in the Herrengasse to be
+got ready, and sought the world as others sought the cloister.
+
+In a week's time she was installed in Vienna, with a score of horses,
+two score of servants, and all the stir and pomp that attend a great
+establishment in the most aristocratic city of Europe, and she made her
+first appearance at a ball at the Residenz covered with jewels from
+head to foot; the wonderful old jewels that for many seasons had lain
+unseen in their iron coffers--opals given by Rurik, sapphires taken
+from Kara Mustafa, pearls worn by her people at the wedding of Mary of
+Burgundy, diamonds that had been old when Maria Theresa had been young.
+
+She had three months of continual homage, of continual flattery, of
+what others called pleasure, and what none could have denied was
+splendour. Great nobles laid their heart and homage before her feet,
+and all the city looked after her for her beauty as she drove her
+horses round the Ringstrasse. It left her all very cold and unamused
+and indifferent.
+
+She was impatient to be back at Hohenszalras, amidst the stillness of
+the woods, the sound of the waters.
+
+'You cannot say now that I do not care for the world, because I have
+forgotten what it was like,' she observed to her aunt.
+
+'I wish you cared more,' said the Princess. 'Position has its duties.'
+
+'I never dispute that; only I do not see that being wearied by society
+constitutes one of them. I cannot understand why people are so afraid
+of solitude; the routine of the world is quite as monotonous.'
+
+'If you only appreciated the homage that you receive----'
+
+'Surely one's mind is something like one's conscience: if one can be
+not too utterly discontented with what it says one does not need the
+verdict of others.'
+
+'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with
+your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your
+overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the
+one I possess.'
+
+'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be
+pride--the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely
+better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'
+
+'They are not all simpletons.'
+
+'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very
+stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well
+as of the Wurstel-Prater.'
+
+The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the
+Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw
+the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she
+was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something
+wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up,
+nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.
+
+The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain,
+and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging
+primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of
+the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging
+with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass
+was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale
+sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras,
+and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she
+returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.
+
+'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold,
+as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the
+Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias
+and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between
+the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of
+their stalls.
+
+'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert,
+as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with
+tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with
+'_Willkommen_' written on it.
+
+She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single
+word.
+
+How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that
+day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been
+sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.
+
+'That is the Stanhopea tigrina,' said Herr Greswold, touching one with
+reverent fingers; 'they are all very rare. It is a welcome worthy of
+you, my lady.'
+
+'A very extravagant one,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a certain
+displeasure that mingled with a softened emotion. 'Who brought it?'
+
+'The Marquis de Sabran, by _extra-poste_, himself this morning,'
+answered Hubert--an answer she did not expect. 'But he would not wait;
+he would not even take a glass of tokayer, or let his horses stay for a
+feed of corn.'
+
+'What knight-errantry!' said the Princess well pleased.
+
+'What folly!' said Wanda, but she had the basket of orchids taken to
+her own octagon room.
+
+It seemed as if he had divined how much of late she had thought of him.
+She was touched, and yet she was angered a little.
+
+'Surely she will write to him,' thought the Princess wistfully very
+often: but she did not write. To a very proud woman the dawning
+consciousness of love is always an irritation, an offence, a failure, a
+weakness: the mistress of Hohenszalras could not quickly pardon herself
+for taking with pleasure the message of the orchids.
+
+A little while later she received a letter from Olga Brancka. In it she
+wrote from Paris:
+
+'Parsifal is doing wonders in the Chamber, that is, he is making Paris
+talk; his party will forbid him doing anything else. You certainly
+worked a miracle. I hear he never plays, never looks at an actress,
+never does anything wrong, and when a grand heiress was offered to
+him by her people refused her hand blandly but firmly. What is one to
+think? That he washed his soul white in the Szalrassee?'
+
+It was the subtlest flattery of all, the only flattery to which she
+would have been accessible, this entire alteration in the current
+of a man's whole life; this change in habit, inclination, temper,
+and circumstance. If he had approached her its charm would have been
+weakened, its motive suspected; but aloof and silent as he remained,
+his abandonment of all old ways, his adoption of a sterner and worthier
+career, moved her with its marked, mute homage of herself.
+
+When she read his discourses in the French papers she felt a glow
+of triumph, as if she had achieved some personal success; she felt
+a warmth at her heart as of something near and dear to her, which
+was doing well and wisely in the sight of men. His cause did not,
+indeed, as Olga Brancka had said, render tangible, practical, victory
+impossible for him, but he had the victories of eloquence, of
+patriotism, of high culture, of pure and noble language, and these
+blameless laurels seemed to her half of her own gathering.
+
+'Will you never reward him?' the Princess ventured to say at last,
+overcome by her own impatience to rashness. 'Never? Not even by a word?'
+
+'Hear mother,' said Wanda, with a smile which perplexed and baffled the
+Princess, 'if your hero wanted reward he would not be the leader of a
+lost cause. Pray do not suggest to me a doubt of his disinterestedness.
+You will do him very ill service.'
+
+The Princess was mute, vaguely conscious that she had said something
+ill-timed or ill-advised.
+
+Time passed on and brought beautiful weather in the month of June,
+which here in the High Tauern means what April does in the south.
+Millions of song-birds were shouting in the woods, and thousands of
+nests were suspended on the high branches of the forest trees, or
+hidden in the greenery of the undergrowth; water-birds perched and
+swung in the tall reeds where the brimming streams tumbled; the purple,
+the white, and the grey herons were all there, and the storks lately
+flown home from Asia or Africa were settling in bands by the more
+marshy grounds beside the northern shores of the Szalrassee.
+
+One afternoon she had been riding far and fast, and on her return a
+telegram from Vienna had been brought to her, sent on from Lienz.
+Having opened it, she approached her aunt and said with an unsteady
+voice:
+
+'War is declared between France and Prussia!'
+
+'We expected it; we are ready for it,' said the Princess, with all
+her Teutonic pride in her eyes. 'We shall show her that we cannot be
+insulted with impunity.'
+
+'It is a terrible calamity for the world,' said Wanda, and her face was
+very pale.
+
+The thought which was present to her was that Sabran would be foremost
+amidst volunteers. She did not hear a word of all the political
+exultation with which Princess Ottilie continued to make her militant
+prophecies. She shivered as with cold in the warmth of the midsummer
+sunset.
+
+'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her
+house.
+
+The Princess demurred.
+
+'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all
+the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial.
+You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the
+especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge
+Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'
+
+'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.
+
+She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from
+her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.
+
+In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War
+is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss
+of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I
+shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw
+bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every
+sword she has.'
+
+Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:
+
+'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her
+soil is bound to arm.'
+
+More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her
+grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.
+
+But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,'
+written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were
+filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that
+was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a
+child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian
+campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made
+her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal
+conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she
+became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had
+at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from
+the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the
+shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the
+command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their
+own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was
+congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of
+his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally,
+in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name
+mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That
+was all.
+
+The autumn began to deepen into winter, and complete silence covered
+all his life. She thought with a great remorse--if he were dead?
+Perhaps he was dead? Why had she been always so cold to him? She
+suffered intensely; all the more intensely because it was not a sorrow
+which she could not confess even to herself. When she ceased altogether
+to hear anything of or from him, she realised the hold which he had
+taken on her life.
+
+These months of suspense did more to attach her to him than years
+of assiduous and ardent homage could have done. She, a daughter of
+soldiers, had always felt any man almost unmanly who had not received
+the baptism of fire.
+
+Mdme. Ottilie talked of him constantly, wondered frequently if he were
+wounded, slain, or in prison; she never spoke his name, and dreaded to
+hear it.
+
+Greswold, who perceived an anxiety in her that, he did not dare to
+allude to, ransacked every journal that was published in German to find
+some trace of Sabran's name. At the first he saw often some mention of
+the Cuirassiers d'Orléans, and of their intrepid Colonel Commandant:
+some raid, skirmish, or charge in which they had been conspicuous for
+reckless gallantry. But after the month of November he could find
+nothing. The whole regiment seemed to have been obliterated from
+existence.
+
+Winter settled down on Central Austria with cold silence, with roads
+blocked and mountains impassable. The dumbness, the solitude around
+her, which she had always loved so well, now grew to her intolerable.
+It seemed like death.
+
+Paris capitulated. The news reached her at the hour of a violent
+snowstorm; the postillion of her post-sledge bringing it had his feet
+frozen.
+
+Though her cousins of Lilienhöhe were amongst those who entered the
+city as conquerors, the fate of Paris smote her with a heavy blow. She
+felt as if the cold of the outer world had chilled her very bones, her
+very soul. The Princess, looking at her, was afraid to rejoice.
+
+On the following day she wrote to her cousin Hugo of Lilienhöhe, who
+was in Paris with the Imperial Guard. She asked him to inquire for and
+tell her the fate of a friend, the Marquis de Sabran.
+
+In due time Prince Hugo answered:
+
+'The gentleman you asked for was one of the most dangerous of our
+enemies. He commanded a volunteer cavalry regiment, which was almost
+cut to pieces by the Bavarian horse in an engagement before Orleans.
+Two or three alone escaped; their Colonel was severely wounded in
+the thigh, and had his charger shot dead under him. He was taken
+prisoner by the Bavarians after a desperate resistance. Whilst he
+lay on the ground he shot three of our men with his revolver. He was
+sent to a fortress, I think Ehrenbreitstein, but I will inquire more
+particularly. I am sorry to think that you have any French friends.
+
+By-and-by she heard that he had been confined not at Ehrenbreitstein
+but at a more obscure and distant fortress on the Elbe; that his wounds
+had been cured, and that he would shortly be set free like other
+prisoners of war. In the month of March in effect she received a brief
+letter from his own hand, gloomy and profoundly dejected.
+
+'Our plans were betrayed,' he wrote. 'We were surprised and surrounded
+just as we had hobbled our horses and lain down to rest, after being
+the whole day in the saddle. Bavarian cavalry, outnumbering us four to
+one, attacked us almost ere we could mount our worn-out beasts. My
+poor troopers were cut to pieces. They hunted me down when my charger
+dropped, and I was made a prisoner. When they could they despatched
+me to one of their places on the Elbe. I have been here December and
+January. I am well. I suppose I must be very strong; nothing kills
+me. They are now about to send me back to the frontier. My beautiful
+Paris! What a fate! But I forget, I cannot hope for your sympathy; your
+kinsmen are our conquerors. I know not whether the house I lived in
+there exists, but if you will write me a word at Romaris, you will be
+merciful, and show me that you do not utterly despise a lost cause and
+a vanquished soldier.'
+
+She wrote to him at Romaris, and the paper she wrote on felt her tears.
+In conclusion she said:
+
+'Whenever you will, come and make sure for yourself that both the
+Princess Ottilie and I honour courage and heroism none the less because
+it is companioned by misfortune.'
+
+But he did not come.
+
+She understood why he did not. An infinite pity for him overflowed her
+heart. His public career interrupted, his country ruined, his future
+empty, what remained to him? Sometimes she thought, with a blush on her
+face, though she was all alone: 'I do.' But then, if he never came to
+hear that?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+The little hamlet of Romaris, on the coast of Finisterre, was very dull
+and dark and silent. A few grave peasant women knitted as they walked
+down the beach or sat at their doors; a few children did the same. Out
+on the _landes_ some cows were driven through the heather and broom;
+out on the sea some fishing-boats with rough, red sails were rocking to
+and fro. All was melancholy, silent, poor; life was hard at Romaris for
+all. The weatherbeaten church looked grey and naked on a black rock;
+the ruins of the old _manoir_ faced it amidst sands and surfs; the only
+thing of beauty was the bay, and that for the folk of Romaris had no
+beauty; they had seen it kill so many.
+
+There was never any change at Romaris, unless it were a change in the
+weather, a marriage, a birth, or a death. Therefore the women and
+children who were knitting had lifted up their heads as a stranger,
+accompanied by their priest, had come down over the black rocks, on
+which the church stood, towards the narrow lane that parted the houses
+where they clustered together face to face on the edge of the shore.
+
+Their priest, an old man much loved by them, came slowly towards them,
+conversing in low tones with the stranger, who had been young and
+handsome, and a welcome sight, since a traveller to Romaris always
+needed a sailing-boat or a rowing-boat, a guide over the moors, or a
+drive in an ox-waggon through the deep-cut lanes of the country.
+
+But they had ceased to think of such things as these when the curate,
+with his hands extended as when he blessed them, had said in _bas_
+Breton as he stood beside them:
+
+'My children, this is the last of the Sabrans of Romaris, come back to
+us from the far west that lies in the setting of the sun. Salute him,
+and show him that in Brittany we do not forget--nay, not in a hundred
+years.'
+
+Many years had gone by since then, and of the last of the old race,
+Romaris had scarcely seen more than when he had been hidden from
+their sight on the other side of the heaving ocean. Sabran rarely came
+thither. There was nothing to attract a man who loved the world and
+who was sought by it, in the stormy sea coast, the strip of sea-lashed
+oak forest, that one tall tower with its gaunt walls of stone which
+was all that was left of what had once been the fortress of his race.
+Now and then they saw him, chiefly when he had heard that there was
+wild weather on the western coast, and at such times he would go out
+in their boats to distressed vessels, or steer through churning waters
+to reach a fishing-smack in trouble, with a wild courage and an almost
+fierce energy which made him for the moment one of themselves. But
+such times had been few, and all that Romaris really knew of the last
+marquis was that he was a gay gentleman away there in distant Paris.
+
+He had been a mere name to them. Now and then he had sent fifty
+napoleons, or a hundred, to the old priest for such as were poor or
+sick amongst them. That was all. Now after the war he came hither.
+Paris had become hateful to him; his political career was ended, at
+all events for the time; the whole country groaned in anguish; the
+vices and follies that had accompanied his past life disgusted him
+in remembrance. He had been wounded and a prisoner; he had suffered
+betrayal at unworthy hands; Cochonette had sold him to the Prussians,
+in revenge of his desertion of her.
+
+He was further removed from the Countess von Szalras than ever. In the
+crash with which the Second Empire had fallen and sunk out of sight for
+evermore, his own hopes had gone down like a ship that sinks suddenly
+in a dark night. All his old associations were broken, half his old
+friends were dead or ruined; gay châteaux that he had ever been welcome
+at were smoking ruins or melancholy hospitals; the past had been
+felled to the ground like the poor avenues of the Bois. It affected
+him profoundly. As far as he was capable of an impersonal sentiment
+he loved France, which had been for so many years his home, and which
+had always seemed to smile at him with indulgent kindness. Her vices,
+her disgrace, her feebleness, her fall, hurt him with an intense pain
+that was not altogether selfish, but had in it a nobler indignation, a
+nobler regret.
+
+When he was released by the Prussians and sent across the frontier, he
+went at once to this sad sea village of Romaris, to collect as best
+he might the shattered fragments of his life, which seemed to him as
+though it had been thrown down by an earthquake. He had resigned his
+place as deputy when he had offered his sword to France; he had now no
+career, no outlet for ambition, no occupation. Many of his old friends
+were dead or ruined; although such moderate means as he possessed were
+safe, they were too slender to give him any position adequate to his
+rank. His old life in Paris, even if Paris arose from her tribulations,
+gay and glorious once more, seemed to him altogether impossible. He had
+lost taste for those pleasures and distractions which had before the
+war--or before his sojourn on the Holy Isle--seemed to him the Alpha
+and Omega of a man's existence. '_Que faire?_' he asked himself wearily
+again and again. He did not even know whether his rooms in Paris had
+been destroyed or spared; a few thousands of francs which he had
+made by a successful speculation years before, and placed in foreign
+funds, were all he had to live on. His keen sense told him that the
+opportunity which might have replaced the Bourbon throne had been lost
+through fatal hesitation. His own future appeared to him like a blank
+dead wall that rose up in front of him barring all progress; he was no
+longer young enough to select a career and commence it. With passionate
+self-reproach he lamented all the lost irrevocable years that he had
+wasted.
+
+Romaris was not a place to cheer a disappointed and dejected soldier
+who had borne the burning pain of bodily wounds and the intolerable
+shame of captivity in a hostile land. Its loneliness, its darkness,
+its storms, its poverty, had nothing in them with which to restore his
+spirit to hope or his sinews to ambition. In these cold, bleak, windy
+days of a dreary and joyless spring-time, the dusky moors and the
+gruesome sea were desolate, without compensating grandeur. The people
+around him were all taciturn, dull, stupid; they had not suffered by
+the war, but they understood that, poor as they were, they would have
+to bear their share in the burden of the nation's ransom. They barred
+their doors and counted their hoarded gains in the dark with throbbing
+hearts, and stole out in the raw, wet, gusty dawns to kneel at the
+bleeding feet of their Christ. He envied them their faith; he could not
+comfort them, they could not comfort him; they were too far asunder.
+
+The only solace he had was the knowledge that he had done his duty by
+France, and to the memory of those whose name he bore; that he had
+rendered what service he could; that he had not fled from pain and
+peril; that he had at least worn his sword well and blamelessly; that
+he had not abandoned his discrowned city of pleasure in the day of
+humiliation and martyrdom. The only solace he had was that he felt
+Wanda von Szalras herself could have commanded him to do no more than
+he had done in this the Année Terrible.
+
+But, though his character had been purified and strengthened by the
+baptism of fire, and though his egotism had been destroyed by the
+endless scenes of suffering and of heroism which he had witnessed, he
+could not in a year change so greatly that he could be content with the
+mere barren sense of duty done and honour redeemed. He was deeply and
+restlessly miserable. He knew not where to turn, either for occupation
+or for consolation. Time hung on his hands like a wearisome wallet of
+stones.
+
+When all the habits of life are suddenly rent asunder, they are like a
+rope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or they may be
+thrown altogether aside and a new strand woven, but they will never be
+the same thing again.
+
+Romaris, with its few wind-tortured trees and its leaden-hued dangerous
+seas, seemed to him, indeed, a _champ des trépassés_, as it was called,
+a field of death. The naked, ugly, half-ruined towers, which no ivy
+shrouded and no broken marble ennobled, as one or the other would have
+done had it been in England or in Italy, was a dreary residence for
+a man who was used to all the elegant and luxurious habits of a man
+of the world, who was also a lover of art and a collector of choice
+trifles. His rooms had been the envy of his friends, with all their
+eighteenth century furniture, and their innumerable and unclassified
+treasures; when he had opened his eyes of a morning a pastel of La
+Tour had smiled at him, rose-coloured windows had made even a grey
+sky smile. Without, there had been the sound of wheels going down
+the gay Boulevard Haussmann. All Paris had passed by, tripping and
+talking, careless and mirthful, beneath his gilded balconies bright
+with canariensis and volubilis; and on a little table, heaped in
+their hundreds, had been cards that bade him to all the best and most
+agreeable houses, whilst, betwixt them, slipped coyly in many an
+amorous note, many an unlooked-for declaration, many an eagerly-desired
+appointment.
+
+'_Quel beau temps!_' he thought, as he awoke in the chill, bare,
+unlively chamber of the old tower by the sea; and it seemed to him
+that he must be dreaming: that all the months of the war had been
+a nightmare; that if he fully awakened he would find himself once
+more with the April sunshine shining through the rose glass, and
+the carriages rolling beneath over the asphalt road. But it was no
+nightmare, it was a terrible, ghastly reality to him, as to so many
+thousands. There were the scars on his breast and his loins where
+the Prussian steel had hacked and the Prussian shot had pierced him;
+there was his sword in a corner all dinted, notched, stained; there
+was a crowd of hideous ineffaceable tumultuous memories; it was all
+true enough, only too true, and he was alone at Romaris, with all his
+dreams and ambitions faded into thin air, vanished like the blown burst
+bubbles of a child's sport.
+
+In time to come he might recover power and nerve to recommence his
+struggle for distinction, but at present it seemed to him that all was
+over. His imprisonment had shaken and depressed him as nothing else
+in the trials of war could have done. He had been shut up for months
+alone, with his own desperation. To a man of high courage and impatient
+appetite for action there is no injury so great and in its effect so
+lasting as captivity. Joined to this he had the fever of a strong, and
+now perfectly hopeless, passion.
+
+Pacing to and fro the brick floor of the tower looking down on the
+sands and rocks of the coast, his thoughts were incessantly with Wanda
+von Szalras in her stately ancient house, built so high up amidst the
+mountains and walled in by the great forests and the ice slopes of the
+glaciers. In the heat and stench of carnage he had longed for a breath
+of that mountain breeze, for a glance from those serene eyes; he longed
+for them still.
+
+As he passed to and fro in the wild wintry weather, his heart was sick
+with hope deferred, with unavailing regret and repentance, with useless
+longings.
+
+It was near noonday; there was no sun; a heavy wrack of cloud was
+sweeping up from the west; on the air the odour of rotting fish and
+of fish-oil, and of sewage trickling uncovered to the beach, were too
+strong to be driven away by the pungency of the sea.
+
+The sea was high and moaning loud; the dusk was full of rain; the
+wind-tormented trees groaned and seemed to sigh; their boughs were
+still scarce in bud though May had come. He felt cold, weary, hopeless.
+His walk brought no warmth to his veins, and his thoughts none to
+his heart. The moisture of the air seemed to chill him to the bone,
+and he went within and mounted the broken granite stairs to his
+solitary chamber, bare of all save the simplest necessaries, gloomy
+and cheerless with the winds and the bats beating together at the high
+iron-barred casement. He wearily lighted a little oil lamp, and threw
+a log or two of drift-wood on the hearth and set fire to them with a
+faggot of dried ling.
+
+He dreaded his long lonely evening.
+
+He had set the lamp on a table while he had set fire to the wood; its
+light fell palely on a small white square thing. It was a letter. He
+took it up eagerly; he, who in Paris had often tossed aside, with a
+passing glance, the social invitations of the highest personages and
+the flattering words of the loveliest women.
+
+Here, any letter seemed a friend, and as he took up this his pulse
+quickened; he saw that it was sealed with armorial bearings which he
+knew--a shield bearing three vultures with two knights as supporters,
+and with the motto '_Gott und mein Schwert_;' the same arms, the same
+motto as were borne upon the great red and gold banner floating from
+the keep on the north winds at the Hohenszalrasburg. He opened it with
+a hand which shook a little and a quick throb of pleasure at his heart.
+He had scarcely hoped that she would write again to him. The sight of
+her writing filled him with a boundless joy, the purest he had ever
+known called forth by the hand of woman.
+
+The letter was brief, grave, kind. As he read he seemed to hear the
+calm harmonious voice of the lady of Hohenszalras speaking to him in
+her mellowed and softened German tongue.
+
+She sent him words of consolation, of sympathy, of congratulation, on
+the course of action he had taken in a time of tribulation, which had
+been the touchstone of character to so many.
+
+'Tell me something of Romaris,' she said in conclusion. 'I am sure
+you will grow to care for the place and the people, now that you seek
+both in the hour of the martyrdom of France. Have you any friends near
+you? Have you books? How do your days pass? How do you fill up time,
+which must seem so dull and blank to you after the fierce excitations
+and the rapid changes of war? Tell me all about your present life, and
+remember that we at Hohenszalras know how to honour courage and heroic
+misfortune.'
+
+He laid the letter down after twice reading it. Life seemed no longer
+all over for him. He had earned her praise and her sympathy. It was
+doubtful if years of the most brilliant political successes would have
+done as much as his adversity, his misadventure, and his daring had
+done for him in her esteem. She had the blood of twenty generations of
+warriors in her, and nothing appealed so forcibly to her sympathies and
+her instincts as the heroism of the sword. Those few lines too were
+a permission to write to her. He replied at once, with a gratitude
+somewhat guardedly expressed, and with details almost wholly impersonal.
+
+She was disappointed that he said so little of himself, but she did
+justice to the delicacy of the carefully guarded words from a man
+whose passion appealed to her by its silence, where it would only have
+alienated her by any eloquence. Of Romaris he said nothing, save that,
+had Dante ever been upon their coast, he would have added another canto
+to the 'Purgatorio,' more desolate and more unrelieved in gloom than
+any other.
+
+'Does he regret Cochonette?' she thought, with a jealous
+contemptuousness of which she was ashamed as soon as she felt it.
+
+Having once written to her, however, he thought himself privileged
+to write again, and did so several times. He wrote with ease, grace,
+and elegance: he wrote as he spoke, which gives this charm to
+correspondence, seem close at hand to the reader in intimate communion.
+The high culture of his mind displayed itself without effort, and he
+had that ability of polished expression which is in our day too often
+a neglected one. His letters became welcome to her: she answered them
+briefly, but she let him see that they were agreeable to her. There
+was in them the note of a profound depression, of an unuttered, but
+suggested hopelessness which touched her. If he had expressed it in
+plain words, it would not have appealed to her one half so forcibly.
+
+They remained only the letters of a man of culture to a woman capable
+of comprehending the intellectual movement of the time, but it
+was because of this limitation that she allowed them. Any show of
+tenderness would have both alarmed and alienated her. There was no
+reason after all, she thought, why a frank friendship should not exist
+between them.
+
+Sometimes she was surprised at herself for having conceded so much,
+and angry that she had done so. Happily he had the good taste to take
+no advantage of it. Interesting as his letters were they might have
+been read from the housetops. With that inconsistency of her sex from
+which hitherto she had always flattered herself she had been free, she
+occasionally felt a passing disappointment that they were not more
+personal as regarded himself. Reticence is a fine quality; it is the
+marble of human nature. But sometimes it provokes the impatience that
+the marble awoke in Pygmalion.
+
+Once only he spoke of his own aims. Then he wrote:
+
+'You bade me do good at Romaris. Candidly, I see no way to do it
+except in saving a crew off a wreck, which is not an occasion that
+presents itself every week. I cannot benefit these people materially,
+since I am poor; I cannot benefit them morally, because I have not
+their faith in the things unseen, and I have not their morality in the
+things tangible. They are God-fearing, infinitely patient, faithful
+in their daily lives, and they reproach no one for their hard lot,
+cast on an iron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at risk
+of their lives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What
+should I say to them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience,
+one petulant mutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only
+take them what the world always takes into solitude--discontent. It
+would be a cruel gift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any
+other. It is a homely saying that no blood comes out of a stone; so,
+out of a life saturated with the ironies, the contempt, the disbelief,
+the frivolous philosophies, the hopeless negations of what we call
+society, there can be drawn no water of hope and charity, for the
+well-head--belief--is dried up at its source. Some pretend, indeed,
+to find in humanity what they deny to exist as deity, but I should
+be incapable of the illogical exchange. It is to deny that the seed
+sprang from a root; it is to replace a grand and illimitable theism by
+a finite and vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased
+mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the
+poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a _vibrion_,
+a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere
+bundle of phosphorus and carbon? how can it contain the elements of
+worship; what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the
+weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty.
+It becomes ridiculous. The _carpe diem_ of the classic sensualists, the
+morality of the "Satyricon" or the "Decamerone," are its only natural
+concomitants and outcome; but as yet it is not honest enough to say
+this. It affects the soothsayer's long robe, the sacerdotal frown, and
+is a hypocrite.'
+
+In answer she wrote back to him:
+
+'I do not urge you to have my faith: what is the use? Goethe was
+right. It is a question between a man and his own heart. No one should
+venture to intrude there. But taking life even as you do, it is surely
+a casket of mysteries. May we not trust that at the bottom of it, as
+at the bottom of Pandora's, there may be hope? I wish again to think
+with Goethe that immortality is not an inheritance, but a greatness
+to be achieved like any other greatness, by courage, self-denial, and
+purity of purpose--a reward allotted to the just. This is fanciful, may
+be, but it is not illogical. And without being either a Christian or a
+Materialist, without beholding either majesty or divinity in humanity,
+surely the best emotion that our natures know--pity--must be large
+enough to draw us to console where we can, and sustain where we can, in
+view of the endless suffering, the continual injustice, the appalling
+contrasts, with which the world is full. Whether man be the _vibrion_
+or the heir to immortality, the bundle of carbon or the care of angels,
+one fact is indisputable: he suffers agonies, mental and physical,
+that are wholly out of proportion to the brevity of his life, while he
+is too often weighted from infancy with hereditary maladies, both of
+body and of character. This is reason enough, I think, for us all to
+help each other, even though we feel, as you feel, that we are as lost
+children wandering in a great darkness, with no thread or clue to guide
+us to the end.'
+
+When Sabran read this answer, he mused to himself:
+
+'Pity! how far would her pity reach? How great offences would it cover?
+She has compassion for the evil-doers, but it is easy, since the evil
+does not touch her. She sits on the high white throne of her honour and
+purity, and surveys the world with beautiful but serene compassion.
+If the mud of its miry labyrinths reached and soiled her, would her
+theories prevail? They are noble, but they are the theories of one who
+sits in safety behind a gate of ivory and jasper, whilst outside, far
+below, the bitter tide of the human sea surges and moans too far off,
+too low down, for its sound to reach within. _Tout comprendre, c'est
+tout pardonner._ But since she would never understand, how could she
+ever pardon? There are things that the nature must understand rather
+than the mind; and her nature is as high, as calm, as pure as the snows
+of her high hills.'
+
+And then the impulse came over him for a passing moment to tell her
+what he had never told any living creature; to make confession to
+her and abide her judgment, even though he should never see her face
+again. But the impulse shrank and died away before the remembrance
+of her clear, proud eyes. He could not humiliate himself before her.
+He would have risked her anger; he could not brave her disdain.
+Moreover, straight and open ways were hot natural to him, though he was
+physically brave to folly. There was a subtlety and a reticence in him
+which were the enemies of candour.
+
+To her he was more frank than to any other because her influence
+was great on him, and a strong reverence was awakened in him that
+was touched by a timid fear quite alien to a character naturally
+contemptuously cynical and essentially proud. But even to her he could
+not bring himself to be entirely truthful in revelation of his past.
+Truthfulness is in much a habit, and he had never acquired its habit.
+When he was most sincere there was always some reserve lying behind
+it. This was perhaps one of the causes of the attraction he exercised
+on all women. All women are allured by the shadows and the suggestions
+of what is but imperfectly revealed. Even on the clear, strong nature
+of Wanda von Szalras it had its unconscious and intangible charm. She
+herself was like daylight, but the subtle vague charm of the shadows
+had their seduction for her; Night holds dreams and passions that fade
+and flee before the lucid noon, and who, at noonday wishes not for
+night?
+
+For himself, the letters he received from her seemed the only things
+that bound him to life at all.
+
+The betrayal of him by a base and mercenary woman had hurt him more
+than it was worthy to do; it had stung his pride and saddened him in
+this period of adversity with a sense of degradation. He had been sold
+by a courtezan; it seemed to him to make him ridiculous as Samson was
+ridiculous, and he had no gates of Gaza to pull down upon himself and
+her. He could only be idle, and stare at an unoccupied and valueless
+future. The summer went on, and he remained at Romaris. An old servant
+had sent him word that all his possessions were safe in Paris, and his
+apartments unharmed; but he felt no inclination to go there: he felt no
+sympathy with Communists or Versaillists, with Gambetta or Gallifet. He
+stayed on at the old storm-beaten sea-washed tower, counting his days
+chiefly by the coming to him of any line from the castle by the lake.
+
+She seemed to understand that and pity it, for each week brought him
+some tidings.
+
+At midsummer she wrote him word that she was about to be honoured again
+by a two days' visit of her Imperial friends.
+
+'We shall have, perforce, a large house party,' she said. 'Will you
+be inclined this time to join it? It is natural that you should
+sorrow without hope for your country, but the fault of her disasters
+lies not with you. It is, perhaps, time that you should enter the
+world again; will you commence with what for two days only will be
+worldly--Hohenszalras? Your old friends the monks will welcome you
+willingly and lovingly on the Holy Isle?'
+
+He replied with gratitude, but he refused. He did not make any plea or
+excuse; he thought it best to let the simple denial stand by itself.
+She would understand it.
+
+'Do not think, however,' he wrote, 'that I am the less profoundly
+touched by your admirable goodness to a worsted and disarmed combatant
+in a lost cause.'
+
+'It is the causes that are lost which are generally the noble ones,'
+she said in answer. 'I do not see why you should deem your life at an
+end because a sham empire, which you always despised, has fallen to
+pieces. If it had not perished by a blow from without, it would have
+crumbled to pieces from its own internal putrefaction.'
+
+'The visit has passed off very well,' she continued. 'Every one was
+content, which shows their kindness, for these things are all of
+necessity so much alike that it is difficult to make them entertaining.
+The weather was fortunately fine, and the old house looked bright.
+You did rightly not to be present, if you felt festivity out of tone
+with your thoughts. If, however, you are ever inclined for another
+self-imprisonment upon the island, you know that your friends, both at
+the monastery and at the burg, will be glad to see you, and the monks
+bid me salute you with affection.'
+
+A message from Mdme. Ottilie, a little news of the horses, a few
+phrases on the politics of the hour, and the letter was done. But,
+simple as it was, it seemed to him to be like a ray of sunshine amidst
+the gloom of his empty chamber.
+
+From her the permission to return to the monastery when he would
+seemed to say so much. He wrote her back calm and grateful words of
+congratulation and cordiality; he commenced with the German formality,
+'Most High Lady,' and ended them with the equally formal 'devoted and
+obedient servant;' but it seemed to him as if under that cover of
+ceremony she must see his heart beating, his blood throbbing; she must
+know very well, and if knowing, she suffered him to return to the Holy
+Isle, why then--he was all alone, but he felt the colour rise to his
+face.
+
+'And I must not go! I must not go!' he thought, and looked at his
+pistols.
+
+He ought sooner to blow his brains out, and leave a written confession
+for her.
+
+The hoarse sound of the sea surging amongst the rocks at the base of
+the tower was all that stirred the stillness; evening was spreading
+over all the monotonous inland country; a west wind was blowing and
+rustling amidst the gorse; a woman led a cow between the dolmen,
+stopping for it to crop grass here and there; the fishing-boats were
+far out to sea, hidden under the vapours and the shadows. It was all
+melancholy, sad-coloured, chill, lonesome. As he leaned against the
+embrasure of the window and looked down, other familiar scenes, long
+lost, rose up to his memory. He saw a wide green rolling river, long
+lines of willows and of larches bending under a steel-hued sky, a vast
+dim plain stretching away to touch blue mountains, a great solitude,
+a silence filled at intervals with the pathetic song of the swans,
+chanting sorrowfully because the nights grew cold, the ice began to
+gather, the food became scanty, and they were many in number.
+
+'I must not go!' he said to himself; 'I must never see Hohenszalras.'
+
+And he lit his study lamp, and held her letter to it and burnt it.
+It was his best way to do it honour, to keep it holy. He had the
+letters of so many worthless women locked in his drawers and caskets
+in his rooms in Paris. He held himself unworthy to retain hers. He
+had burned each written by her as it had come to him, in that sort
+of exaggeration of respect with which it seemed to him she was most
+fittingly treated by him. There are less worthy offerings than the
+first scruple of an unscrupulous life. It is like the first pure drops
+that fall from a long turbid and dust-choked fountain.
+
+As he walked the next day upon the windblown, rock-strewn strip of sand
+that parted the old oak wood from the sea, he thought restlessly of her
+in those days of stately ceremony which suited her so well. What did he
+do here, what chance had he to be remembered by her? He chafed at his
+absence, yet it seemed to him impossible that he could ever go to her.
+What had been at first keen calculation with him had now become a finer
+instinct, was now due to a more delicate sentiment, a truer and loftier
+emotion. What could he ever look to her if he sought her but a mere
+base fortune-seeker, a mere liar, with no pride and no manhood in him?
+And what else was he? he thought, with bitterness, as he paced to and
+fro the rough strip of beach, with the dusky heaving waves trembling
+under a cloudy sky, where a red glow told the place of the setting sun.
+
+There were few bolder men living than He, and he was cynical and
+reckless before many things that most men reverence; but at the thought
+of her possible scorn he felt himself tremble like a child. He thought
+he would rather never see her face again than risk her disdain; there
+was in him a vague romantic wishfulness rather to die, so that she
+might think well of his memory, than live in her love through any
+baseness that would be unworthy of her.
+
+Sin had always seemed a mere superstitious name to him, and if he had
+abstained from its coarser forms it had been rather from the revolt
+of the fine taste of a man of culture than from any principle or
+persuasion of duty. Men he believed were but ephemera, sporting their
+small hours, weaving their frail webs, and swept away by the great
+broom of destiny as spiders by the housewife. In the spineless doctrine
+of altruism he had had too robust a temperament, too clear a reason,
+to seek a guide for conduct. He had lived for himself, and had seen
+no cause to do otherwise. That he had not been more criminal had been
+due partly to indolence, partly to pride. In his love for Wanda von
+Szalras, a love with which considerable acrimony had mingled at the
+first, he yet, through all the envy and the impatience which alloyed
+it, reached a moral height which he had never touched before. Between
+her and him a great gulf yawned. He abstained from any effort to pass
+it. It was the sole act of self-denial of a selfish life, the sole
+obedience to conscience in a character which obeyed no moral laws, but
+was ruled by a divided tyranny of natural instinct and conventional
+honour.
+
+The long silent hours of thought in the willow-shaded cloisters of
+the Holy Isle had not been wholly without fruit. He desired, with
+passion and sincerity, that she should think well of him, but he did
+not dare to wish for more; love offered from him to her seemed to him
+as if it would be a kind of blasphemy. He remembered in his far-off
+childhood, which at times still seemed so near to him, nearer than all
+that was around him, the vague, awed, wistful reverence with which
+he had kneeled in solitary hours before the old dim picture of the
+Madonna with the lamp burning above it, a little golden flame in the
+midst of the gloom; he remembered so well how his fierce young soul and
+his ignorant yearning child's heart had gone out in a half-conscious
+supplication, how it had seemed to him that if he only knelt long
+enough, prayed well enough, she would come down to him and lay her
+hands on him. It was all so long ago, yet, when he thought of Wanda
+von Szalras, something of that same emotion rose up in him, something
+of the old instinctive worship awoke in him. In thought he prostrated
+himself once more whenever the memory of her came to him. He had no
+religion; she became one to him.
+
+Meanwhile, he was constantly thinking restlessly to himself, 'Did I do
+ill not to go?'
+
+His bodily life was at Romaris, but his mental life was at
+Hohenszalras. He was always thinking of her as she would look in those
+days of the Imperial visit; he could see the stately ceremonies of
+welcome, the long magnificence of the banquets, the great Rittersaal
+with cressets of light blazing on its pointed emblazoned roofs; he
+could see her as she would move down the first quadrille which she
+would dance with her Kaiser: she would wear her favourite ivory-white
+velvet most probably, and her wonderful old jewels, and all her orders.
+She would look as if she had stepped down off a canvas of Velasquez
+or Vandyck, and she would be a little tired, a little contemptuous, a
+little indifferent, despite her loyalty; she would be glad, he knew,
+when the brilliant gathering was broken up, and the old house, and the
+yew terrace, and the green lake were all once more quiet beneath the
+rays of the watery moon. She was so unlike other women. She would not
+care about a greatness, a compliment, a success more or less. Such
+triumphs were for the people risen yesterday, not for a Countess von
+Szalras.
+
+He knew the simplicity of her life and the pride of her temper,
+and they moved him to the stronger admiration because he knew also
+that those mere externals which she held in contempt had for him an
+exaggerated value. He was scarcely conscious himself of how great a
+share the splendour of her position, united to her great indifference
+to it, had in the hold she had taken on his imagination and his
+passions. He did know that there were so much greater nobilities in
+her that he was vaguely ashamed of the ascendency which her mere rank
+took in his thoughts of her. Yet he could not divest her of it, and
+it seemed to enhance both her bodily and spiritual beauty, as the
+golden calyx of the lily makes its whiteness seem the whiter by its
+neighbourhood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+In the Iselthal the summer was more brilliant and warm than usual. The
+rains were less frequent, and the roses on the great sloping lawns
+beneath the buttresses and terraces of Hohenszalras were blooming
+freely.
+
+Their mistress did not for once give them much heed. She rode long and
+fast through the still summer woods, and came back after nightfall. Her
+men of business, during their interviews with her, found her attention
+less perfect, her interest less keen. In stormy days she sat in the
+library, and read Heine and Schiller often, and all the philosophers
+and men of science rarely. A great teacher has said that the Humanities
+must outweigh the Sciences at all times, and he is unquestionably
+true, if it were only for the reason that in the sweet wise lore of
+ages every human heart in pain and perplexity finds a refuge; whilst in
+love or in sorrow the sciences seem the poorest and chilliest of mortal
+vanities that ever strove to measure the universe with a foot-rule.
+
+The Princess watched her with wistful, inquisitive eyes, but dared
+not name the person of whom they both thought most. Wanda was herself
+intolerant of the sense of impatience with which she awaited the coming
+of the sturdy pony that brought the post-bag from Windisch-Matrey.
+He in his loneliness and emptiness of life on the barren sea-shore
+of Romaris did not more anxiously await her letters than did the
+châtelaine of Hohenszalras, amidst all her state, her wealth, and her
+innumerable occupations, await his. She pitied him intensely; there was
+something pathetic to her in the earnestness with which he had striven
+to amend his ways of life, only to have his whole career shattered by
+an insensate and unlooked-for national war. She understood that his
+poverty stood in the path of his ambition, and she divined that his
+unhappiness had broken that spring of manhood in him which would have
+enabled him to construct a new career for himself out of the ruins of
+the old. She understood why he was listless and exhausted.
+
+There were moments when she was inclined to send him some invitation
+more cordial, some bidding more clear; but she hesitated to take a step
+which would bind her in her own honour to so much more. She knew that
+she ought not to suggest a hope to him to which she was not prepared
+to give full fruition. And again, how could he respond? It would be
+impossible for him to accept. She was one of the great alliances of
+Europe, and he was without fortune, without career, without a future.
+Even friendship was only possible whilst they were far asunder.
+
+Two years had gone by since he had come across from the monastery in
+the green and gold of a summer afternoon. The monks had not forgotten
+him; throughout the French war they had prayed for him. When their
+Prior saw her, he said anxiously sometimes: 'And the Markgraf von
+Sabran, will he never come to us again? Were we too dull for him?
+Will your Excellency remember us to him, if ever you can?' And she
+had answered with a strange emotion at her heart: 'His country is
+in trouble, holy father; a good son cannot leave his land in her
+adversity. No: I do not think he was dull with you; he was quite happy,
+I believe. Perhaps he may come again some day, who knows? He shall be
+told what you say.'
+
+Then a vision would rise up to her of herself and him, as they would
+be perhaps when they should be quite old. Perhaps he would retire into
+this holy retreat of the Augustines, and she would be a grave sombre
+woman, not gay and pretty and witty, as the Princess was. The picture
+was gloomy; she chased it away, and galloped her horse long and far
+through the forests.
+
+The summer had been so brilliant that the autumn which followed was
+cold and severe, earlier than usual, and heavy storms swept over the
+Tauern, almost ere the wheat harvest could be reaped. Many days were
+cheerless and filled only with the sound of incessant rains. In the
+Pinzgau and the Salzkammergut floods were frequent. The Ache and the
+Szalzach, with all their tributary streams and wide and lonely lakes,
+were carrying desolation and terror into many parts of the land which
+in summer they made beautiful. Almost every day brought her some
+tidings of some misfortunes in the villages on the farms belonging to
+her in the more distant parts of Austria; a mill washed away, a bridge
+down, a dam burst, a road destroyed, a harvest swept into the water,
+some damage or other done by the swollen river and torrents, she heard
+of by nearly every communication that her stewards and her lawyers made
+to her at this season.
+
+'Our foes the rivers are more insidious than your mighty enemy the
+salt water,' she wrote to Romaris. 'The sea deals open blows, and men
+know what they must expect if they go out on the vasty deep. But here
+a little brook that laughed and chirped at noon-day as innocently as
+a child may become at nightfall or dawn a roaring giant, devouring
+all that surrounds him. We pay heavily for the glory of our mountain
+waters.'
+
+These autumn weeks seemed very dreary to her. She visited her horses
+chafing at inaction in their roomy stalls, and attended to her affairs,
+and sat in the library or the octagon room hearing the rain beat
+against the emblazoned leaded panes, and felt the days, and above all
+the evenings, intolerably dull and melancholy. She had never heeded
+rain before, or minded the change of season.
+
+One Sunday a messenger rode through the drenching storm, and brought
+her a telegram from her lawyer in Salzburg. It said: 'Idrac flooded:
+many lives lost: great distress: fear town wholly destroyed. Please
+send instructions.'
+
+The call for action roused her as a trumpet sounding rouses a cavalry
+charger.
+
+'Instructions!' she echoed as she read. 'They write as if I could bid
+the Danube subside, or the Drave shrink in its bed!'
+
+She penned a hasty answer.
+
+'I will go to Idrac myself.'
+
+Then she sent a message also to S. Johann im Wald for a special train
+to be got in readiness for her, and told one of her women and a trusty
+servant to be ready to go with her to Vienna in an hour. It was still
+early in the forenoon.
+
+'Are you mad?' cried Madame Ottilie, when she was informed of the
+intended journey.
+
+Wanda kissed her hand.
+
+'There is no madness in what I shall do, dear mother, and Bela surely
+would have gone.'
+
+'Can you stay the torrents of heaven? Can you arrest a river in its
+wrath?'
+
+'No; but lives are often lost because poor people lose their senses in
+fright. I shall be calmer than anyone there. Besides, the place belongs
+to us; we are bound to share its danger. If only Egon were not away
+from Hungary!'
+
+'But he is away. You have driven him away.'
+
+'Do not dissuade me, dearest mother. It would be cowardice not to go.'
+
+'What can women do in such extremities?'
+
+'But we of Hohenszalras must not be mere women when we are wanted in
+any danger. Remember Luitgarde von Szalras, the _kuttengeier._'
+
+The Princess sighed, prayed, even wept, but Wanda was gently
+inflexible. The Princess could not see why a precious life should be
+endangered for the sake of a little half barbaric, half Jewish town,
+which was remarkable for nothing except for shipping timber and selling
+_salbling._ The population was scarcely Christian, so many Hebrews were
+there, and so benighted were the Sclavonian poor, who between them made
+up the two thousand odd souls that peopled Idrac. To send a special
+messenger there, and to give any quantity of money that the distress
+of the moment might demand, would be all right and proper; indeed,
+an obligation on the owner of the little feudal river-side town. But
+to go! A Countess von Szalras to go in person where not one out of a
+hundred of the citizens had been properly baptized or confirmed! The
+Princess could not view this Quixotism in any other light than that of
+an absolute insanity.
+
+'Bela lost his life in just such a foolish manner!' she pleaded.
+
+'So did the saints, dear mother,' said his sister, gently.
+
+The Princess coloured and coughed.
+
+'Of course, I am aware that many holy lives have been--have been--what
+appears to our finite senses wasted,' she said, with a little asperity.
+'But I am also aware, Wanda, that the duties most neglected are those
+which lie nearest home and have the least display; consideration for
+_me_ might be better, though less magnificent, than so much heroism for
+Idrac.'
+
+'It pains me that you should put it in that light, dearest mother,'
+said Wanda, with inexhaustible patience. 'Were you in any danger I
+would stay by you first, of course; but you are in none. These poor,
+forlorn, ignorant, cowardly creatures are in the very greatest. I
+draw large revenues from the place; I am in honour bound to share
+its troubles. Pray do not seek to dissuade me. It is a matter not of
+caprice but of conscience. I shall be in no possible peril myself. I
+shall go down the river in my own vessel, and I will telegraph to you
+from every town at which I touch.'
+
+The Princess ceased not to lament, to oppose, to bemoan her own
+powerlessness to check intolerable follies. Sitting in her easy chair
+in her warm blue-room, sipping her chocolate, the woes of a distant
+little place on the Danube, whose population was chiefly Semitic, were
+very bearable and altogether failed to appeal to her.
+
+Wanda kissed her, asked her blessing humbly, and took her way in the
+worst of a blinding storm along the unsafe and precipitous road which
+went over the hills to Windisch-Matrey.
+
+'What false sentiment it all is!' thought the Princess, left alone.
+'She has not seen this town since she was ten years old. She knows that
+they are nearly all Jews, or quite heathenish Sclavonians. She can do
+nothing at all--what should a woman do?--and yet she is so full of her
+conscience that she goes almost to the Iron Gates in quest of a duty in
+the wettest of weather, while she leaves a man like Egon and a man like
+Sabran wretched for want of a word! I must say,' thought the Princess,
+'false sentiment is almost worse than none at all!'
+
+The rains were pouring down from leaden skies, hiding all the sides of
+the mountains and filling the valleys with masses of vapour. The road
+was barely passable; the hill torrents dashed across it; the little
+brooks were swollen to water-courses; the protecting wall on more than
+one giddy height had been swept away; the gallop of the horses shook
+the frail swaying galleries and hurled the loosened stones over the
+precipice with loud resounding noise. The drive to Matrey and thence
+with post-horses to S. Johann im Wald, the nearest railway station, was
+in itself no little peril, but it was accomplished before the day had
+closed in, and the special train she had ordered being in readiness
+left at once for Vienna, running through the low portions of the
+Pinzgau, which were for the most part under water.
+
+All the way was dim and watery, and full of the sound of running
+or of falling water. The Ache and the Szalsach, both always deep
+and turbulent rivers, were swollen and boisterous, and swirled and
+thundered in their rocky beds; in the grand Pass of Lueg the gloom,
+always great, was dense as at midnight, and when they reached Salzburg
+the setting sun was bursting through ink-black clouds, and shed a
+momentary glow as of fire upon the dark sides of the Untersberg, and
+flamed behind the towers of the great castle on its rocky throne. All
+travellers know the grandeur of that scene; familiar as it was to her
+she looked upward at it with awe and pleasure commingled. Salzburg in
+the evening light needs Salvator Rosa and Rembrandt together to portray
+it.
+
+The train only paused to take in water; the station was crowded as
+usual, set as it is between the frontiers of empire and kingdom, but in
+the brief interval she saw one whom she recognised amongst the throng,
+and she felt the colour come into her own face as she did so.
+
+She saw Sabran; he did not see her. Her train moved out of the station
+rapidly, to make room for the express from Munich; the sun dropped down
+into the ink-black clouds; the golden and crimson pomp of Untersberg
+changed to black and grey; the ivory and amber and crystal of the
+castle became stone and brick and iron, that frowned sombrely over a
+city sunk in river-mists and in rain-vapours. She felt angrily that
+there was an affinity between the landscape and herself; that so, at
+sight of him, a light had come into her life which had no reality in
+fact, prismatic colours baseless as a dream.
+
+She had longed to speak to him; to stretch out her hand to him; to
+say at least how her thoughts and her sympathies had been with him
+throughout the war. But her carriage was already in full onward
+movement, and in another moment had passed at high speed out of the
+station into that grand valley of the Szalzach where Hohensalzburg
+seems to tower as though Friederich Barbarossa did indeed sleep there.
+With a sigh she sank backward amongst her furs and cushions, and saw
+the soaring fortress pass, into the clouds.
+
+The night had now closed in; the rain fell heavily. As the little
+train, oscillating greatly from its lightness, swung over the iron
+rails, there was a continual sound of splashing water audible above
+the noise of the wheels and the throb of the engine. She had often
+travelled at night and had always slept soundly; this evening she could
+not sleep. She remained wide awake watching the swaying of the lamp,
+listening to the shrill shriek of the wheels as they rushed through
+water where some hillside brook had broken bounds and spread out in a
+shallow lagoon. The skies were overcast in every direction; the rain
+was everywhere unceasing; the night seemed to her very long.
+
+She pondered perpetually on his presence at Salzburg, and wondered if
+he were going to the Holy Isle. Three months had gone by since she had
+sent him the semi-invitation to her country.
+
+The train sped on; the day dawned; she began to get glimpses of the
+grand blue river, now grey and ochre-coloured and thick with mud, its
+turbid waves heaving sullenly under the stormy October skies. She had
+always loved the great Donau; she knew its cradle well in the north
+land of the Teutons. She had often watched the baby-stream rippling
+over the stones, and felt the charm, as of some magical transformation,
+as she thought of the same stream stretching broadly under the monastic
+walls of Klosterneuberg, rolling in tempest by the Iron Gates, and
+gathering its mighty volume higher and deeper to burst at last into
+the sunlight of the eastern sea. Amidst the levelled monotony of
+modern Europe the Danube keeps something of savage grandeur, something
+of legendary power, something of oriental charm; it is still often
+tameless, a half-barbaric thing, still a Tamerlane amidst rivers: and
+yet yonder at its birthplace it is such a slender thread of rippling
+water! She and Bela had crossed it with bare feet to get forget-me-nots
+in Taunus, talking together of Chriemhilde and her pilgrimage to the
+land of the Huns.
+
+The little train swung on steadily through the water above and below,
+and after a night of no little danger came safely to Vienna as the dawn
+broke. She went straight to her yacht, which was in readiness off the
+Lobau and weighed anchor as the pale and watery morning broadened into
+day above the shores that had seen Aspern and Wagram. The yacht was
+a yawl, strongly built and drawing little water, made on purpose for
+the ascent and descent of the Danube, from Passau up in the north to
+as far south as the Bosphorus if needed. The voyage had been of the
+greatest joys of hers and of Bela's childhood; they had read on deck
+alternately the 'Nibelungen-Lied' and the 'Arabian Nights,' clinging
+together in delighted awe as they passed through the darkness of the
+defile of Kasan.
+
+Idrac was situated between Pesth and Peterwardein, lying low on marshy
+ground that was covered with willows and intersected by small streams
+flowing from the interior to the Danube.
+
+The little town gave its name and its seigneurie to the owner of its
+burg; an ancient place built on a steep rock that rose sheer out of
+the fast-running waves, and dominated the passage of the stream. The
+Counts of Idrac had been exceeding powerful in the old times, when
+they had stopped at their will the right of way of the river; and
+their appanages with their title had come by marriage into the House
+of Szalras some four centuries before, and although the dominion over
+the river was gone, the fortress and the little town and all that
+appertained thereto still formed a considerable possession; it had
+usually been given with its Countship to the second son of the Szalras.
+
+Making the passage to Pesth in fourteen hours, the yacht dropped
+anchor before the Franz Josef Quai as the first stars came out above
+the Blocksburg, for by this time the skies had lightened and the rains
+had ceased. Here she stayed the night perforce, as an accident had
+occurred to the machinery of the vessel. She did not leave the yacht,
+but sent into the inner city for stores of provisions and of the local
+cordial, the _slibowitza_, to distribute to the half-drowned people
+amongst whom she was about to go. It was noonday before the yawl got
+under weigh and left the twin-towns behind her. A little way further
+down the stream they passed a great castle, standing amidst beech woods
+on a rock that rose up from fields covered with the Carlowitz vine. She
+looked at it with a sigh: it was the fortress of Kohacs, one of the
+many possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely.
+
+The weather had now cleared, but the skies were overcast, and the
+plains, which began to spread away monotonously from either shore,
+were covered with white fog. Soon the fog spread also over the river,
+and the yacht was compelled to advance cautiously and slowly, so that
+the voyage was several hours longer than usual. When the light of the
+next day broke they had come in sight of the flooded districts on their
+right: the immense flat fields that bore the flax and grain which make
+the commerce of Baja, of Neusatz, and of other riverain towns, were
+all changed to shallow estuaries. The Theiss, the Drave, and many
+minor streams, swollen by the long autumnal rains, had burst their
+boundaries and laid all the country under water for hundreds of square
+leagues. The granaries, freshly filled with the late abundant harvest,
+had at many places been flooded or destroyed: thousands of stacks of
+grain were floating like shapeless, dismasted vessels. Timber and the
+thatched roofs of the one-storied houses were in many places drifting
+too, like the flotsam and the hulls of wrecked ships.
+
+There are few scenes more dreary, more sad, more monotonous than those
+of a flat country swamped by flood: the sky above them was leaden
+and heavy, the Danube beneath them was turgid and discoloured; the
+shrill winds whistled through the brakes of willow, the water-birds,
+frightened, flew from their osier-beds on the islands, the bells of
+churches and watch-towers tolled dismally.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when she came within sight of her little
+town on the Sclavonian shore, which Ernst von Szalras had fired on
+August 29, 1526, to save it from the shame of violation by the Turks.
+Though he had perished, and most of the soldiers and townsfolk with
+him, the fortress, the _têtes du pont_, and the old water-gates and
+walls had been too strong for the flames to devour, and the town had
+been built up again by the Turks and subsequently by the Hungarians.
+
+The slender minarets of the Ottomans' two mosques still raised
+themselves amidst the old Gothic architecture of the mediæval
+buildings, and the straw-covered roofs and the white-plastered walls
+of the modern houses. As they steamed near it the minarets and the
+castle towers rose above what looked a world of waters, all else seemed
+swallowed in the flood; the orchards, which had surrounded all save the
+river-side of the town; were immersed almost to the summits of their
+trees. The larger vessels could never approach Idrac in ordinary times,
+the creek being too shallow on which it stood; but now the water was
+so high that though it would be too imprudent to anchor there, the
+yacht easily passed in, and hove-to underneath the water-walls, a pilot
+taking careful soundings as they steered. It was about three in the
+afternoon. The short, grey day was near its end; a shout of welcome
+rose from some people on the walls as they recognised the build and the
+ensign of the yawl. Some crowded boats were pulling away from the town,
+laden with fugitives and their goods.
+
+'How soon people run away! They are like rats,' she thought. 'I would
+sooner be like the stork, and not quit my nest if it were in flames.'
+
+She landed at the water-stairs of the castle. Men, women, and children
+came scrambling along the walls, where they were huddled together out
+of temporary reach of the flood, and threw themselves down at her
+feet and kissed her skirts with abject servility. They were half mad
+with terror, and amongst the population there were many hundreds of
+Jews, the most cowardly people in all the world. The boats were quite
+inadequate in number to the work they had to do; the great steamers
+passing up and down did not pause to help them; the flood was so
+general below Pesth that on the right shore of the river each separate
+village and township was busy with its own case and had no help for
+neighbours: the only aid came from those on the opposite shore, but
+that was scanty and unwisely ministered. The chief citizens of Idrac
+had lost their wits, as she had foreseen they would do. To ring the
+bells madly night and day, and fire off the old culverins from the
+water-gate, was all they seemed to know how to do. They told her that
+many lives had been lost, as the inland waters had risen in the night,
+and most of the houses were of only one storey. In the outlying
+flax-farms it was supposed that whole households had perished. In the
+town itself there were six feet of water everywhere, and many of the
+inhabitants were huddled together in the two mosques, which were now
+granaries, in the towers, and in the fortress itself; but several
+families had been enabled to escape, and had climbed upon the roofs,
+clinging to the chimneys for bare life.
+
+Her mere presence brought reviving hope and energy to the primitive
+population. Their Lady had a romantic legendary reputation amongst
+them, and they were ready to cling round the pennon of the yacht as
+their ancestors had rallied round the standard of Ernst von Szalras.
+
+She ascended to the Rittersaal of the fortress, and assembled a few of
+the men about her, who had the most influence and energy in the little
+place. She soon introduced some kind of system and method into the
+efforts made, promised largesse to those who should be the most active,
+and had the provisions she had brought distributed amongst those who
+most needed them. The boats of the yawl took many away to a temporary
+refuge on the opposite shore. Many others were brought in to the
+state-room of the castle for shelter. Houses were constantly falling,
+undermined by the water, and there were dead and wounded to be attended
+to, as well as the hungry and terrified living creatures. Once before,
+Idrac had been thus devastated by flood, but it had been far away in
+the previous century, and the example was too distant to have been a
+warning to the present generation.
+
+She passed a fatiguing and anxious night. It was impossible to
+think of sleep with so much misery around. The yacht was obliged to
+descend, the river for safe anchorage, but the boats remained. She
+went herself, now in one, now in another, to endeavour to inspire the
+paralysed people with some courage and animation. A little wine, a
+little bread, were all she took; food was very scarce. The victuals of
+the yacht's provisioning did not last long amongst so many famishing
+souls. She ordered her skipper at dawn to go down as far as Neusatz
+and purchase largely. There were five thousand people, counting those
+of the neighbourhood, or more, homeless and bereft of all shelter. The
+telegraph was broken, the poles had been snapped by the force of the
+water in many places.
+
+With dawn a furious storm gathered and broke, and renewed rains added
+their quota to the inundation and their discomfort to the exposed
+sufferers. The cold was great, and the chill that made them shudder
+from head to foot was past all cure by cordials. She regretted not
+to have brought Greswold with her. She was indifferent to danger,
+indefatigable in exertion, and strong as Libussa, brave as Chriemhilde.
+Because the place belonged to her in almost a feudal manner, she held
+herself bound to give her life for it if need be. Bela would have done
+what she was doing.
+
+Twice or thrice during the two following days she heard the people
+speak of a stranger who had arrived fifteen hours before her, and had
+wrought miracles of deliverance. Unless the stories told her were
+greatly exaggerated, this foreigner had shown a courage and devotion
+quite unequalled. He had thrown himself into the work at once on his
+arrival there in a boat from Neusatz, and had toiled night and day,
+enduring extreme fatigue and running almost every hour some dire peril
+of his life. He had saved whole families of the poorest and most
+wretched quarter; he had sprung on to roofs that were splitting and
+sinking, on to walls that were trembling and tottering, and had borne
+away in safety men, women, and children, the old, and the sick, and the
+very animals; he had infused some of his own daring and devotedness
+into the selfish and paralysed Hebrew population; priests and rabbis
+were alike unanimous in his praise, and she, as she heard, felt that
+he who had fought for France had been here for her sake. They told
+her that he was now out amongst the more distant orchards and fields,
+amidst the flooded farms where the danger was even greater than in the
+town itself. Some Czechs said that he was S. John of Nepomuc himself.
+She bade them bring him to her, that she might thank him, whenever he
+should enter the town again, and then thought of him no more.
+
+Her whole mind and feeling were engrossed by the spectacle of a misery
+that even all her wealth could not do very much to alleviate. The
+waters as yet showed no sign of abatement. The crash of falling houses
+sounded heavily ever and again through the gloom. The melancholy sight
+of humble household things, of drowned cattle, of dead dogs, borne down
+the discoloured flood out to the Danube renewed itself every hour.
+The lamentations of the ruined people went up in an almost continuous
+wail like the moaning of a winter wind. There was nothing grand,
+nothing picturesque, nothing exciting to redeem the dreariness and the
+desolation. It was all ugly, miserable, dull. It was more trying than
+war, which even in its hideous senselessness lends a kind of brutal
+intoxication to all whom it surrounds.
+
+She was incessantly occupied and greatly fatigued, so that the time
+passed without her counting it. She sent a message each day to the
+Princess at home, and promised to return as soon as the waters had
+subsided and the peril passed. For the first time in her life she
+experienced real discomfort, real privation; she had surrendered nearly
+all the rooms in the burg to the sick people, and food ran short and
+there was none of good quality, though she knew that supplies would
+soon come from the steward at Kohacs and by the yacht.
+
+On the fourth day the waters had sunk an inch. As she heard the good
+tidings she was looking out inland over the waste of grey and yellow
+flood; a Jewish rabbi was beside her speaking of the exertions of the
+stranger, in whom the superstitious of the townsfolk saw a saint from
+heaven.
+
+'And does no one even know who he is?' she asked.
+
+'No one has asked,' answered the Jew. 'He has been always out where the
+peril was greatest.'
+
+'How came he here?'
+
+'He came by one of the big steamers that go to Turkey. He pulled
+himself here in a little boat that he had bought; the boat in which he
+has done such good service.'
+
+'What is he like in appearance?'
+
+'He is very tall, very fair, and handsome; I should think he is
+northern.'
+
+Her pulse beat quicker for a moment; then she rejected the idea as
+absurd, though indeed, she reflected, she had seen him at Salzburg.
+
+'He must at least be a brave man,' she said quietly. 'If you see him
+bring him to me that I may thank him. Is he in the town now?'
+
+'No; he is yonder, where the Rathwand farms are, or were; where your
+Excellency sees those dark, long islands which are not islands at all,
+but only the summits of cherry orchards. He has carried the people
+away, carried them down to Peterwardein; and he is now about to try and
+rescue some cattle which were driven up on to the roof of a tower, poor
+beasts--that tower to the east there, very far away: it is five miles
+as the crow flies.'
+
+'I suppose he will come into the town again?'
+
+'He was here last night; he had heard of your Excellency, and asked for
+her health.'
+
+'Ah! I will see and thank him if he come again.'
+
+But no one that day saw the stranger in Idrac.
+
+The rains fell again and the waters again rose. The maladies which
+come of damp and of bad exhalations spread amongst the people; they
+could not all be taken to other villages or towns, for there was no
+room for them. She had quinine, wines, good food ordered by the great
+steamers, but they were not yet arrived. What could be got at Neusatz
+or Peterwardein the yacht brought, but it was not enough for so many
+sick and starving people. The air began to grow fœtid from the many
+carcases of animals, though as they floated the vultures from the hills
+fed on them. She had a vessel turned into a floating hospital, and
+the most delicate of the sick folk carried to it, and had it anchored
+off the nearest port. Her patience, her calmness, and her courage did
+more to revive the sinking hearts of the homeless creatures than the
+cordials and the food. She was all day long out in her boat, being
+steered from one spot to another. At night she rested little and passed
+from one sick bed to another. She had never been so near to hopeless
+human misery before. At Hohenszalras no one was destitute.
+
+One twilight hour on the ninth day, as she was rowed back to the castle
+stairs, she passed another boat in which were two lads and a man. The
+man was rowing, a dusky shadow in the gloom of the wet evening and the
+uncouthness of his waterproof pilot's dress; but she had a lantern
+beside her, and she flashed its light full on the boat as it passed
+her. When she reached the burg, she said to her servant Anton: 'Herr
+von Sabran is in Idrac; go and say that I desire to see him.'
+
+Anton, who remembered him well, returned in an hour, and said he could
+neither find him nor hear of him.
+
+All the night long, a cheerless tedious night, with the rain falling
+without and the storm that was raging in the Bosphorus sending its
+shrill echoes up the Danube, she sat by the beds of the sick women
+or paced up and down the dimly-lit Rittersaal in an impatience which
+it humiliated her to feel. It touched her that he should be here,
+so silently, so sedulously avoiding her, and doing so much for the
+people of Idrac, because they were her people. The old misgiving that
+she had been ungenerous in her treatment of him returned to her. He
+seemed always to have the finer part--the _beau rôle._ To her, royal
+in giving, imperious in conduct, it brought a sense of failure, of
+inferiority. As she read the psalms in Hungarian to the sick Magyar
+women, her mind perpetually wandered away to him.
+
+She did not see Sabran again, but she heard often of him. The fair
+stranger, as the people called him, was always conspicuous wherever
+the greatest danger was to be encountered. There was always peril in
+almost every movement where the undermined houses, the tottering walls,
+the stagnant water, the fever-reeking marshes presented at every turn a
+perpetual menace to life. 'He is not vainly _un fils des preux_,' she
+thought, with a thrill of personal pride, as if someone near and dear
+to her were praised, as she listened to the stories of his intrepidity
+and his endurance. Whole nights spent in soaked clothes, in half
+swamped boats; whole days lost in impotent conflict with the ignorance
+or the poltroonery of an obstinate populace, continual risk encountered
+without counting its cost to rescue some poor man's sick beast, or pull
+a cripple from beneath falling beams, or a lad from choking mud; hour
+on hour of steady laborious rowing, of passage to and fro the sullen
+river with a freight of moaning, screaming peasantry--this was not
+child's play, nor had it any of the animation and excitation which in
+war or in adventure make of danger a strong wine that goes merrily and
+voluptuously to the head. It was all dull, stupid, unlovely, and he
+had come to it for her sake. For her sake certainly, though he never
+approached her; though when Anton at last found and took her message
+to him he excused himself from obedience to it by a plea that he was
+at that moment wet and weary, and had come from a hut where typhoid
+raged. She understood the excuse; she knew that he knew well she was no
+more afraid than he of that contagion. She admired him the more for his
+isolation; in these grey, rainy, tedious, melancholy days his figure
+seemed to grow into a luminous heroic shape like one of the heroes of
+the olden time. If he had once seemed to seek a guerdon for it the
+spell would have been broken. But he never did. She began to believe
+that such a knight deserved any recompense which she could give.
+
+'Egon himself could have done no more,' she said in her own thoughts,
+and it was the highest praise that she could give to any man, for
+her Magyar cousin was the embodiment of all martial daring, of all
+chivalrous ardour, and had led his glittering hussars down on to the
+French bayonets, as on to the Prussian Krupp guns, with a fury that
+bore all before it, impetuous and irresistible as a stream of fired
+naphtha.
+
+On the twelfth morning the river had sunk so much lower that the yacht
+arriving with medicines and stores of food from Neusatz signalled that
+she could not enter the creek on which Idrac stood, and waited orders.
+It had ceased to rain, but the winds were still strong and the skies
+heavy. She descended to her boat at the water-gate, and told the men to
+take her out to the yacht. It was early, the sun behind the clouds had
+barely climbed above the distant Wallachian woods, and the scene had
+lost nothing of its melancholy. A man was standing on the water-stairs
+as she descended them, and turned rapidly away, but she had seen him
+and stretched out her long staff and touched him lightly.
+
+'Why do you avoid me?' she said, as he uncovered his head; 'my men
+sought you in all directions; I wished to thank you.'
+
+He bowed low over the hand she held out to him. 'I ventured to be near
+at hand to be of use,' he answered. 'I was afraid the exposure, and,
+the damp, and all this pestilence would make you ill: you are not ill?'
+
+'No; I am quite well. I have heard of all your courage and endurance.
+Idrac owes you a great debt.'
+
+'I only pay my debt to Hohenszalras.'
+
+They were both silent; a certain constraint was upon them both.
+
+'How did you know of the inundation? It was unkind of you not to come
+to me,' she said, and her voice was unsteady as she spoke. 'I want so
+much to tell you, better than letters can do, all that we felt for you
+throughout that awful war.'
+
+He turned away slightly with a shudder. 'You are too good. Thousands of
+men much better than I suffered much more.'
+
+The tears rose to her eyes as she glanced at him. He was looking pale
+and worn. He had lost the graceful _insouciance_ of his earlier manner.
+He looked grave, weary, melancholy, like a man who had passed through
+dire disaster, unspeakable pain, and had seen his career snapped in
+two like a broken wand. But there was about him instead something
+soldierlike, proven, war-worn, which became him in her eyes, daughter
+of a race of warriors as she was.
+
+'You have much to tell me, and I have much to hear,' she said, after
+a pause. 'You should have come to the monastery to be cured of your
+wounds. Why were you so mistrustful of our friendship?'
+
+He coloured and was silent.
+
+'Indeed,' she said gravely, 'we can honour brave men in the Tauern and
+in Idrac too. You are very brave. I do not know how to thank you for my
+people or for myself.'
+
+'Pray do not speak so,' he said, in a very low voice. 'To see you again
+would be recompense for much worthier things than any I have done.'
+
+'But you might have seen me long ago,' she said, with a certain
+nervousness new to her, 'had you only chosen to come to the Isle. I
+asked you twice.'
+
+He looked at her with eyes of longing and pathetic appeal.
+
+'Do not tempt me,' he murmured. 'If I yielded, and if you despised
+me----'
+
+'How could I despise one who has so nobly saved the lives of my people?'
+
+'You would do so.'
+
+He spoke very low: he was silent a little while, then he said very
+softly:
+
+'One evening, when we spoke together on the terrace at Hohenszalras,
+you leant your hand upon the ivy there. I plucked the leaf you touched;
+you did not see. I had the leaf with me all through the war. It was
+a talisman. It was like a holy thing. When your cousin's soldiers
+stripped me in their ambulance, they took it from me.'
+
+His voice faltered. She listened and was moved to a profound emotion.
+
+'I will give you something better,' she said very gravely. He did not
+ask her what she would give.
+
+She looked away from him awhile, and her face flushed a little. She was
+thinking of what she would give him; a gift so great that the world
+would deem her mad to bestow it, and perhaps would deem him dishonoured
+to take it.
+
+'How did you hear of these floods along the Danube?' she asked him,
+recovering her wonted composure.
+
+'I read about them in telegrams in Paris,' he made answer. 'I had
+mustered courage to revisit my poor Paris; all I possess is there.
+Nothing has been injured; a shell burst quite close by but did not
+harm my apartments. I went to make arrangements for the sale of my
+collections, and on the second day that I arrived there I saw the news
+of the inundations of Idrac and the lower Danubian plains. I remembered
+the name of the town; I remembered it was yours. I remembered your
+saying once that where you had feudal rights you had feudal duties, so
+I came on the chance of being of service.'
+
+'You have been most devoted to the people.'
+
+'The people! What should I care though the whole town perished? Do not
+attribute to me a humanity that is not in my nature.'
+
+'Be as cynical as you like in words so long as you are heroic in
+action. I am going out to the yacht; will you come with me?'
+
+He hesitated. 'I merely came to hear from the warder of your health. I
+am going to catch the express steamer at Neusatz; all danger is over.'
+
+'The yacht can take you to Neusatz. Come with me.'
+
+He did not offer more opposition; he accompanied her to the boat and
+entered it.
+
+The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing more, but she could not
+forget that scores of her own people here had owed their lives to his
+intrepidity and patience, and that he had never hesitated to throw his
+life into the balance when needed. And it had been done for her sake
+alone. The love of humanity might have been a nobler and purer motive,
+but it would not have touched her so nearly as the self-abandonment of
+a man by nature selfish and cold.
+
+In a few moments they were taken to the yawl. He ascended the deck with
+her.
+
+The tidings the skipper brought, the examination of the stores, the
+discussion of ways and means, the arrangements for the general relief,
+were air dull, practical matters that claimed careful attention and
+thought. She sat in the little cabin that was brave with marqueterie
+work and blue satin and Dresden mirrors, and made memoranda and
+calculations, and consulted him, and asked his advice on this, on
+that. The government official, sent to make official estimates of the
+losses in the township, had come on board to salute and take counsel
+with her. The whole forenoon passed in these details. He wrote, and
+calculated, and drew up reports for her. No more tender or personal
+word was spoken between them; but there was a certain charm for them
+both in this intimate intercourse, even though it took no other shape
+than the study of how many boatloads of wheat were needed for so many
+hundred people, of how many florins a day might be passed to the head
+of each family, of how many of the flooded houses would still be
+serviceable with restoration, of how many had been entirely destroyed,
+of how the town would best be rebuilt, and of how the inland rivers
+could best be restrained in the future.
+
+To rebuild it she estimated that she would have to surrender for five
+years the revenues from her Galician and Hungarian mines, and she
+resolved to do it altogether at her own cost. She had no wish to see
+the town figure in public prints as the object of public subscription.
+
+'I am sure all my woman friends,' she said, 'would kindly make it
+occasion for a fancy fair or a lottery (with new costumes) in Vienna,
+but I do not care for that sort of thing, and I can very well do what
+is needed alone.'
+
+He was silent. He had always known that her riches were great, but
+he had never realised them as fully as he now did when she spoke of
+rebuilding an entire town as she might have spoken of building a
+carriage.
+
+'You would make a good prime minister,' she said, smiling; 'you have
+the knowledge of a specialist on so many subjects.'
+
+At noon they served her a little plain breakfast of Danubian
+_salbling_, with Carlowitzer wine and fruit sent by the steward of
+Mohacs. She bade him join her in it.
+
+'Had Egon himself been here he could not have done more for Idrac than
+you have done,' she said.
+
+'Is this Prince Egon's wine?' he said abruptly, and on hearing that it
+was so, he set the glass down untasted.
+
+She looked surprised, but she did not ask him his reason, for she
+divined it. There was an exaggeration in the unspoken hostility more
+like the days of Arthur and Lancelot than their own, but it did not
+displease her.
+
+They were both little disposed to converse during their meal; after the
+dreary and terrible scenes they had been witness of, the atmosphere
+of life seems grave and dark even to those whom the calamity had not
+touched. The most careless spirit is oppressed by a sense of the
+precariousness and the cruelty of existence.
+
+When they ascended to the deck the skies were lighter than they had
+been for many weeks; the fog had cleared, so that, in the distance, the
+towers of Neusatz and the fortress of Peterwardein were visible; vapour
+still hung over the vast Hungarian plain, but the Danube was clear and
+the affluents of it had sunk to their usual level.
+
+'You really go to-night?' she said, as they looked down the river.
+
+'There is no need for me to stay; the town is safe, and you are well,
+you say. If there be anything I can still do, command me.'
+
+She smiled a little and let her eye meet his for a moment.
+
+'Well, if I command you to remain then, will you do so as my viceroy?
+I want to return home; Aunt Ottilie grows daily more anxious, more
+alarmed, but I cannot leave these poor souls all alone with their
+priests, and their rabbi, who are all as timid as sheep and as stupid.
+Will you stay in the castle and govern them, and help them till they
+recover from their fright? It is much to ask, I know, but you have
+already done so much for Idrac that I am bold to ask you to do more?'
+
+He coloured with a mingled emotion.
+
+'You could ask me nothing that I would not do,' he said in a low tone.
+'I could wish you asked me something harder.'
+
+'Oh, it will be very hard,' she said, with an indifference she did not
+feel. 'It will be very dull, and you will have no one to speak to that
+knows anything save how to grow flax and cherries. You will have to
+talk the Magyar tongue all day, and you will have nothing to eat save
+_kartoffeln_ and _salbling_; and I do not know that I am even right,'
+she added, more gravely, 'to ask you to incur the risks that come from
+all that soaked, ground, which will be damp so long.'
+
+'The risks that you have borne yourself! Pray do not wound me by any
+such scruple as that. I shall be glad, I shall be proud, to be for ever
+so short or so long a time as you command, your representative, your
+servant.'
+
+'You are very good.'
+
+'No.'
+
+His eyes looked at hers with a quick flash, in which all the passion
+he dared not express was spoken. She averted her glance and continued
+calmly: 'You are very good indeed to Idrac. It will be a great
+assistance and comfort to me to know that you are here. The poor people
+already love you, and you will write to me and tell me all that may
+need to be done. I will leave you the yacht and Anton. I shall return
+by land with my woman; and when I reach home I will send you Herr
+Greswold. He is a good companion, and has a great admiration for you,
+though he wishes that you had not forsaken the science of botany.'
+
+'It is like all other dissection or vivisection; it spoils the artistic
+appreciation of the whole. I am yet unsophisticated enough to feel the
+charm of a bank of violets, of a cliff covered with alpen-roses. I may
+write to you?'
+
+'You must write to me! It is you who will know all the needs of Idrac.
+But are you sure that to remain here will not interfere with your own
+projects, your own wishes, your own duties?'
+
+'I have none. If I had any I would throw them away, with pleasure, to
+be of use to one of your dogs, to one of your birds.'
+
+She moved from his side a little.
+
+'Look how the sun has come out. I can see the sparkle of the brass on
+the cannon down yonder at Neusatz. We had better go now. I must see my
+sick people and then leave as soon as I can. The yacht must take me to
+Mohacs; from there I will send her back to you.'
+
+'Do as you will. I can have no greater happiness than to obey you.'
+
+'I am sure that I thank you in the way that you like best, when I say
+that I believe you.'
+
+She said the words in a very low tone, but so calmly that the calmness
+of them checked any other words he might have uttered. It was a royal
+acceptance of a loyal service; nothing more. The boat took them back
+to the fortress. Whilst she was occupied in her farewell to the sick
+people, and her instructions to those who attended on them, he, left
+to himself in the apartment she had made her own, instinctively went
+to an old harpsichord that stood there and touched the keys. It had a
+beautiful case, rich with the varnish of the Martins. He played with
+it awhile for its external beauty, and then let his fingers stray over
+its limited keyboard. It had still sweetness in it, like the spinet
+of Hohenszalras. It suited certain pathetic quaint old German airs he
+knew, and which he half unconsciously reproduced upon it, singing them
+as he did so in a low tone. The melody, very soft and subdued, suited
+to the place where death had been so busy and nature so unsparing, and
+where a resigned exhaustion had now succeeded to the madness of terror,
+reached the ears of the sick women in the Rittersaal and of Wanda von
+Szalras seated beside their beds.
+
+'It is like the saints in Heaven sighing in pity for us here,' said one
+of the women who was very feeble and old, and she smiled as she heard.
+The notes, tremulous from age but penetrating in their sweetness, came
+in slow calm movements of harmony through the stillness of the chamber;
+his voice, very low also, but clear, ascended with them. Wanda sat
+quite still, and listened with a strange pleasure. 'He alone,' she
+thought, 'can make the dumb strings speak.
+
+It was almost dusk when she descended to the room which she had made
+her own. In the passages of the castle oil wicks were lighted in the
+iron lamps and wall sconces, but here it was without any light, and
+in the gloom she saw the dim outline of his form as he sat by the
+harpsichord. He had ceased playing; his head was bent down and rested
+on the instrument; he was lost in thought, and his whole attitude was
+dejected. He did not hear her approach, and she looked at him some
+moments, herself unseen. A great tenderness came over her: he was
+unhappy, and he had been very brave, very generous, very loyal: she
+felt almost ashamed. She went nearer, and he raised himself abruptly.
+
+'I am going,' she said to him. 'Will you come with me to the yacht?'
+
+He rose, and though it was dusk, and in this chamber so dark that his
+face was indistinct to her, she was sure that tears had been in his
+eyes.
+
+'Your old harpsichord has the vernis Martin,' he said, with effort.
+'You should not leave it buried here. It has a melody in it too, faint
+and simple and full of the past, like the smell of dead rose-leaves.
+Yes, I will have the honour to come with you. I wish there were a full
+moon. It will be a dark night on the Danube.'
+
+'My men know the soundings of the river well. As for the harpsichord,
+you alone have found its voice. It shall go to your rooms in Paris.'
+
+'You are too good, but I would not take it. Let it go to Hohenszalras.'
+
+'Why would you not take it?
+
+'I would take nothing from you.'
+
+He spoke abruptly, and with some sternness.
+
+'I think there is such a thing as being too proud? she said, with
+hesitation.
+
+'Your ancestors would not say so,' he answered, with an effort; she
+understood the meaning that underlay the words. He turned away and
+closed the lid of the harpsichord, where little painted cupids wantoned
+in a border of metal scroll-work.
+
+All the men and women well enough to stand crowded on the water-stairs
+to see her departure; little children were held up in their mother's
+arms and bidden remember her for evermore; all feeble creatures lifted
+up their voices to praise her; Jew and Christian blessed her; the
+water-gate was cumbered with sobbing people, trying to see her face,
+to kiss her skirt for the last time. She could not be wholly unmoved
+before that unaffected, irrepressible emotion. Their poor lives were
+not worth much, but such as they were she, under Heaven, had saved them.
+
+'I will return and see you again,' she said to them, as she made a slow
+way through the eager crowd. 'Thank Heaven, my people, not me. And I
+leave my friend with you, who did much more for you than I. Respect him
+and obey him.'
+
+They raised with their thin trembling voices a loud _Eljén_! of homage
+and promise, and she passed away from their sight into the evening
+shadows on the wide river.
+
+Sabran accompanied her to the vessel, which was to take her to the town
+of Mohacs, thence to make her journey home by railway.
+
+'I shall not leave until you bid me, even though you should forget to
+call me all in my life!' he said, as the boat slipped through the dark
+water.
+
+'Such oblivion would be a poor reward.'
+
+'I have had reward enough. You have called me your friend.'
+
+She was silent. The boat ran through the dusk and the rippling rays of
+light streaming from the sides of the yacht, and they went on board. He
+stood a moment with uncovered head before her on the deck, and she gave
+him her hand.
+
+'You will come to the Holy Isle?' she said, as she did so.
+
+'If you bid me,' he said, as he bowed and kissed her hand. His lips
+trembled as he did so, and by the lamplight she saw that he was very
+pale.
+
+'I shall bid you,' she said, very softly, by-and-by. Farewell!'
+
+He bowed very low once more, then he dropped over the yacht's side into
+the boat waiting below; the splash of the oars told her he was gone
+back to Idrac. The yawl weighed anchor and began to go up the river,
+a troublesome and tedious passage at all seasons. She sat on deck
+watching the strong current of the Danube as it rolled on under the bow
+of the schooner. For more than a league she could see the beacon that
+burned by the water-gate of the fortress. When the curve of the stream
+hid it from her eyes she felt a pang of painful separation, of wistful
+attachment to the old dreary walls where she had seen so much suffering
+and so much courage, and where she had learned to read her own heart
+without any possibility of ignoring its secrets. A smile came on her
+mouth and a moisture in her eyes as she sat alone in the dark autumn
+night, while the schooner made her slow ascent through the swell that
+accompanies the influx of the Drave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+In two days' time Hohenszalras received its mistress home.
+
+She was not in any way harmed by the perils she had encountered, and
+the chills and fever to which she had been exposed. On the contrary,
+her eyes had a light and her face had a bloom which for many months had
+not been there.
+
+The Princess heard a brief sketch of what had passed in almost
+total silence. She had disapproved strongly, and she said that her
+disapproval could not change, though a merciful heavenly host had
+spared her the realisation of her worst fears.
+
+The name of Sabran was not spoken. Wanda was of a most truthful temper,
+but she could not bring herself to speak of his presence at Idrac; the
+facts would reveal themselves inevitably soon enough.
+
+She sent Greswold to the Danube laden with stores and medicines.
+She received a letter every morning from her delegate; but he wrote
+briefly, and with scrupulous care, the statements of facts connected
+with the town and reports of what had been done. Her engineer had
+arrived from the mines by Kremnitz, and the builders estimated that
+the waters would have subsided and settled enough, if no fresh rising
+took place, for them to begin the reconstruction of the town with the
+beginning of the new month. Ague and fever were still very common, and
+fresh cases were brought in every hour to the hospital in the fortress.
+He wrote on the arrival of Herr Greswold, that, with her permission, he
+himself would still stay on, for the people had grown used to him, and
+having some knowledge of hydraulics he would be interested to see the
+plans proposed by her engineers for preserving the town from similar
+calamities.
+
+Three weeks passed; all that time she spoke but little either of him or
+of any other subject. She took endless rides, and she sat many hours
+doing nothing in the white room, absorbed in thought. The Princess,
+who had learned what had passed, with admirable exercise of tact and
+self-restraint made neither suggestion nor innuendo, and accepted the
+presence of a French Marquis at a little obscure town in Sclavonia as
+if it were the most natural circumstance in the world.
+
+'All the Szalras have been imperious, arrogant, and of complicated
+character,' she thought; 'she has the same temper, though it is
+mitigated in her by great natural nobility of disposition and strong
+purity of motives. She will do as she chooses, let all the world do
+what it may to change her. If I say a word either way it may take
+effect in some wholly unforeseen manner that I should regret. It is
+better to abstain. In doubt do nothing, is the soundest of axioms.'
+
+And Princess Ottilie, who on occasion had the wisdom of the serpent
+with the sweetness of the dove, preserved a discreet silence, and
+devoured her really absorbing curiosity in her own heart.
+
+At the end of the fourth week she heard that all was well at Idrac,
+so far as it could be so in a place almost wholly destroyed. There
+was no sign of renewed rising of the inland streams. The illness was
+diminished, almost conquered; the people had begun to take heart and
+hope, and, being aided, wished to aid themselves. The works for new
+embankments, water-gates, and streets were already planned, though
+they could not be begun until the spring. Meanwhile, strong wooden
+houses were being erected on dry places, which which could shelter
+_ad interim_ many hundreds of families; the farmers were gradually
+venturing to return to their flooded lands. The town had suffered
+grievously and in much irreparably, but it began to resume its trade
+and its normal life.
+
+She hesitated a whole day when she heard this. Though Sabran did not
+hint at any desire of his own to leave the place, she knew it, was
+impossible to bid him remain longer, and that a moment of irrevocable
+decision was come. She hesitated all the day, slept little all the
+night, then sent him a brief telegram: 'Come to the Island.'
+
+Obey the summons as rapidly as he might, he could not travel by Vienna
+and Salzburg more quickly than in some thirty hours or more. The time
+passed to her in a curious confusion and anxiety. Outwardly she was
+calm enough; she visited the schools, wrote some letters, and took her
+usual long ride in the now leafless woods, but at heart she was unquiet
+and ill at ease, troubled more than by anything else at the force of
+the desire she felt to meet him once more. It was but a month since
+they had parted on the deck, and it seemed ten years. She had known
+what he had meant when he had said that he would come if she bade him;
+she had known that she would only do the sheerest cruelty and treachery
+if she called him thither only to dismiss him. It had not been a visit
+of the moment, but all his life that she had consented to take when she
+had written 'Come to the Island.'
+
+She would never have written it unless she had been prepared to fulfil
+all to which it tacitly pledged her. She was incapable of wantonly
+playing with any passion that moved another, least of all with his. The
+very difference of their position would have made indecision or coyness
+in her seem cruelty, humiliation. The decision hurt her curiously with
+a sense of abdication, mortification, and almost shame. To a very proud
+woman in whom the senses have never asserted their empire, there is
+inevitably an emotion of almost shame, of self-surrender, of loss of
+self-respect, in the first impulses of love. It made her abashed and
+humiliated to feel the excitation that the mere touch of his hand, the
+mere gaze of his eyes, had power to cause her. 'If this be love,' she
+thought, 'no wonder the world is lost for it.'
+
+Do what she would, the time seemed very long; the two evenings that
+passed were very tedious and oppressive. The Princess seemed to
+observe nothing of what she was perfectly conscious of, and her
+flute-like voice murmured on in an unending stream of commonplaces to
+which her niece replied much at random.
+
+In the afternoon of the third day she stood on the terrace looking down
+the lake and towards the Holy Isle, with an impatience of which she was
+in turn impatient. She was dressed in white woollen stuff with silver
+threads in it; she had about her throat an old necklace of the Golden
+Fleece, of golden shells enamelled, which had been a gift from Charles
+the Fifth to one of her house; over her shoulders, for the approach
+of evening was cold, she had thrown a cloak of black Russian sables.
+She made a figure beautiful, stately, patrician, in keeping with the
+background of the great donjon tower, and the pinnacled roofs, and the
+bronze warriors in their Gothic niches.
+
+When she had stood there a few minutes looking down the lake towards
+the willows of the monastery island, a boat came out from the willow
+thickets, and came over the mile-and-half of green shadowy water. There
+was only one person in it. She recognised him whilst he was still far
+off, and a smile came on her mouth that it was a pity he could not see.
+
+He was a bold man, but his heart stood still with awe of her, and his
+soul trembled within him at this supreme moment of his fate. For he
+believed that she would not have bidden him there unless her hand were
+ready to hold out destiny to him--the destiny of his maddest, of his
+sweetest, dreams.
+
+She came forward a few paces to meet him; her face was grave and pale,
+but her eyes had a soft suppressed light.
+
+'I have much for which to thank you,' she said, as she held out her
+hand to him. Her voice was tremulous though calm.
+
+He kissed her hand, then stood silent. It seemed to him that there was
+nothing to say. She knew what he would have said if he had been king,
+or hero, or meet mate for her. His pulses were beating feverishly, his
+self-possession was gone, his eyes did not dare to meet hers. He felt
+as if the green woods, the shining waters, the rain-burdened skies were
+wheeling round him. That dumbness, that weakness, in a man so facile
+of eloquence, so hardy and even cynical in courage, touched her to a
+wondering pitifulness.
+
+'After all,' she thought once more, 'if we love one another what is it
+to anyone else? We are both free.'
+
+If the gift she would give would be so great that the world would blame
+him for accepting it, what would that matter so long as she knew him
+blameless?
+
+They were both mute: he did not even look at her, and she might have
+heard the beating of his heart. She looked at him and the colour came
+back into her face, the smile back upon her mouth.
+
+'My friend,' she said very gently,'did never you think that I also----'
+
+She paused: it was very hard to her to say what she must say, and he
+could not help her, dared not help her, to utter it.
+
+They stood thus another moment mute, with the sunset glow upon the
+shining water, and upon the feudal majesty of the great castle.
+
+Then she looked at him with a straight, clear, noble glance, and with
+the rich blood mounting in her face, stretched out her hand to him with
+a royal gesture.
+
+'They robbed you of your ivy leaf, my cruel Prussian cousins. Will
+you--take--this--instead?'
+
+Then Heaven itself opened to his eyes. He did not take her hand. He
+fell at her feet and kissed them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Is it wisest after all to be very unwise, dear mother mine?' she said a
+little later, with a smile that was tender and happy.
+
+The Princess looked up quickly, and so looking understood.
+
+'Oh, my beloved, is it indeed so? Yes, you are wise to listen to your
+heart; God speaks in it!'
+
+With tears in her eyes she stretched out her pretty hands in solemn
+benediction.
+
+'Be His Spirit for ever with you,' she said with great emotion. 'I
+shall be so content to know that I leave you not alone when our Father
+calls me, for I think your very greatness and dominion, my dear, but
+make you the more lonely, as sovereigns are, and it is not well to be
+alone, Wanda; it is well to have human love close about us.'
+
+'It is to lean on a reed, perhaps,'murmured Wanda, in that persistent
+misgiving which possessed her. 'And when the reed breaks, then though
+it has been so weak before, it becomes of iron, barbed and poisoned.'
+
+'What gloomy thoughts! And you have made me so happy, and surely you
+are happy yourself?'
+
+'Yes. My reed is in full flower, but--but--yes, I am happy; I hope that
+Bela knows.'
+
+The Princess kissed her once again.
+
+'Ah! he loves you so well.'
+
+'That I am sure of; yet I might never have known it but for you.'
+
+'I did for the best.'
+
+'I will send him to you. I want to be alone a little. Dear mother, he
+cares for you as tenderly as though he were your son.'
+
+'I have been his friend always,' said the Princess, with a smile,
+whilst the tears still stood in her eyes. 'You cannot say so much,
+Wanda; you were very harsh.'
+
+'I know it. I will atone to him.'
+
+The eyes of the Princess followed her tenderly.'
+
+'And she will make her atonement generously, grandly,' she thought.
+'She is a woman of few protestations, but of fine impulses and of
+unerring magnanimity. She will be incapable of reminding him that
+their kingdom is hers. I have done this thing; may Heaven be with it!
+If she had loved no one, life would have grown so pale, so chill, so
+monotonous to her; she would have tired of herself, having nothing
+but herself for contemplation. Solitude has been only grand to her
+hitherto because she has been young, but as the years rolled on she
+would have died without ever having lived; now she will live. She may
+have to bear pains, griefs, infidelities, calamities that she would
+have escaped; but even so, how much better the summer day, even with
+the summer storm, than the dull, grey, quiet, windless weather! Of
+course, if she could have found sanctuary in the Church----But her
+faith is not absolute and unwavering enough for that; she has read too
+many philosophies; she requires, too, open-air and vigorous life; the
+cloister would have been to her a prison. She is one of those whose
+religion lies in activity; she will worship God through her children.'
+
+Sabran entered as she mused, and knelt down before her.
+
+'You have been my good angel, always,' he murmured. 'How can I thank
+you? I think she would never have let her eyes rest on me but for you.'
+
+The Princess smiled.
+
+'My friend, you are one of those on whom the eyes of women willingly
+rest, perhaps too willingly. But you--you will have no eyes for any
+other now? You must deserve my faith in you. Is it not so?'
+
+'Ah, madame,' he answered with deep emotion, 'all words seem so trite
+and empty; any fool can make phrases, but when I say that my life
+shall be consecrated to her, I mean it, in the uttermost royalty, the
+uttermost gratitude.'
+
+'I believe you,' said the Princess, as she laid her hand lightly
+on his bent head. 'Perhaps no man can understand entirely all that
+she surrenders in admitting that she loves you; for a proud woman
+to confess so much of weakness is very hard: but I think you will
+comprehend her better than any other would. I think you will not force
+her to pass the door of disillusion; and remember that though she will
+leave you free as air--for she is not made of that poor stuff which
+would enslave what it loves--she would not soon forgive too great abuse
+of freedom. I mean if you were ever--ever unfaithful----
+
+'For what do you take me?' he cried, with indignant passion. 'Is there
+another woman in the world who could sit beside her, and not be
+dwarfed, paled, killed, as a candle by the sun?'
+
+'You are only her betrothed,' said the Princess, with a little sigh.
+'Men see their wives with different eyes; so I have been told, at
+least. Familiarity is no courtier, and time is always cruel.'
+
+'Nay, time shall be our dearest friend,' said Sabran, with a tenderness
+in his voice that spoke more constancy than a thousand oaths. 'She will
+be beautiful when she is old, as you are; age will neither alarm nor
+steal from her; her bodily beauty is like her spiritual, it is cast
+in lines too pure and clear not to defy the years. Oh, mother mine!
+(let me call you that) fear nothing; I will love her so well that, all
+unworthy now, I will grow worthy her, and cause her no moment's pain
+that human love can spare her.'
+
+'Her people shall be your people, and her God your God,' murmured the
+Princess, with her hand still lying lightly on his head, obediently
+bent.
+
+When late that night he went across the lake the monks were at their
+midnight orisons; their voices murmured as one man's the Latin words of
+praise and prayer, and made a sound like that of a great sea rolling
+slowly on a lonely shore.
+
+He believed naught that they believed. Deity was but a phrase to him;
+faith and a future life were empty syllables to him. Yet, in the
+fulness of his joy and the humiliation of his spirit, he felt his heart
+swell, his pride sink subdued. He knelt down in the hush and twilight
+of that humble place of prayer, and for the first moment in many years
+he also praised God.
+
+No one heeded him; he knelt behind them in the gloom unnoticed; he rose
+refreshed as men in barren lands in drought are soothed by hearing the
+glad fall of welcome rain. He had no place there, and in another hour
+would have smiled at his own weakness; but now he remembered nothing
+except that he, utterly beyond his deserts, was blessed. As the monks
+rose to their feet and their loud chanting began to vibrate in the air,
+he went out unheard, as he had entered, and stood on the narrow strip
+of land that parted the chapel from the lake. The green waters were
+rolling freshly in under a strong wind, the shadows of coming night
+were stealing on; in the south-west a pale yellow moonlight stretched
+broadly in a light serene as dawn, and against it there rose squarely
+and darkly with its many turrets the great keep of Hohenszalras.
+
+He looked, but it was not of that great pile and all which it
+represented and symbolised that he thought now.
+
+It was of the woman he loved as a woman, not as a great possessor of
+wealth and lands.
+
+'Almost I wish that she were poor as the saints she resembles!' he
+thought, with a tender passion that for the hour was true. It seemed
+to him that had he seen her standing in her shift in the snow, like
+our Lady of Hungary, discrowned and homeless, he would have been glad.
+He was honest with the honesty of passion. It was not the mistress of
+Hohenszalras that he loved, but his own wife.
+
+Such a marriage could not do otherwise than arouse by its announcement
+the most angry amazement, the most indignant protests from all the
+mighty houses with which for so many centuries the house of Szalras
+had allied itself. In a few tranquil sentences she made known her
+intentions to those of her relations whom she felt bound thus to
+honour; but she gave them clearly to understand that it was a formula
+of respect not an act of consultation. When they received her letters
+they knew that her marriage was already quite as irrevocable as though
+it had already taken place in the Hof-Kapelle of Vienna.
+
+All her relatives and all her order were opposed to her betrothal;
+a cold sufferance was the uttermost which any of them extended to
+Sabran. A foreigner and poor, and, with a troubled and uncertain
+past behind him, he was bitterly unwelcome to the haughty Prussian,
+Austrian, and Hungarian nobilities to which she belonged; neither his
+ancient name nor his recent political brilliancy and military service
+could place him on an equality with them in their eyes. Her trustees,
+the Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe and the Cardinal Vàsàrhely, with her
+cousin Kaulnitz, hurried in person as swiftly as special trains could
+bring them to the Iselthal, but they were too late to avert the blow.
+
+'It is not a marriage for her,' said Kaulnitz, angrily.
+
+'Why not? It is a very old family,' said the Princess, with no less
+irritation.
+
+'But quite decayed, long ruined,' he returned. 'This man was himself
+born in exile.'
+
+'As they exile everybody twice in every ten years in France!
+
+'And there have been stories----'
+
+'Of whom are there not stories? Calumny is the parasite of character;
+the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler.'
+
+'I never heard him accused of any strength, except of the wrist in
+_l'escrime!_'
+
+'Do you know anything dishonourable of him? If you do you are bound to
+say it.'
+
+'Dishonourable is a grave word. No, I cannot say that I do; the society
+he frequents is a guarantee against that; but his life has been
+indifferent, complicated, uncertain, not a life to be allied with that
+of such a woman as Wanda. My dear Princess, it has been a life _dans le
+milieu parisien_; what more would you have me say?'
+
+'Prince Archambaud's has been that. Yet three years since you earnestly
+pressed his suit on Wanda.'
+
+'Archambaud! He is one of the first alliances in Europe; he is of blood
+royal, and he has not been more vicious than other men.'
+
+'It would be better he should have been less so, since he lives so near
+'the fierce light that beats upon the throne;' an electric light which
+blackens while it illumines! My good Kaulnitz, you wander very far
+afield. If you know anything serious against M. de Sabran it is your
+duty to say it.'
+
+'He is a gambler.'
+
+'He has renounced gambling.'
+
+'He is a duellist.'
+
+'Society was of much better constitution when the duel was its habitual
+phlebotomy.'
+
+'He has been the lover of many women.'
+
+'I am afraid that is nothing singular.'
+
+'He is hardly more than an adventurer.'
+
+'He counts his ancestry in unbroken succession from the clays of
+Dagobert.
+
+'He has nothing but a _pignon sur rue_ in Paris, and a league or two of
+rocks and sand in Brittany; yet, though so poor, he made money enough
+by cards and speculation to be for three years the _amant en titre_ of
+Cochonette.'
+
+Madame Ottilie rose with a little frown.
+
+'I think we will say no more, my dear Baron; the matter is, after all,
+not yours or mine to decide. Wanda will assuredly do as she likes.'
+
+'But you have so much influence with her.'
+
+'I have none; no one has any: and I think you do not understand her in
+the least. It may cost her very much to avow to him that she loves him,
+but once having done that, it will cost her nothing at all to avow it
+to the world. She is much too proud a woman to care for the world.'
+
+'He is _gentilhomme de race_, I grant,' admitted with reluctance the
+Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe.
+
+'When has a noble of Brittany been otherwise?' asked the Princess
+Ottilie.
+
+'I know,' said the Prince; 'but you will admit that he occupies a
+difficult position--an invidious one.'
+
+'And he carries himself well through it. It is a difficult position
+which is the test of breeding,' said the Princess, triumphantly, 'and
+I deny entirely that it is what you call an invidious one. It is you
+who have the idea of the crowd when you lay so much stress on the mere
+absence of money.'
+
+'It is the idea of the crowd that dominates in this age.'
+
+'The more reason for us to resist it, if it be so.'
+
+'I think you are in love with him yourself, my sister!'
+
+'I should be were I forty years younger.'
+
+The Countess Brancka alone wrote with any sort of sympathy and pleasure
+to congratulate them both.
+
+'I was sure that Parsifal would win soon or late,' she said. 'Only
+remember that he is a Parsifal _doublé_ by a de Morny.'
+
+Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than
+the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of
+the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied.
+De Morny!--a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The
+comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!
+
+She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or
+remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had
+so much of the '_éternel féminin_' in her that she was only the more
+resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and
+exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was
+natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All
+the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those
+who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances
+produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as
+Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again
+Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had
+no power of persuasion.
+
+The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more
+graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as
+might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were
+present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that
+he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The
+sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man,
+whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of
+many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had
+they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her
+hand.
+
+'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of
+this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of
+birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere
+difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or
+the inches of one's stature.'
+
+The Princess shook her head.
+
+'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he
+is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always
+be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at
+large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'
+
+'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what
+matters the opinion of others?'
+
+'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt
+those motives?'
+
+Wanda did not reply.
+
+'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has
+been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him
+as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to
+him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the
+power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'
+
+As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was
+listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ
+within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of
+grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous
+years to come.
+
+When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:
+
+'I want you to promise me one thing.'
+
+'I promise you all things. What is this one?'
+
+'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those
+great fortunes which form the _acte d'accusation_ of socialists against
+society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of
+Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It
+is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed
+by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious
+barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one
+of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!--Promise me that
+you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may
+enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'
+
+He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to
+speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still
+remained silent.
+
+'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is
+too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against
+me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a
+few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too
+much!'
+
+He stooped and kissed her hand.
+
+'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with
+passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that
+I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be
+right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away
+from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'
+
+A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her
+hands as he held them clasped in his.
+
+'We will drink that wafer together, and as long as we are together it
+will never be bitter, I think,' she said very softly.
+
+Her voice seemed to sink into his very soul, so much it said of faith,
+so much it aroused of remorse.
+
+Then the great joy which had entered his life, like a great dazzling
+flood of light suddenly let loose into a darkened chamber, so blinded
+consumed, and intoxicated him, that he forgot all else; all else save
+this one fact--she would be his, body and soul, night and day, in life
+and in death for ever; his children borne by her, his life spent with
+her, her whole existence surrendered to him.
+
+For some days after that she mused upon the possibility of rendering
+him entirely independent of herself, without insulting him by a direct
+offer of a share in her possessions. At last a solution occurred
+to her. The whole of the fiefs of Idrac constituted a considerable
+appanage apart; its title went with it. When it had come into the
+Szalras family by marriage, as far back as the fifteenth century, it
+had been a principality; it was still a seigneurie, and many curious
+feudal privileges and distinctions went with it.
+
+It was Idrac now that she determined to abandon to her lover.
+
+'He will be seigneur of Idrac,' she thought, 'and I shall be so glad
+for him to bear an Austrian name.'
+
+'She herself would always retain her own name, and would take no other.
+
+'We will go and revisit it together,' she thought, and though she
+was all alone' at that moment, a soft warmth came into her face, and
+a throb of emotion to her heart, as she remembered all that would lie
+in that one word 'together,' all the tender and intimate union of the
+years to come.
+
+Her trustees were furious, and sought the aid of the men of law to
+enable them to step in and arrest her in what they deemed a course
+of self-destruction, but the law could not give them so much power;
+she was her own mistress, and as sole inheritrix had received her
+possessions singularly untrammelled by restrictions. In vain Prince
+Lilienhöhe spent his severe and chilly anger, Kaulnitz his fine
+sarcasm and delicate insinuations, and the Cardinal his stately and
+authoritative wrath. She was not to be altered in her decision.
+
+Austrian law allowed her to give away an estate to her husband if she
+chose, and there was nothing in the private settlements of her property
+to prevent her availing herself of the law.
+
+Strenuous opposition was encountered by her to this project, by every
+one of her relatives, hardly excluding the Princess Ottilie; 'for,'
+said that sagacious recluse, 'your horses may show you, my dear, the
+dangers of a rein too loose.'
+
+'I want no rein at all,' said Wanda. 'You forget that, to my thinking,
+marriage should never be bondage; two people with independent wills,
+tastes, and habits should mutually concede a perfect independence of
+action to each other. When one must yield, it must be the woman.'
+
+'Those are very fine theories,' the Princess remarked with caution.
+
+'I hope we shall put them in practice,' said Wanda, with unruffled good
+humour. 'Dear mother, I am sure you can understand that I want him
+to feel he is wholly independent of me. To what I love best on earth
+shall I dole out a niggard largesse from my wealth? If I were capable
+of doing so he would grow in time to hate me, and his hatred would be
+justified.'
+
+'I never should have supposed you would become so romantic,' said the
+Princess.
+
+'It will make him independent of you,' objected Prince Lilienhöhe.
+
+'That is what, beyond all, I desire him to be,' she answered.
+
+'It is an infatuation,' sighed Cardinal Vàsàrhely, out of her hearing,
+'when Egon would have brought to her a fortune as large as her own.'
+
+'You think water should always run to the sea,' said Princess Ottilie;
+'surely that is great waste sometimes?'
+
+'I think you are as infatuated as she is,' murmured the Cardinal. 'You
+forget that had she not been inspired with this unhappy sentiment she
+would have most probably left Hohenszalras to the Church.'
+
+'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,'
+answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else,
+had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'
+
+That would have been better than to an adventurer.'
+
+'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest
+aristocracies of the world, if poor.'
+
+'_Ce que femme veut_,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the
+Church had been worsted by women.
+
+The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the
+marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any
+possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband,
+and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of
+action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the
+deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself,
+as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud
+to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your
+hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he
+will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always
+will. If not--if not--well, he must go!'
+
+One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment
+emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She
+spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He
+looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush
+that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow
+tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires.
+She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of
+the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before
+him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.
+
+'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you
+to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of
+Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their
+feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been
+lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the
+reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary
+passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'
+
+'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with
+those roses.'
+
+'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced
+flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment.
+It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'
+
+'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your
+coronet, to which I can add none!'
+
+But to please her he bent over the crabbed black letter and the antique
+blazonings of the great roll to which the great dead men had set their
+sign and seal. She watched him as he read it, then after a little time
+she put her hand with a caressing movement on his shoulder.
+
+'My love, I can do just as I will with Idrac. The lawyers are agreed on
+that, and the Kaiser will confirm whatever I do. Now I want to give you
+Idrac, make you wholly lord of it; indeed, the thing is already done. I
+have signed all the documents needful, and, as I say, the Emperor will
+confirm any part of them that needs his assent. My Réné, you are a very
+proud man, but you will not be too proud to take Idrac and its title
+from your wife. But for that town who can say that our lives might not
+have been passed for ever apart? Why do you look so grave? The Kaiser
+and I both want you to be Austrian. When I transfer to you the fief of
+Idrac you are its Count for evermore.'
+
+He drew a quick deep breath as if he had been struck a blow, and stood
+gazing at her. He did not speak, his eyes darkened as with pain. For
+the moment she was afraid that she had wounded him. With exquisite
+softness of tone and touch she took his hand and said to him tenderly:
+
+'Why will you be so proud? After all, what are these things? Since
+we love one another, what is mine is yours; a formula more or less
+is no offence. It is my fancy that you should have the title and the
+fief. The people know you there, and your heroic courage will be for
+ever amongst their best traditions. Dear! once I read that it needs a
+greater soul to take generously than to give. Be great so, now, for my
+sake!'
+
+'Great!' he echoed the word hoarsely, and a smile of bitter irony
+passed for a moment over his features. But he controlled the passionate
+self-contempt that rose in him. He knew that whatever else he was,
+he was her lover, and her hero in her sight. If the magnitude and
+magnanimity of her gifts overwhelmed and oppressed him, he was recalled
+to self-control by the sense of her absolute faith in him. He pressed
+her hands against his heavily-beating heart.
+
+'All the greatness is with you, my beloved,' he said with effort.
+'Since you delight to honour me, I can but strive my utmost to deserve
+your honour. It is like your beautiful and lavish nature to be prodigal
+of gifts. But when you give yourself, what need is there for aught
+else?'
+
+'But Idrac is my caprice. You must gratify it.'
+
+'I will take the title gladly at your hands then. The revenues--No.'
+
+'You must take it all, the town and the title, and all they bring,' she
+insisted. 'In truth, but for you there would possibly be no town at
+all. Nay, my dear, you must do me this little pleasure; it will become
+you so well that Countship of Idrac: it is as old a place as Vindobona
+itself.'
+
+'Do you not understand?' she added, with a flush on her face. 'I want
+you to feel that it is wholly yours; that if I die, or if you leave me,
+it remains yours still. Oh, I do not doubt you; not for one moment. But
+liberty is always good. And Idrac will make you an Austrian noble in
+your own right. If you persist in refusing it I will assign it to the
+Crown; you will pain me and mortify me.'
+
+'That is enough! Never wittingly in my life will I hurt you. But if you
+wish me to be lord of Idrac, invest me with the title, my Empress. I
+will take it and be proud of it; and as for the revenues--well, we will
+not quarrel for them. They shall go to make new dykes and new bastions
+for the town, or pile themselves one on another in waiting for your
+children.'
+
+She smiled and her face grew warm as she turned aside and took up one
+of the great swords with jewelled hilts and damascened scabbards, which
+were ranged along the wall of the Rittersaal with other stands of arms.
+
+She drew the sword, and as he fell on his knee before her smote him
+lightly on the shoulder with its blade.
+
+'Rise, Graf von Idrac!' she said, stooping and touching his forehead
+with the bouquet that she wore at her breast. He loosened one of the
+roses and held it to his lips.
+
+'I swear my fealty now and for ever,' he said with emotion, and his
+face was paler and his tone was graver than the playfulness of the
+moment seemed to call for in him.
+
+'Would to Heaven I had had no other name than this one you give me,'
+he murmured as he rose. 'Oh, my love, my lady, my guardian angel!
+Forget that ever I lived before, forget all my life when I was unworthy
+you; let me live only from the day that will make me your vassal and
+your----'
+
+'That will make you my lord!' she said softly; then she stooped, and
+for the first time kissed him.
+
+What caused her the only pain that disturbed the tranquillity of these
+cloudless days was the refusal of her cousin Egon to be present at
+her marriage. He sent her, with some great jewels that had come from
+Persia, a few words of sad and wistful affection.
+
+'My presence,' he added in conclusion, 'is no more needed for your
+happiness than are these poor diamonds and pearls needed in your
+crowded jewel-cases. You will spare me a trial, which it could be of no
+benefit to you for me to suffer. I pray that the Marquis de Sabran may
+all his life be worthy of the immense trust and honour which you have
+seen fit to give to him. For myself, I have been very little always in
+your life. Henceforth I shall be nothing. But if ever you call on me
+for any service--which it is most unlikely you ever will do--I entreat
+you to remember that there is no one living who will more gladly or
+more humbly do your bidding at all cost than I, your cousin Egon.'
+
+The short letter brought tears to her eyes. She said nothing of it to
+Sabran. He had understood from Mdme. Ottilie that Prince Vàsàrhely had
+loved his cousin hopelessly for many years, and could not be expected
+to be present at her marriage.
+
+In a week from that time their nuptials were celebrated in the Court
+Chapel of the Hofburg at Vienna, with all the pomp and splendour that
+a brilliant and ceremonious Court could lend to the espousal of one of
+the greatest ladies of the old Duchy of Austria.
+
+Immediately after the ceremony they left the capital for Hohenszalras.
+
+At the signing of the contract on the previous night, when he had taken
+up the pen he had grown very pale; he had hesitated a moment, and
+glanced around him on the magnificent crowd, headed by the Emperor and
+Empress, with a gleam of fear and of anxiety in his eyes, which Baron
+Kaulnitz, who was intently watching him, had alone perceived.
+
+'There is something. What is it?' had mused the astute German.
+
+It was too late to seek to know. Sabran had bent down over the
+parchment, and with a firm hand had signed his name and title.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+It was midsummer once more in the Iselthal, five years and a half after
+the celebration at the Imperial palace of those nuptials which had been
+so splendid that their magnificence had been noticeable even at that
+magnificent Court. The time had seemed to her like one long, happy,
+cloudless day, and if to him there had come any fatigue, any satiety,
+any unrest, such as almost always come to the man in the fruition of
+his passion, he suffered her to see none of them.
+
+It was one of those rare marriages in which no gall of a chain is felt,
+but a quick and perfect sympathy insures that harmony which passion
+alone is insufficient to sustain. He devoted himself with ardour to the
+care of the immense properties that belonged to his wife; he brought
+to their administration a judgment and a precision that none had looked
+for in a man of pleasure; he entered cordially into all her schemes for
+the well-being of her people dependent on her, and carried them out
+with skill and firmness. The revenues of Idrac he never touched; he
+left them to accumulate for his younger son, or expended them on the
+township itself, where he was adored.
+
+If he were still the same man who had been the lover of Cochonette,
+the terror of Monte Carlo, the hero of night-long baccara and frontier
+duels, he had at least so banished the old Adam that it appeared wholly
+dead. Nor was the death of it feigned. He had flung away the slough
+of his old life with a firm hand, and the peace, the dignity of his
+present existence were very precious to him. He was glad to steep
+himself in them, as a tired and fevered wayfarer was glad to bathe his
+dusty and heated limbs in the cool, clear waters of the Szalrassee. And
+he loved his wife with a great love, in which reverence, and gratitude,
+and passion were all blent. Possession had not dulled, nor familiarity
+blunted it. She was still to him a sovereign, a saint, a half divine
+creature, who had stooped to become mortal for his sake, and his
+children's.
+
+The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls
+and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the
+Szalrassee.
+
+'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath
+the great yews beside the keep.
+
+'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but
+watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as
+ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty
+amphitheatre.
+
+She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of
+whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy
+with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The
+other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months
+of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were
+all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.
+
+'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the
+world called so proud.
+
+'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near
+her wicker chair.
+
+'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it,
+at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you
+it will be he who will be dearest to me.'
+
+As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.
+
+She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.
+
+'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that
+we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all
+the world who have passed five years and more together without once
+disagreeing?'
+
+'In all the world there is not another Countess Wanda!'
+
+'Ah! that is your only defect; you will always avoid argument by
+escaping through the side-door of compliment. It is true, to be sure,
+that your flattery is a very high and subtle art.'
+
+'It is like all high art then, based on what is eternally true.'
+
+'You will always have the last word, and it is always so graceful a
+one that it is impossible to quarrel with it. But, Réné, I want you
+to speak without compliment to me for once. Tell me, are you indeed
+never--never--a little weary of being here?'
+
+He hesitated a moment and a slight flush came on his face.
+
+She observed both signs, slight as they were, and sighed; it was the
+first sigh she had ever breathed since her marriage.
+
+'Of course you are, of course you must be,' she said quickly. 'It has
+been selfish and blameable of me never to think of it before. It is
+paradise to me, but no doubt to you, used as you have been to the stir
+of the world, there, must be some tedium, some dulness in this mountain
+isolation. I ought to have remembered that before.'
+
+'You need do nothing of the kind, now,' he said. 'Who has been talking
+to you? Who has brought this little snake into our Eden?'
+
+'No one; and it is not a snake at all, but a natural reflection.
+Hohenszalras and you are the world to me, but I cannot expect that
+Hohenszalras and I can be quite as much to yourself. It is always the
+difference between the woman and the man. You have great talents; you
+are ambitious.'
+
+'Were I as ambitious as Alexander, surely I have gained wherewithal to
+be content!'
+
+'That is only compliment again, or if truth it is only a side of the
+truth. Nay, love, I do not think for a moment you are tired of me;
+I am too self-satisfied for that! But I think it is possible that
+this solitude may have grown, or may grow, wearisome to you; that you
+desire, perhaps without knowing it, to be more amidst the strife,
+the movement, and the pleasures of men. Aunt Ottilie calls this
+"confinement to a fortress;" now that is a mere pleasantry, but if ever
+you should feel tempted to feel what she feels, have confidence enough
+in my good sense and in my affection to say so to me, and then----.'
+
+'And then? We will suppose I have this ingratitude and bad taste, what
+then?'
+
+'Why then, my own wishes should not stand for one instant in the way
+of yours, or rather I would make yours mine. And do not use the word
+ingratitude, my dearest; there can be no question of that betwixt you
+and me.'
+
+'Yes,' said Sabran, as he stooped towards her and touched her hair
+with his lips. 'When you gave me yourself, you made me your debtor
+for all time; would have made me so had you been as poor as you are
+rich. When I speak of gratitude it is of _that_ gift, I think, not of
+Hohenszalras.'
+
+A warmth of pleasure flushed her cheek for a moment, and she smiled
+happily.
+
+'You shall not beg the question so,' she said, with gentle insistence
+after a moment's pause. 'I have not forgotten your eloquence in the
+French Chamber.' You are that rare thing a born orator. You are
+not perhaps fitted to be a statesman, for I doubt if you would have
+the application or bear the tedium necessary, but you have every
+qualification for a diplomatist, a foreign minister.'
+
+'I have not the first qualification, I have no country!'
+
+She looked at him, in surprise--he spoke with bitterness and
+self-contempt; but in a moment he had added quickly:--
+
+'France is nothing to me now, and though I am Austrian by all ties and
+affections, I am not an Austrian before the law.'
+
+'That is hardly true,' she answered, satisfied with the explanation.
+'Since France is little to you you could be naturalised here whenever
+you chose, even if Idrac have not made you a Croat noble, as I believe
+the lawyers would say it had; and the Emperor, who knows and admires
+you, would, I think, at once give you gladly any mission you preferred;
+you would make so graceful, so perfect, so envied an ambassador!
+Diplomacy has indeed little force now, yet tact still tells wherever
+it be found, and it is as rare as blue roses in the unweeded garden of
+the world. I do not speak for myself, dear; that you know. Hohenszalras
+is my beloved home, and it was enough for me before I knew you, and
+nowhere else could life ever seem to me so true, so high, so simple,
+and so near to God as here. But I do remember that men weary even of
+happiness when it is unwitnessed, and require the press and stir of
+emulation and excitation; and, if you feel that want, say so. Have
+confidence enough in me to believe that your welfare will be ever my
+highest law. Promise me this.'
+
+He changed colour slightly at her generous and trustful words, but he
+answered without a moment's pause:
+
+'Whenever I am so thankless to fate I will confess it. No; the world
+and I never valued one another much. I am far better here in the heart
+of your mountains. Here only have I known peace and rest.'
+
+He spoke with a certain effort and emotion, and he stooped over his
+little son and raised him on her knees.
+
+'These children shall grow up at Hohenszalras,' he continued, 'and you
+shall teach them your love of the open air, the mountain solitudes, the
+simple people, the forest creatures, the influences and the ways of
+nature. You care for all those things, and they make up true wisdom,
+true contentment. As for myself, if you always love me I shall ask no
+more of fate.'
+
+'If! Can you be afraid?'
+
+'Sometimes. One always fears to lose what one has never merited.'
+
+'Ah, my love, do not be so humble! If you saw yourself as I see you,
+you would be very proud.'
+
+She smiled as she spoke, and stretched her hand out to him over the
+golden head of her child.
+
+He took it and held it against his heart, clasped in both his own.
+Bela, impatient, slipped off his mother's lap to pursue his capture of
+the daisies; the butterflies were forbidden joys, and he was obedient,
+though in his own little way he was proud and imperious. But there
+was a blue butterfly just in front of him, a Lycœna Adonis, like a
+little bit of the sky come down and dancing about; he could not resist,
+he darted at it. As he was about to seize it she caught his fingers.
+
+'I have told you, Bela, you are never to touch anything that flies or
+moves. You are cruel.'
+
+He tried to get away, and his face grew very warm and passionate.
+
+'Bela will be cruel, if he like,' he said, knitting his pretty brows.
+
+Though he was not more than four years old he knew very well that he
+was the Count Bela, to whom all the people gave homage, crowding to
+kiss his tiny hand after Mass on holy-days. He was a very beautiful
+child, and all the prettier for his air of pride and resolution; he had
+been early put on a little mountain pony, and could ride fearlessly
+down the forest glades with Otto. All the imperiousness of the great
+race which had dealt out life and death so many centuries at their
+caprice through the Hohe Tauern seemed to have been inherited by him,
+coupled with a waywardness and a vanity that were not traits of the
+house of Szalras. It was impossible, even though those immediately
+about him were wise and prudent, to wholly prevent the effects of the
+adulation with which the whole household was eager to wait on every
+whim of the little heir.
+
+'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his
+desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that
+to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it
+his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition,
+and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very
+affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.
+
+With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he
+said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'
+
+Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very
+frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been
+four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.
+
+Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.
+
+'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'
+
+Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.
+
+'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'
+
+Then he burst into tears.
+
+'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his
+father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his
+nurse, who came for him.
+
+'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him
+more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give
+you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'
+
+It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil
+qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son,
+and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was
+unworthy to beget _her_ children,' he thought, with the self-reproach
+that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his
+satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what
+trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years
+to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his
+blood?
+
+'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to
+see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It
+hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own
+little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill;
+do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is
+your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud
+of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'
+
+'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows
+older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to
+enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy
+that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry
+passions, of my degraded humanity?'
+
+'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think
+me.'
+
+'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'
+
+'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a _beau défaut_,
+and I would not have you lose it.'
+
+'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and
+passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'
+
+She looked at him surprised, and vaguely troubled at the self-reproach
+and the self-scorn of his passionate utterance. Seeing that surprise
+and trouble in her glance, he controlled the emotion that for the
+moment mastered him.
+
+'Ah, love!' he said quickly and truly, 'if you could but guess how
+gross and base a man's life seems to him contrasted with the life of
+a pure and noble woman! Being born of you, those children, I think,
+should be as faultless and as soilless as those pearls that lie on your
+breast. But then they are mine also; so already on that boy's face one
+sees the sins of revolt, of self-will, of cruelty--being mine also,
+your living pearls are dulled and stained!'
+
+A greater remorse than she dreamed of made his heart ache as he said
+these words; but she heard in them only the utterance of that extreme
+and unwavering devotion to her which he had shown in all his acts and
+thoughts from the first hours of their union.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The Princess Ottilie was scarcely less happy than they in the
+realisation of her dreams and prophecies. Those who had been most
+bitterly opposed to her alliance with him could find no fault in his
+actions and his affections.
+
+'I always said that Wanda ought to marry, since she had plainly no
+vocation for the cloister,' she said a hundred times a year. 'And I was
+certain that M. de Sabran was the person above all others to attract
+and to content her. She has much more imagination than she would be
+willing to allow and he is capable at once of fascinating her fancy
+and of satisfying her intellect. No one can be dull where he is; he is
+one of those who make _la pluie et le beau temps_ by his absence or
+presence; and, besides that, no commonplace affection would have ever
+been enough for her. And he loves her like a poet, which he is at once
+whenever he leaves the world for Beethoven and Bach. I cannot imagine
+why you should have opposed the marriage, merely because he had not two
+millions in the Bank of France.'
+
+'Not for that,' answered the Grand Duke; 'rather because he broke the
+bank of Monte Carlo, and other similar reasons. A great player of
+baccara is scarcely the person to endow with the wealth of the Szalras.'
+
+'The wealth is tied up tightly enough at the least, and you will admit
+that he was yet more eager than you that it should be so.'
+
+'Oh, yes! he behaved very well. I never denied it. But she has placed
+it in his power to make away with the whole of Idrac, if he should ever
+choose. That was very unwise, but we had no power to oppose.'
+
+'You may be quite sure that Idrac will go intact to the second son, as
+it has always done; and I believe but for his own exertions Idrac would
+now be beneath the Danube waters. Perhaps you never heard all that
+story of the flood?'
+
+'I only hope that if I have detractors you will defend me from them,'
+said Prince Lilienhöhe, giving up argument.
+
+Fair weather is always especially fair in the eyes of those who have
+foretold at sunset that the morrow would be fine; and so the married
+life of Wanda von Szalras was especially delightful as an object of
+contemplation, as a theme of exultation, to the Princess, who alone had
+been clear-sighted enough to foresee the future. She really also loved
+Sabran like a son, and took pride and pleasure in the filial tenderness
+he showed her, and in his children, with the beautiful blue eyes that
+had gleams of light in them like sapphires. The children themselves
+adored her; and even the bold and wilful Bela was as quiet as a
+startled fawn beside this lovely little lady, with her snow-white hair
+and her delicate smile, whose cascades of lace always concealed such
+wonderful bon-bon boxes, and gilded cosaques, and illuminated stories
+of the saints.
+
+Almost all their time was spent at Hohenszalras. A few winter months
+in Vienna was all they had ever passed away from it, except one visit
+to Idrac and the Hungarian estates. The children never left it for
+a day. He shared her affection for the place, and for the hardy and
+frank mountain people around them. He seemed to her to entirely forget
+Romaris, and beyond the transmission of moneys to its priest, he
+took no heed of it. She hesitated to recall it to him, since to do
+so might have seemed to remind him that it was she, not he, who was
+suzerain in the Hohe Tauern. Romaris was but a bleak rock, a strip of
+sea-swept sand; it was natural that it should have no great hold on his
+affections, only recalling as it did all that its lords had lost.
+
+'I hate its name,' he said impetuously once; and seeing the surprise
+upon her face, he added: 'I was very lonely and wretched there; I
+tried to take interest in it because you bade me, but I failed; all
+I saw, all I thought of, was yourself, and I believed you as far and
+for ever removed from me as though you had dwelt in some other planet.
+No! perhaps I am superstitious: I do not wish you to go to Romaris. I
+believe it would bring us misfortune. The sea is full of treachery, the
+sands are full of graves.'
+
+She smiled.
+
+'Superstition is a sort of parody of faith; I am sure you are not
+superstitious. I do not care to go to Romaris; I like to cheat myself
+into the belief that you were born and bred in the Iselthal. Otto said
+to me the other day, "My lord must be a son of the soil, or how could
+he know our mountains so well as he does, and how could he anywhere
+have learned to shoot like that?"'
+
+'I am very glad that Otto does me so much honour. When he first met
+me, he would have shot me like a fox, if you had given the word. Ah, my
+love! how often I think of you that day, in your white serge, with your
+girdle of gold, and your long gold-headed staff, and your little ivory
+horn. You were truly a châtelaine of the old mystical German days.
+You had some _Schlüsselblumen_ in your hand. They were indeed the key
+flower to my soul, though, alas! treasures, I fear, you found none on
+your entrance there.'
+
+'I shall not answer you, since to answer would be to flatter you, and
+Aunt Ottilie already, does that more than is good for you,' she said
+smiling, as she passed her fingers over the waves of his hair. 'By the
+way, whom shall we invite to meet the Lilienhöhe? Will you make out a
+list?'
+
+'The Grand Duke does not share Frau Ottilie's goodness for me.'
+
+'What would you? He has been made of buckram and parchment; besides
+which; nothing that is not German has, to his mind, any right to exist.
+By the way, Egon wrote to me this morning; he will be here at last.'
+
+He looked up quickly in unspoken alarm: 'Your cousin Egon? Here?'
+
+'Why are you so surprised? I was sure that sooner or later he would
+conquer that feeling of being unable to meet you. I begged him to come
+now; it is eight whole years since I have seen him. When once you have
+met you will be friends--for my sake.'
+
+He was silent; a look of trouble and alarm was still upon his face.
+
+'Why should you suppose it any easier to him now than then?' he said at
+length. 'Men who love _you_ do not change. There are women who compel
+constancy, _sans le vouloir_. The meeting can but be painful to Prince
+Vàsàrhely.'
+
+'Dear Réné,' she answered in some surprise, 'my nearest male relative
+and I cannot go on for ever without seeing each other. Even these years
+have done Egon a great deal of harm. He has been absent from the Court
+for fear of meeting us. He has lived with his hussars, or voluntarily
+confined to his estates, until he grows morose and solitary. I am
+deeply attached to him. I do not wish to have the remorse upon me of
+having caused the ruin of his gallant and brilliant life. When he
+has been once here he will like you: men who are brave have always
+a certain sympathy. When he has seen you here he will realise that
+destiny is unchangeable, and grow reconciled to the knowledge that I am
+your wife.'
+
+Sabran gave an impatient gesture of denial, and began to write the list
+of invitations for the autumn circle of guests who were to meet the
+Prince and Princess of Lilienhöhe.
+
+Once every summer and every autumn Hohenszalras was filled with a
+brilliant house-party, for she sacrificed her own personal preferences
+to what she believed to be for the good of her husband. She knew that
+men cannot always live alone; that contact with the world is needful to
+their minds and bracing for it. She had a great dread lest the ghost
+_ennui_ should show his pale face over her husband's shoulder, for
+she realised that from the life of the asphalte of the Champs-Élysées
+to the life amidst the pine forests of the Iselthal was an abrupt
+transition that might easily bring tedium in its train. And tedium is
+the most terrible and the most powerful foe love ever encounters.
+
+Sabran completed the list, and when he had corrected it into due
+accordance with all Lilienhöhe's personal and political sympathies and
+antipathies, despatched the invitations, 'for eight days,' written on
+cards that bore the joint arms of the Counts of Idrac and the Counts of
+Szalras. He had adopted the armorial bearings of the countship of Idrac
+as his own, and seemed disposed to abandon altogether those of the
+Sabrans of Romaris.
+
+When they were written he went out by himself and rode long and fast
+through the mists of a chilly afternoon, through dripping forest ways
+and over roads where little water-courses spread in shining shallows.
+The coming of Egon Vàsàrhely troubled him and alarmed him. He had
+always dreaded his first meeting with the Magyar noble; and as the
+years had dropped by one after another, and her cousin had failed
+to find courage to see her again, he had begun to believe that they
+and Vàsàrhely would remain always strangers. His wish had begotten
+his thought. He knew that she wrote at intervals to her cousin, and
+he to her; he knew that at the birth of each of their children some
+magnificent gift, with a formal letter of felicitation, had come from
+the Colonel of the White Hussars; but as time had gone on and Prince
+Egon had avoided all possibility of meeting them, he had grown to
+suppose that the wound given her rejected lover was too profound ever
+to close; nor did he wonder that it was so: it seemed to him that any
+man who loved her must do so for all eternity, if eternity there should
+be. To learn suddenly that within another month Vàsàrhely would be his
+guest, distressed and alarmed him in a manner she never dreamed. They
+had been so happy. On their cloud less heaven there seemed to him to
+rise a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but bearing with it disaster
+and a moonless night.
+
+'Perhaps he will have forgotten,' he thought, as he strove to shake off
+his forebodings. 'We were so young then. He was not even as old as I!'
+
+And he rode fast and furiously homewards as the day drew in, and the
+lighted windows of the great castle seemed to smile at him as lie saw
+it high up above the darkness of the woods and of the evening mists,
+his home, beloved, sacred, infinitely dear to him; dear as the soil of
+the mother country which the wrecked mariner reaches after facing death
+on the deep sea.
+
+'God save her from suffering by me!' he said, in an unconscious prayer,
+as he drew rein before the terrace of Hohenszalras. Almost he believed
+in God through her.
+
+When, after dressing, he went into, the Saxe room, the peace and
+beauty of the scene had never struck him so strongly as it did now,
+coming out of the shadows of the wet woods and the gloom of his own
+anxieties; anxieties the heavier and the more wearing because they
+could be shared by no one. The soft, full light of the wax candles fell
+on the Louis Seize embroideries and the white woodwork of the panelling
+and the china borders of the mirrors. The Princess Ottilie sat making
+silk-netting for the children's balls; his wife was reading, and Bela
+and Gela, who were there for their privileged half-hour before dinner,
+were fitting together on a white bearskin, playing with the coloured
+balls of the game of solitaire. The soft light from the chandeliers
+and sconces of the Saxe Royale china fell on the golden heads and the
+velvet frocks of the children, on the old laces and the tawny-coloured
+plush of their mothers skirts, on the great masses of flowers in the
+Saxe bowls, and on the sleeping forms of the big dogs Donau and Neva.
+It was an interior that would have charmed Chardin, that would have
+been worthy of Vandyck.
+
+As he looked at it he thought with a sort of ecstasy, 'All that is
+mine;' and then his heartstrings tightened as he thought again, 'If she
+knew----?'
+
+She looked up at his entrance with a welcome on her face that needed no
+words.
+
+'Where have you been in the rain all this long afternoon?' You see we
+have a fire, even though it is midsummer. Bela, rise, and make your
+obeisance, and push that chair nearer the hearth.'
+
+The two little boys stood up and kissed his hand, one after another,
+with the pretty formality; of greeting on which she always insisted;
+then they went back to their coloured glass balls, and he sank into a
+low chair beside his wife with a sigh half of fatigue, half of content.
+
+'Yes, I have been riding all the time,' he said to her. 'I am not sure
+that Siegfried approved it. But it does one good sometimes, and after
+the blackness and the wetness of that forest how charming it is to come
+home!'
+
+She looked at him with wistfulness.
+
+'I wish you were not vexed that Egon is coming! I am sure you have been
+thinking of it as you rode.'
+
+'Yes, I have; but I am ashamed of doing so. He is your cousin, that
+shall be enough for me. I will do my best to make him welcome. Only
+there is this difficulty; a welcome from me to him will seem in itself
+an insult.'
+
+'An insult! when you are my husband? One would think you were my
+_jägermeister._ Dear mother mine, help me to scold him.'
+
+'I am a stranger,' he said, under his breath.
+
+She smiled a little, but she said with a certain hauteur:
+
+'You are master of Hohenszalras, as your son will be when our places
+shall know us no more. Do not let the phantom of Egon come between us,
+I beseech you. His real presence never will do so, that is certain.'
+
+'Nothing shall come between us,' said Sabran, as his hand took and
+closed upon hers. 'Forgive me if I have brought some gloomy _nix_ out
+of the dark woods with me; he will flee away in, the light of this
+beloved white-room. No evil spirits could dare stay by your hearth.'
+
+'There are _nixes_ in the forests,' said Bela in a whisper to his
+brother.
+
+'Ja!' said Gela, not comprehending.
+
+'We will kill them all when we are big,' said Bela.
+
+'Ja! ja!' said Gela.
+
+Bela knew very well what a _nix_ was. Otto had told him all about
+kobolds and sprites, as his pony trotted down the drives.
+
+'Or we will take them prisoners,' he added, remembering that his mother
+never allowed anything to be killed, not even butterflies.
+
+'Ja!' said Gela again, rolling the pretty blue and pink and amber balls
+about in the white fur of the bearskin.
+
+Gela's views of life were simplified by the disciple's law of
+imitation; they were restricted to doing whatever Bela did, when that
+was possible, when it was not possible he remained still adoring Bela,
+with his little serious face as calm as a god's.
+
+She used to think that when they should grow up Bela would be a great
+soldier like Wallenstein or Condé, and Gela would stay at home and
+take care of his people here in the green, lone, happy Iselthal.
+
+Time ran on and the later summer made the blooming hay grow brown on
+all the alpine meadows, and made the garden of Hohenszalras blossom
+with a million autumnal glories; it brought also the season of the
+first house-party. Egon Vàsàrhely was to arrive one day before the
+Lilienhöhe and the other guests.
+
+'I want Egon so much to see Bela!' she said, with the thoughtless
+cruelty of a happy mother forgetful of the pain of a rejected lover.
+
+'I fear Bela will find little favor in your cousin's eyes, since he is
+mine too,' said Sabran.
+
+'Oh, Egon is content to be only our cousin by this----'
+
+'You think so? You do not know yourself if you imagine that.'
+
+'Egon is very loyal. He would not come here if he could not greet you
+honestly.'
+
+Sabran's face flushed a little, and he turned away. He vaguely dreaded
+the advent of Egon Vàsàrhely, and there were so many innocent words
+uttered in the carelessness of intimate intercourse which stabbed him
+to the quick; she had so wounded him all unconscious of her act.
+
+'Shall we have a game of billiards?' he asked her as they stood in the
+Rittersaal, whilst the rain fell fast without. She played billiards
+well, and could hold her own against him, though his game was one that
+had often been watched by a crowded _galerie_ in Paris with eager
+speculation and heavy wager. An hour afterwards they were still playing
+when the clang of a great bell announced the approach of the carriage
+which had been sent to Windisch-Matrey.
+
+'Come!' she said joyously, as she put back her cue in its rest; but
+Sabran drew back.
+
+'Receive your cousin first alone,' he said. 'He must resent my presence
+here. I will not force it on him on the threshold of your house.'
+
+'Of our house! Why will you use wrong pronouns? Believe me, dear, Egon
+is too generous to bear you the animosity you think.'
+
+'Then he never loved you,' said Sabran, somewhat impatiently, as he
+sent one ball against another with a sharp collision. 'I will come if
+you wish it,' he added; 'but I think it is not in the best taste to so
+assert myself.'
+
+'Egon is only my cousin and your guest. You are the master of
+Hohenszalras. Come! you were not so difficult when you received the
+Emperor.'
+
+'I had done the Emperor no wrong,' said Sabran, controlling the
+impatience and the reluctance he still felt.
+
+'You have done Egon none. I should not have been his wife had I never
+been yours.'
+
+'Who knows?' murmured Sabran, as he followed her into the entrance
+hall. The stately figure of Egon Vàsàrhely enveloped in furs was just
+passing through the arched doorway.
+
+She went towards him with a glad welcome and both hands outstretched.
+
+Prince Egon bowed to the ground: then took both her hands in his and
+kissed her on the cheek.
+
+Sabran, who grew very pale, advanced and greeted him with ceremonious
+grace.
+
+'My wife has bade me welcome you, Prince, but it would be presumptuous
+in me, a stranger, to do that. All her kindred must be dear and sacred
+here.'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely, with an effort to which he had for years been vainly
+schooling himself, stretched out his hand to take her husband's; but
+as he did so, and his glance for the first time dwelt on Sabran, a
+look surprised and indefinitely perplexed came on his own features.
+Unconsciously he hesitated a moment; then, controlling himself, he
+replied with a few fitting words of courtesy and friendship. That
+there should be some embarrassment, some constraint, was almost
+inevitable, and did not surprise her: she saw both, but she also saw
+that both were hidden under the serenity of high breeding and worldly
+habit. The most difficult moment had passed: they went together into
+the Rittersaal, talked together a little on a few indifferent topics,
+and in a little space Prince Egon withdrew to his own apartments to
+change his travelling clothes. Sabran left him on the threshold of his
+chamber.
+
+Vàsàrhely locked the doors, locking out even his servant, threw off
+his furs and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. The meeting had
+cost him even more than he had feared that it would do. For five years
+he had dreaded this moment, and its pain was as sharp and as fresh to
+him as though it had been unforeseen. To sleep under the same roof
+with the husband of Wanda von Szalras! He had overrated his power of
+self-control, underrated his power of suffering, when to please her he
+had consented after five years to visit Hohenszalras. What were five
+years?--half a century would not have changed him.
+
+Under the plea of fatigue, he, who had sat in his saddle eighteen hours
+at a stretch, and was braced to every form of endurance in the forest
+chase and in the tented field, sent excuses to his host for remaining
+in his own rooms until the Ave Maria rung. When he at length went
+down to the blue-room where she was, he had recovered, outwardly at
+least, his tranquillity and his self-possession, though here, in this
+familiar, once beloved chamber, where every object had been dear to him
+from his boyhood, a keener trial than any he had passed through awaited
+him, as she led forward to meet him a little boy clad in white velvet,
+with a cloud of light golden hair above deep blue luminous eyes, and
+said to him:
+
+'Egon, this is my Bela. You will love him a little, for my sake?'
+
+Vàsàrhely felt a chill run through him like the cold of death as he
+stooped towards the child; but he smiled and touched the boy's forehead
+with his lips.
+
+'May the spirit of our lost Bela be with him and dwell in his heart,'
+he murmured; 'better I cannot wish him.'
+
+With an effort he turned to Sabran.
+
+'Your little son is a noble child; you may with reason be proud of him.
+He is very like you in feature. I see no trace of the Szalras.'
+
+'The other boy is more like Wanda,' replied Sabran, sensible of a
+certain tenacity of observation with which Vàsàrhely was gazing at
+him. 'As for my daughter, she is too young for anyone to say whom she
+will resemble. All I desire is that she should be like her mother,
+physically and spiritually.'
+
+'Of course,' said the Prince, absently, still looking from Sabran to
+the child, as if in the endeavour to follow some remembrance that
+eluded-him. The little face of Bela was a miniature of his father's,
+they were as alike as it is possible for a child and a man to be so,
+and Egon Vàsàrhely perplexedly mused and wondered at vague memories
+which rose up to him as he gazed on each.
+
+'And what do you like best to do, my little one?' he asked of Bela, who
+was regarding him with curious and hostile eyes.
+
+'To ride,' answered Bela at once, in his pretty uncertain German.
+
+'There you are a true Szalras at least. And your brother Gela, can he
+ride yet? Where is Gela, by the way?'
+
+'He is asleep,' said Bela, with some contempt. 'He is a little thing.
+Yes; he rides, but it is in a chair-saddle. It is not real riding.'
+
+'I see. Well, when you come and see me you shall have some real riding,
+on wild horses if you like;' and he told the child stories of the great
+Magyar steppes, and the herds of young horses, and the infinite delight
+of the unending gallop over the wide hushed plain; and all the while
+his heart ached bitterly, and the sight of the child--who was her
+child, yet had that stranger's face--was to him like a jagged steel
+being turned and twisted inside a bleeding wound. Bela, however, was
+captivated by the new visions that rose before him.
+
+'Bela will come to Hungary,' he said with condescension, and then with
+an added thought, continued: 'I think Bela has great lands there. Otto
+said so.'
+
+'Bela has nothing at all,' said Sabran, sternly. 'Bela talks great
+nonsense sometimes, and it would be better he should go to sleep with
+his brother.'
+
+Bela looked up shyly under his golden cloud of hair. 'Folko is Bela's,'
+he said under his breath. Folko was his pony.
+
+'No,' said Sabran; 'Folko belongs to your mother. She only allows you
+to have him so long as you are good to him.'
+
+'Bela is always good to him,' he said decidedly.
+
+'Bela is faultless in his own estimation,' said his mother, with a
+smile. 'He is too little to be wise enough to see himself as he is.'
+
+This view made Bela's blue eyes open very wide and fill very
+sorrowfully. It was humiliating. He longed to get back to Gela, who
+always listened to him dutifully, and never said anything in answer
+except an entirely acquiescent 'Ja! ja!' which was indeed about the
+limitation of Gela's lingual powers. In a few moments, indeed, his
+governess came for him and took him away, a little dainty figure in his
+ivory velvet and his blue silk stockings, with his long golden curls
+hanging to his waist.
+
+'It is so difficult to keep him from being spoilt,' she said, as the
+door closed on him. 'The people make a little prince, a little god, of
+him. He believes himself to be something wonderful. Gela, who is so
+gentle and quiet, is left quite in the shade.'
+
+'I suppose Gela takes your title?' said Vàsàrhely to his host. 'It
+is usual with the Austrian families for the second son to have some
+distant appellation?'
+
+'They are babies,' said Sabran, impatiently.
+
+'It will be time enough to settle those matters when they are old
+enough to be court-pages or cadets. They are Bela and Gela at present.
+The only real republic is childhood.'
+
+'I am afraid Bela is the _tyrannus_ to which all republics succumb,'
+said Wanda, with a smile. He is extremely autocratic in his notions,
+and in his family. In all his "make believe" games he is crowned.'
+
+'He is a beautiful child,' said her cousin, and she answered, still
+smiling:
+
+'Oh, yes: he is so like Réné!'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely turned his face from her. The dinner was somewhat dull,
+and the evening seemed tedious, despite the efforts of Sabran to
+promote conversation, and the _écarté_ which he and his guest played
+together. They, were all sensible that some chord was out of tune, and
+glad that on the morrow a large house-party would be there to spare
+them a continuation of this difficult intercourse.
+
+'Your cousin will never forgive me,' said Sabran to her when they were
+alone. 'I think, beside his feeling that I stand for ever between you
+and him there is an impatience of me as a stranger and one unworthy
+you.'
+
+'You do yourself and him injustice,' she answered. 'I shall be unhappy
+if you and he be not friends.'
+
+'Then unhappy you will be, my beloved. We both adore you.'
+
+'Do not say that. He would not be here if it were so.'
+
+'Ah! look at him when he looks at Bela!'
+
+She sighed; she had felt a strong emotion on the sight of her cousin,
+for Egon Vàsàrhely was much changed by these years of pain. His grand
+carriage and his martial beauty were unaltered, but all the fire and
+the light of earlier years were gone out of his face, and a certain
+gloom and austerity had come there. To all other women he would have
+been the more attractive for the melancholy which was in such apt
+contrast with the heroic adventures of his life, but to her the change
+in him was a mute reproach which filled her with remorse though she had
+done no wrong.
+
+Meantime Prince Egon, throwing open his window, leaned out into the
+cold rainy night, as though a hand were at his throat and suffocating
+him. And amidst all the tumult of his pain and revolt, one dim thought
+was incessantly intruding itself; he was always thinking, as he
+recalled the face of Sabran and of Sabran's little son, 'Where have I
+seen those blue eyes, those level brows, those delicate curved lips?'
+
+They were so familiar, yet so strange to him. When he would have given
+a name to them they receded into the shadows of some far away past of
+his own, so far away he could not follow them. He sat up half the night
+letting the wind beat and the rain fall on him. He could not sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+In the morrow thirty or forty people arrived, amongst them Baron
+Kaulnitz _en congé_ from his embassy.
+
+'What think you of Sabran?' he asked of Egon Vàsàrhely, who answered:
+
+'He is a perfect gentleman. He is a charming companion. He plays
+admirably at _écarté._
+
+'_Écarté_! I spoke of his moral worth: what is your impression of that?'
+
+'If he had not satisfied her as to that, Wanda would not be his wife,'
+answered the Prince gravely. 'He has given her beautiful children, and
+it seems to me that he renders her perfectly happy. We should all be
+grateful to him.'
+
+'The children are certainly very beautiful,' said Baron Kaulnitz, and
+said no more.
+
+'The people all around are unfeignedly attached to him,' Vàsàrhely
+continued with generous effort. 'I hear nothing but his praise. Nor do
+I think it the conventional compliment which loyalty leads them to pay
+the husband of their Countess; it is very genuine attachment. The men
+of the old Archduchy are not easily won; it is only qualities of daring
+and manliness which appeal to their sympathies. That he has gained
+their affections is as great testimony to his character in one way as
+that he has gained Wanda's is in another. At Idrac also the people
+adore him, and Croats are usually slow to see merit in strangers.'
+
+'In short, he is a paragon,' said the ambassador, with a little dubious
+smile. 'So much the better, since he is irrevocably connected with us.'
+
+Sabran was at no time seen to greater advantage than when he was
+required to receive and entertain a large house-party. Always graceful,
+easily witty, endowed with that winning tact which is to society as
+cream is to the palate, the charm he possessed for women and the
+ascendency he could, at times, exercise over men--even men who were
+opposed to him--were never more admirably displayed than when he was
+the master of Hohenszalras, with crowned heads, and princes, and
+diplomatists, and beauties gathered beneath his roof. His mastery,
+moreover, of all field sports, and his skill at all games that demanded
+either intelligence or audacity, made him popular with a hardy and
+brilliant nobility; his daring in a boar hunt at noon was equalled by
+his science at whist in the evening. Strongly prejudiced against him at
+the onset, the great nobles who were his guests had long ceased to feel
+anything for him except respect and regard; whilst the women admired
+him none the less for that unwavering devotion to his wife which made
+even the conventionalities of ordinary flirtation wholly impossible to
+him. With all his easy gallantry and his elegant homage to them, they
+all knew that, at heart, he was as cold as the rocks to all women save
+one.
+
+'It is really the knight's love for his lady,' said the Countess
+Brancka once; and Sabran, overhearing, said: 'Yes, and, I think that if
+there were more like my lady on earth, knighthood might revive on other
+scenes than Wagner's.'
+
+Between him and the Countess Brancka there was a vague intangible
+enmity, veiled under the perfection of courtesy. They could ill have
+told why they disliked each other; but they did so. Beneath their
+polite or trivial or careless speech they often aimed at each other's
+feelings or foibles with accuracy and malice. She had stayed at
+Hohenszalras more or less time each year in the course of her flight
+between France and Vienna, and was there now. He admired his wife's
+equanimity and patience under the trial of Mdme. Olga's frivolities,
+but he did not himself forbear from as much sarcasm as was possible
+in a man of the world to one who was his guest, and by marriage his
+relative, and he was sensible of her enmity to himself, though she
+paid him many compliments, and sometimes too assiduously sought his
+companionship. '_Elle fait le ronron, mais gare à ses pattes!_' he said
+once to his wife concerning her.
+
+Sabran appraised her indeed with unflattering accuracy. He knew
+by heart all the wiles and wisdom of such a woman as she was. Her
+affectations did not blind him to her real danger, and her exterior
+frivolity did not conceal from him the keen and subtle self-interest
+and the strong passions which laboured beneath it.
+
+She felt that she had an enemy in him, and partly in self-protection,
+partly in malice, she set herself to convert a foe into a friend,
+perhaps, without altogether confessing it to herself, into a lover as
+well.
+
+The happiness that prevailed at Hohenszalrasburg annoyed her for
+no other reason than that it wearied her to witness it. She did
+not envy it, because she did not want happiness at all; she wanted
+perpetual change, distraction, temptation, passion, triumph--in a word,
+excitement, which becomes the drug most unobtainable to those who have
+early exhausted all the experiences and varieties of pleasure.
+
+Mdme. Brancka had always an unacknowledged resentment against her
+sister-in-law, for being the owner of all the vast possessions of the
+Szalras. 'If Gela had lived!' she thought constantly. 'If I had only
+had a son by him before he died, this woman would have had her dower
+and nothing more.' That his sister should possess all, whilst she had
+by her later marriage lost her right even to a share in that vast
+wealth, was a perpetual bitterness to her.
+
+Stefan Brancka was indeed rich, but he was an insensate gambler. She
+was extravagant to the last degree, with all the costly caprices of
+a _cocodette_ who reigned in the two most brilliant capitals of the
+world. They were often troubled by their own folly, and again and again
+the generosity of his elder brother had rescued them from humiliating
+embarrassments. At such moments she had almost hated Wanda von Szalras
+for these large possessions, of which, according to her own views,
+her sister-in-law made no use whatever. Meantime, she wished Egon
+Vàsàrhely to die childless, and to that end had not been unwilling
+for the woman he loved to marry anyone else. She had reasoned that the
+Szalras estates would go to the Crown or the Church if Wanda did not
+marry; whilst all the power and possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely must, if
+he had no sons, pass in due course to his brother. She had the subtle
+acuteness of her race, and she had the double power of being able at
+once to wait very patiently and to spring with swift rage on what she
+needed. To her sister-in-law she always appeared a mere flutterer on
+the breath of fashion. The grave and candid nature of the one could not
+follow or perceive the intricacies of the other.
+
+'She is a cruel woman and a perilous one,' Sabran said one day to his
+wife's surprise.
+
+She answered him that Olga Brancka had always seemed to her a mere
+frivolous _mondaine_, like so many others of their world.
+
+'No,' he persisted. 'You are wrong; she is not a butterfly. She has too
+much energy. She is a profoundly immoral woman also. Look at her eyes.'
+
+'That is Stefan's affair,' she answered, 'not ours. He is indifferent.'
+
+'Or unsuspicious? Did your brother care for her?'
+
+'He was madly in love with her. She was only sixteen when he married
+her. He fell at Solferino half a year later. When she married my
+cousin it shocked and disgusted me. Perhaps I was foolish to take it
+thus, but it seemed such a sin against Gela. To die _so_, and not to be
+even remembered!'
+
+'Did your cousin Egon approve this second marriage?'
+
+'No,' he opposed it; he had our feeling about it. But Stefan, though
+very young, was beyond any control. He had the fortune as he had the
+title of his mother, the Countess Brancka, and Olga bewitched him as
+she had done my brother.'
+
+'She _is_ a witch, a wicked witch,' said Sabran.
+
+The great autumn party was brilliant and agreeable. All things went
+well, and the days were never monotonous. The people were well
+assorted, and the social talent of their host made their outdoor sports
+and their indoor pastimes constantly varied, whilst Hungarian musicians
+and Viennese comedians played waltzes that would have made a statue
+dance, and represented the little comedies for which he himself had
+been famous at the Mirlitons.
+
+He was not conscious of it, but he was passionately eager for Egon
+Vàsàrhely to be witness, not only of his entire happiness, but of his
+social powers. To Vàsàrhely he seemed to put forward the perfection
+of his life with almost insolence; with almost exaggeration to exhibit
+the joys and the gifts with which nature and chance had so liberally
+dowered him. The stately Magyar soldier, sitting silent and melancholy
+apart, watched him with a curious pang, that in a lesser nature would
+have been a consuming envy. Now and then, though Sabran and his wife
+spoke rarely to each other in the presence of others, a glance, a
+smile, a word passed between them that told of absolute unuttered
+tenderness, profound and inexhaustible as the deep seas; in the very
+sound of their laughter, in the mere accent of their voices, in a
+careless caress to one of their children, in a light touch of the hand
+to one another as they rode, or as they met in a room, there was the
+expression of a perfect joy, of a perfect faith between them, which
+pierced the heart of the watcher of it. Yet would he not have had it
+otherwise at her cost.
+
+'Since she has chosen him as the companion of her life, it is well
+that he should be what she can take pride in, and what all men can
+praise,' he thought, and yet the happiness of this man seemed to him an
+audacity, an insolence. What human lover could merit her?
+
+Between himself and Sabran there was the most perfect courtesy, but no
+intimacy. They both knew that if for fifty years they met continually
+they would never be friends. All her endeavours to produce sympathy
+between them failed. Sabran was conscious of a constant observation of
+him by her cousin, which seemed to him to have a hostile motive, and
+which irritated him extremely, though he did not allow his irritation
+any visible vent. Olga Brancka perceived, and with the objectless
+malice of women of her temperament, amused herself with fanning, the
+slumbering enmity, as children play at fire.
+
+'You cannot expect Egon to love you,' she said once to her host. 'You
+know he was the betrothed of Wanda from her childhood--at least in his
+own hopes, and in the future sketched for them by their families.'
+
+'I was quite aware of that before I married,' he answered her
+indifferently. 'But those family arrangements are tranquil disposals of
+destiny which, if they be disturbed, leave no great trace of trouble.
+The Prince is young still, and a famous soldier as well as a great
+noble. He has no lack of consolation if he need it, and I cannot
+believe that he does.'
+
+Mdme. Olga laughed.
+
+'You know as well as I do that Egon adores the very stirrup your wife's
+foot touches!'
+
+'I know he is her much beloved cousin,' said Sabran, in a tone which
+admitted of no reply.
+
+To Vàsàrhely his sister-in-law said confidentially:
+
+'Dear Egon, why did you not stay on the _pusztas_ or remain with your
+hussars? You make _le beau_ Sabran jealous.'
+
+'Jealous!' asked Vàsàrhely, with a bitter smile. 'He has much cause,
+when she has neither eye nor ear, neither memory nor thought of any
+kind for any living thing except himself and those children who are
+all his very portraits! Why do you say these follies, Olga? You know
+that my cousin Wanda chose her lord out of all the world, and loves
+him as no one would have supposed she had it in her to love any mortal
+creature.'
+
+He spoke imperiously, harshly, and she was silenced.
+
+'What do you think of him?' she said with hesitation.
+
+'Everyone asks me that question. I am not his keeper!'
+
+'But you must form some opinion. He is virtual lord of Hohenszalras,
+and I believe she has made over to him all the appanages of Idrac, and
+his children will have everything.'
+
+'Are they not her natural heirs? Who should inherit from her if not her
+sons?'
+
+'Of course, of course they will inherit, only they inherit nothing
+from him. It was certainly a great stroke of fortune for a landless
+gentleman to make. Why does the _gentilhomme pauvre_ always so
+captivate women?'
+
+'What do you mean to insinuate, Olga?' he asked her, with a stern
+glance of his great black eyes.'
+
+'Oh, nothing; only his history was peculiar. I remember his arrival
+in France, his first appearance in society; it is many years ago now.
+All the Faubourg received him, but some said at the time that it was
+too romantic to be true--those Mexican forests, that long exile of the
+Sabran, the sudden appearance of this beautiful young marquis; you
+will grant it was romantic. I suppose it was the romance that made
+even Wanda's clear head turn a little. It is a _vin capiteux_ for many
+women. And then such a life in Paris after it--duels, baccara, bonnes
+fortunes, clever comedies, a touch like Liszt's, a sudden success in
+the Chamber--it was all so romantic; it was bound to bring him at
+last to his haven, the Prince Charmant of an enchanted castle! Only
+enchanted castles sometimes grow dull, and Princes Charmants are not
+always amusable by the same châtelaine!'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely, with his eyes sombre under their long black lashes,
+listened to the easy bantering phrases with the vague suspicion of an
+honest and slow-witted man that a woman is trying to drop poison into
+his ear which she wishes to pass as _eau sucrée._ He did not altogether
+follow her insinuation, but he understood something of her drift. They
+were alone in a corner of the ball-room, whilst the cotillon was at its
+height, conducted by Sabran, who had been famous for its leadership in
+Paris and Vienna. He stooped his head and looked her full in her eyes.
+
+'Look here, Olga. I am not sure what you mean, but I believe you are
+tired of seeing my cousin's happiness, merely because it is something
+with which you cannot interfere. For myself I would protect her
+happiness as I would her honour if I thought either endangered. Whether
+you or I like the Marquis de Sabran is wholly beyond the question. She
+loves him, and she has made him one of us. His honour is now ours.
+For myself I would defend him in his absence as though he were my own
+brother. Not for his sake at all--for hers. I do not express myself
+very well, but you know what I mean. Here is Max returning to claim
+you.'
+
+Silenced and a little alarmed the Countess Brancka rose and went off to
+her place in the cotillon.
+
+Vàsàrhely, sitting where she had left him, watched the mazes of the
+cotillon, the rhythm of the tzigane musicians coming to his ear
+freighted with a thousand familiar memories of the czardas danced madly
+in the long Hungarian nights. Time had been when the throb of the
+tzigane strings had stirred all his pulses like magic, but now all his
+bold bright life seemed numb and frozen in him.
+
+His eyes rested on his cousin, where she stood conversing with a crown
+prince, who was her chief guest, and passed from her to follow the
+movements of Sabran, who with supreme ease and elegance was leading a
+new intricate measure down the ball-room.
+
+She was happy, that he could not doubt. Every action, every word, every
+glance said so with a meaning not to be doubted. He thought she had
+never looked so handsome as she did to-night since that far away day
+in her childhood when he had seen her with the red and white roses in
+her lap and the crown upon her curls. She had the look of her childhood
+in her eyes, that serene and glad light which had been dimmed by her
+brothers' death, but now shone there again tranquil, radiant, and pure
+as sunlight is. She wore white velvet and white brocade; her breast
+was hidden in white roses; she wore her famous pearls and the ribbons
+of the Starred Cross of Austria and of the Prussian Order of Merit;
+she held in her hand a large painted fan which had belonged to Maria
+Theresa. Every now and then, as she talked with her royal guest, her
+glance strayed down the room to where her husband was, and lingered
+there a moment with a little smile.
+
+Vàsàrhely watched her for awhile, then rose abruptly, and made his way
+out of the ball-room and the state apartments down the corridors of the
+old house he knew so well towards his own chamber. He thought he would
+write to her and leave upon the morrow. What need was there for him to
+stay on in this perpetual pain? He had done enough for the world, which
+had seen him under the roof of Hohenszalras.
+
+As he took his way through the long passages, tapestry-hung or
+oak-panelled, which led across the great building to his own set of
+rooms in the clock tower, he passed an open door out of which a light
+was streaming. As he glanced within he saw it was the children's
+sleeping apartment, of which the door was open because the night was
+warm, unusually warm for the heart of the Gross Glöckner mountains. An
+impulse he could not have explained made him pause and enter. The three
+little white beds of carved Indian work, with curtains of lace, looked
+very snowy and peaceful in the pale light from a hanging lamp. The
+children were all asleep; the one nearest the door was Bela.
+
+Vàsàrhely stood and looked at him. His head was thrown back on his
+pillow and his arms were above his head. His golden hair, which was
+cut straight and low over his forehead, had been pushed back in his
+slumber; he looked more like his father than in his waking hours,
+for as he dreamed there was a look of coldness and of scorn upon his
+childish face, which made him so resemble Sabran that the man who
+looked on him drew his breath hard with pain.
+
+The night-nurse rose from her seat, recognising Prince Egon, whom she
+had known from his childhood.
+
+'The little Count is so like the Marquis,' she said, approaching; 'so
+is Herr Gela. Ah, my Prince, you remember the noble gentlemen whose
+names they bear? God send they may be like them in their lives and not
+their deaths!'
+
+'An early death is good,' said Vàsàrhely, as he stood beside the
+child's bed. He thought how good it would have been if he had fallen
+at Sadowa or Königsgrätz, or earlier by the side of Gela and Victor,
+charging with his White Hussars.
+
+The old nurse rambled on, full of praise and stories of the children's
+beauty, and strength, and activity, and intelligence. Vàsàrhely did not
+hear her; he stood lost in thought looking down on the sleeping figure
+of Bela, who, as if conscious of strange eyes upon him, moved uneasily
+in his slumber, and ruffled his golden hair with his hands, and thrust
+off his coverings from his beautiful round white limbs.
+
+'Count Bela is not like our saint who died,' said the old nurse. 'He
+is always masterful, and loves his own way. My lady is strict with
+him, and wisely so, for he is a proud rebellious child. But he is very
+generous, and has noble ways. Count Gela is a little angel; he will be
+like the Heilige Graf.'
+
+Vàsàrhely did not hear anything she said. His gaze was bent on the
+sleeping child, studying the lines of the delicate brows, of the
+curving lips, of the long black lashes. It was so familiar, so
+familiar! Suddenly as he gazed a light seemed to leap out of the
+darkness of long forgotten years, and the memory which had haunted him
+stood out clear before him.
+
+'He is like Vassia Kazán!' he cried, half aloud. The face of the child
+had recalled what in the face of the man had for ever eluded his
+remembrance.
+
+He thrust a gold coin in the nurse's hand, and hurried from the
+chamber. A sudden inconceivable, impossible suspicion had leaped up
+before him as he had gazed on the sleeping loveliness of Sabran's
+little son.
+
+The old woman saw his sudden pallor, his uncertain gesture, and
+thought, 'Poor gallant gentleman! He wishes these pretty boys were his
+own. Well, it might have been better if he had been master here, though
+there is nothing to say against the one who is so. Still, a stranger is
+always a stranger, and foreign blood is bad.'
+
+Then she drew the coverings over Bela's naked little limbs, and passed
+on to make sure that the little Ottilie, who had been born when the
+primroses where first out in the Iselthal woods, was sleeping soundly,
+and wanted nothing.
+
+Vàsàrhely made his way to his own chamber, and there sat down heavily,
+mechanically, like a man waking out from a bad dream.
+
+His memory went back to twenty years before, when he, a little lad, had
+accompanied his father on a summer visit to the house of a Russian,
+Prince Paul Zabaroff. It was a house, gay, magnificent, full of idle
+men and women of facile charm; it was not a house for youth; but
+both the Prince Vàsàrhely and the Prince Zabaroff were men of easy
+morals--_viveurs_, gamesters, and philosophers, who at fifteen years
+old themselves had been lovers and men of the world. At that house
+had been present a youth, some years older than he was, who was known
+as Vassia Kazán: a youth whose beauty and wit made him the delight of
+the women there, and whose skill at games and daring in sports won him
+the admiration of the men. It was understood without even being said
+openly that Vassia Kazán was a natural son of the Prince Zabaroff. The
+little Hungarian prince, child as he was, had wit enough and enough
+knowledge of life to understand that this brilliant companion, of his
+was base-born. His kind heart moved him to pity, but his intense pride
+curbed his pity with contempt. Vassia Kazán had resented the latter too
+bitterly to even be conscious of the first. The gentlemen assembled had
+diverted themselves by the unspoken feud that had soon risen between
+the boys, and the natural intelligence of the little Magyar noble had
+been no match for the subtle and cultured brain of the Parisian Lycéen.
+
+One day one of the lovely ladies there, who plundered Zabaroff and
+caressed his son, amused herself with a war of words between the lads,
+and so heated, stung, spurred and tormented the Hungarian boy that,
+exasperated by the sallies and satires of his foe, and by the presence
+of this lovely goddess of discord, he so far forgot his chivalry that
+he turned on Vassia with a taunt. 'You would be a serf if you were in
+Russia!' he said, with his great black eyes flashing the scorn of the
+noble on the bastard. Without a word, Vassia, who had come in from
+riding and had his whip in his hand, sprang on him, held him in a grip
+of steel, and thrashed him. The fiery Magyar, writhing under the blows
+of one who to him was as a slave, as a hound, freed his right arm,
+snatched from a table near an oriental dagger lying there with other
+things of value, and plunged it into the shoulder of his foe. The
+cries of the lady, alarmed at her own work, brought the men in from
+the adjoining room; the boys were forced apart and carried to their
+chambers.
+
+Prince Vàsàrhely left the house that evening with his son, still
+furious and unappeased. Vassia Kazán remained, made a hero of and
+nursed by the lovely woman who had thrown the apple of strife. His
+wound was healed in three weeks' time; soon after his father's
+house-party was scattered, and he himself returned to his college. Not
+a syllable passed between him and Zabaroff as to his quarrel with the
+little Hungarian magnate. To the woman who had wrought the mischief
+Zabaroff said: 'Almost I wish he were my lawful son. He is a true wolf
+of the steppes. Paris has only combed his hide and given him a silken
+coat; he is still a wolf, like all true Russians.'
+
+Looking on the sleeping child of Sabran, all that half-forgotten scene
+had risen up before the eyes of Egon Vàsàrhely. He seemed to see the
+beautiful fair face of Vassia Kazán, with the anger on the knitted
+brows, and the ferocity on the delicate stern lips as he had raised his
+arm to strike. Twenty years had gone by; he himself, whenever he had
+remembered the scene, had long grown ashamed of the taunt he had cast,
+not of the blow he had given, for the sole reproof his father had ever
+made him was to say: 'A noble, only insults his equals. To insult an
+inferior is ungenerous, it is derogatory; whom you offend you raise for
+the hour to a level with yourself. Remember to choose your foes not
+less carefully than you choose your friends.'
+
+Why with the regard, the voice, the air of Sabran had some vague
+intangible remembrance always come before him?'
+
+Why, as he had gazed on the sleeping child had the vague uncertainty
+suddenly resolved itself into distinct revelation?
+
+'He is Vassia Kazán! He is Vassia Kazán!' he said to himself a score
+of times stupidly, persistently, as one speaks in a dream. Yet he knew
+he must be a prey to delusion, to phantasy, to accidental resemblance.
+He told himself so. He resisted his own folly, and all the while a
+subtler inner consciousness seemed to be speaking in him, and saying to
+him:
+
+'That man is Vassia Kazán. Surely he is Vassia Kazán.'
+
+And then the loyal soul of him strengthened itself and made him think:
+
+'Even if he be Vassia Kazán he is her husband. He is what she loves; he
+is the father of those children that are hers.'
+
+He never went to his bed that night. When the music ceased at an hour
+before dawn, and the great house grew silent, he still sat there by
+the open casement, glad of the cold air that blew in from over the
+Szalrassee, as with daybreak a fine film of rain began to come down the
+mountain sides.
+
+Once he heard the voice of Sabran, who passed the door on his way to
+his own apartment. Sabran was saying in German with a little laugh:
+
+'My lady!' I am jealous of your crown prince. When I left him now in
+his chamber I was disposed to immortalise myself by regicide. He adores
+you!'
+
+Then he heard Wanda laugh in answer, with some words that did not
+reach his ear as they passed on further down the corridor. Vàsàrhely
+shivered, and instinctively rose to his feet. He felt as if he must
+seek him out and cry out to him:
+
+'Am I mad or is it true? Let me see your shoulder--have you the mark of
+the wound that I gave? Your little child has the face of Vassia Kazán.
+Are you Vassia Kazán? Are you the bastard of Zabaroff? Are you the wolf
+of the steppes?'
+
+He had desired to go from Hohenszalras, where every hour was pain to
+him, but now he felt an irresistible fascination in the vicinity of
+Sabran. His mind was in that dual state which at once rejects a fact as
+incredible, and believes in it absolutely. His reason told him that his
+suspicion was a folly; his instinct told him that it was a truth.
+
+When in the forenoon the castle again became animated, and the guests
+met to the mid-day breakfast in the hall of the knights, he descended,
+moved by an eagerness that made him for the first time in his life
+nervous. When Sabran addressed him he felt himself grow pale; he
+followed the movements, he watched the features, he studied the tones
+of his successful rival, with an intense absorption in them. Through
+the hunting breakfast, at which only men were present, he was conscious
+of nothing that was addressed to him; he only seemed to hear a voice in
+his ear saying perpetually----'Yonder is Vassia Kazán.'
+
+The day was spent in sport, sport rough and real, that gave fair play
+to the beasts and perilous exposure to the hunters. For the first time
+in his life, Egon Vàsàrhely let a brown bear go by him untouched,
+and missed more than one roebuck. His eyes were continually seeking
+his host; a mile off down a forest glade the figure of Sabran seemed
+to fill his vision, a figure full of grace and dignity, clad in a
+hunting-dress of russet velvet, with a hunting-horn slung at his side
+on a broad chain of gold, the gift of his wife in memory of the fateful
+day when he had aimed at the _kuttengeier_ in her woods.
+
+Sabran of necessity devoted himself to the crown prince throughout
+the day's sport; only in the twilight as they returned he spoke to
+Vàsàrhely.
+
+'Wanda is so full of regret that you wish to leave us,' he said, with
+graceful cordiality; 'if only I can persuade you to remain, I shall
+take her the most welcome of all tidings from the forest. Stay at the
+least another week, the weather has cleared.'
+
+As he spoke he thought that Vàsàrhely looked at him strangely; but
+he knew that he could not be much loved by his wife's cousin, and
+continued with good humour to persist in his request. Abruptly, the
+other answered him at last.
+
+'Wanda wishes me to stay? Well, I will stay then. It seems strange to
+hear a stranger invite _me_ to Hohenszalras.'
+
+Sabran coloured; he said with hauteur:
+
+'That I am a stranger to Prince Vàsàrhely is not my fault. That I have
+the right to invite him to Hohenszalras is my happiness, due to his
+cousin's goodness, which has been far beyond my merit.'
+
+Vàsàrhely's eyes dwelt on him gloomily; he was sensible of the dignity,
+the self-command, and the delicacy of reproof which were blent in the
+answer he had received; he felt humbled and convicted of ill-breeding.
+He said after a pause:
+
+'I should ask your pardon. My cousin would be the first to condemn my
+words; they sounded ill, but I meant them literally. Hohenszalras has
+been one of my homes from boyhood; it will be your son's when we are
+both dead. How like he is to you; he has nothing of his mother.'
+
+Sabran, somewhat surprised, smiled as he answered:
+
+'He is very like me. I regret it; but you know the poets and the
+physiologists are for once agreed as to the cause of that. It is a
+truth proved a million times: _l'enfant de l'amour ressemble toujours
+au père._'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely grew white under the olive hue of his sun-bronzed
+cheek. The _riposte_ had been made with a thrust that went home. Otto
+at that moment approached his master for orders for the morrow. They
+were no more alone. They entered the house; the long and ceremonious
+dinner succeeded. Vàsàrhely was silent and stern. Sabran was the most
+brilliant of hosts, the happiest of men; all the women present were in
+love with him, his wife the most of all.
+
+'Réné tells me you will stay, Egon. I am so very glad,' his cousin said
+to him during the evening, and she added with a little hesitation, 'If
+you would take time to know him well, you would find him so worthy of
+your regard; he has all the qualities that most men esteem in each
+other. It would make me so happy if you were friends at heart, not only
+in mere courtesy.'
+
+'You know that can never be,' said Vàsàrhely, almost rudely. 'Even you
+cannot work miracles. He is your husband. It is a reason that I should
+respect him, but it is also a reason why I shall for ever hate him.'
+
+He said the last words in a tone scarcely audible, but low as it was,
+there was a force in it that affected her painfully.
+
+'What you say there is quite unworthy of you,' she said with gentleness
+but coldness. 'He has done you no wrong. Long ere I met him I told you
+that what you wished was not what I wished, never would be so. You are
+too great a gentleman, Egon, to nourish an injustice in your heart.'
+
+He looked down; every fibre in him thrilled and burned under the sound
+of her voice, the sense of her presence.
+
+'I saw your children asleep last night,' he said abruptly. 'They have
+nothing of you in them; they are his image.'
+
+'Is it so unusual for children to resemble their father?' she said with
+a smile, whilst vaguely disquieted by his tone.
+
+'No, I suppose not; but the Szalras have always been of one type. How
+came your husband by that face? I have seen it amongst the Circassians,
+the Persians, the Georgians; but you say he is a Breton.'
+
+'The Sabrans of Romaris are Bretons; you have only to consult history.
+Very beautiful faces like his have seldom much impress of nationality;
+they always seem as though they followed the old Greek laws, and were
+cast in the divine heroic mould of another time than ours.'
+
+'Who was his mother?'
+
+'A Spanish Mexican.'
+
+Vàsàrhely was silent.
+
+His cousin left him and went amongst her guests. A vague sense of
+uneasiness went with her at her consciousness of his hostility to
+Sabran. She wished she had not asked him to remain.
+
+'You have never offended Egon?' she asked Sabran anxiously that night.
+'You have always been forbearing and patient with him?'
+
+'I have obeyed you in that as all things, my angel,', he answered her
+lightly. 'What would you? He is in love with you still, and I have
+married you! It is even a crime in his eyes that my children resemble
+me! One can never argue with a passion that is unhappy. It is a kind of
+frenzy.'
+
+She heard with some impatience.
+
+'He has no right to cherish such a resentment. He keeps it alive by
+brooding on it. I had hoped that when he saw you here, saw how happy
+you render me, saw your children too, he would grow calmer, wiser, more
+reconciled to the inevitable.'
+
+'You did not know men, my love,' said Sabran, with a smile.
+
+To him the unhappiness and the ill-will of Egon Vàsàrhely were matters
+of supreme indifference; in a manner they gratified him, they even
+supplied that stimulant of rivalry which a man's passion needs to keep
+at its height in the calm of safe possession. That Egon Vàsàrhely saw
+his perfect happiness lent it pungency and a keener sense of victory.
+When he kissed his wife's hand in the sight of her cousin, the sense
+of the pain it dealt to the spectator gave the trivial action to him
+all the sweetness and the ardour of the first caresses of his accepted
+passion.
+
+Of that she knew nothing. It would have seemed to her ignoble, as so
+much that makes up men's desire always does seem to a woman of her
+temperament, even whilst it dominates and solicits her, and forces her
+to share something of its own intoxication.
+
+'Egon is very unreasonable,' said Mdme. Ottilie. 'He believes that
+if you had not met Réné you would have in time loved himself. It is
+foolish. Love is a destiny. Had you married him you would not have
+loved him. He would soon have perceived that and been miserable, much
+more miserable than he is now, for he would have been unable to release
+you. I think he should not have come here at all if he could not have
+met M. de Sabran with at least equanimity.'
+
+'I think so, too,' said Wanda, and an impatience against her cousin
+began to grow into anger; without being conscious of it, she had placed
+Sabran so high in her own esteem that she could forgive none who did
+not adore her own idol. It was a weakness in her that was lovely and
+touching in a character that had had before hardly enough of the usual
+foibles of humanity. Every error of love is lovable.
+
+Vàsàrhely could not dismiss from his mind the impression which haunted
+him.
+
+'I conclude you knew the Marquis de Sabran well in France?' he said one
+day to Baron Kaulnitz, who was still there.
+
+Kaulnitz demurred.
+
+'No, I cannot say that I did. I knew him by repute; that was not very
+pure. However, the Faubourg always received and sustained him; the
+Comte de Chambord did the same; they were the most interested. One
+cannot presume to think they could be deceived.'
+
+'Deceived!' echoed Prince Egon. 'What a singular word to use. Do you
+mean to imply the possibility of--of any falsity on his part--any
+intrigue to appear what he is not?'
+
+'No,' said Kaulnitz, with hesitation. 'Honestly, I cannot say so much.
+An impression was given me at the moment of his signing his marriage
+contract that he concealed something; but it was a mere suspicion. As I
+told you, the whole Legitimist world, the most difficult to enter, the
+most incredulous of assumption, received him with open arms. All his
+papers were of unimpeachable regularity. There was never a doubt hinted
+by anyone, and yet I will confess to you, my dear Egon, since we are
+speaking in confidence, that I have had always my own doubts as to his
+marquisate of Sabran.'
+
+'_Grosser Gott!_' exclaimed Vàsàrhely, as he started from his seat.
+'Why did you not stop the marriage?'
+
+'One does not stop a marriage by a mere baseless suspicion,' replied
+Kaulnitz. 'I have not one shadow of reason for my probably quite
+unwarranted conjecture. It merely came into my mind also at the
+signing of the contracts. I had already done all I could to oppose
+the marriage, but Wanda was inflexible--you are witness of the charm
+he still possesses for her--and even the Princess was scarcely
+less infatuated. Besides, it must be granted that few men are more
+attractive in every way; and as he _is_ one of us, whatever else he be,
+his honour is now our honour, as you said yourself the other day.'
+
+'One could always kill him,' muttered Vàsàrhely, 'and set her free so,
+if one were sure.'
+
+'Sure of what?' said Kaulnitz, rather alarmed at the effect of his own
+words. 'You Magyar gentlemen always think that every knot can be cut
+with a sword. If he were a mere adventurer (which is hardly possible)
+it would not mend matters for you to run him through the heart; there
+are his children.'
+
+'Would the marriage be legal if his name were assumed?'
+
+'Oh, no! She could have it annulled, of course, both by Church and Law.
+All those pretty children would have no rights and no name. But we are
+talking very wildly and in a theatrical fashion. He is as certainly
+Marquis de Sabran as I am Karl von Kaulnitz.'
+
+Vàsàrhely said nothing; his mind was in tumult, his heart oppressed by
+a sense of secrecy and of a hope that was guilty and mean.
+
+He did not speak to his companion of Vassia Kazán, but his conjecture
+seemed to hover before his sight like a black cloud which grew bigger
+every hour.
+
+He remained at Hohenszalras throughout the autumnal festivities. He
+felt as if he could not go away with that doubt still unsolved, that
+suspicion either confirmed or uprooted. His cousin grew as uneasy at
+his presence there as she had before been uneasy at his absence. Her
+instinct told her that he was the foe of the one dearest to her on
+earth. She felt that the gallant and generous temper of him had changed
+and grown morose; he was taciturn, moody, solitary.
+
+He spent almost all his time out of doors, and devoted himself to the
+hardy sport of the mountains and forests with a sort of rage. Guests
+came and went at the castle; some were imperial, some royal people;
+there was always a brilliant circle of notable persons there, and
+Sabran played his part as their host, with admirable tact, talent, and
+good humour. His wit, his amiability, his many accomplishments, and
+his social charm were in striking contrast to the sombre indifference
+of Vàsàrhely, whom men had no power to amuse and women no power to
+interest. Prince Egon was like a magnificent picture by Rembrandt,
+as he sat in his superb uniform in a corner of a ball-room with the
+collars of his orders blazing with jewels, and his hands crossed on
+the diamond-studded hilt of his sword; but he was so mute, so gloomy,
+so austere, that the vainest, coquette there ceased to hope to please
+him, and his most cordial friends found his curt contemptuous replies
+destroy their desire for his companionship.
+
+Wanda, who was frankly and fondly attached to him, began to long for
+his departure. The gaze of his black eyes, fixed in their fire and
+gloom on the little gay figures of her children, filled her with a
+vague apprehension.
+
+'If he would only find some one and be happy,' she thought, with anger
+at this undesired and criminal love which clung to her so persistently.
+
+'Am I made of wax?' he said to her with scorn, when she ventured to
+hint at her wishes.
+
+'How I wish I had not asked him to remain here!' she said to herself
+many times. It was not possible for her to dismiss her cousin, who had
+been from his infancy accustomed to look on the Hohenszalrasburg as his
+second home. But as circle after circle of guests came, went, and were
+replaced by others, and Egon Vàsàrhely still retained the rooms in the
+west tower that had been his from boyhood, his continual presence grew
+irksome and irritating to her.
+
+'He forgets that it is now my husband's house!' she thought.
+
+There was only one living creature in all the place to whom Vàsàrhely
+unbent from his sullen and haughty reserve, and that one was the child
+Bela.
+
+Bela was as beautiful as the morning, with his shower of golden hair,
+and his eyes like sapphires, and his skin like a lily. With curious
+self-torture Vàsàrhely would attract the child to him by tales of
+daring and of sport, and would watch with intent eyes every line of
+the small face, trying therein to read the secret of the man by whom
+this child had been begotten. Bela, all unconscious, was proud of this
+interest displayed in him by this mighty soldier, of whose deeds in war
+Ulrich and Hubert and Otto told such Homeric tales.
+
+'Bela will fight with you when he is big,' he would say, trying to
+inclose the jewelled hilt of Vàsàrhely's sword in his tiny fingers, or
+trotting after him through the silence of the tapestried corridors.
+When she saw them thus together she felt that she could understand the
+superstitious fear of oriental women when their children are looked at
+fixedly.
+
+'You are very good to my boy,' she said once to Vàsàrhely, when he had
+let the child chatter by his side for hours.
+
+Vàsàrhely turned away abruptly.
+
+'There are times when I could kill your son, because he is his,' he
+muttered, 'and there are times when I could worship him, because he is
+yours.'
+
+'Do not talk so, Egon,'she said, gravely. 'If you will feel so, it is
+best--I must say it--it is best that you should see neither my child
+nor me.'
+
+He took no notice of her words.
+
+'The children would always be yours,' he muttered. 'You would never
+leave him, never disgrace him for their sake; even if one knew--it
+would be of no use.'
+
+'Dear Egon,' she said in real distress, 'what strange things are you
+saying? Are you mad? Whose disgrace do you mean?'
+
+'Let us suppose an extreme case,' he said, with a hard laugh. 'Suppose
+their father were base, or vile, or faithless, would you hate the
+children? Surely you would.'
+
+'I have not imagination enough to suppose any such thing,'she said very
+coldly. 'And you do not know what a mother's love is, my cousin.'
+
+He walked away, leaving her abruptly.
+
+'How strange he grows!' she thought. 'Surely his mind must be touched;
+jealousy is a sort of madness.'
+
+She bade the children's attendants keep Count Bela more in the
+nurseries; she told them that the child teased her guests, and must
+not be allowed to run so often at his will and whim over the house.'
+She never seriously feared that Egon would harm the child: his noble
+and chivalrous nature could not have changed so cruelly as that; but
+it hurt her to see his eyes fixed on the son of Sabran with such
+persistent interrogation and so strange an intensity of observation. It
+made her think of old Italian tales of the evil eye.
+
+She did not know that Vàsàrhely had come thither with a sincere and
+devout intention to conquer his jealous hatred of her husband, and
+to habituate himself to the sight of her in the new relations of her
+life. She did not know that he would probably have honestly tried to
+do his duty, and honestly striven to feel at least esteem for one so
+near to her, if the suspicion which had become almost certainty in his
+own mind had not made him believe that he saw in Sabran a traitor,
+a bastard, and a criminal whose offences were the deepest of all
+possible offences, and whose degradation was the lowest of all possible
+degradation, in the sight of the haughty magnate of Hungary, steeped
+to the lips in all the traditions and the convictions of an unsullied
+nobility. If what he believed were, indeed, the truth, he would hold
+Sabran lower than any beggar crouching at the gate of his palace in
+Buda, than any gipsy wandering in the woods of his mountain fortress
+of Taróc. If what he believed were the truth, no leper would seem to
+him so loathsome as this brilliant and courtly gentleman to whom his
+cousin had given her hand, her honour, and her life.
+
+'Doubt, like a raging tooth,' gnawed at his heart, and a hope, which
+he knew was dishonourable to his chivalry, sprang up in him, vague,
+timid, and ashamed. If, indeed, it were as he believed, would not such
+crime, proven on the sinner, part him for ever from the pure, proud
+life of Wanda von Szalras? And then, as he thought thus, he groaned in
+spirit, remembering the children--the children with their father's face
+and their father's taint in them, for ever living witnesses of their
+mother's surrender to a lying hound.
+
+'Your cousin cannot be said to contribute to the gaiety of your
+house parties, my love,' Sabran observed with a smile one day, when
+they received the announcement of an intended visit from one of the
+archdukes. Egon Vàsàrhely was still there, and even his cousin, much
+as she longed for his departure, could not openly urge it upon him;
+relationship and hospitality alike forbade.
+
+'He is sadly changed,' she answered. 'He was always silent, but he is
+now morose. Perhaps he lives too much at Taróc, where all is very wild
+and solitary.'
+
+'He lives too much in your memory,' said Sabran, with no compassion.
+'Could he determine to forgive my marriage with you, there would be a
+chance for him to recover his peace of mind. Only, my Wanda, it is not
+possible for any man to be consoled for the loss of you.'
+
+'But that is nothing new,' she answered, with impatience. 'If he felt
+so strongly against you, why did he come here? It was not like his
+high, chivalrous honour.'
+
+'Perhaps he came with the frank will to be reconciled to his fate,'
+said Sabran, not knowing how closely he struck the truth, 'and at the
+sight of you, of all that he lost and that I gained, he cannot keep his
+resolution.'
+
+'Then he should go away,' she said, with that indifference to all
+others save the one beloved which all love begets.
+
+'I think he should. But who can tell him so?'
+
+'I did myself the other day. I shall tell him so more plainly, if
+needful. Who cannot honour you shall be no friend of mine, no guest of
+ours.'
+
+'Oh, my love!' said Sabran, whose conscience was touched. 'Do not have
+feud with your relatives for my sake. They are worthier than I.'
+
+The Archduke, with his wife, arrived there on the following day, and
+Hohenszalras was gorgeous in the September sun, with all the pomp with
+which the lords of it had always welcomed their Imperial friends.
+Vàsàrhely looked on as a spectator at a play when he watched its
+present master receive the Imperial Prince with that supreme ease,
+grace, and dignity which were so admirably blent in him.
+
+'Can he be but a marvellous comedian?' wondered the man, to whom a
+bastard was less even than a peasant.
+
+There was nothing of vanity, of effort, of assumption visible in the
+perfect manner of his host. He seemed to the backbone, in all the
+difficult subtleties of society, as in the simple, frank intercourse
+of man and man, that which even Kaulnitz had conceded that he was,
+_gentilhomme de race._ Could he have been born a serf--bred from the
+hour's caprice of a voluptuary for a serving-woman?
+
+Vàsàrhely sat mute, sunk so deeply in his own thoughts that all the
+festivities round him went by like a pageantry on a stage, in which he
+had no part.
+
+'He looks like the statue of the Commendatore,' said Olga Brancka, who
+had returned for the archducal visit, as she glanced at the sombre,
+stately figure of her brother-in-law, Sabran, to whom she spoke,
+laughed with a little uneasiness. Would the hand of Egon Vàsàrhely ever
+seize him and drag him downward like the hand of the statue in _Don
+Giovanni?_
+
+'What a pity that Wanda did not marry him, and that I did not marry
+you!' said Mdme. Brancka, saucily, but with a certain significance of
+meaning.
+
+'You do me infinite honour!' he answered. 'But, at the risk of seeming
+most ungallant, I must confess the truth. I am grateful that the gods
+arranged matters as they are. You are enchanting, Madame Olga, as a
+guest, but as a wife--alas! who can drink _kümmel_ every day?'
+
+She smiled enchantingly, showing her pretty teeth, but she was bitterly
+angered. She had wished for a compliment at the least. 'What can these
+men see in Wanda?' she thought savagely. 'She is handsome, it is true;
+but she has no coquetry, no animation, no passion. She is dressed by
+Worth, and has a marvellous quantity of old jewels; but for that no one
+would say anything of her except that she was much too tall and had a
+German face!' And she persuaded herself that it was so; if the Venus
+de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her
+waist was large.
+
+Mdme. Olga was still very lovely, and took care to be never seen except
+at her loveliest. She always treated Sabran with a great familiarity,
+which his wife was annoyed by, though she did not display her
+annoyance. Mdme Brancka always called him _mon cousin_ or _beau cousin_
+in the language she usually used, and affected much more previous
+knowledge of him than their acquaintance warranted, since it had been
+merely such slight intimacy as results from moving in the same society.
+She was small and slight, but of great spirit; she shot, fished, rode,
+and played billiards with equal skill; she affected an adoration of
+the most dangerous sports, and even made a point of sharing the bear
+and the boar hunt. Wanda, who, though a person of much greater real
+courage, abhorred all the cruelties and ferocities that perforce
+accompany sport, saw her with some irritation go out with Sabran on
+these expeditions.
+
+'Women are utterly out of place in such sport as that, Olga,' she urged
+to her; 'and indeed are very apt to bring the men into peril, for of
+course no man can take care of himself whilst he has the safety of a
+woman to attend to; she must of necessity distract and trouble him.'
+
+But the Countess Stefan only laughed, and slipped with affectation her
+jewelled hunting-knife into its place in her girdle.
+
+Throughout the Archduke's visit, and after the Prince's departure,
+Vàsàrhely continued to stay on, whilst a succession of other guests
+came and went, and the summer deepened into autumn. He felt that he
+could not leave his cousin's house with that doubt unsolved; yet he
+knew that he might stay on for ever with no more certainty to reward
+him and confirm his suspicions than he possessed now. His presence
+annoyed his host, but Sabran was too polished a gentleman to betray
+his irritation; sometimes Vàsàrhely shunned his presence and his
+conversation for days together, at other times he sought them and rode
+with him, shot with him, and played cards with him, in the vain hope of
+gathering from some chance admission or allusion some clue to Sabran's
+early days. But a perfectly happy man is not given at any time to
+retrospection, and Sabran less than most men loved his past. He would
+gladly have forgotten everything that he had ever done or said before
+his marriage at the Hofburg.
+
+The intellectual powers and accomplishments of Sabran dazzled Vàsàrhely
+with a saddened sense of inferiority. Like most great soldiers he
+had a genuine humility in his measurement of himself. He knew that he
+had no talents except as a leader of cavalry. 'It is natural that she
+never looked at me,' he thought, 'when she had once seen this man, with
+his wit, his grace, his facility.' He could not even regard the skill
+of Sabran in the arts, in the salon, in the theatre with the contempt
+which the 'Wild Boar of Taróc' might have felt for a mere maker of
+music, a squire of dames, a writer of sparkling little comedies, a
+painter of screens, because he knew that both at Idrac and in France
+Sabran had showed himself the possessor of those martial and virile
+qualities, by the presence or the absence of which the Hungarian noble
+measured all men. He himself could only love well and live well: he
+reflected sadly that honesty and honour are not alone enough to draw
+love in return.
+
+As the weeks passed on, his host grew so accustomed to his presence
+there that it ceased to give him offence or cause him anxiety.
+
+'He is not amusing, and he is not always polite,' he said to his
+wife, 'but if he likes to consume his soul in gazing at you, I am not
+jealous, my Wanda; and so taciturn a rival would hardly ever be a
+dangerous one.'
+
+'Do not jest about it,' she answered him, with some real pain. 'I
+should be very vexed at his remaining here, were it not that I feel
+sure he will in time learn to live down his regrets, and to esteem and
+appreciate you.'
+
+'Who knows but his estimation of me may not be the right one?' said
+Sabran, with a pang of sad self-knowledge. And although he did not
+attach any significance to the prolonged sojourn of the lord of Taróc
+and Mohacs, he began to desire once more that his guest would return
+to the solitudes of the Carlowitz vineyards, or of the Karpathian
+mountains and gorges of snow.
+
+When over seven weeks had passed by, Vàsàrhely himself began to think
+that to stay in the Iselthal was useless and impossible, and he had
+heard from Taróc tidings which annoyed him--that his brother Stefan
+and his wife, availing themselves of his general permission to visit
+any one of his places when they chose had so strained the meaning of
+the permission that they had gone to his castle, with a score of their
+Parisian friends, and were there keeping high holiday and festival,
+to the scandal of his grave old stewards, and their own exceeding
+diversion. Hospitable to excess as he was, the liberty displeased him,
+especially as his, men wrote him word that his favourite horses; were
+being ruined by over-driving, and in the list of the guests which they
+sent him were the names of more than one too notorious lady, against
+whose acquaintance he had repeatedly counselled Olga Brancka. He would
+not have cared much what they had done at any other of his houses, but
+at Taróc, his mother, whom he had adored, had lived and died, and the
+place was sacred to him.
+
+He determined to tear himself away from Hohenszalras, and go and
+scatter these gay unbidden revellers in the dusky Karpathian ravines.
+'I cannot stay here for ever,' he thought, 'and I might be here for
+years without acquiring any more certainty than my own conviction.
+Either I am wrong, or he has nothing to conceal, or if I be right he is
+too wary to betray himself. If only I could see his shoulder where I
+struck the dagger--but I cannot go into his bath-room and say to him,
+"You are Vassia Kazán!"'
+
+He resolved to leave on the day after the morrow. For the next day
+there was organised on a large scale a hunting party, to which the
+nobility of the Tauern had been bidden. There were only some half-dozen
+men then staying in the Burg, most of them Austrian soldiers. The delay
+gave him the chance he longed for, which but for an accident he might
+never have had, though he had tarried there half a century.
+
+Early in the morning there was a great breakfast in the Rittersaal,
+at which Wanda did not appear. Sabran received the nobles and gentry
+of the province, and did the honours of his table with his habitual
+courtliness and grace. He was not hospitable in Vàsàrhely's sense of
+the word: he was too easily wearied by others, and too contemptuous of
+ordinary humanity; but he was alive to the pleasure of being lord of
+Hohenszalras, and sensible of the favour with which he was looked upon
+by a nobility commonly so exclusive and intolerant of foreign invasion.
+
+Breakfast over, the whole party went out and up into the high woods.
+The sport at Hohenszalras always gave fair play to beast and bird. In
+deference to the wishes of his wife, Sabran would have none of those
+battues which make of the covert or the forest a slaughterhouse. He
+himself disdained that sort of sport, and liked danger and adventure
+to mingle with his out-of-door pastimes. Game fairly found by the
+spaniel or the pointer; the boar, the wolf, the bear, honestly started
+and given its fair chance of escape or revenge; the steinbock stalked
+in a long hard day with peril and effort--these were all delightful
+to him on occasion; but for the crowded drive, the horde of beaters,
+the terrified bewildered troop of forest denizens driven with sticks
+on to the very barrels of the gunners, for this he had the boundless
+contempt of a man who had chased the buffalo over the prairie, and
+lassoed the wild horse and the wild bull leaning down from the saddle
+of his mustang. The day passed off well, and his guests were all
+content: he alone was not, because a large brown bear which he had
+sighted and tired at twice had escaped him, and roused that blood-lust
+in him which is in the hearts of all men.
+
+'Will you come out alone with me to-morrow and try for that grand
+brute?' he said to Vàsàrhely, as the last of his guests took their
+departure.
+
+Vàsàrhely hesitated.
+
+'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since
+you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'
+
+He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught
+at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of
+Sabran.
+
+'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had
+suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had
+intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving
+directions to the _jägermeister_ for the next day.
+
+Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is
+impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance
+resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a
+child.
+
+In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where
+the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a
+rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and
+mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in
+the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with
+no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their
+rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went
+through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a
+mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and
+capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big
+game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting
+and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and
+drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper
+woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian
+pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above
+some underground.
+
+'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper
+to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should
+be his host's.
+
+'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my
+guest.'
+
+Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him
+to contrive to sting and wound him.
+
+Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not
+observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed
+upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both
+in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron,
+good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about
+a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low
+hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and
+would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached.
+The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.
+
+'Well done,' cried Sabran, but scarcely were the words off his lips
+when another bear burst through the boughs ahead of him by fifty yards.
+He levelled his rifle and received its approach with two bullets in
+rapid succession. But neither had entered a vital part, and the animal,
+only rendered furious by pain, reared and came towards him with
+deadliest intent, its great fangs grinning. He fired again, and this
+shot struck home. The poor brute fell with a crash, the blood pouring
+from its mouth. It was not dead and its agony was great.
+
+'I will give it the _coup de grâce_,' said Sabran, who, for his wife's
+sake', was as humane as any hunter ever can be to the beasts he slew.
+
+'Take care,' said Vàsàrhely. 'It is dangerous to touch a wounded bear.
+I have known one that looked stone dead rise up and kill a man.'
+
+Sabran did not heed. He went up to the poor, panting, groaning mass of
+fur and flesh, and drew his hunting-knife to give it the only mercy
+that it was now possible for it to receive. But as he stooped to
+plunge the knife into its heart the bear verified the warning he had
+been given. Gathering all its oozing strength in one dying effort to
+avenge its murder, it leaped on him, dashed him to the earth, and clung
+to him with claw and tooth fast in his flesh. He freed his right arm
+from its ponderous weight, its horrible grip, and stabbed it with his
+knife as it clung to and lacerated him where he lay upon the grass.
+In an instant, Vàsàrhely and the jäger who was with them were by his
+side, freed him from the animal, and raised him from the ground. He
+was deluged with its blood and his own. Vàsàrhely, for one moment of
+terrible joy, for which he loathed himself afterwards, thought, 'Is he
+dead?' Men had died of lesser things than this.
+
+He stood erect and smiled, and said that it was nothing, but even as he
+spoke a faintness came over him, and his lips turned grey.
+
+The jäger supported him tenderly, and would have had him sit down upon
+a boulder of rock, but he resisted.
+
+'Let me get to that water, he said feebly, looking to a spot a few
+yards off, where one of the many torrents of the Hohe Tauern tumbled
+from the wooded cliff above through birch and beechwood, and rushing
+underground left a clear round brown pool amongst the ferns. He took a
+draught from the flask of brandy; tendered him by the lad, and leaning
+on the youth, and struggling against the sinking swoon that was coming
+on him, walked to the edge of the pool, and dropped down there on one
+of the mossy stones which served as a rough chair.
+
+'Strip me, and wash the blood away, he said to the huntsman, whilst the
+green wood and the daylight, and the face of the man grew dim to him,
+and seemed to recede further and further in a misty darkness. The youth
+obeyed, and cut away the velvet coat, the cambric shirt, till he was
+naked to his waist; then, making sponges of handkerchiefs, the jäger
+began to wash the blood from him and staunch it as best he could.
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely stood by, without offering any aid; his eyes were
+fastened on the magnificent bust of Sabran, as the sunlight fell on the
+fair blue-veined flesh, the firm muscles, the symmetrical throat, the
+slender, yet sinewy arms, round one of which was clasped a bracelet of
+fair hair. He had the chance he needed.
+
+He approached and told the lad roughly to leave the Marquis to him,
+he was doing him more harm than good; he himself had seen many
+battle-fields, and many men bleeding to death upon their mother earth.
+By this time Sabran's eyes were closed; he was hardly conscious of
+anything, a great numbness and infinite exhaustion had fallen upon him;
+his lips moved feebly. 'Wanda!' he said once or twice,'Wanda!'
+
+The face of the man who leaned above him grew dark as night; he gnashed
+his teeth as he begun his errand of mercy.
+
+Leave me with your lord,' he said to the young jäger. 'Go you to the
+castle. Find Herr Greswold, bring him; do not alarm the Countess, and
+say nothing to the household.'
+
+The huntsman went, fleet as a roe. Vàsàrhely remained alone with
+Sabran, who only heard the sound of the rushing water magnified a
+million times on his dulled ear.
+
+Vàsàrhely tore the shirt in shreds, and laved and bathed the wounds,
+and then began to bind them with the skill of a soldier who had often
+aided his own wounded troopers. But first of all, when he had washed
+the blood away, he searched with keen and eager eyes for a scar on the
+white skin--and found it.
+
+On the right shoulder was a small triangular mark; the mark of what,
+to a soldier's eyes, told of an old wound. When he saw it he smiled a
+cruel smile, and went on with his work of healing.
+
+Sabran leaned against the rock behind him; his eyes were still closed,
+the pulsations of his heart were irregular. He had lost a great
+quantity of blood, and the pool at his feet was red. They were but
+flesh wounds, and there was no danger in them themselves, but great
+veins had been severed, and the stream of life had hurried forth in
+torrents. Vàsàrhely thrust the flask between his lips, but he could not
+swallow.
+
+All had been done that could be for the immediate moment. The stillness
+of the deep woods was around them; the body of the brown bear lay on
+the soaked grass; a vulture scenting death, was circling above against
+the blue sky. Over the mind of his foe swept at the sight of them one
+of those hideous temptations which assail the noblest natures in an
+hour of hatred. If he tore the bandages he had placed there off the
+rent veins of the unconscious man whom he watched, the blood would
+leap out again in floods, and so weaken the labouring heart that in
+ten minutes more its powers would fall so low that all aid would be
+useless. Never more would the lips of Sabran meet his wife! Never
+more would his dreams be dreamed upon her breast! For the moment the
+temptation seemed to curl about him like a flame; he shuddered, and
+crossed himself. Was he a soldier to slay in cold blood by treachery a
+powerless rival?
+
+He leaned over Sabran again, and again tried to force the mouthpiece
+of his wine-flask through his teeth. A few drops passed them, and
+he revived a little, and swallowed a few drops more. The blood was
+arrested in its escape, and the pulsations of the heart were returning
+to their normal measure; after a while he unclosed his eyes, and looked
+up at the green leaves, at the blue sky.
+
+'Do not alarm Wanda,' he said feebly. 'It is a scratch; it will be
+nothing. Take me home.'
+
+With his left hand he felt for the hair bracelet on his right arm,
+between the shoulder and the wrist. It was stiff with his own blood.
+
+Then Vàsàrhely leaned over him and met his upward gaze, and said in his
+ear, that seemed still filled with the rushing of many waters, 'You are
+Vassia Kazán!'
+
+When a little later the huntsman returned, bringing the physician, whom
+he had met a mile nearer the house in the woods, and some peasants
+bearing a litter made out of pine branches and wood moss, they found
+Sabran stretched insensible beside the water-pool; and Egon Vàsàrhely,
+who stood erect beside him, said in a strange tone:
+
+'I have stanched the blood, and he has swooned, you see. I commit him
+to your hands. I am not needed.'
+
+And, to their surprise, he turned and walked away with swift steps into
+the green gloom of the dense forest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+Sabran was still insensible when he was carried to the house.
+
+When he regained consciousness he was on his own bed, and his wife was
+bending over him. A convulsion of grief crossed his face as he lifted
+his eyelids and looked at her.
+
+'Wanda,' he murmured feebly, 'Wanda, you will forgive----'
+
+She kissed him passionately, while her tears fell like rain upon his
+forehead. She did not hear his words distinctly; she was only alive to
+the intense joy of his recovered consciousness, of the sound of his
+voice, of the sense of his safety. She kneeled by his bed, covering his
+hands with caresses, prodigal of a thousand names of love, given up to
+an abandonment of terror and of hope which broke down all the serenity
+and self-command of her habitual temper. She was not even aware of the
+presence of others. The over-mastering emotions of anguish and of joy
+filled her soul, and made her seem deaf, indifferent to all living
+things save one.
+
+Sabran lay motionless. He felt her lips, he heard her voice; he did not
+look up again, nor did he speak again. He shut his eyes, and slowly
+remembered all that had passed. Greswold approached him and held his
+fingers on his wrist, and held a little glass to his mouth. Sabran put
+it away. 'It is an opiate,' he said feebly; 'I will not have it.'
+
+He was resolute; he closed his teeth, he thrust the calming draught
+away.
+
+He was thinking to himself: 'Sometimes in unconsciousness one speaks.'
+
+'You are not in great pain?' asked the physician. He made a negative
+movement of his head. What were the fire and the smart of his lacerated
+flesh, of his torn muscles, to the torments of his fears, to the agony
+of his long stifled conscience?
+
+'Do not torment him, let him be still,' she said to the physician; she
+held his hand in both her own and pressed it to her heart. His languid
+eyes thanked her, then closed again.
+
+Herr Greswold withdrew to a little distance and waited. It seemed to
+him strange that a man of the high courage and strong constitution of
+Sabran should be thus utterly broken down by any wound that was not
+mortal; should be thus sunk into dejection and apathy, making no effort
+to raise himself, even to console and reassure his wife. It was not
+like his careless and gallant temper, his virile and healthful strength.
+
+It was true, the doctor reflected, that he had lost a great amount of
+blood. Such a loss he knew sometimes affects the heart and shatters the
+nervous system in many unlooked-for ways. Yet, he thought, there was
+something beyond this; the attitude and the regard of Egon Vàsàrhely
+had been unnatural at such an hour of peril. 'When he said just now
+"forgive," what did he mean?' reflected the old man, whose ear had
+caught the word which had escaped that of Wanda, who had been only
+alive to the voice she adored.
+
+The next four days were anxious and terrible. Sabran did not recover as
+the physician expected that he would, seeing the nature of his wounds
+and the naturally elastic and sanguine temperament he possessed. He
+slept little, had considerable fever, woke from the little rest he
+had, startled, alarmed, bathed in cold sweats; at other times he lay
+still in an apathy almost comatose, from which all the caresses and
+entreaties of his wife failed to rouse him. They began to fear that the
+discharge from the arteries had in some subtle and dangerous manner
+affected the action of the heart, the composition of the blood, and
+produced aneurism or pyæmia. 'The hero of Idrac to be prostrated by a
+mere flesh wound!' thought Herr Greswold in sore perplexity. He sent
+for a great man of science from Vienna, who, when he came, declared the
+treatment admirable, the wounds healthy, the heart in a normal state,
+but added it was evident the nervous system had received a severe
+shock, the effects of which still remained.
+
+'But it is that which I cannot understand,' said the old man in
+despair. 'If you only knew the Marquis de Sabran as I know him; the
+most courageous, the most gay, the most resolute of men! A man to laugh
+at death in its face! A man absolutely without fear!'
+
+The other assented.
+
+'Every one knows what he did in the floods at Idrac,' he answered; 'but
+he has a sensitive temperament for all that. If you did not tell me it
+is impossible, I should say that he had had some mental shock, some
+great grief. The prostration seems to me more of the mind than the
+body. But you have assured me it is impossible?'
+
+'Impossible! There does not live on earth a man so happy, so fortunate,
+so blessed in all the world as he.'
+
+'Men have a past that troubles them sometimes,' said the Vienna
+physician. 'Nay, I mean nothing, but I believe that M. de Sabran was a
+man of pleasure. The cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must
+drink long afterwards. I do not mean anything; I merely suggest. The
+prostration has to my view its most probable origin in mental trouble;
+but it would do him more harm than good to excite him by any effort to
+certify this. To the Countess von Szalras I have merely said, that his
+state is the result of the large loss of blood, and, indeed, after all
+it may be so.'
+
+On the fifth day, Sabran, still lying in that almost comatose silence
+which had been scarcely broken since his accident, said in a scarce
+audible voice to his wife:
+
+'Is your cousin here?'
+
+She stooped towards him and answered:
+
+'Yes; he is here, love. All the others went immediately, but Egon
+remained. I suppose he thought it looked kinder to do so. I have
+scarcely seen him, of course.'
+
+The pallor of his face grew greyer; he turned his head away restlessly.
+
+'Why does he not go?' he muttered in his throat. 'Does he wait for my
+death?'
+
+'Oh, Réné! hush, hush!' she said, with horror and amaze. 'My love, how
+can you say such things? You are in no danger; the doctor assures me
+so. In a week or two you will be well, you will be yourself.'
+
+'Send your cousin away.'
+
+She hesitated; troubled by his unreasoning, restless jealousy, which
+seemed to be the only consciousness of life remaining with him. 'I will
+obey you, love; you are lord here,' she said softly; 'but will it not
+look strange? No guest can well be told to go.'
+
+'A guest!--he is an enemy!'
+
+She sighed, knowing how hopelessly reason can struggle against the
+delusions of a sick bed. 'I will tell him to go to-morrow,' she said,
+to soothe him. 'To-night it is too late.'
+
+'Write to him--do not leave me.'
+
+There was a childlike appeal in his voice, that from a man so strong
+had a piteous pathos. Her eyes swam with tears as she heard.
+
+'Oh, my dearest, I will not leave you!' she said passionately, 'not for
+one moment whilst I live; and oh, my beloved! what could death ever
+change in _me_? Have you so little faith?'
+
+'You do not know,' he said, so low that his breath scarcely stirred the
+air.
+
+She thought that he was tormented by a doubt that she would not be
+faithful to him if he died. She stooped and kissed him.
+
+'My own, I would sooner be faithless to you in your life than after
+death. Surely you know me well enough to know that at the least?'
+
+He was silent. A great sigh struggled from his breast and escaped his
+pale lips like a parting breath.
+
+'Kiss me again,' he murmured; 'kiss me again, whilst----That gives me
+life,' he said, as he drew her head down upon his bosom, where his
+heart throbbed labouredly. A little while later he fell asleep. He
+slept some hours. When he awoke he was consumed by a nameless fear.
+
+'Is your cousin gone?' he asked.
+
+She told him that it was one o'clock in the same night; she had not
+written yet.
+
+'Let him stay,' he said feverishly. 'He shall not think I fear him. Do
+you hear me? Let him stay.'
+
+The words seemed to her the causeless caprice of a jealousy magnified
+and distorted by the weakness of fever. She strove to answer him
+calmly. 'He shall go or stay as you please,' she assured him. 'What
+does it matter, dear, what Egon does? You always speak of Egon. You
+have never spoken of the children once.'
+
+She wanted to distract his thoughts. She was pained to think how deep,
+though unspoken, his antagonism to her cousin must have been, that now
+in his feebleness it--was the one paramount absorbing thought.
+
+A great sadness came upon his face as she spoke; his lips trembled a
+little.
+
+'Ah! the children,' he repeated. 'Yes, bring them to me to-morrow. Bela
+is too like me. Poor Bela, it will be his curse.'
+
+'It is my joy of joys,' she murmured, afraid to see how his mind seemed
+astray.
+
+A shudder that was almost a spasm passed over him. He did not reply. He
+turned his face away from her, and seemed to sleep.
+
+The day following he was somewhat calmer, somewhat stronger, though his
+fever was high.
+
+The species of paralysis that had seemed to; fall on all his faculties
+had in a great measure left him. 'You wish, me to recover,' he said to
+her. 'I will do so, though perhaps it were, better not?'
+
+'He says strange things,' she said to Greswold. 'I cannot think why he
+has such thoughts.'
+
+'It is not he, himself, that has them, it is his fever,' answered the
+doctor. 'Why, in fever, do people often hate what they most adore when
+they are in health?'
+
+She was reassured, but not contented.
+
+The children were brought to see him. Bela had with him an ivory
+air-gun, with which he was accustomed to blow down his metal soldiers;
+he looked at his father with awed, dilated eyes, and said that he would
+go out with the gun and kill the brothers of the bear that had done the
+harm.
+
+'The bear was quite right,' said Sabran. 'It was I who was wrong to
+take a life not my own.'
+
+'That is beyond Bela,' said his wife. 'But I will translate it to him
+into language he shall understand, though I fear very much, say what I
+will, he will be a hunter and a soldier one day.'
+
+Bela looked from one to the other, knitting, his fair brows as he sat
+on the edge of the bed.
+
+'Bela will be like Egon,' he said, 'with all gold and fur to dress up
+in, and a big jewelled sword, and ten hundred men and horses, and Bela
+will be a great killer of things!'
+
+Sabran smiled languidly, but she saw that he flinched at her cousin's
+name.
+
+'I shall not love you, Bela, if you are a killer of things that are
+God's dear creatures,' she said, as she sent the child away.
+
+His blue eyes grew dark with anger.
+
+'God only cares about Bela,' he said in innocent profanity, with
+a profound sense of his own vastness in the sight of heaven, 'and
+Gela,' he added, with the condescending tenderness wherewith he always
+associated his brother and himself.
+
+'Where could he get all that overwhelming pride?' she said, as he was
+led away. 'I have tried to rear him so simply. Do what I may he will
+grow arrogant and selfish.'
+
+'My dear,' said Sabran, very bitterly, 'what avails that he was borne
+in your bosom? He is my son!'
+
+'Gela is your son, and he is so different,' she answered, not seeking
+to combat the self-censure to which she was accustomed in him, and
+which she attributed to faults or follies of a past life, magnified by
+a conscience too sensitive.
+
+'He is all yours then,' he said, with a wan smile. 'You have prevailed
+over evil.'
+
+In a few days later his recovery had progressed so far that he had
+regained his usual tone and look; his wounds were healing, and his
+strength was returning. He seemed to the keen eyes of Greswold to have
+made a supreme effort to conquer the moral depression into which he had
+sunk, and to have thrust away his malady almost by force of will. As he
+grew better he never spoke of Egon Vàsàrhely.
+
+On the fifteenth day from his accident he was restored enough to health
+for apprehension to cease. He passed some hours seated at an open
+window in his own room. He never asked if Vàsàrhely were still there or
+not.
+
+Wanda, who never left him, wondered at that silence, but she forbore to
+bring forward a name which had had such power to agitate him. She was
+troubled at the nervousness which still remained to him. The opening of
+a door, the sound of a step, the entrance of a servant made him start
+and turn pale. When she spoke of it with anxiety to Herr Joachim, he
+said vague sentences as to the nervousness which was consequent on
+great loss of blood, and brought forward instances of soldiers who had
+lost their nerve from the same cause. It did not satisfy her. She was
+the descendant of a long line of warriors; she could not easily believe
+that her husband's intrepid and careless courage could have been
+shattered by a flesh wound.
+
+'Did you really mean,' he said abruptly to her that afternoon, as he
+sat for the first time beside the open panes of the oriel; 'did you
+really mean that were I to die you would never forget me for any other?'
+
+She rose quickly as if she had been stung, and her face flushed.
+
+'Do I merit that doubt from you? she said. 'I think not.'
+
+She spoke rather in sadness than in anger. He had hurt her, he could
+not anger her. He felt the rebuke.
+
+'Even if I were dead, should I have all your life?' he murmured, in
+wonder at that priceless gift.
+
+'You and your children,' she said gravely. 'Ah! what can death do
+against great love? Make its bands stronger perhaps, its power purer.
+Nothing else.'
+
+'I thank you,' he said very low, with great humility, with intense
+emotion. For a moment he thought----should he tell her, should he trust
+this deep tenderness which could brave death; and might brave even
+shame unblenching? He looked at her from under his drooped eyelids, and
+then--he dared not. He knew the pride which was in her better than she
+did----her pride, which was inherited by her firstborn, and had been
+the sign manual of all her imperious race.
+
+He looked at her where she stood with the light falling on her through
+the amber hues of painted glass; worn, wan, and tired by so many days
+and nights of anxious vigil, she yet looked a woman whom a nation
+might salute with the _pro rege nostro!_ that Maria Theresa heard. All
+that a great race possesses and rejoices in of valour, of tradition,
+of dignity, of high honour, and of blameless truth were expressed in
+her; every movement, attitude, and gesture spoke of the aristocracy of
+blood. All that potent and subtle sense of patrician descent which had
+most allured and intoxicated him in other days now awed and daunted
+him. He dared not tell her of his treason. He dared not. He was as a
+false conspirator before a great queen he has betrayed.
+
+'Are you faint, my love?' she asked him, alarmed to see the change upon
+his face and the exhaustion with which he sunk, backward against the
+cushions of his chair.
+
+'Mere weakness; it will pass,' he said, smiling as best he might, to
+reassure her. He felt like a man who slides down a crevasse, and has
+time and consciousness enough to see the treacherous ice go by him,
+the black abyss yawning below him, the cold, dark death awaiting him
+beyond, whilst on the heights the sun is shining.
+
+That night he entreated her to leave him and rest. He assured her he
+felt well; he feigned a need of sleep. For fifteen nights she had not
+herself lain down. To please him she obeyed, and the deep slumber of
+tired nature soon fell upon her. When he thought she slept, he rose
+noiselessly and threw on a long velvet coat, sable-lined, that was by
+his bedside, and looked at his watch. It was midnight.
+
+He crossed the threshold of the open door into his wife's chamber and
+stood beside her bed for a moment, gazing at her as she slept. She
+seemed like the marble statue of some sleeping saint; she lay in the
+attitude of S. Cecilia on her bier at Home. The faint lamplight made
+her fair skin white as snow. Bound her arm was a bracelet of his hair
+like the one which he wore of hers. He stood and gazed on her, then
+slowly turned away. Great tears fell down his cheeks as he left her
+chamber. He opened the door of his own room, the outer one which led
+into the corridor, and walked down the long tapestry-hung gallery
+leading to the guest-chambers. It was the first time that he had walked
+without assistance; his limbs felt strange and broken, but he held on,
+leaning now and then to rest against the arras. The whole house was
+still.
+
+He took his way straight to the apartments set aside for guests. All
+was dark. The little lamp he carried shed a circle of light about his
+steps but none beyond him. When he reached the chamber which he knew
+was Egon Vàsàrhely's he did not pause. He struck on its panels with a
+firm hand.
+
+The voice of Vàsàrhely asked from within, 'Who is there? Is there
+anything wrong?'
+
+'It is I! Open,' answered Sabran.
+
+In a moment more the door unclosed. Vàsàrhely stood within it; he was
+not undressed. There were a dozen wax candles burning in silver sconces
+on the table within. The tapestried figures on the walls grew pale and
+colossal in their light. He did not speak, but waited.
+
+Sabran entered and closed the door behind him. His face was bloodless,
+but he carried himself erect despite the sense of faintness which
+assailed him.
+
+'You know who I am?' he said simply, without preface or supplication.
+
+Vàsàrhely gave a gesture of assent.
+
+'How did you know it?'
+
+'I remembered,' answered the other.
+
+There was a moment's silence. If Vàsàrhely could have withered to the
+earth by a gaze of scorn the man before him, Sabran would have fallen
+dead. As it was his eyes dropped beneath the look, but the courage and
+the dignity of his attitude did not alter. He had played his part of
+a great noble for so long that it had ceased to be assumption and had
+become his nature.
+
+'You will tell her?' he said, and his voice did not tremble, though his
+very soul seemed to swoon within him.
+
+'I shall not tell her!'
+
+Vàsàrhely spoke with effort; his words were hoarse and stern.
+
+'You will not?'
+
+An immense joy, unlooked for, undreamed of, sprang up in him, checked
+as it rose by incredulity.
+
+'But you loved her!' he said, on an impulse which he regretted even
+as the exclamation escaped him. Vàsàrhely threw his head back with a
+gesture of fine anger.
+
+'If I loved' her what is that to you?' he said, with a restrained
+violence vibrating in his words. 'It is, perhaps, because I once loved
+her that your foul secret is safe with me now. I shall not tell her. I
+waited to say this to you. I could not write it lest it should meet her
+eyes. You came to ask me this? Be satisfied and go.'
+
+'I came to ask you this because, had you said otherwise, I would have
+shot myself ere she could have heard.'
+
+Vàsàrhely said nothing; a great scorn was still set like the grimness
+of death upon his face. He looked far away at the dim figures on the
+tapestries; he shrunk from the sight of his boyhood's enemy as from
+some loathly unclean thing he must not kill.
+
+'Suicide!' he thought, 'the Slav's courage, the serf's refuge!
+
+Before the sight of Sabran the room went round, the lights grew dull,
+the figures on the walls became, fantastic and unreal. His heart beat
+with painful effort, yet his ears, his throat, his brain seemed full
+of blood. The nerves of his whole body seemed to shrink and thrill and
+quiver, but the force of habit kept him composed and erect before this
+man who was his foe, yet did for him what few friends would have done.
+
+'I do not thank you,' he said at last. 'I understand; you spare me for
+her sake, not mine.'
+
+'But for her, I would treat you so.'
+
+As he spoke he broke in two a slender agate ruler which lay on the
+writing-table at his elbow.
+
+'Go,' he added, 'you have had my word; though we live fifty years you
+are safe from me, because----because----God forgive you! you are hers.'
+
+He made a gesture towards the door. Sabran shivered under the insult
+which his conscience could not resent, his hand dared not avenge.
+
+Hearing this there fell away from him the arrogance that had been his
+mask, the courage that had been his shield. He saw himself for the
+first time as this man saw him, as all the world would see him if once
+it knew his secret. For the first time his past offences rose up like
+ghosts naked from their graves. The calmness, the indifference, the
+cynicism, the pride which had been so long in his manner and in his
+nature deserted him. He felt base-born before a noble, a liar before a
+gentleman, a coward before a man of honour.
+
+Where he stood, leaning on a high caned chair to support himself
+against the sickly weakness which still came on him from his scarce
+healed wounds, he felt for the first time to cower and shrink before
+this man who was his judge, and might become his accuser did he choose.
+Something in the last words of Egon Vàsàrhely suddenly brought home
+to him the enormity of his own sin, the immensity of the other's
+forbearance. He suddenly realised all the offence to honour, all the
+outrage to pride, all the ineffaceable indignity which he had brought
+upon a great race: all that he had done, never to be undone by any
+expiation of his own, in making Wanda von Szalras the mother of his
+sons. Submissive, he turned without a word of gesture or of pleading,
+and felt his way out of the chamber through the dusky mists of the
+faintness stealing on him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against
+the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his
+clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.
+
+She was still asleep.
+
+When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever.
+He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a
+moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his
+desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.
+
+But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.
+
+Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned
+to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had
+left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person,
+as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no
+importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said
+nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental
+impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian
+mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use
+to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife
+attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial
+always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength
+returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a
+gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened
+upon her with a strange appeal.
+
+One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was
+certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following
+words to his foe and his judge:
+
+'Sir,----You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I
+send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical
+weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time
+or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof
+absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that
+the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue
+it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but
+shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of
+action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present
+permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have
+governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or
+chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern
+both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse
+at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia
+Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to
+nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the
+great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was
+taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never
+saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years
+old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I
+remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you,
+and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then
+returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him.
+One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the
+Prince Zabaroff was dead--my protector, as they termed him--and that
+I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make
+you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always
+been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family,
+could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts,
+the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then,
+thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father.
+I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my
+fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother
+Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year
+after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You
+see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things
+or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had
+a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices,
+like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the
+love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit
+which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of
+me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive
+tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in
+my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those
+three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me
+with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be
+rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did
+me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a
+word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis
+with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold
+some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque
+going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down
+with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone
+reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe,
+and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread,
+fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I
+neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me
+popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name
+of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went
+there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the
+moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I
+liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely
+more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his
+fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior.
+Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left
+for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his
+hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the
+Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the
+solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts
+the hiss of an Indian's arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he
+lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of
+him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows
+of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher
+in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been
+subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having
+wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died
+of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to
+think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life
+with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed
+me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the
+dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history
+of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was
+glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike
+as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on
+the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the
+steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men
+I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I
+loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican _ranch_ near,
+within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us
+and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost
+inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps
+covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it
+all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be
+gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies
+which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight
+whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector
+and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose
+heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he
+died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything
+he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would
+collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France.
+For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss.
+I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and
+his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of
+cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave.
+I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the
+temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all
+those which had been brought with him from France by his Jesuit tutors,
+and the certificates of his own and his father's births and marriages,
+with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper
+containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and
+patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden
+in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had
+desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great
+sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine:
+he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human
+being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed
+to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots
+not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had
+the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was
+born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible
+reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years
+I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and
+purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris,
+yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in
+many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong
+which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that
+I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it
+seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had
+deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and
+had given me all he held most dear----the fruits of his researches.
+To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation.
+I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as
+the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew
+that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke
+no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was
+recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned
+to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance
+with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to
+me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not
+having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I
+went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had
+been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The
+priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the
+name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing----Bretons
+never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead
+men who had gone down when the _Estelle_ had foundered off the Pinos.
+I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so
+much during my seven years' absence from Paris that I did not suppose
+anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran.
+And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known
+me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred
+of me as your cousin's husband; and had you even had suspicions you
+could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in
+the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down
+the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me
+take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune
+involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have
+done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and
+some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What
+was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over
+with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is
+my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious
+and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense
+perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it
+as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying
+ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to
+justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware
+that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true
+that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed
+me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to
+me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I
+had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely
+closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became
+almost by necessity a _fainéant_, and fate smiled upon me more than I
+merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all
+his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me.
+I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I
+can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so
+natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made
+me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to
+act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and
+irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call
+_flair._ I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on
+the Bourse. I was also, famous for _la main heureuse_ in all forms of
+gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept
+always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed
+to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded
+the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should
+not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was
+a man of honour until----I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to
+defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware
+of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied
+your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her.
+You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It
+is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions
+of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to
+me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia,
+but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am
+base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting
+elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and
+mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten
+by a great lord's momentary _ennui_ and caprice! But if you will stoop
+so far----if you will consider me ennobled by _her_ enough to meet
+you as an equal would do----we can find with facility some pretext
+of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me.
+You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are
+the only male champion--what her brothers would surely have taken had
+they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have
+passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your
+commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to
+their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet
+you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother's
+than their father's, and she will rear them in all noble ways.'
+
+Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return
+of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace
+with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his
+own cowardice and shame.
+
+It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of
+Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief:----
+
+'I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for
+she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.
+
+(Signed) 'PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.'
+
+To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:
+
+'Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did
+not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has
+seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return.
+It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a
+prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go
+to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If
+ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope
+this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen
+you.' Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to
+be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name.
+Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your
+husband, and give me a remembrance in your prayers.
+
+(Signed) 'EGON.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn
+shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and
+to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of
+her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to
+play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and
+eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this
+unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it
+plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian
+world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it
+was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman,
+which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon
+her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and
+what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at
+Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of
+it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation.
+If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again
+paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and
+her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.
+
+'Wanda has ruined him!' she always thought angrily. 'He always expects
+every other woman to have a soul above _chiffons_ and to bury herself
+in the country with children and horses.'
+
+Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which
+his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to
+her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the
+pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him.
+Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed
+measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to
+entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and
+was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law.
+She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only
+came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild
+forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely,
+and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope,
+which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for
+her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the
+post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and
+soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was
+called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish
+literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race
+of Vàsàrhely.
+
+What was in that letter?
+
+She attended to none of her own, so absorbed was she in the impression
+which gained upon her that the packet which had brought so much
+surprise and even emotion upon his face came from the hand of Wanda.
+'If even she should be no saint at all?' she thought, with a malicious
+amusement. She did not see Egon Vàsàrhely for many hours, but she
+did not lose her curiosity nor cease to cast about for a method of
+gratifying it. At the close of the day when she came back from hunting
+she went into the library, which was then empty. She did not seriously
+expect to see anything that would reward her enterprise, but she knew
+he read his letters there and wrote the few he was obliged to write:
+like most soldiers he disliked using pen and ink. It was dusk, and
+there were a few lights burning in the old silver sconces fixed upon
+the horns of forest animals against the walls. With a quick, calm
+touch, she moved all the litter of papers lying on the huge table
+where he was wont to do such business as he was compelled to transact.
+She found nothing that gratified her inquisitiveness. She was about
+to leave the room in baffled impatience----impatience of she knew not
+what----when her eyes fell upon a pile of charred paper lying on the
+stove.
+
+It was one of those monumental polychrome stoves of fifteenth-century
+work in which the country-houses of Central Europe are so rich; a
+grand pile of fretted pottery, towering half way to the ceiling, with
+the crown and arms of the Vàsàrhely princes on its summit. There was
+no fire in it, for the weather was not cold, and Vàsàrhely, who alone
+used the room, was an ascetic in such matters; but upon its jutting
+step, which was guarded by lions of gilded bronze, there had been some
+paper burned: the ashes lay there in a little heap. Almost all of
+it was ash, but a few torn pieces were only blackened and coloured.
+With the eager curiosity of a woman who is longing to find another
+woman at fault, she kneeled down by the stove and patiently examined
+these pieces. Only one was so little burned that it had a word or two
+legible upon it; two of those words were Vassia Kazán. Nothing else was
+traceable; she recognised the handwriting of Sabran. She attached no
+importance to it, yet she slipped the little scrap, burnt and black as
+it was, within one of her gauntlets; then, as quickly as she had come
+there, she retreated and in another half hour, smiling and radiant,
+covered with jewels, and with no trace of fatigue or of weather, she
+descended the great banqueting-hall, clad as though the heart of the
+Greater Karpathians was the centre of the Boulevard S. Germain.
+
+Who was Vassia Kazán?
+
+The question floated above all her thoughts all that evening. Who was
+he, she, or it, and what could Sabran have to say of him, or her, or
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely? A less wise woman might have asked straightway
+what the unknown name might mean, but straight ways are not those
+which commend themselves to temperaments like hers. The pleasure and
+the purpose of her life was intrigue. In great things she deemed
+it necessity; in trifles it was an amusement; without it life was
+flavourless.
+
+The next day her brother-in-law abandoned Taróc, to join his hussars
+and prepare for the autumn manœuvres in the plains, and left her and
+Stefan in possession of the great place, half palace, half fortress,
+which had withstood more than one siege of Ottoman armies, where it
+stood across a deep gorge with the water foaming black below. But she
+kept the charred, torn, triangular scrap of paper; and she treasured
+in her memory the two words Vassia Kazán; and she said again and again
+and again to herself: 'Why should he write to Egon? Why should Egon
+burn what he writes?' Deep down in her mind there was always at work
+a bitter jealousy of Wanda von Szalras; jealousy of her regular and
+perfect beauty, of her vast possessions, of her influence at the Court,
+of her serene and unspotted repute, and now of her ascendency over the
+lives of Sabran and of Vàsàrhely.
+
+'Why should they both love that woman so much?' she thought very often.
+'She is always alike. She has no temptations. She goes over life as if
+it were frozen snow. She did one senseless thing, but then she was rich
+enough to do it with impunity. She is so habitually fortunate that she
+is utterly uninteresting; and yet they are both her slaves!'
+
+She went home and wrote to a cousin of her own who had been a member
+of the famous Third Section at Petersburg. She said in her letter: 'Is
+there anyone known in Russia as Vassia Kazán? I want you to learn for
+me to what or to whom this name belongs. It is certainly Russian, and
+appears to me to have been taken by some one who has been named _more
+hebrœo_ from the city of Kazán. You, who know everything past,
+present, and to come, will be able to know this.'
+
+In a few days she received an answer from Petersburg. Her cousin wrote:
+'I cannot give you the information you desire. It must be a thing of
+the past. But I will keep it in mind, and sooner or later you shall
+have the knowledge you wish. You will do us the justice to admit that
+we are not easily baffled.'
+
+She was not satisfied, but knew how to be patient.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+Strangely enough the consciousness that one person lived who knew
+his secret unnerved him. He had said truly that so much were all his
+instincts and temper those of an aristocrat that he had long ceased to
+remember that he was not the true Marquis de Sabran. The admiration men
+frankly gave him, and the ascendency he exercised over women, had alike
+concurred in fostering his self-delusion. Since his recognition by the
+foe of his boyhood a vivid sense of his own shamefulness, however, had
+come upon him; a morbid consciousness that he was not what he seemed,
+and what all the world believed him, had returned to him. Egon would
+never speak, but he himself could never forget. He said to himself in
+his solitude, 'I am Vassia Kazán! and what he had done appeared to him
+intolerable, infamous, beyond all expiation.
+
+It was like an impalpable but impassable wall built up between himself
+and her. Nothing was changed except that one man knew his secret, but
+this one fact seemed to change the face of the world. For the first
+time all the deference, all the homage with which the people of the
+Tauern treated him seemed to him a derision. Naturally of proud temper,
+and of an intellect which gave him ascendency over others, he had from
+the first moment he had assumed the marquisate of Sabran received
+all the acknowledgments of his rank with an honest unconsciousness
+of imposture. After all he had in his veins blood as patrician as
+that of the Sabrans; but now that Egon Vàsàrhely knew the truth he
+was perpetually conscious of not being what he seemed. The mere sense
+that about the world there was another living being who knew what he
+knew, shook down all the self-possession and philosophy which had so
+long made him assure himself that the assumption of a name was an
+immaterial circumstance, which, harming no one, could concern no one.
+Egon Vàsàrhely seemed to have seized his sophisms in a rude grasp, and
+shaken them down as blossoms fall in wind. He thought with bitter
+self-contempt how true the cynic was who said that no sin exists so
+long as it is not found out; that discovery is the sole form which
+remorse takes.
+
+At times his remorse made him almost afraid of Wanda, almost shrink
+from her, almost tremble at her regard; at other times it intensified
+his passion and infused into his embraces a kind of ferocity of
+triumph. He would show an almost brutal ardour in his caresses, and
+would think with an almost cruel exultation, 'I was born a serf, and I
+am her lover, her lord! Strangely enough, she began to lose something
+of her high influence upon him, of her spiritual superiority in his
+sight. She was so entirely, so perpetually his, that she became in a
+manner tainted with his own degradation. She could no longer check him
+with a word, calm him with a gesture of restraint. She was conscious of
+a change in him which she could not explain to herself. His sweetness
+of temper was broken by occasional irritability that she had never seen
+before. He was at times melancholy and absorbed; he at times displayed
+a jealousy which appeared unworthy of herself and him; at other moments
+he adored her, submitted to her with too great a humility. They were
+still happy, but their happiness was more uncertain, more disturbed by
+passing shadows. She told herself that it was always so in marriage,
+that in the old trite phrase nothing mortal was ever perfect long. But
+this philosophy failed to reconcile her. She found herself continually
+pondering on the alteration that she perceived in him, without being
+able to explain it to herself in any satisfactory manner.
+
+One day he announced to her without preface that he had decided to
+renounce the name of Sabran; that he preferred to any other the title
+which she had given him in the Countship of Idrac. She was astonished,
+but on reflection only saw, in his choice, devotion and deference to
+herself. Perhaps, too, she reflected with a pang, he desired some
+foreign mission such as she had once proposed to him; perhaps the life
+at Hohenszalras was monotonous and too quiet for a man so long used
+to the movement and excitation of Paris. She suggested the invitation
+of a circle of guests more often, but he rejected the idea with some
+impatience. He, who had previously amused himself so well with the
+part of host to a brilliant society, now professed that he saw nothing
+but trouble and _ennui_ in a house full of people, who changed every
+week, and of royal personages who exacted ceremonious observances
+that were tedious and burdensome. So they remained alone, for even
+the Princess Ottilie had gone away to Lilienslust. For her own part
+she asked nothing better. Her people, her lands, her occupations, her
+responsibilities, were always interest enough. She loved the stately,
+serene tread of Time in these mountain solitudes. Life always seemed
+to her a purer, graver, more august thing when no echo of the world
+without jarred on the solemnity of the woods and hills. She wanted her
+children to grow up to love Hohenszalras, as she had always done, far
+above all pomps and pleasures of courts and cities.
+
+The winter went by, and he spent most of the days out of doors in
+violent exercise, sledging, skating, wolf hunting. In the evenings he
+made music for her in the white room: beautiful, dreamy music, that
+carried her soul from earth. He played for hours and hours far into the
+night; he seemed more willing to do anything than to converse. When he
+talked to her she was sensible of an effort of constraint; it was no
+longer the careless, happy, spontaneous conversation of a man certain
+of receiving sympathy in all his opinions, indulgence in all his
+errors, comprehension in even his vaguest or most eccentric ideas: a
+certain charm was gone out of their intercourse. She thought sometimes
+humbly enough, was it because a man always wearies of a woman? Yet
+she could scarcely think that, for his reverential deference to her
+alternated with a passion that had lost nothing of its voluptuous
+intensity.
+
+So the winter passed away. Madame Ottilie was in the South for her
+health, with her relatives of Lilienhöhe; they invited no one, and so
+no one could approach them. The children grew and throve. Bela and his
+brother had a little sledge of their own, drawn by two Spanish donkeys,
+white as the snows that wrapped the Iselthal in their serenity and
+silence. In their little sable coats and their sable-lined hoods the
+two little boys looked like rosebuds wrapped in brown moss. They were a
+pretty spectacle upon the ice, with their stately Heiduck, wrapped in
+his scarlet and black cloak, walking by the gilded shell-shaped sledge.
+
+'Bela loves the ice best. Bela wishes the summer never was!' said the
+little heir of the Counts of Szalras one day, as he leaped out from
+under the bearskin of his snow-carriage. His father heard him, and
+smiled a little bitterly.
+
+'You have the snow in your blood,' he thought. 'I, too, know how I
+loved the winter with all its privations, how I skimmed like a swallow
+down the frozen Volga, how I breasted the wind of the North Sea, sad
+with the dying cries of the swans! But I had an empty stomach and
+naked limbs under my rough goatskin, and you ride there in your sables
+and velvets, a proud little prince, and yet you are my son!'
+
+Was he almost angered against his own child for the great heirship to
+which he was born, as kings are often of their dauphins? Bela looked up
+at him a little timidly, always being in a certain awe of his father.
+
+'May Bela go with you some day with the big black horses, one day when
+you go very far?'
+
+'Ask your mother,' said Sabran.
+
+'She will like it,' said the child. 'Yesterday she said you never do
+think of Bela. She did not say it _to_ Bela, but he heard.'
+
+'I will think of him,' said Sabran, with some emotion: he had a certain
+antagonism to the child, of which he was vaguely ashamed; he was sorry
+that she should have noticed it. He disliked him because Bela so
+visibly resembled himself that he was a perpetual reproach; a living
+sign of how the blood of a Russian lord and of a Persian peasant had
+been infused into the blood of the Austrian nobles.
+
+The next day he took the child with him on a drive of many leagues,
+through the frozen highways winding through the frosted forests under
+the huge snow-covered range of the Glöckner mountains. Bela was in
+raptures; the grand black Russian horses, whose speed was as the wind,
+were much more to his taste than the sedate and solemn Spanish asses.
+When they returned, and Sabran lifted him out of the sledge in the
+twilight, the child kissed his hand.
+
+'Bela loves you,' he said timidly.
+
+'Why do you?' said his father, surprised and touched. 'Because you are
+your mother's child?'
+
+Bela did not understand. He said, after a moment of reflection:
+
+'Bela is afraid, when you are angry; very afraid. But Bela does love
+you.'
+
+Sabran laid his hand on the child's shoulder. 'I shall never be angry
+if Bela obey his mother, and never pain her. Remember that.'
+
+'He will remember,' said Bela. 'And may he go with the big black horses
+very soon again?'
+
+'Your mother's horses are just as big, and just as black. Is it not the
+same thing to go with her?'
+
+'No. Because she takes Bela often; you never.'
+
+'You are ungrateful,' said Sabran, in the tone which always alarmed and
+awed the bold, bright spirit of his child. 'Your mother's love beside
+mine is like the great mountain beside the speck of dust. Can you
+understand? You will when you are a man. Obey her and adore her. So you
+will best please me.'
+
+Bela looked at him with troubled suffused eyes; he went within doors a
+little sadly, led away by Hubert, and when he reached his nursery and
+had his furs taken from off him he was still serious, and for once he
+did not tell his thoughts to Gela, for they were too many for him to
+be able to master them in words. His father was a beautiful, august,
+terrible, magnificent figure in his eyes; with the confused fancies
+of a child's scarce-opened mind he blended together in his admiration
+Sabran and the great marble form of S. Johann of Prague which stretched
+its arm towards the lake from the doors of the great entrance, and, as
+Bela always understood, controlled the waters and the storms at will.
+Bela feared no one else in all the world, but he feared his father,
+and for that reason loved him as he loved nothing else in his somewhat
+selfish and imperious little life.
+
+'It is so good of you to have given Bela that pleasure,' his wife said
+to him when he entered the white room. 'I know you cannot care to hear
+a child chatter as I do. It can only be tiresome to you.'
+
+'I will drive him every day if it please _you_,' said Sabran.
+
+'No, no; that would be too much to exact from you. Besides, he would
+soon despise his donkeys, and desert poor Gela. I take him but seldom
+myself for that reason. He has an idea that he is immeasurably older
+than Gela. It is true a year at their ages is more difference than are
+ten years at ours.'
+
+'The child said something to me, as if he had heard you say I do not
+care for him?'
+
+'You do not, very much. Surely you are inclined to be harsh to him?'
+
+'If I be so, it is only because I see so much of myself in him.'
+
+He looked at her, assailed once more by the longing which at times came
+over him to tell her the truth of himself, to risk everything rather
+than deceive her longer, to throw himself upon her mercy, and cut short
+this life which had so much of duplicity, so much of concealment, that
+every year added to it was a stone added to the mountain of his sins.
+But when he looked at her he dared not. The very grace and serenity
+of her daunted him; all the signs of nobility in her, from the repose
+of her manner to the very beauty of her hands, with their great rings
+gleaming on the long and slender fingers, seemed to awe him into
+silence. She was so proud a woman, so great a lady, so patrician in
+all her prejudices, her habits, her hereditary qualities, he dared not
+tell her that he had betrayed her thus. An infidelity, a folly, even
+any other crime he thought he could have summoned courage to confess
+to her; but to say to her, the daughter of a line of princes: 'I, who
+have made you the mother of my children, I was born a bastard and a
+serf!' How could he dare say that? Anything else she might forgive,
+he thought, since love is great, but never that. Nay, a cold sickness
+stole over him as he thought again that she came of great lords who had
+meted justice out over whole provinces for a thousand years; and he
+had wronged her so deeply that the human tongue scarcely held any word
+of infamy enough to name his crime. The law would set her free, if she
+chose, from a man who had so betrayed her, and his children would be
+bastards like himself.
+
+He had stretched himself on a great couch, covered with white
+bear-skins. He was in shadow; she was in the light that came from the
+fire on the wide hearth, and from the oriel window near, a red warm
+dusky light, that fell on the jewels on her hands, the furs on her
+skirts, the very pearls about her throat.
+
+She glanced at him anxiously, seeing how motionless he lay there, with
+his head turned backward on the cushions.
+
+'I am afraid you are weak still from that wound,' she said, as she rose
+and approached him. 'Greswold assures me it has left no trace, but I am
+always afraid. And you look often so pale. Perhaps you exert yourself
+too much? Let the wolves be. Perhaps it is too cold for you? Would you
+like to go to the south? Do not think of me; my only happiness is to do
+whatever you wish.'
+
+He kissed her hand with deep unfeigned emotion. 'I believe in angels
+since I knew you,' he murmured. 'No; I will not take you away from the
+winter and the people that you love. I am well enough. Greswold is
+right. I could not master those horses if I were not strong; be sure of
+that.'
+
+'But I always fear that it is dull here for you?'
+
+'Dull! with you? "Custom cannot stale her infinite variety." That was
+written in prophecy of your charm for me.'
+
+'You will always flatter me! And I am not "various" at all; I am too
+grave to be entertaining. I am just the German house-mother who cares
+for the children and for you.'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Is that your portrait of yourself? I think Carolus Duran's is truer,
+my grand châtelaine. When you are at Court the whole circle seems to
+fade to nothing before your presence. Though there are so many women
+high-born and beautiful there, you eclipse them all.'
+
+'Only in your eyes! And you know I care nothing for courts. What I like
+is the life here, where one quiet day is the pattern of all the other
+days. If I were sure that you were content in it----'
+
+'Why should you think of that?'
+
+'My love, tell me honestly, do you never miss the world?'
+
+He rose and walked to the hearth. He, whose life was a long lie, never
+lied to her if he could avoid it; and he knew very well that he did
+miss the world with all its folly, stimulant, and sin. Sometimes the
+moral air here seemed to him too pure, too clear.
+
+'Did I do so I should be thankless indeed--thankless as madmen are who
+do not know the good done to them. I am like a ship that has anchored
+in a fair haven after press of weather. I infinitely prefer to see
+none but yourself: when others are here we are of necessity so much
+apart. If the weather,' he added more lightly, 'did not so very often
+wear Milton's grey sandals, there would be nothing one could ever
+wish changed in the life here. For such great riders as we are, that
+is a matter of regret. Wet saddles are too often our fate, but in
+compensation our forests are so green.'
+
+She did not press the question.
+
+But the next day she wrote a letter to a relative who was a great
+minister and had preponderating influence in the council chamber of the
+Austrian Empire. She did not speak to Sabran of the letter that she
+sent.
+
+She had not known any of that disillusion which befalls most women in
+their love. Her husband had remained her lover, passionately, ardently,
+jealously; and the sincerity of his devotion to her had spared her
+all that terrible consciousness of the man's satiety which usually
+confronts a woman in the earliest years of union. She shrank now with
+horror from the fear which came to her that this passion might, like so
+many others, alter and fade under the dulness of habit. She had high
+courage and clear vision; she met half-way the evil that she dreaded.
+
+In the spring a Foreign Office despatch from Vienna came to him and
+surprised and moved him strongly. With it in his hand he sought her at
+once.
+
+'You did this!' he said quickly. 'They offer me the Russian mission.'
+
+She grew a little pale, but had courage to smile. She had seen by a
+glance at his face the pleasure the offer gave him.
+
+'I only told my cousin Kunst that I thought you might be persuaded to
+try public life, if he proposed it to you.'
+
+'When did you say that?'
+
+'One day in the winter, when I asked you if you did not miss the world.'
+
+'I never thought I betrayed that I did so.'
+
+'You were only over eager to deny it. And I know your generosity, my
+love. You miss the world; we will go back to it for a little. It will
+only make our life here dearer--I hope.'
+
+He was silent; emotion mastered him. 'You have the most unselfish
+nature that was!' he said brokenly. 'It will be a cruel sacrifice to
+you, and yet you urge it for my sake.'
+
+'Dear, will you not understand? What is for your sake is what is most
+for mine. I see you long, despite yourself, to be amidst men once more,
+and use your rare talents as you cannot use them here. It is only right
+that you should have the power to do so. If our life here has taken
+the hold on your heart then, I think you will come back to it all the
+more gladly. And then I too have my vanity; I shall be proud for the
+world to see how you can fill a great station, conduct a difficult
+negotiation, distinguish yourself in every way. When they praise you,
+I shall be repaid a thousand times for any sacrifice of my own tastes
+that there may be.'
+
+He heard her with many conflicting emotions, of which a passionate
+gratitude was the first and highest.
+
+'You make me ashamed,' he said in a low voice. 'No man can be worthy of
+such goodness as yours; and I----'
+
+Once more the avowal of the truth rose to his lips, but stayed
+unuttered. His want of courage took refuge in procrastination.
+
+'We need not decide for a day or two,' he added; 'they give me time; we
+will think well. When do you think I must reply?'
+
+'Surely soon; your delay would seem disrespect. You know we Austrians
+are very ceremonious.'
+
+'And if I accept, it will not make you unhappy?'
+
+'My love, no, a thousand times, no; your choice is always mine.'
+
+He stooped and kissed her hand.
+
+'You are ever the same,' he murmured. 'The noblest, the most
+generous----'
+
+She smiled bravely. 'I am quite sure you have decided already. Go to my
+table yonder, and write a graceful acceptance to my cousin Kunst. You
+will be happier when it is posted.'
+
+'No, I will think a little. It is not a thing to be done in haste. It
+will be irrevocable.'
+
+'Irrevocable? A diplomatic mission? You can throw it up when you
+please. You are not bound to serve longer than you choose.'
+
+He was silent: what he had thought himself had been of the irrevocable
+insult he would be held to have offered to the emperor, the nation, and
+the world, if ever they knew.
+
+'It will not be liked if I accept for a mere caprice. One must never
+treat a State as Bela treats his playthings,' he said as he rang, and
+when the servant answered the summons ordered them to saddle his horse.
+
+'No; there is no haste. Glearemberg is not definitely recalled, I
+think.'
+
+But as she spoke she knew very well that, unknown to himself, he had
+already decided; that the joy and triumph the offer had brought to him
+were both too great for him eventually to resist them. He sat down and
+re-read the letter.
+
+She had said the truth to him, but she had not said all the truth. She
+had a certain desire that he should justify her marriage in the eyes of
+the world by some political career brilliantly followed; but this was
+not her chief motive in wishing him to return to the life of cities.
+She had seen that he was in a manner disquieted, discontented, and
+attributed it to discontent at the even routine of their lives. The
+change in his moods and tempers, the arbitrary violence of his love
+for her, vaguely alarmed and troubled her; she seemed to see the germ
+of much that might render their lives far less happy. She realised
+that she had given herself to one who had the capacity of becoming a
+tyrannical possessor, and retained, even after six years of marriage,
+the irritable ardour of a lover. She knew that it was better for them
+both that the distraction and the restraint of the life of the world
+should occupy some of his thoughts, and check the over-indulgence of
+a passion which in solitude grew feverish and morbid. She had not the
+secret of the change in him, of which the result alone was apparent to
+her, and she could only act according to her light. If he grew morose,
+tyrannical, violent, all the joy of their life would be gone. She knew
+that men alter curiously under the sense of possession. She felt that
+her influence, though strong, was not paramount as it had been, and she
+perceived that he no longer took much interest in the administration
+of the estates, in which he had shown great ability in the first years
+of their marriage. She had been forced to resume her old governance
+of all those matters, and she knew that it was not good for him to
+live without occupation. She feared that the sameness of the days, to
+her so delightful, to him grew tiresome. To ride constantly, to hunt
+sometimes, to make music in the evenings----this was scarcely enough to
+fill up the life of a man who had been a _viveur_ on the bitumen of the
+boulevards for so long.
+
+A woman of a lesser nature would have been too vain to doubt the
+all-sufficiency of her own presence to enthral and to content him; but
+she was without vanity, and had more wisdom than most women. It did
+not even once occur to her, as it would have done incessantly to most,
+that the magnificence of all her gifts to him were title-deeds to his
+content for life.
+
+Public life would be her enemy, would take her from the solitudes she
+loved, would change her plans for her children's education, would bring
+the world continually betwixt herself and her husband; but since he
+wished it that was all she thought of, all her law.
+
+'Surely he will accept?' said Mdme. Ottilie, who had returned from the
+south of France.
+
+'Yes, he will accept,' said his wife. 'He does not know it, but he
+will.'
+
+'I cannot imagine why he should affect to hesitate. It is the career
+he is made for, with his talents, his social graces.'
+
+'He does not affect; he hesitates for my sake. He knows I am never
+happy away from Hohenszalras.'
+
+'Why did you write then to Kunst?'
+
+'Because it will be better for him; he is neither a poet nor a
+philosopher, to be able to live away from the world.'
+
+'Which are you?'
+
+'Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the
+people she----'
+
+'Reigns over,' added the Princess. 'Admit, my beloved, that a part of
+your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be
+quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!'
+
+Wanda von Szalras smiled. 'Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed
+with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.'
+
+'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural
+life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.'
+
+At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great
+avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before
+coming into his wife's presence. He would no more have gone to her with
+the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in
+such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.
+
+When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with
+vivacity:
+
+'Well! you accept, of course?
+
+'I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.'
+
+The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the
+carpet.
+
+'Wanda is a hermit,' she said; 'she should have dwelt in a cave, and
+lived on berries with S. Scholastica. What is the use of leaving it to
+her? She will say No. She loves her mountains.'
+
+'Then she shall stay amidst her mountains.'
+
+'And you will throw all your future away?'
+
+'Dear mother, I have no future----should have had none but for her.'
+
+'All that is very pretty, but after nearly six years of marriage it is
+not necessary to _faire des madrigaux._'
+
+The Princess sat a little more erect, angrily, and continued to tap her
+foot upon the floor. His wife was silent for a little while; then she
+went over to her writing-table, and wrote with a firm hand a few lines
+in German. She rose and gave the sheet to Sabran.
+
+'Copy that,' she said, 'or give it as many graces of style as you like.'
+
+His heart beat, his sight seemed dim as he read what she had written.
+
+It was an acceptance.
+
+'See, my dear Réné!' said the Princess, when she understood;
+'never combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon--
+unselfishness! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort.'
+
+The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her----
+
+'Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of
+_faisant des madrigaux!_'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna,
+and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called
+her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who
+showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and
+welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the
+most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the
+prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified
+and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware
+that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands
+for _finesse_ and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make
+upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his
+wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and
+splendour it required.
+
+He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when
+the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his
+nerve, his self-command, his _insouciance_; he was once more capable of
+honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman
+he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of
+his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates
+a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must
+always exist, _sub rosa_, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance
+with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for
+every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul
+Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen
+politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The
+prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of
+a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff
+as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle
+projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social
+honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the
+minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in
+all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the
+purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of
+Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked _moujik_ in the
+_isba_ of a Persian peasant.
+
+Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like
+all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify
+his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort
+that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and
+perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men
+was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public
+career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to
+be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor
+had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.
+
+'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition
+that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which
+had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from
+circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of
+his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the
+social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better
+moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess
+von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;'
+and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless
+and ill at ease.
+
+He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold
+by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more
+prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if
+ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate,
+dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him
+with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed
+to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he
+been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his
+own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have
+always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion
+of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his
+own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any
+such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly,
+that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a
+suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always
+reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.
+
+This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life;
+not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a
+jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his
+ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it
+touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the
+felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the
+contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and
+witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and
+too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on
+his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed
+of constancy.
+
+'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of
+dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly
+degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is
+always hers and my love.'
+
+Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of
+her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty
+life led there under the show summits of her hills.
+
+He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's
+caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not
+infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most
+use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the
+daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.
+
+As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the
+Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and
+a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour
+and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he
+had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world
+beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had
+beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He
+went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now
+and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some
+portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some
+quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.
+
+On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:
+
+'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.
+
+(Signed) 'WANDA.'
+
+No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches
+could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful
+affection.
+
+'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.
+
+The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the
+season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the
+sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and
+the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and
+magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present
+at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation,
+as the ambassador-designate to Russia.
+
+Court dress became him, and his great height and elegance of manner
+made him noticeable even in that brilliant crowd of notables. All the
+greatest ladies distinguished him with their smiles, but he gave them
+no more than courtesy. He saw only before the 'eye of memory' his wife
+as he had seen her at the last court ball, with the famous pearls about
+her throat, and her train of silver tissue sown with pearls and looped
+up with white lilac.
+
+'It is the flower I like best,' she had said to him. 'It brought me
+your first love-message in Paris, do you remember? It said little; it
+was very discreet, but it said enough!'
+
+'You are always thinking of Wanda!' said the Countess Brancka to him
+now, with a tinge of impatience in her tone.
+
+He coloured a little, and said with that hauteur with which he always
+repressed any passing jest at his love for his wife:
+
+'When both one's duty and joy point the same way it is easy to follow
+them in thought.'
+
+'I hope you follow them in action too,' said Mdme. Brancka.
+
+'If I do not, I am at least only responsible to Wanda.'
+
+'Who would be a lenient judge you mean? said the Countess, with a
+certain smile that displeased him. 'Do not be too sure; she is a von
+Szalras. They are not agreeable persons when they are angered.'
+
+'I have not been so unhappy as to see her so,' said Sabran coldly,
+with a vague sense of uneasiness. As much as it is possible for a man
+to dislike a woman who is very lovely, and young enough to be still
+charming in the eyes of the world, he disliked Olga Brancka. He had
+known her for many years in Paris, not intimately, but by force of
+being in the same society, and, like many men who do not lead very
+decent lives themselves, he frankly detested _cocodettes._
+
+'If we want these manners we have our _lionnes_,' he was wont to say,
+at a time when Cochonette was seen every day behind his horses by the
+Cascade, and it had been the height of the Countess Olga's ambition at
+that time to be called like Cochonette. A certain resemblance there
+was between the great lady and the wicked one; they had the same small
+delicate sarcastic features, the same red gold curls, the same perfect
+colourless complexion; but where Cochonette had eyes of the slightest
+blue, the wife of Count Stefan had the luminous piercing black eyes of
+the Muscovite physiognomy. Still the likeness was there, and it made
+the sight of Mdme. Brancka distasteful to him, since his memories of
+the other were far from welcome. It was for Cochonette that he had
+broken the bank at Monte Carlo, and into her lap that he had thrown
+all the gold rouleaux at a time when in his soul he had already adored
+Wanda von Szalras, and had despised himself for returning to the slough
+of his old pleasures. It was Cochonette who had sold his secrets to
+the Prussians, and brought them down upon him in the farmhouse amongst
+the orchards of the Orléannais, whilst she passed safely through, the
+German lines and across the frontier, laden with her jewels and her
+_valeurs_ of all kinds, saying in her teeth as she went: 'He will
+never see that Austrian woman again!' That had been the end of all he
+had known of Cochonette, and a presentiment of perfidy, of danger, of
+animosity always came over him whenever he saw the _joli petit minois_
+which in profile was so like Cochonette's, looking up from under the
+loose auburn curls that Mdme. Olga had copied from her.
+
+Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more
+admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds;
+and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette
+would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels
+flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams.
+There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her
+breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.
+
+Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an _étourdissement_
+that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.
+
+'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda,
+_mon beau_ cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are
+really going to Russia?'
+
+'I believe so.'
+
+'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in
+paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'
+
+'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'
+
+'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy
+enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money
+that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'
+
+'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played
+since my marriage.'
+
+'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A
+saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature,
+though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by
+marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean
+nothing.'
+
+'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he
+was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.
+
+'Call me at least _cousinette_,' said Mdme. Olga; 'we are cousins, you
+know, thanks to Wanda. Oh! she will be very unhappy in St. Petersburg;
+she will not amuse herself, she never does. She is incapable of a
+flirtation; she never touches a card. When she dances it is only
+because she must, and then it is only a quadrille or a contre-dance.
+She always reminds me of Marie Thérèse's "In our position nothing is a
+trifle." You remember the Empress's letters to Versailles?'
+
+Sabran was very much angered, but he was afraid to express his anger
+lest it should seem to make him absurd.
+
+'Madame,' he said, with ill-repressed irritation, 'I know you speak
+only in jest, but I must take the liberty to tell you----however
+bourgeois it appear----that I do not allow a jest even from you upon my
+wife. Anything she does is perfect in my sight, and if she be imbued
+with the old traditions of gentle blood, too many ladies desert them in
+these days for me not to be grateful to her for her loyalty.'
+
+She listened, with her bright black eyes fixed on him; then she leaned
+a little more closely on his arm.
+
+'Do you know that you said that very well? Most men are ridiculous
+when they are in love with their wives, but it becomes you, Wanda is
+perfect, we all know that; you are not alone in thinking so. Ask Egon!'
+
+The face of Sabran changed as he heard that name. As she saw the
+change she thought: 'Can it be possible that he is jealous?'
+
+Aloud she said with a little laugh: 'I almost wonder Egon did not
+run you through the heart before you married. Now, of course, he
+is reconciled to the inevitable; or, if not reconciled, he has to
+submit to it as we all have to do. He grows very _farouche_; he lives
+between his troopers and his castle of Taróc, like a barbaric lord
+of the Middle Ages. Were you ever at Taróc? It is worth seeing----a
+huge fortress, old as the days of Ottokar, in the very heart of the
+Karpathians. He leads a wild, fierce life enough there. If he keep the
+memory of Wanda with him it is as some men keep an idolatry for what is
+dead.'
+
+Sabran listened with a sombre irritation. 'Suppose we leave my wife's
+name in peace,' he said coldly. 'The _grosser cotillon_ is about to
+begin; may I aspire to the honour?'
+
+As he led her out, and the light fell on her red gold curls, on her
+dazzling butterflies, her armour of diamonds, her snow-white skin, a
+thousand memories of Cochonette came over him, though the scene around
+him was the ball-room of the Hofburg, and the woman whose great bouquet
+of _rêve d'or_ roses touched his hand was a great lady who had been the
+wife of Gela von Szalras, and the daughter of the Prince Serriatine.
+He distrusted her, he despised her, he disliked her so strongly that
+he was almost ashamed of his own antagonism; and yet her contact, her
+grace of movement, the mere scent of the bouquet of roses had a sort of
+painful and unwilling intoxication for the moment for him.
+
+He was glad when the long and gorgeous figures of the cotillon had
+tired out even her steel-like nerves, and he was free to leave the
+palace and go home to sleep. He looked at a miniature of his wife as
+he undressed; the face of it, with its tenderness and its nobility,
+seemed to him, after the face of this other woman, like the pure high
+air of the Iselthal after the heated and unhealthy atmosphere of a
+gambling-room.
+
+The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence
+was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which
+had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was
+brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural
+gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the
+sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some
+with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the
+empire.
+
+As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way
+slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through
+the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and
+odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After
+all, I may do her some honour before I die.'
+
+When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached
+him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said
+that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought
+it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.
+
+Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the
+staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants
+away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.
+
+There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:
+
+'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to
+him, under secrecy, what I know.'
+
+They were fully signed----'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a
+courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph.
+They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the
+Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+As the carriage of the Countess Olga rolled home through the Graben
+after the military spectacle, she stopped it suddenly, and signed to an
+old man in the crowd who was waiting to cross the road until a regiment
+of cuirassiers had rolled by. He was eyeing them critically, as only an
+old soldier does look at troops.
+
+'Is it you, Georg?' said Madame Olga. 'What brings you here?'
+
+'I came from Taróc with a letter from the Prince, my master,' answered
+the man, an old hussar who had carried Vàsàrhely in his arms off the
+field of Königsgrätz, after dragging him from under a heap of dead men
+and horses.
+
+'A letter! To whom?' asked Olga, who always was curious and persistent
+in investigation of all her brother-in-law's movements and actions.
+
+Vàsàrhely had not laid any injunction as to secrecy, only as to speed,
+upon his faithful servant; so that Georg replied, unwitting of harm,
+'To the Markgraf von Sabran, my Countess.'
+
+'A letter that could not go by post--how strange! And from Egon to
+Wanda's husband!' she thought, with her inquisitive eagerness awakened.
+Aloud she bade the old trooper call at her palace for a packet for
+Taróc, to make excuse for having stopped and questioned him, and drove
+onward lost in thought.
+
+'Perhaps it is a challenge late in the day!' she thought, with a laugh;
+but she was astonished and perplexed that any communication should take
+place between these men; she perplexed her mind in vain in the effort
+to imagine what tie could connect them, what mystery mutually affecting
+them could lie beneath the secret of Vassia Kazán.
+
+When, on the morrow, she heard at Court that the Emperor was deeply
+incensed at the caprice and disrespect of the Count von Idrac, as
+he was called at Court, who, at the eleventh hour, had declined a
+mission already accepted by him, and of which the offer had been in
+itself an unprecedented mark of honour and confidence, her swift
+sagacity instantly associated the action, apparently so excuseless and
+inexcusable, with the letter sent up from Taróc. It was still as great
+a mystery to her as it had been before what the contents of the letter
+could have been, but she had no doubt that in some way or another it
+had brought about the resignation of the appointment. It awakened a
+still more intense curiosity in her, but she was too wise to whisper
+her suspicion to anyone. To her friends at the Court she said, with
+laughter: 'A night or two ago I chanced to tell Sabran that his wife
+would be wretched at St. Petersburg. That is sure to have been enough
+for him. He is such a devoted husband.'
+
+No one of course believed her, but they received the impression that
+she knew the real cause of his resignation, though she could not be
+induced to say it.
+
+What did it matter to her? Nothing, indeed. But the sense of a secret
+withheld from her was to Mdme. Olga like the slot of the fox to a young
+hound. She might have a thousand secrets of her own if it pleased her,
+but she could not endure anyone else to guard one. Besides, in a vague,
+feverish, angry way, she was almost in love with the man who was so
+faithful to his wife that he had looked away from her as from some
+unclean thing when she had wished to dazzle him. She had no perception
+that the secret could concern him himself very nearly, but she thought
+it was probably one which he and Egon Vàsàrhely, for reasons of their
+own, chose to share and keep hidden. And if it were a secret that
+prevented Sabran from going to the Court of Russia? Then, surely, it
+was one worth knowing? And if she gained a knowledge of it, and his
+wife had none?----what a superiority would be hers, what a weapon
+always to hand!
+
+She did not intend any especial cruelty or compass any especial end:
+she was actuated by a vague desire to interrupt a current of happiness
+that flowed on smoothly without her, to interfere where she had no
+earthly title or reason to do so, merely because she was disregarded
+by persons content with each other. It is not always definite motives
+which have the most influence; the subtlest poisons are those which
+enter the system we know not how, and penetrate it ere we are aware.
+The only thing which had ever held her back from any extremes of evil
+had been the mere habit of good-breeding and an absolute egotism which
+had saved her from all strong passions. Now something that was like
+passion had touched her under the sting of Sabran's indifference, and
+with it she became tenacious, malignant, and unsparing: adroit she had
+always been. Instinct is seldom at fault when we are conscious of an
+enemy, and Sabran's had not erred when it had warned him against the
+wife of Stefan Brancka as the serpent who would bring woe and disaster
+to his paradise.
+
+In some three months' time she received a more explicit answer from her
+cousin in St. Petersburg. Giving the precise dates, he told her that
+Vassia Kazán was the name given to the son of Count Paul Ivanovitch
+Zabaroff by a wayside amour with one of his own serfs at a village
+near the border line of Astrachan. He narrated the early history of
+the youth, and said that he had been amongst the passengers on board a
+Havre ship, which had foundered with all hands. So far the brief record
+of Vassia Kazán was clear and complete. But it told her nothing. She
+was unreasonably enraged, and looked at the little piece of burnt paper
+as though she would wrench the secret out of it.
+
+'There must be so much more to know,' she thought. 'What would a mere
+drowned boy be to either of those men----a boy dead too all these years
+before?'
+
+She wrote insolently to her cousin, that the Third Section, with
+its eyes of Argus and its limbs of Vishnoo, had always been but an
+overgrown imbecile, and set her woman's wits to accomplish what the
+Third Section had failed to do for her. So much she thought of it that
+the name seemed forced into her very brain; she seemed to hear every
+one saying----'Vassia Kazán.' It was a word to conjure with, at least:
+she could at the least try the effect of its utterance any day upon
+either of those who had made it the key of their correspondence. Russia
+had written down Vassia Kazán as dead, and the mystery which enveloped
+the name would not open to her. She knew her country too well not to
+know that this bold statement might cover some political secret, some
+story wholly unlike that which was given her. Vassia Kazán might have
+lived and have incurred the suspicions of the police, and be dwelling
+far away in the death in life of Siberian mines, or deep sunk in some
+fortress, like a stone at the bottom of a well. The reply not only
+did not beget her belief in it, but gave her range for the widest and
+wildest conjectures of imagination. 'It is some fault, some folly, some
+crime, who can tell? And Vassia Kazán is the victim or the associate,
+or the confidant of it. But what is it? And how does Egon know of it?'
+
+She passed the summer in pleasures of all kinds, but the subject did
+not lose its power over her, nor did she forget the face of Sabran as
+he had turned it away from her in the ball-room of the Hofburg.
+
+He himself had left the capital, after affirming to the minister that
+private reasons, which he could not enter into, had induced him to
+entreat the Imperial pardon for so sudden a change of resolve, and to
+solicit permission to decline the high honour that had been vouchsafed
+to him.
+
+'What shall I say to Wanda?' he asked himself incessantly, as the
+express train swung through the grand green country towards Salzburg.
+
+She was sitting on the lake terrace with the Princess, when a telegram
+from her cousin Kunst was brought to her. Bela and Gela were playing
+near with squadrons of painted cuirassiers, and the great dogs were
+lying on the marble pavement at her feet. It was a golden close to a
+sunless but fine day; the snow peaks were growing rosy as the sun shone
+for an instant behind the Venediger range, and the lake was calm and
+still and green, one little boat going noiselessly across it from the
+Holy Isle to the further side.
+
+'What a pity to leave it all!' she thought as she took the telegram.
+
+The Minister's message was curt and angered:
+
+'Your husband has resigned; he makes himself and me ridiculous. Unable
+to guess his motive, I am troubled and embarrassed beyond expression.'
+
+The other, from Sabran, said simply: 'I am coming home. I give up
+Russia.'
+
+'Any bad news?' the Princess asked, seeing the seriousness of her face.
+Her niece rose and gave her the papers.
+
+'Is Réné mad!' she exclaimed as she read. His wife, who was startled
+and dismayed at the affront to her cousin and to her sovereign, yet had
+been unable to repress a movement of personal gladness, hastened to say
+in his defence:
+
+'Be sure he has some grave, good reason, dear mother. He knows the
+world too well to commit a folly. Unexplained, it looks strange,
+certainly; but he will be home to-night or in the early morning; then
+we shall know; and be sure we shall find him right.'
+
+'Right!' echoed the Princess, lifting the little girl who was her
+namesake off her knee, a child white as a snowdrop, with golden curls,
+who looked as if she had come out of a band of Correggio's baby angels.
+
+'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who
+had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard
+suspended in the air.
+
+'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme
+displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when
+through him you are probably _brouillée_ with your Sovereign for life.'
+
+She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a
+caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon.
+I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible
+excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such
+vast importance.'
+
+'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would
+condemn Réné unheard?'
+
+'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'
+
+'Perhaps none. I know it is a very grave offence that he has committed,
+and yet I cannot help being happy,' said his wife with a smile, as she
+lifted up the little Ottilie, and murmured over the child's fair curls,
+'Ah, my dear little dove! We are not going to Russia after all. You
+little birds will not leave your nest!'
+
+'Bela is not going to the snow palace?' said he, whose ears were very
+quick, and to whom his attendants had told marvellous narratives of an
+utterly imaginary Russia.
+
+'No; are not you glad, my dear?'
+
+He thought very gravely for a moment.
+
+'Bela is not sure. Marc says Bela would have slaves in Russia, and
+might beat them.'
+
+'Bela would be beaten himself if he did, and by my own hand, said his
+mother very gravely. 'Oh, child! where did you get your cruelty?'
+
+'He is not cruel,' said the Princess. 'He is only masterful.'
+
+'Alas! it is the same thing.'
+
+She sent the children indoors, and remained after the sun-glow had all
+faded, and Mdme. Ottilie had gone away to her own rooms, and paced
+to and fro the length of the terrace, troubled by an anxiety which
+she would have owned to no one. What could have happened to make
+him so offend alike the State and the Court? She tormented herself
+with wondering again and again whether she had used any incautious
+expression in her letters which could have betrayed to him the poignant
+regret the coming exile gave her. No! she was sure she had not done
+so. She had only written twice, preferring telegrams as quicker, and,
+to a man, less troublesome than letters. She knew courts and cabinets
+too well not to know that the step her husband had taken was one which
+would wholly ruin the favour he enjoyed with the former, and wholly
+take away all chance of his being ever called again to serve the
+latter. Personally she was indifferent to that kind of ambition; but
+her attachment to the Imperial house was too strong, and her loyalty
+to it too hereditary, for her not to be alarmed at the idea of losing
+its good-will. Disquieted and afraid of all kinds of formless unknown
+ills, she went with a heavy heart into the Rittersaal to a dinner for
+which she could find no appetite. The Princess also, so talkative and
+vivacious at other times, was silent and pre-occupied. The evening
+passed tediously. He did not come.
+
+It was past midnight, and she had given up all hope of his arrival,
+when she heard the returning trot of the horses, who had been sent over
+to Matrey in the evening on the chance of his being there. She was in
+her own chamber, having dismissed her women, and was trying in vain to
+keep her thoughts to nightly prayer. At the sound of the horses' feet
+without, she threw on a _négligé_ of white satin and lace, and went,
+out on to the staircase to meet him. As he came up the broad stairs,
+with Donau and Neva gladly leaping on him, he looked up and saw her
+against the background of oak and tapestry and old armour, with the
+light of a great Persian lamp in metal that swung above shed full upon
+her. She had never looked more lovely to him than as she stood so, her
+eyes eagerly searching the dim shadow for him, and the loose white
+folds embroidered in silk with pale roses flowing downward from her
+throat to her feet. He drew her within her chamber, and took her in his
+arms with a passionate gesture.
+
+'Let us forget everything,' he murmured, 'except that we have been
+parted nearly a month!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+In the morning, after breakfast in the little Saxe room, she said to
+him with gentle firmness: 'Réné, you must tell me now--why have you
+refused Russia?'
+
+He had known that the question must come, and all the way on his
+homeward journey he had been revolving in his mind the answer he would
+give to it. He was very pale, but otherwise he betrayed no agitation as
+he turned and looked at her.
+
+'That is what I cannot tell you,' he replied.
+
+She could not believe she heard aright.
+
+'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'I have had a message from Kunst;
+he is deeply angered. I understand that, after all was arranged, you
+abruptly resigned the Russian mission. I ask your reasons. It is a very
+grave step to have taken. I suppose your motives must be very strong
+ones?'
+
+'They are so,' said Sabran; and he continued in the forced and measured
+tone of one who recites what he has taught himself to say: 'It is quite
+natural that your cousin Kunst should be offended; the Emperor also.
+You perhaps will be the same when I say to you that I cannot tell you,
+as I cannot tell them, the grounds of my withdrawal. Perhaps you, like
+them, will not forgive it.'
+
+Her nostrils dilated and her breast heaved: she was startled,
+mortified, amazed. 'You do not choose to tell _me_!' she said in
+stupefaction.
+
+'I cannot tell you.'
+
+'She gazed at him with the first bitterness of wrath that he had ever
+seen upon her face. She had been used to perfect submission of others
+all her life. She had the blood in her of stern princes, who had meted
+out rule and justice against which there had been no appeal. She was
+accustomed even in him to deference, homage, consideration, to be
+consulted always, deferred to often. His answer for the moment seemed
+to her an unwarrantable insult.
+
+Her influence, her relatives, her sovereign, had given him one of the
+highest honours conceivable, and he did not choose to even say why he
+was thankless for it! Passionate and withering words rose to her lips,
+but she restrained their utterance. Not even in that moment could she
+bring herself to speak what might seem to rebuke him with the weight
+of all his debt to her. She remained silent, but he understood all the
+intense indignation that held her speechless there. He approached her
+more nearly, and spoke with emotion, but with a certain sternness in
+his voice----
+
+'I know very well that I must offend and even outrage you. But I
+cannot tell you my motives. It is the first time that I have ever
+acted independently of you or failed to consult your wishes. I only
+venture to remind you that marriage does give to the man the right to
+do so, though I have never availed myself of it. Nay, even now, I owe
+you too much to be ingrate enough to take refuge in my authority as
+your husband. I prefer to owe more, as I have owed so much, to your
+tenderness. I prefer to ask of you, by your love for me, not to press
+me for an answer that I am not in a position to make; to be content
+with what I say--that I have relinquished the Russian mission because I
+have no choice but to do so.'
+
+He spoke firmly, because he spoke only the truth, although not all the
+truth.
+
+A great anger rose up in her, the first that she had ever been moved to
+by him. All the pride of her temper and all her dignity were outraged
+by this refusal to have confidence in her. It seemed incredible
+to her. She still thought herself the prey of some dream, of some
+hallucination. Her lips parted to speak, but again she withheld the
+words she was about to utter. Her strong justice compelled her to admit
+that he was but within his rights, and her sense of duty was stronger
+than her sense of self-love.
+
+She did not look at him, nor could she trust her voice. She turned
+from him without a syllable, and left the room. She was afraid of the
+violence of the anger that she felt.
+
+'If it had been only to myself I would pardon it,' she thought; 'but an
+insult to my people, to my country, to my sovereign!--an insult without
+excuse, or explanation, or apology----'
+
+She shut herself alone within her oratory and passed the most bitter
+hour of her life. The imperious and violent temper of the Szalras
+was dormant in her character, though she had chastened and tamed it,
+and the natural sweetness and serenity of her disposition had been a
+counterpoise to it so strong that the latter had become the only thing
+visible in her. But all the wrath of her race was now aroused and in
+arms against what she loved best on earth.
+
+'If it had been anything else,' she thought; 'but a public act like
+this--an ingratitude to the Crown itself! A caprice for all the world
+to chatter of and blame!'
+
+It would have been hard enough to bear, difficult enough to explain
+away to others, if he had told her his reasons, however captious,
+unwise, or selfish they might be; but to have the door of his soul
+thus shut upon her, his thoughts thus closed to her, hurt her with
+intolerable pain, and filled her with a deep and burning indignation.
+
+She passed all the early morning hours alone in her little temple of
+prayer, striving in vain against the bitterness of her heart; above
+her the great ivory Crucifixion, the work of Angermayer, beneath which
+so many generations of the women of the House of Szalras had knelt in
+their hours of tribulation or bereavement.
+
+When she left the oratory she had conquered herself. Though she could
+not extinguish the human passions that smarted and throbbed within her,
+she knew her duty well enough to know that it must lie in submission
+and in silence.
+
+She sought for him at once. She found him in the library: he was
+playing to himself a long dreamy concerto of Schubert's, to soothe the
+irritation of his own nerves and pass away a time of keen suspense. He
+rose as she came into the room, and awaited her approach with a timid
+anxiety in his eyes, which she was too absorbed by her own emotions to
+observe. He had assumed a boldness that he had not, and had used his
+power to dominate her rather in desperation than in any sense of actual
+mastery. In his heart it was he who feared her.
+
+'You were quite right,' she said simply to him. 'Of course, you are
+master of your own actions, and owe no account of them to me. We will
+say no more about it. For myself, you know I am content enough to
+escape exile to any embassy.'
+
+He kissed her hand with an unfeigned reverence and humility.
+
+'You are as merciful as you are great,' he murmured. 'If I be silent it
+is my misfortune.' He paused abruptly.
+
+A sudden thought came over her as he spoke.
+
+'It is some State secret that he knows and cannot speak of, and that
+has made him unwilling to go. Why did I never think of that before?'
+
+An explanation that had its root in honour, a reticence that sprang
+from conscience, were so welcome to her, and to her appeared so
+natural, that they now consoled her at once, and healed the wounds to
+her own pride.
+
+'Of course, if it be so, he is right not to speak even to me,' she
+mused, and her only desire was now to save him from the insistence and
+the indignation of the Princess, and the examination which these were
+sure to entail upon him when he should meet her at the noon breakfast
+now at hand.
+
+To that end she sought out her aunt in her own apartments, taking
+with her the tiny Ottilie, who always disarmed all irritation in her
+godmother by the mere presence of her little flower-like face.
+
+'Dear mother,' she said softly, when the child had made her morning
+obeisance, 'I am come to ask of you a great favour and kindness to me.
+Réné returned last night. He has done what he thought right. I do not
+even ask his reasons. He has acted from _force majeure_ by dictate of
+his own honour. Will you do as I mean to do? Will you spare him any
+interrogation? I shall be so grateful to you, and so will he.'
+
+Mdme. Ottilie, opening her bonbonnière for her namesake, drew up her
+fragile figure with a severity unusual to her.
+
+'Do I hear you aright? You do not even know the reasons of the insult
+M. de Sabran has passed upon the Crown and Cabinet, and you do not even
+mean to ask them?'
+
+'I do mean that; and what I do not ask I feel sure you will admit no
+one else has any right to ask of him.'
+
+'No one certainly except His Majesty.'
+
+'I presume His Majesty has had all information due to him as our
+Imperial master. All I entreat of you, dearest mother, is to do as
+I have done; assume, as we are bound to assume, that Réné has acted
+wisely and rightly, and not weary him with questions to which it will
+be painful to him not to respond.'
+
+'Questions! I never yet indulged in anything so vulgar as curiosity,
+that you should imagine I shall be capable of subjecting your husband
+to a cross-examination. If you be satisfied, I can have no right to
+be more exacting than yourself. The occurrence is to me lamentable,
+inexcusable, unintelligible; but if explanation be not offered me you
+may rest assured I shall not intrude my request for it.'
+
+'Of that I am sure; but I am not contented only with that. I want you
+to feel no dissatisfaction, no doubt, no anger against him. You may be
+sure that he has acted from conviction, because he was most desirous to
+go to Russia, as you saw when you urged him to accept the mission.'
+
+'I have said the utmost that I can say,' replied the Princess, with a
+chill light in her blue eyes. 'This little child is no more likely to
+ask questions than I am, after what you have stated. But you must not
+regard my silence as any condonation of what must always appear to me a
+step disrespectful to the Crown, contrary to all usages of etiquette,
+and injurious to his own future and that of his children. His scruples
+of conscience came too late.'
+
+'I did not say they were exactly that. I believe he learned something
+which made him consider that his honour required him to withdraw.'
+
+'That may be,' said the Princess, frigidly. 'As I observed, it came
+lamentably late. You will excuse me if I breakfast in my own rooms this
+morning.'
+
+Wanda left her, gave the child to a nurse who waited without, and
+returned to the library. She had offended and pained Mdme. Ottilie,
+but she had saved her husband from annoyance. She knew that though
+the Princess was by no means as free from curiosity as she declared
+herself, she was too high-bred and too proud to solicit a confidence
+withheld from her.
+
+Sabran was seated at the piano where she had left him, but his forehead
+rested on the woodwork of it, and his whole attitude was suggestive
+of sad and absorbed thought and abandonment to regrets that were
+unavailing.
+
+'It has cost him so much,' she reflected as she looked at him. 'Perhaps
+it has been a self-sacrifice, a heroism even; and I, from mere wounded
+feeling, have been angered against him and almost cruel!'
+
+With the exaggeration in self-censure of all generous natures, she was
+full of remorse at having added any pain to the disappointment which
+had been his portion; a disappointment none the less poignant, as she
+saw, because it had been voluntarily, as she imagined, accepted.
+
+As he heard her approach he started and rose, and the expression of his
+face startled her for a moment; it was so full of pain, of melancholy,
+almost (could she have believed it) of despair. What could this matter
+be to affect him thus, since being of the State it could be at its
+worst only some painful and compromising secret of political life which
+could have no personal meaning for him? It was surely impossible that
+mere disappointment----a disappointment self-inflicted----could bring
+upon him such suffering? But she threw these thoughts away. In her
+great loyalty she had told herself that she must not even think of this
+thing, lest she should let it come between them once again and tempt
+her from her duty and obedience. Her trust in him was perfect.
+
+The abandonment of a coveted distinction was in itself a bitter
+disappointment, but it seemed to him as nothing beside the sense of
+submission and obedience compelled from him to Vàsàrhely. He felt as
+though an iron hand, invisible, weighed on his life, and forced it into
+subjection. When he had almost grown secure that his enemy's knowledge
+was a buried harmless thing, it had risen and barred his way, speaking
+with an authority which it was not possible to disobey. With all his
+errors he was a man of high courage, who had always held his own with
+all men. How the old forgotten humiliation of his earliest years
+revived, and enforced from him the servile timidity of the Slav blood
+which he had abjured. He had never for an instant conceived it possible
+to disregard the mandate he received; that an apparently voluntary
+resignation was permitted to him was, his conscience acknowledged, more
+mercy than he could have expected. That Vàsàrhely would act thus had
+not occurred to him; but before the act he could not do otherwise than
+admit its justice and obey.
+
+But the consciousness of that superior will compelling him, left in him
+a chill tremor of constant fear, of perpetual self-abasement. What was
+natural to him was the reckless daring which many Russians, such as
+Skobeleff, have shown in a thousand ways of peril. He was here forced
+only to crouch and to submit; it was more galling, more cruel to him
+than utter exposure would have been. The sense of coercion was always
+upon him like a dragging chain. It produced on him a despondency, which
+not even the presence of his wife or the elasticity of his own nature
+could dispel.
+
+He had to play a part to her, and to do this was unfamiliar and hateful
+to him. In all the years before he had concealed a fact from her, but
+he had never been otherwise false. Though to his knowledge there had
+been always between them the shadow of a secret untold, there had
+never been any sense upon him of obligation to measure his words, to
+feign sentiments he had not, to hide behind a carefully constructed
+screen of untruth. Now, though he had indeed not lied with his lips,
+he had to sustain a concealment which was a thousand times more trying
+to him than that concealment of his birth and station to which he had
+been so long accustomed that he hardly realised it as any error. The
+very nobility with which she had accepted his silence, and given it,
+unasked, a worthy construction, smote him with a deeper sense of shame
+than even that which galled him when he remembered the yoke laid on him
+by the will of Egon Vàsàrhely.
+
+He roused himself to meet her with composure.
+
+She rested her hand caressingly on his.
+
+'We will never speak of Russia any more. I should be sorry were the
+Kaiser to think you capricious or disloyal, but you have too much
+ability to have incurred this risk. Let it all be as though there had
+never arisen any question of public life for you. I have explained
+to Aunt Ottilie; she will not weary you with interrogation; she
+understands that you have acted as your honour bade you. That is enough
+for those who love you as do she and I.'
+
+Every word she spoke entered his very soul with the cruellest irony,
+the sharpest reproach. But of these he let her see nothing. Yet he
+was none the less abjectly ashamed, less passionately self-condemned,
+because he had to consume his pain in silence, and had the self-control
+to answer, still with a smile, as he touched a chord or two of music:
+
+'When the Israelites were free they hankered after the flesh-pots of
+Egypt. They deserved eternal exile, eternal bondage. So do I, for
+having ever been ingrate enough to dream of leaving Hohenszalras for
+the world of men!'
+
+Then he turned wholly towards the Erard keyboard, and with splendour
+and might there rolled forth under his touch the military march of
+Rákóczi: he was glad of the majesty and passion of the music which
+supplanted and silenced speech.
+
+'That is very grand,' she said, when the last notes had died away.
+'One seems to hear the _Eljén!_ of the whole nation in it. But play me
+something more tender, more pathetic----some _lieder_ half sorrow and
+half gladness, you know so many of all countries.'
+
+He paused a moment; then his hands wandered lightly across the notes,
+and called up the mournful folk-songs that he had heard so long, so
+long, before; songs of the Russian peasants, of the maidens borne off
+by the Tartar in war, of the blue-eyed children carried away to be
+slaves, of the homeless villagers beholding their straw-roofed huts
+licked up by the hungry hurrying flame lit by the Kossack or the Kurd;
+songs of a people without joy, that he had heard in his childish days,
+when the great rafts had drifted slowly down the Volga water, and
+across the plains the lines of chained prisoners had crept as slowly
+through the dust; or songs that he had sung to himself, not knowing
+why, where the winter was white on all the land, and the bay of the
+famished wolves afar off had blent with the shrill sad cry of the wild
+swans dying of cold and of hunger and of thirst on the frozen rivers,
+and the reeds were grown hard as spears of iron, and the waves were
+changed to stone.
+
+The intense melancholy penetrated her very heart. She listened with
+the tears in her eyes, and her whole being stirred and thrilled by a
+pain not her own. A kind of consciousness came to her, borne on that
+melancholy melody, of some unspoken sorrow which lived in this heart
+which beat so near her own, and whose every throb she had thought she
+knew. A sudden terror seized her lest all this while she who believed
+his whole life hers was in truth a stranger to his deepest grief, his
+dearest memories.
+
+When the last sigh of those plaintive songs without words had died
+away, she signed to him to approach her.
+
+'Tell me,' she said very gently, 'tell me the truth. Réné, did you ever
+care for any woman, dead or lost, more than, or as much as, you care
+for me? I do not ask you if you loved others. I know all men have many
+caprices, but was any one of them so dear to you that you regret her
+still? Tell me the truth; I will be strong to bear it.'
+
+He, relieved beyond expression that she but asked him that on which his
+conscience was clear and his answer could be wholly sincere, sat down
+at her feet and leaned his head against her knee.
+
+'Never, so hear me God!' he said simply. 'I have loved no woman as I
+love you.'
+
+'And there is not one that you regret?'
+
+'There is not one.'
+
+'Then what is it that you do regret? Something more weighs on you than
+the mere loss of diplomatic life, which; after all, to you is no more
+than the loss of a toy to Bela.'
+
+'If I do regret,' he said, with a smile, 'it is foolish and thankless.
+The happiness you give me here is worth all the fret and fever of
+the world's ambitions. You are so great and good to be so little
+angered with me for my reticence. All my life, such as it is, shall be
+dedicated to my gratitude.'
+
+Once more an impulse to tell her all passed over him----a sense that
+he might trust her absolutely for all tenderness and all pity came
+upon him; but with the weakness which so constantly holds back human
+souls from their own deliverance, his courage once again failed him.
+He once more looking at her thought: 'Nay! I dare not. She would never
+understand, she would never pardon, she would never listen. At the
+first word she would abhor me.'
+
+He did not dare; he bent his face down on her knees as any child might
+have done.
+
+'What I ever must regret is not to be worthy of you!' he murmured; and
+the subterfuge was also a truth.
+
+She looked down at him wistfully with doubt and confusion mingled. She
+sighed, for she understood that buried in his heart there was some pain
+he would not share, perchance some half involuntary unfaithfulness he
+did not dare confess. She thrust this latter thought away quickly; it
+hurt her as the touch of a hot iron hurts tender flesh; she would not
+harbour it. It might well be, she knew.
+
+She was silent some little time, then she said calmly:
+
+'I think you worthy. Is not that enough? Never say to me what you do
+not wish to say. But----but----if there be anything you believe that I
+should blame, be sure of this, love: I am no fair weather friend. Try
+me in deep water, in dark storm!'
+
+And still he did not speak.
+
+His evil angel held him back and said to him, 'Nay! she would never
+forgive.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+One day in this winter time she sat alone in her octagon-room whilst he
+was out driving in the teeth of a strong wind blowing from the north
+and frequent bursts of snowstorm. Rapid exercise, eager movements, were
+necessary to him at once as tonic and as anodyne, and the northern
+blood that was in him made the bitter cold, the keen and angry air, the
+conflict with the frantic horses tearing at their curbs welcome and
+wholesome to him. Paul Zabaroff had many a day driven so over the hard
+snows of Russian plains.
+
+She sat at home as the twilight drew on, her feet buried in the furs
+before her chair, the fragrance shed about her from a basket of forced
+narcissus and bowls full of orange flowers and of violets, the light
+of the burning wood shining on the variegated and mellow hues of the
+tiles of the hearth. The last poems of Coppée were on her lap, but
+her thoughts had wandered away from those to Sabran, to her children,
+to a thousand happy trifles connected with one or the other. She was
+dreaming idly in that vague reverie which suits the last hour of the
+reclining day in the grey still winter of a mountain-land. She was
+almost sorry when Hubert entered and brought her the mail-bag, which
+had just come through the gloomy defiles and the frosted woods which
+stretched between them and Matrey.
+
+'It grows late,' she said to him. 'I fear it will be a stormy night.
+Have you heard the Marquis return?
+
+He told her that Sabran had not yet driven in, and ventured to add
+his hope that his master would not be out long; then he asked if she
+desired the lamps lit, and on being told she did not, withdrew, leaving
+the leather bag on a table close to one of the Saxe bowls of violets.
+There was plenty of light from the fire, and even from the windows, to
+read her letters by; she went first to one of the casements and looked
+at the night, which was growing very wild and dark. Though day still
+lingered, she could hear the wind go screaming down the lake, and
+the rush of the swollen water swirling against the terrace buttresses
+below. All beyond, woods, hills, mountains, were invisible under the
+grey mist.
+
+'I hope he will not be late,' she thought, but she was too keen a
+mountaineer to be apprehensive. Sabran now knew every road and path
+through all the Tauern as well as she did. She returned to her seat and
+unlocked the leather bag; there were several newspapers, two letters
+for the Princess, three or four for Sabran, and one only for herself.
+She laid his aside for him, sent those of the Princess to her room,
+and opened her own. The writing of it she did not recognise; it was
+anonymous, and was very brief.
+
+
+'If you wish to know why the Marquis de Sabran did not go to Russia,
+ask Egon Vàsàrhely.'
+
+
+That was all: so asps are little.
+
+She sat quite still, and felt as if a bolt had fallen on her from the
+leaden skies without. Vàsàrhely knew, the writer of the letter knew,
+and she----_she----_ did not know! That was her first distinct thought.
+
+If Sabran had entered the room at that instant she would have held to
+him this letter, and would have said, 'I ask you, not him.' He was
+absent, and she sat motionless, keeping the unsigned note in her hand,
+and staring down on it. Then she turned and looked at the post-mark.
+It was 'Vienna,' A city of a million souls! What clue to the writer
+was there? She read it again and again, as even the wisest will read
+such poisonous things, as though by repeated study that mystery would
+be compelled to stand out clearly revealed. It did not say enough to
+have been the mere invention of the sender; it was not worded as an
+insinuation, but as a fact. For that reason it took a hold upon her
+mind which would at once have rejected a fouler or a darker suggestion.
+Although free from any baseness of suspicion there was yet that in the
+name of her cousin, in juxtaposition with her husband's, which could
+not do otherwise than startle and carry with it a corroboration of the
+statement made. A wave of the deep anger which had moved her on her
+husband's first refusal swept over her again. Her hand clenched, her
+eyes hashed, where she sat alone in the gathering shadows.
+
+There came a sound at the door of the room and a small golden head came
+from behind the tapestry.
+
+'May we come in?' said Bela; it was the children's hour.
+
+She rose, and put him backward.
+
+'Not now, my darling; I am occupied. Go away for a little while.'
+
+The women who were with them took the children back to their
+apartments. She sat down with the note still in her hand. What could
+it mean? No good thing was ever said thus. She pondered long, and was
+unable to imagine any sense or meaning it could have, though all the
+while memories thronged upon, her of words, and looks, and many trifles
+which had told her of the enmity that was existent between her cousin
+and Sabran. That she saw; but there her knowledge ceased, her vision
+failed. She could go no further, conjecture nothing more.
+
+'Ask Egon!' Did they think she would ask him or any living being that
+which Sabran had refused to confide in her? Whoever wrote this knew her
+little, she thought. Perhaps there were women who would have done so.
+She was not one of them.
+
+With a sudden impulse of scorn she cast the sheet of paper into the
+fire before her. Then she went to her writing-table and enclosed the
+envelope in another, which she addressed to her lawyers in Salzburg.
+She wrote with it: 'This is the cover to an anonymous letter which I
+have received. Try your uttermost to discover the sender.'
+
+Then she sat down again and thought long, and wearily, and vainly. She
+could make nothing of it. She could see no more than a wayfarer whom a
+blank wall faces as he goes. The violets and orange blossoms were close
+at her elbow; she never in after time smelt their perfume without a
+sick memory of the stunned, stupefied bewilderment of that hour.
+
+The door unclosed again, a voice again spoke behind as a hand drew back
+the folds of the tapestry.
+
+'What, are you in darkness here? I am very cold. Have you no tea for
+me?' said Sabran, as he entered, his eyes brilliant; his cheeks warm,
+from the long gallop against the wind. He had changed his clothes, and
+wore a loose suit of velvet; the servants, entering behind him, lit the
+candelabra, and brought in the lamps; warmth, and gladness, and light
+seemed to come with him; she looked up and thought, 'Ah! what does any
+thing matter? He is home in safety!'
+
+The impulse to ask of him what she had been bidden to ask of Egon
+Vàsàrhely had passed with the intense surprise of the first moment. She
+could not ask of him what she had promised never to seek to know; she
+could not reopen a long-closed wound. But neither could she forget the
+letter lying burnt there amongst the flames of the wood. He noticed
+that her usual perfect calm was broken as she welcomed him, gave him
+his letters, and bade the servants bring tea; but he thought it mere
+anxiety, and his belated drive; and being tired with a pleasant fatigue
+which made rest sweet, he stretched his limbs out on a low couch beside
+the hearth, and gave himself up to that delicious dreamy sense of
+_bien-être_ which a beautiful woman, a beautiful room, tempered warmth
+and light, and welcome repose, bring to any man after some hours effort
+and exposure in wild weather and intense cold and increasing darkness.
+
+'I almost began to think I should not see you to-night,' he said
+happily, as he took from her hand the little cup of Frankenthal china
+which sparkled like a jewel in the light. 'I had fairly lost my way,
+and Josef knew it no better than I; the snow fell with incredible
+rapidity, and it seemed to grow night in an instant. I let the horses
+take their road, and they brought us home; but if there be any poor
+pedlars or carriers on the hills to-night I fear they will go to their
+last sleep.'
+
+She shuddered and looked at him with dim, fond eyes, 'He is here; he is
+mine,' she thought; 'what else matters?'
+
+Sabran stretched out his fingers and took some of the violets from the
+Saxe bowl and fastened them in his coat as he went on speaking of the
+weather, of the perils of the roads whose tracks were obliterated, and
+of the prowess and intelligence of his horses, who had found the way
+home when he and his groom, a man born and bred in the Tauern, had both
+been utterly at a loss. The octagon-room had never looked lovelier and
+gayer to him, and his wife had never looked more beautiful than both
+did now as he came to them out of the darkness and the snowstorm and
+the anxiety of the last hour.
+
+'Do not run those risks,' she murmured. 'You know all that your life is
+to me.'
+
+The letter which lay burnt in the fire, and the dusky night of ice
+and wind without, had made him dearer to her than ever. And yet the
+startled, shocked sense of some mystery, of some evil, was heavy upon
+her, and did not leave her that evening nor for many a day after.
+
+'You are not well?' he said to her anxiously later, as they left the
+dinner-table. She answered evasively.
+
+'You know I am not always quite well now. It is nothing. It will pass.'
+
+'I was wrong to alarm you by being out so late in such weather,' he
+said with self-reproach. 'I will go out earlier in future.'
+
+'Do not wear those violets,' she said, with a trivial caprice wholly
+unlike her, as she took them from his coat. 'They are Bonapartist
+emblems--_fleurs de malheur_.'
+
+He smiled, but he was surprised, for he had never seen in her any one
+of those fanciful whims and vagaries that are common to women.
+
+'Give me any others instead,' he said; 'I wear but your symbol, O my
+lady!'
+
+She took some myrtle and lilies of the valley from one of the large
+porcelain jars in the Rittersaal.
+
+'These are our flowers,' she said as she gave them to him. 'They mean
+love and peace.'
+
+He turned from her slightly as he fastened them where the others had
+been.
+
+All the evening she was pre-occupied and nervous. She could not forget
+the intimation she had received. It was intolerable to her to have
+anything of which she could not speak to her husband. Though they had
+their own affairs apart one from the other, there had been nothing
+of moment in hers that she had ever concealed from him. But here it
+was impossible for her to speak to him, since she had pledged herself
+never to seek to know the reason of an action which, however plausibly
+she explained it to herself, remained practically inexplicable and
+unintelligible. It was terrible to her, too, to feel that the lines
+of a coward who dared not sign them had sunk so deeply into her mind
+that she did not question their veracity. They had at once carried
+conviction to her that Egon Vàsàrhely did know what they said he did.
+She could not have told why this was, but it was so. It was what hurt
+her most----others knew; she did not.
+
+She felt that if she could have spoken to Sabran of it, the matter
+would have become wholly indifferent to her; but the obligation of
+reticence, the sense of separation which it involved, oppressed her
+greatly. She was also haunted by the memory of the enmity which existed
+between these men, whose names were so strangely coupled in the
+anonymous counsel given her.
+
+She stayed long in her oratory that night, seeking vainly for calmness
+and patience under this temptation; seeking beyond all things for
+strength to put the poison of it wholly from her mind. She dreaded lest
+it should render her irritable and suspicious. She reproached herself
+for having been guilty of even so much insinuation of rebuke to him
+as her words with the flower had carried in them. She had ideas of
+the duties of a woman to her husband widely different to those which
+prevail in the world. She allowed herself neither irritation nor irony
+against him. 'When the thoughts rebel, the acts soon revolt,' she was
+wont to say to herself, and even in her thoughts she would never blame
+him.
+
+Prayer, even if it have no other issue or effect, rarely fails to
+tranquillise and fortify the heart which is lifted up ever so vaguely
+in search of a superhuman aid. She left her oratory strengthened and
+calmed, resolved in no way to allow such partial success to their
+unknown foe as would be given if the treacherous warning brought any
+suspicion or bitterness to her mind. She passed through the open
+archway in the wall which divided his rooms from hers, and looked at
+him where he lay already asleep upon his bed, early fatigued by the
+long cold drive from which he had returned at nightfall. He was never
+more handsome than sleeping calmly thus, with the mellow light of a
+distant lamp reaching the fairness of his face. She looked at him with
+all her heart in her eyes; then stooped and kissed him without awaking
+him.
+
+'Ah! my love,' she thought, 'what should ever come between us? Hardly
+even death, I think, for if I lost you I should not live long without
+you.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+The Salzburg lawyers employed all the resources of the Viennese police
+to discover the sender of the envelope, but vainly; nothing was
+learned by all the efforts made. But the letter constantly haunted her
+thoughts. It produced in her an uneasiness and an apprehensiveness
+wholly foreign to her temper. The impossibility also of saying anything
+about it increased the weight of it on her memory. Yet she never once
+thought of asking Vàsàrhely. She wrote to him now and then, as she had
+always done, to give him tidings of her health or of her movements,
+but she never once alluded in the most distant terms to the anonymous
+information she had received. If he had been there beside her she would
+not have spoken of it. Of the two, she would sooner have reopened the
+subject to her husband. But she never did so. She had promised him
+to be silent, and to her creed a promise was inviolate, never to be
+retracted, be the pressure or the desire to do so what it would.
+
+It was these grand lines on which her character and her habits were
+cast that awed him, and made him afraid to tell her his true history.
+Had he revered her less he would probably have deceived her less. Had
+she been of a less noble temperament she would also probably have been
+much less easy to deceive.
+
+Her health was at this time languid, and more uncertain than usual,
+and the two lines of the letter were often present to her thoughts,
+tormenting her with idle conjecture, painful doubt, none the less
+painful because it could take no definite shape. Sometimes when she
+was not well enough to accompany him out of doors or drive her own
+sleigh through the keen clear winter air, she sat doing nothing, and
+thinking only of this thing, in the same room, with the same smell of
+violets about her, musing on what it might by any possibility mean. Any
+secret was safe with Egon, but then since the anonymous writer was in
+possession of it the secret was not only his. She wondered sometimes in
+terror whether it could be anything that might in after years affect
+her children's future, and then as rapidly discarded the bare thought
+as so much dishonour to their father. 'It is only because I am now
+nervous and impressionable,' she said to herself,'that this folly takes
+such a hold upon me. When I am well again I shall not think of it. Who
+is it says of anonymous letters that they are like "_les immondices des
+rues: il faut boucher le nez, tourner la tête et passer outre?_"'
+
+But '_les immondices_' spoiled the odours of the new year violets to
+her.
+
+In the early spring of the year she gave birth to another son. She
+suffered more than she had ever done before, and recovered less
+quickly. The child was like all the others, fair, vigorous, and full
+of health. She wished to give him her husband's name, but Sabran so
+strenuously opposed the idea that she yielded, and named him after her
+brother Victor, who had fallen at Magenta.
+
+There were the usual rejoicings throughout the estates, rejoicings
+that were the outcome of genuine affection and fealty to the race of
+Szalras, whose hold on the people of the Tauern had resisted all the
+revolutionary movements of the earlier part of the century, and had
+fast root in the hearts of the staunch and conservative mountaineers.
+But for the first time as she heard the hearty '_Hoch!_' of the
+assembled peasantry echoing beneath her windows, and the salvos fired
+from the old culverins on the keep, a certain fear mingled with her
+maternal pride, and she thought: 'Will the people love them as well
+twenty years hence, fifty years hence, when I shall be no more? Will my
+memory be any shield to them? Will the traditions of our race outlast
+the devouring changes of the world?'
+
+Meantime the Princess, happy and smiling, showed the little new-born
+noble to the stalwart chamois hunters, the comely farmers and
+fishermen, the clear-eyed stout-limbed shepherds and labourers gathered
+bareheaded round the Schloss.
+
+Bela stood by contemplating the crowd he knew so well; he did not see
+why they should cheer any other child beside himself. He stood with his
+little velvet cap in his hand, because he was always told to do so, but
+he felt very inclined to put it on; if his father had not been present
+there he would have done so.
+
+'If I have ever so many brothers,' he said at last thoughtfully to
+Greswold, who was by his side, 'it will not make any difference, will
+it? I shall always be _the_ one?'
+
+'What do you mean?' asked the physician.
+
+'They will none of them be like me? They will none of them be as great
+as I am? Not if I have twenty?'
+
+'You will be always the eldest son, of course,' said the old man,
+repressing a smile. 'Yes; you will be their head, their chief, their
+leading spirit; but for that reason you will have much more expected of
+you than will be expected of them; you will have to learn much more,
+and try to be always good. Do you follow me, Count Bela?'
+
+Bela's little rosy mouth shut itself up contemptuously. 'I shall be
+always the eldest, and I shall do whatever I like. I do not see why
+they want any others than me.'
+
+'You will not do always what you like, Count Bela.'
+
+'Who shall prevent me?'
+
+'The law, which you will have to obey like everyone else.'
+
+'I shall make the laws when I am a little older,' said Bela. 'And they
+will be for my brothers and all the people, but not for me. I shall do
+what I like.'
+
+'That will be very ungenerous,' said Greswold, quietly. 'Your mother,
+the Countess, is very different. She is stern to herself, and indulgent
+to all others. That is why she is beloved. If you will think of
+yourself so much when you are grown up, you will be hated.'
+
+Bela flushed a little guiltily and angrily.
+
+'That will not matter,' he said sturdily. 'I shall please myself
+always.'
+
+'And be unkind to your brothers?'
+
+'Not if they do what I tell them; I will be very kind if they are good.
+Gela always does what I tell him,' he added after a little pause; 'I do
+not want any but Gela.'
+
+'It is natural you should be fondest of Gela, as he is nearest your
+age, but you must love all the brothers you may have, or you will
+distress your mother very greatly.'
+
+'Why does she want any but me?' said Bela, clinging to his sense of
+personal wrong. And he was not to be turned from that.
+
+'She wants others beside you,' said the physician, adroitly, 'because
+to be happy she needs children who are tender-hearted, unselfish, and
+obedient. You are none of those things, my Count Bela, so Heavens ends
+her consolation.'
+
+Bela opened his blue eyes very wide, and he coloured with mortification.
+
+'She always loves me best!' he said haughtily. 'She always will!'
+
+'That will depend on yourself, my little lord,' said Greswold, with a
+significance which was not lost on the quick intelligence of the child;
+and he never forgot this day when his brother Victor was shown to the
+people.
+
+'There will be no lack of heirs to Hohenszalras,' said the Princess
+meanwhile to his father.
+
+He thought as he heard:
+
+'And if ever she know she can break her marriage like a rotten thread!
+Those boys can all be made as nameless as I was! Would she do it?
+Perhaps not, for the children's sake. God knows----she might change
+even to them; she might hate them as she loves them now, because they
+are mine.'
+
+Even as he sat beside her couch with her hand in his these thoughts
+pursued and haunted him. Remorse and fear consumed him. When she looked
+at the blue eyes of her new-born son, and said to him with a happy
+smile: 'He will be just as much like you as the others are,' he could
+only think with a burning sense of shame, 'Like me! like a traitor!
+like a liar! like a thief!'----and the faces of these children seemed
+to him like those of avenging angels.
+
+He thought with irrepressible agony of the fact that her country's
+laws would divorce her from him if she chose, did ever the truth come
+to her ear. He had always known this indeed, as he had known all the
+other risks he ran in doing what he did. Put it had been far away,
+indistinct, unasserted; whenever the memory of it had passed over him
+he had thrust it away. Now when another knew his secret, he could
+not do so. He had a strange sensation of having fallen from some
+great height; of having all his life slide away like melting ice out
+of his hands. He never once doubted for an instant the good faith of
+Egon Vàsàrhely. He knew that his lips would no more unclose to tell
+his secret than the glaciers yonder would find human voice. But the
+consciousness that one man lived, moved, breathed, rose with each day,
+and went amongst other men, bearing with him that fatal knowledge,
+made it now impossible for himself ever to forget it. A dull remorse,
+a sharp apprehension, were for ever his companions, and never left him
+for long even in his sweetest hours. He did justice to the magnificent
+generosity of the one who spared him. Egon Vàsàrhely knew, as he knew,
+that she, hearing the truth, could annul the marriage if she chose.
+His children would have no rights, no name, if their mother chose to
+separate herself from him. The law would make her once more as free
+as though she had never wedded him. He knew that, and the other man
+who loved her knew it too. He could measure the force of Vàsàrhely's
+temptation as that simple and heroic soldier could not stoop to measure
+his.
+
+He was deeply unhappy, but he concealed it from her. Even when his
+heart beat against hers it seemed to him always that there was an
+invisible wall between himself and her. He longed to tell the whole
+truth to her, but he was afraid; if the whole pain and shame had been
+his own that the confession would have caused, he would have dared it;
+but he had not the heart to inflict on her such suffering, not the
+courage to destroy their happiness with his own hand. Egon Vàsàrhely
+alone knew, and he for her sake would never speak. As for the reproach
+of his own conscience, as for the remorse that the words of his
+children might at any moment call up in him, these lie must bear. He
+was a man of cool judgment and of ready resource, and though he had
+never foreseen the sharp repentance which his better nature now felt,
+he knew that he would be able to live it down as he had crushed out so
+many other scruples. He vowed to himself that as far as in him lay he
+would atone for his act. The moral influence of his wife had not been
+without effect on him. Not altogether, but partially, he had grown to
+believe in what she believed in, of the duty of human life to other
+lives; he had not her sympathy for others, but he had admired it, and
+in his own way followed it, though without her faith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+Life went on in its old pathways at Hohenszalras. Nothing more, was
+said by him, or to him, as to his rejection of the Russian mission. She
+was niggard in nothing, and when she offered her faith or pledged her
+silence, gave both entirely and ungrudgingly. Sabran to her showed an
+increase of devotion, an absolute adoration which would in themselves
+have sufficed to console any woman; and if the most observant member
+of their household, Greswold, perceived in him a preoccupation, a
+languor, a gloom, which boded ill for their future peace, the old man
+was too loyal in his attachment not to endeavour to shake off his own
+suspicions and discredit his own penetration.
+
+The Princess had been favoured by a note from Olga Brancka, in which
+that lady wrote: 'Have you discovered the nature of his refusal of
+Russia? Myself, I believe that I was to blame. I hinted to him that
+he would be tempted to his old sins in St. Petersburg, and that Wanda
+would be very miserable there. It seems that this was enough for the
+tender heart of this devoted lover, and too much for his wisdom and
+his judgment; he rejected the mission after accepting it. I believe
+the Court is furious. I am not _de service_ now, so that I have no
+opportunity of endeavouring to restore him to favour; but I imagine the
+Emperor will not quarrel for ever with the Hohenszalrasburg.
+
+The letter restored him at least to the favour of Mdme. Ottilie.
+Exaggerated as such a scruple appeared it did not seem to her
+impossible in a man whose devotion to his wife she daily witnessed,
+shown in a hundred traits. She blamed him still severely in her own
+thoughts for what she held an inexcusable disrespect to the Crown, but
+she kept her word scrupulously and never spoke to him on the subject.
+
+'Where else in the wide world would any man have found such
+forbearance?' he thought with gratitude, and he knew that nowhere
+would such delicate sentiment have existed outside the pale of that
+fine patrician dignity which is as incapable of the vulgarity of
+inquisitiveness and interrogation as was the Spartan of lament.
+
+The months went by. They did not leave home; he seemed to have lost
+all wish for any absence, and even repulsed the idea of inviting the
+usual house parties of the year. She supposed that he was averse to
+meeting people who might recur to his rejection of the post he had
+once accepted. The summer passed and the autumn came; he spent his
+time in occasional sport, the keen and perilous sport of the Austrian
+mountains, and more often and more faithfully beguiled himself with
+those arts of which he was a brilliant master, though he would call
+himself no more than a mere amateur. From the administration of the
+estates he had altogether withdrawn himself.
+
+'You are so much wiser than I,' he always said to her; and when she
+would have referred to him, replied: 'You have your lawyers; they are
+all honest men. Consult them rather than me.'
+
+With the affairs of Idrac only he continued to concern himself a
+little, and was persistent in setting aside all its revenues to
+accumulate for his second son.
+
+'I wish you cared more about all these things,' she said to him one
+day, when she had in her hand the reports from the mines of Galicia.
+He answered angrily, 'I have no right to them. They are not mine. If
+you chose to give them all away to the Crown I should say nothing.'
+
+'Not even for the children's sake?'
+
+'No: you would be entirely justified if you liked to give the children
+nothing.'
+
+'I really do not understand you,' she said in great surprise.
+
+'Everything is yours,' he said abruptly.
+
+'And the children too, surely!' she said, with a smile: but the
+strangeness of the remark disquieted her. 'It is over-sensitiveness,'
+she thought; 'he can never altogether forget that he was poor. It is
+for that reason public life would have been so good for him; dignities
+which he enjoyed of his own, honours that he arrived at through his own
+attainments.'
+
+Chagrined to have lost, the opportunity of winning personal honours
+in a field congenial to him, the sense that everything was hers could
+hardly fail to gall him sometimes constantly, though she strove to
+efface any remembrance or reminder that it was so.
+
+In the midsummer of that year, whilst they were quite alone, they were
+surprised by another letter from Mdme. Brancka, in which she proposed
+to take Hohenszalras on her way from France to Tsarköe Selo, where she
+was about to pay a visit which could not be declined by her.
+
+When in the spring he had written with formality to her to announce the
+birth of his son Victor, she had answered with a witty coquettish reply
+such as might well have been provocative of further correspondence.
+But he had not taken up the invitation. Mortified and irritated, she
+had compared his writing with the piece of burnt paper, and been more
+satisfied than ever that he had penned the name of Vassia Kazán. But
+even were it so, what, she wondered, had it to do with Russia? He
+and Egon Vàsàrhely were not friends so intimate that they had any
+common interests one with the other. The mystery had interested her
+intensely when her rapid intuition had connected the resignation of
+Sabran's appointment with the messenger sent to him from Taróc. Her
+impatience to be again in his presence grew intense. She imagined a
+thousand stories, to cast each aside in derision as impossible. All her
+suppositions were built upon no better basis than a fragment of charred
+paper; but her shrewd intuition bore her into the region of truth,
+though the actual truth of course never suggested itself to her even in
+her most fantastic and dramatic visions. Finally she thus proposed to
+visit Hohenszalras in the midsummer months.
+
+'Last year you had such a crowd about you,' she wrote, 'that I
+positively saw nothing of you, _liebe_ Wanda. You are alone now, and
+I venture to propose myself for a fortnight. You cannot exactly be
+said to be in the way to anywhere, but I shall make you so. When one
+is going to Russia, a matter of another five hundred miles or so is a
+bagatelle.'
+
+'We must let her come,' said Wanda, as she gave the letter to Sabran,
+who, having read it, said with much sincerity----
+
+'For heaven's sake, do not. A fortnight of Madame Olga! as well
+have----a century of "Madame Angot!"'
+
+'Can I prevent her?'
+
+'You can make some excuse. I do not like Mdme. Brancka.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+He hesitated; he could not tell her what he had felt at the ball of
+the Hofburg. 'She reminds me of a woman who drew me into a thousand
+follies, and to cap her good deeds betrayed me to the Prussians. If you
+must let her come I will go away. I will go and see your haras on the
+Pusztas.'
+
+'Are you serious?'
+
+'Quite serious. Were I not ashamed of such a weakness, I should use a
+feminine expression. I should say "_elle me donne des nerfs._"'
+
+'I think she has a great admiration for you, and she does not conceal
+it.'
+
+'Merely because she is sensible that I do not like her. Such women as
+she are discontented if only one person fail to admit their charm. She
+is accustomed to admiration, and she is not scrupulous as to how she
+obtains it.'
+
+'My dear! pray remember that she is our guest, and doubly our relative.'
+
+'I will try and remember it; but, believe me, all honour is wholly
+wasted upon Mdme. Olga. You offer her a coin of which the person and
+the superscription are alike unknown to her.'
+
+'You are very severe,' said his wife.
+
+She looked at him, and perceived that he was not jesting, that he
+was on the contrary disturbed and annoyed, and she remembered the
+persistence with which Olga Brancka had sought his companionship and
+accompanied him on his sport in the summer of her visit there.
+
+'If she had not married first my brother and then my cousin, she would
+never have been an intimate friend of mine,' she continued. 'She is of
+a world wholly opposed to all my tastes. For you to be absent, if she
+came, would be too marked, I think; but we can both leave, if you like.
+I am well enough for any movement now, and I can leave the child with
+his nurse. Shall we make a tour in Hungary? The haras will interest
+you. There are the mines, too, that one ought to visit.'
+
+He received her assent with gratitude and delight. He felt that he
+would have gone to the uttermost ends of the earth rather than run the
+risk of spending long lonely summer days in the excitation of Mdme.
+Brancka's presence. He detested her, he would always detest her; and
+yet when he shut his eyes he saw her so clearly, with the malicious
+light in her dusky glance, and the jewelled butterfly trembling about
+her breasts.
+
+'She shall never come under Wanda's roof if I can prevent it,' he
+thought, remembering her as she had been that night.
+
+A few days later the Countess Brancka, much to her rage, had a note
+from the Hohenszalrasburg, which said that they were on the point of
+leaving for Hungary and Galicia, but that if she would come there in
+their absence, the Princess Ottilie, who remained, would be charmed to
+receive her. Of course she excused herself, and did not go. A visit to
+the solitudes of the Iselthal, where she would, see no one but a lady
+of eighty years old and four little children, had few attractions for
+the adventurous and vivacious wife of Stefan Brancka.
+
+'It is only Wanda's jealousy,' she thought, and was furious; but she
+looked at herself in the mirror, and was almost consoled as she thought
+also, 'He avoids me. Therefore he is afraid of me!'
+
+She went to her god, _le monde_, and worshipped at all its shrines and
+in all its fashions; but in the midst of the turmoil and the triumphs,
+the worries and the intoxications of her life, she did not lose her
+hold on her purpose, nor forget that he had slighted her. His beautiful
+face, serene and scornful, was always before her. He might have been at
+her feet, and he chose to dwell beside his wife under those solitary
+forests, amongst those solitary mountains of the High Tauern!
+
+'With a woman he has lived with all these eight years!' she thought,
+with furious impatience. 'With a woman who has grafted the Lady of La
+Garaye on Libussa, who never gives him a moment's jealousy, who is
+as flawless as an ivory statue or a marble throne, who suckles her
+children and could spin their clothes if she wanted, who never cares
+to go outside the hills of her own home----the Teuton _Hausfrau_ to
+her finger-tips.' And she was all the more bitter and the more angered
+because, always as she tried to think thus, the image of Wanda rose up
+before her, as she had seen her so often at Vienna or Hohenszalras,
+with the great pearls on her hair and on her breast.
+
+/$
+A planet at whose passing, lo!
+All lesser stars recede, and night
+Grows clear as day thus lighted up
+By all her loveliness, which burns
+With pure white flame of chastity;
+And fires of fair thought....
+$/
+
+
+END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Ouida
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52136 ***
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Ouida

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-Title: Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3)

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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDA, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***

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-

-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">

-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" />

-</div>

-<h1>WANDA</h1>

-

-<h3>BY</h3>

-

-<h2>OUIDA</h2>

-

-

-<p class="center">

-<i>'Doch!&mdash;alles was dazu mich trieb;</i><br />

-<i>Gott!&mdash;war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'</i><br />

-<span style="margin-left: 20%;">Goethe</span><br />

-</p>

-

-

-<h4>IN THREE VOLUMES</h4>

-

-<h4>VOL. II.</h4>

-

-

-<h5>London</h5>

-

-<h5>CHATTO &amp; WINDUS, PICCADILLY</h5>

-

-<h5>1883</h5>

-

-<hr class="full" />

-

-<h3><a name="WANDA" id="WANDA">WANDA.</a></h3>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>On her return she spoke of her royal friends, of her cousins, of

-society, of her fears for the peace of Europe, and her doubts as to

-the strength of the empire; but she did not speak of the one person of

-whom, beyond all others, Mdme. Ottilie was desirous to hear. When some

-hours had passed, and still she had never alluded to the existence of,

-the Princess could bear silence no longer, and casting prudence to the

-winds, said boldly and with impatience:</p>

-

-<p>'And your late guest? Have you nothing to tell me? Surely you have seen

-him?'</p>

-

-<p>'He called once,' she answered, 'and I heard him speak at the Chamber.'</p>

-

-<p>'And was that all?' cried the Princess, disappointed.</p>

-

-<p>'He speaks very well in public,' added Wanda, 'and he said many tender

-and grateful things of you, and sent you many messages&mdash;such grateful

-ones that my memory is too clumsy a tray to hold such eggshell china.'</p>

-

-<p>She was angered with herself as she spoke, but the fragrance of the

-white lilac and the remembrance of its donor pursued her&mdash;angered

-with herself, too, because Hohenszalras seemed for the moment sombre,

-solitary, still, almost melancholy, wrapped in that winter whiteness

-and stillness which she had always loved so well.</p>

-

-<p>The next morning she saw all her people, visited her schools and her

-stables, and tried to persuade herself that she was as contented as

-ever.</p>

-

-<p>The aurist came from Paris shortly after her, and consoled the Princess

-by assuring her that the slight deafness she suffered from occasionally

-was due to cold.</p>

-

-<p>'Of course!' she said, with some triumph. 'These mountains, all this

-water, rain whenever there is not snow, snow whenever there is not

-rain; it is a miracle, and the mercy of Heaven, if one saves any of

-one's five senses uninjured in a residence here.'</p>

-

-<p>She had her satin hood trebly wadded, and pronounced the aurist a

-charming person. Herr Greswold in an incautious moment had said to her

-that deafness was one of the penalties of age and did not depend upon

-climate. A Paris doctor would not have earned his fee of two hundred

-napoleons if he had only produced so ungallant a truism. She heard a

-little worse after his visit, perhaps, but if so, she said that was

-caused by the additional wadding in her hood. He had told her to use a

-rose-water syringe, and Herr Greswold was forbidden her presence for a

-week because he averred that you might as well try to melt the glacier

-with a lighted pastille.</p>

-

-<p>The aurist gone, life at Hohenszalras resumed its even tenor; and

-except for, the post, the tea-cups, and the kind of dishes served at

-dinner, hardly differed from what life had been there in the sixteenth

-century, save that there were no saucy pages playing in the court, and

-no destriers stamping in the stalls, and no culverins loaded on the

-bastions.</p>

-

-<p>'It is like living between the illuminated leaves of one of the Hours,'

-thought the Princess, and though her conscience told her that to dwell

-so in a holy book like a pressed flower was the most desirable life

-that could be granted by Heaven to erring mortality, still she felt it

-was dull. A little gossip, a little movement, a little rolling of other

-carriage-wheels than her own, had always seemed desirable to her.</p>

-

-<p>Life here was laid down on broad lines. It was stately, austere,

-tranquil; one day was a mirror of all the rest. The Princess fretted

-for some little <i>frou-frou</i> of the world to break its solemn silence.</p>

-

-<p>When Wanda returned from her ride one forenoon she said a little

-abruptly to her aunt:</p>

-

-<p>'I suppose you will be glad to hear you have convinced me. I have

-telegraphed to Ludwig to open and air the house in Vienna; we will go

-there for three months. It is, perhaps, time I should be seen at Court.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is a very sudden decision!' said Madame Ottilie, doubting that she

-could hear aright.</p>

-

-<p>'It is the fruit of your persuasions, dear mother mine! The only

-advantage in having houses in half a dozen different places is to be

-able to go to them without consideration. You think me obstinate,

-whimsical, barbaric; the Kaiserin thinks so too. I will endeavour to

-conquer my stubbornness. We will go to Vienna next week. You will see

-all your old friends, and I all my old jewels.'</p>

-

-<p>The determination once made, she adhered to it. She had felt a vague

-annoyance at the constancy and the persistency with which regret for

-the lost society of Sabran recurred to her. She had attributed it to

-the solitude in which she lived: that solitude which is the begetter

-and the nurse of thought may also be the hotbed of unwise fancies.

-It was indeed a solitude filled with grave duties, careful labours,

-high desires and endeavours; but perhaps, she thought, the world for a

-while, even in its folly, might be healthier, might preserve her from

-the undue share which the memory of a stranger had in her musings.</p>

-

-<p>Her people, her lands, her animals, would none of them suffer by

-a brief absence; and perhaps there were duties due as well to her

-position as to her order. She was the only representative of the great

-Counts of Szalras. With the whimsical ingratitude to fate common

-to human nature, she thought she would sooner have been obscure,

-unnoticed, free. Her rank began to drag on her with something like the

-sense of a chain. She felt that she was growing irritable, fanciful,

-thankless; so she ordered the huge old palace in the Herrengasse to be

-got ready, and sought the world as others sought the cloister.</p>

-

-<p>In a week's time she was installed in Vienna, with a score of horses,

-two score of servants, and all the stir and pomp that attend a great

-establishment in the most aristocratic city of Europe, and she made her

-first appearance at a ball at the Residenz covered with jewels from

-head to foot; the wonderful old jewels that for many seasons had lain

-unseen in their iron coffers&mdash;opals given by Rurik, sapphires taken

-from Kara Mustafa, pearls worn by her people at the wedding of Mary of

-Burgundy, diamonds that had been old when Maria Theresa had been young.</p>

-

-<p>She had three months of continual homage, of continual flattery, of

-what others called pleasure, and what none could have denied was

-splendour. Great nobles laid their heart and homage before her feet,

-and all the city looked after her for her beauty as she drove her

-horses round the Ringstrasse. It left her all very cold and unamused

-and indifferent.</p>

-

-<p>She was impatient to be back at Hohenszalras, amidst the stillness of

-the woods, the sound of the waters.</p>

-

-<p>'You cannot say now that I do not care for the world, because I have

-forgotten what it was like,' she observed to her aunt.</p>

-

-<p>'I wish you cared more,' said the Princess. 'Position has its duties.'</p>

-

-<p>'I never dispute that; only I do not see that being wearied by society

-constitutes one of them. I cannot understand why people are so afraid

-of solitude; the routine of the world is quite as monotonous.'</p>

-

-<p>'If you only appreciated the homage that you receive&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'Surely one's mind is something like one's conscience: if one can be

-not too utterly discontented with what it says one does not need the

-verdict of others.'</p>

-

-<p>'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with

-your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your

-overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the

-one I possess.'</p>

-

-<p>'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be

-pride&mdash;the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely

-better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'</p>

-

-<p>'They are not all simpletons.'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very

-stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well

-as of the Wurstel-Prater.'</p>

-

-<p>The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the

-Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw

-the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she

-was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something

-wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up,

-nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.</p>

-

-<p>The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain,

-and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging

-primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of

-the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging

-with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass

-was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale

-sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras,

-and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she

-returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.</p>

-

-<p>'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold,

-as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the

-Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias

-and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between

-the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of

-their stalls.</p>

-

-<p>'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert,

-as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with

-tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with

-'<i>Willkommen</i>' written on it.</p>

-

-<p>She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single

-word.</p>

-

-<p>How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that

-day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been

-sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.</p>

-

-<p>'That is the Stanhopea tigrina,' said Herr Greswold, touching one with

-reverent fingers; 'they are all very rare. It is a welcome worthy of

-you, my lady.'</p>

-

-<p>'A very extravagant one,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a certain

-displeasure that mingled with a softened emotion. 'Who brought it?'</p>

-

-<p>'The Marquis de Sabran, by <i>extra-poste</i>, himself this morning,'

-answered Hubert&mdash;an answer she did not expect. 'But he would not wait;

-he would not even take a glass of tokayer, or let his horses stay for a

-feed of corn.'</p>

-

-<p>'What knight-errantry!' said the Princess well pleased.</p>

-

-<p>'What folly!' said Wanda, but she had the basket of orchids taken to

-her own octagon room.</p>

-

-<p>It seemed as if he had divined how much of late she had thought of him.

-She was touched, and yet she was angered a little.</p>

-

-<p>'Surely she will write to him,' thought the Princess wistfully very

-often: but she did not write. To a very proud woman the dawning

-consciousness of love is always an irritation, an offence, a failure, a

-weakness: the mistress of Hohenszalras could not quickly pardon herself

-for taking with pleasure the message of the orchids.</p>

-

-<p>A little while later she received a letter from Olga Brancka. In it she

-wrote from Paris:</p>

-

-<p>'Parsifal is doing wonders in the Chamber, that is, he is making Paris

-talk; his party will forbid him doing anything else. You certainly

-worked a miracle. I hear he never plays, never looks at an actress,

-never does anything wrong, and when a grand heiress was offered to

-him by her people refused her hand blandly but firmly. What is one to

-think? That he washed his soul white in the Szalrassee?'</p>

-

-<p>It was the subtlest flattery of all, the only flattery to which she

-would have been accessible, this entire alteration in the current

-of a man's whole life; this change in habit, inclination, temper,

-and circumstance. If he had approached her its charm would have been

-weakened, its motive suspected; but aloof and silent as he remained,

-his abandonment of all old ways, his adoption of a sterner and worthier

-career, moved her with its marked, mute homage of herself.</p>

-

-<p>When she read his discourses in the French papers she felt a glow

-of triumph, as if she had achieved some personal success; she felt

-a warmth at her heart as of something near and dear to her, which

-was doing well and wisely in the sight of men. His cause did not,

-indeed, as Olga Brancka had said, render tangible, practical, victory

-impossible for him, but he had the victories of eloquence, of

-patriotism, of high culture, of pure and noble language, and these

-blameless laurels seemed to her half of her own gathering.</p>

-

-<p>'Will you never reward him?' the Princess ventured to say at last,

-overcome by her own impatience to rashness. 'Never? Not even by a word?'</p>

-

-<p>'Hear mother,' said Wanda, with a smile which perplexed and baffled the

-Princess, 'if your hero wanted reward he would not be the leader of a

-lost cause. Pray do not suggest to me a doubt of his disinterestedness.

-You will do him very ill service.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess was mute, vaguely conscious that she had said something

-ill-timed or ill-advised.</p>

-

-<p>Time passed on and brought beautiful weather in the month of June,

-which here in the High Tauern means what April does in the south.

-Millions of song-birds were shouting in the woods, and thousands of

-nests were suspended on the high branches of the forest trees, or

-hidden in the greenery of the undergrowth; water-birds perched and

-swung in the tall reeds where the brimming streams tumbled; the purple,

-the white, and the grey herons were all there, and the storks lately

-flown home from Asia or Africa were settling in bands by the more

-marshy grounds beside the northern shores of the Szalrassee.</p>

-

-<p>One afternoon she had been riding far and fast, and on her return a

-telegram from Vienna had been brought to her, sent on from Lienz.

-Having opened it, she approached her aunt and said with an unsteady

-voice:</p>

-

-<p>'War is declared between France and Prussia!'</p>

-

-<p>'We expected it; we are ready for it,' said the Princess, with all

-her Teutonic pride in her eyes. 'We shall show her that we cannot be

-insulted with impunity.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is a terrible calamity for the world,' said Wanda, and her face was

-very pale.</p>

-

-<p>The thought which was present to her was that Sabran would be foremost

-amidst volunteers. She did not hear a word of all the political

-exultation with which Princess Ottilie continued to make her militant

-prophecies. She shivered as with cold in the warmth of the midsummer

-sunset.</p>

-

-<p>'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her

-house.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess demurred.</p>

-

-<p>'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all

-the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial.

-You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the

-especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge

-Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'</p>

-

-<p>'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.</p>

-

-<p>She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from

-her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.</p>

-

-<p>In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War

-is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss

-of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I

-shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw

-bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every

-sword she has.'</p>

-

-<p>Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:</p>

-

-<p>'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her

-soil is bound to arm.'</p>

-

-<p>More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her

-grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.</p>

-

-<p>But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,'

-written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were

-filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that

-was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a

-child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian

-campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made

-her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal

-conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she

-became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had

-at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from

-the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the

-shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the

-command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their

-own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was

-congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of

-his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally,

-in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name

-mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That

-was all.</p>

-

-<p>The autumn began to deepen into winter, and complete silence covered

-all his life. She thought with a great remorse&mdash;if he were dead?

-Perhaps he was dead? Why had she been always so cold to him? She

-suffered intensely; all the more intensely because it was not a sorrow

-which she could not confess even to herself. When she ceased altogether

-to hear anything of or from him, she realised the hold which he had

-taken on her life.</p>

-

-<p>These months of suspense did more to attach her to him than years

-of assiduous and ardent homage could have done. She, a daughter of

-soldiers, had always felt any man almost unmanly who had not received

-the baptism of fire.</p>

-

-<p>Mdme. Ottilie talked of him constantly, wondered frequently if he were

-wounded, slain, or in prison; she never spoke his name, and dreaded to

-hear it.</p>

-

-<p>Greswold, who perceived an anxiety in her that, he did not dare to

-allude to, ransacked every journal that was published in German to find

-some trace of Sabran's name. At the first he saw often some mention of

-the Cuirassiers d'Orléans, and of their intrepid Colonel Commandant:

-some raid, skirmish, or charge in which they had been conspicuous for

-reckless gallantry. But after the month of November he could find

-nothing. The whole regiment seemed to have been obliterated from

-existence.</p>

-

-<p>Winter settled down on Central Austria with cold silence, with roads

-blocked and mountains impassable. The dumbness, the solitude around

-her, which she had always loved so well, now grew to her intolerable.

-It seemed like death.</p>

-

-<p>Paris capitulated. The news reached her at the hour of a violent

-snowstorm; the postillion of her post-sledge bringing it had his feet

-frozen.</p>

-

-<p>Though her cousins of Lilienhöhe were amongst those who entered the

-city as conquerors, the fate of Paris smote her with a heavy blow. She

-felt as if the cold of the outer world had chilled her very bones, her

-very soul. The Princess, looking at her, was afraid to rejoice.</p>

-

-<p>On the following day she wrote to her cousin Hugo of Lilienhöhe, who

-was in Paris with the Imperial Guard. She asked him to inquire for and

-tell her the fate of a friend, the Marquis de Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>In due time Prince Hugo answered:</p>

-

-<p>'The gentleman you asked for was one of the most dangerous of our

-enemies. He commanded a volunteer cavalry regiment, which was almost

-cut to pieces by the Bavarian horse in an engagement before Orleans.

-Two or three alone escaped; their Colonel was severely wounded in

-the thigh, and had his charger shot dead under him. He was taken

-prisoner by the Bavarians after a desperate resistance. Whilst he

-lay on the ground he shot three of our men with his revolver. He was

-sent to a fortress, I think Ehrenbreitstein, but I will inquire more

-particularly. I am sorry to think that you have any French friends.</p>

-

-<p>By-and-by she heard that he had been confined not at Ehrenbreitstein

-but at a more obscure and distant fortress on the Elbe; that his wounds

-had been cured, and that he would shortly be set free like other

-prisoners of war. In the month of March in effect she received a brief

-letter from his own hand, gloomy and profoundly dejected.</p>

-

-<p>'Our plans were betrayed,' he wrote. 'We were surprised and surrounded

-just as we had hobbled our horses and lain down to rest, after being

-the whole day in the saddle. Bavarian cavalry, outnumbering us four to

-one, attacked us almost ere we could mount our worn-out beasts. My

-poor troopers were cut to pieces. They hunted me down when my charger

-dropped, and I was made a prisoner. When they could they despatched

-me to one of their places on the Elbe. I have been here December and

-January. I am well. I suppose I must be very strong; nothing kills

-me. They are now about to send me back to the frontier. My beautiful

-Paris! What a fate! But I forget, I cannot hope for your sympathy; your

-kinsmen are our conquerors. I know not whether the house I lived in

-there exists, but if you will write me a word at Romaris, you will be

-merciful, and show me that you do not utterly despise a lost cause and

-a vanquished soldier.'</p>

-

-<p>She wrote to him at Romaris, and the paper she wrote on felt her tears.

-In conclusion she said:</p>

-

-<p>'Whenever you will, come and make sure for yourself that both the

-Princess Ottilie and I honour courage and heroism none the less because

-it is companioned by misfortune.'</p>

-

-<p>But he did not come.</p>

-

-<p>She understood why he did not. An infinite pity for him overflowed her

-heart. His public career interrupted, his country ruined, his future

-empty, what remained to him? Sometimes she thought, with a blush on her

-face, though she was all alone: 'I do.' But then, if he never came to

-hear that?</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>The little hamlet of Romaris, on the coast of Finisterre, was very dull

-and dark and silent. A few grave peasant women knitted as they walked

-down the beach or sat at their doors; a few children did the same. Out

-on the <i>landes</i> some cows were driven through the heather and broom;

-out on the sea some fishing-boats with rough, red sails were rocking to

-and fro. All was melancholy, silent, poor; life was hard at Romaris for

-all. The weatherbeaten church looked grey and naked on a black rock;

-the ruins of the old <i>manoir</i> faced it amidst sands and surfs; the only

-thing of beauty was the bay, and that for the folk of Romaris had no

-beauty; they had seen it kill so many.</p>

-

-<p>There was never any change at Romaris, unless it were a change in the

-weather, a marriage, a birth, or a death. Therefore the women and

-children who were knitting had lifted up their heads as a stranger,

-accompanied by their priest, had come down over the black rocks, on

-which the church stood, towards the narrow lane that parted the houses

-where they clustered together face to face on the edge of the shore.</p>

-

-<p>Their priest, an old man much loved by them, came slowly towards them,

-conversing in low tones with the stranger, who had been young and

-handsome, and a welcome sight, since a traveller to Romaris always

-needed a sailing-boat or a rowing-boat, a guide over the moors, or a

-drive in an ox-waggon through the deep-cut lanes of the country.</p>

-

-<p>But they had ceased to think of such things as these when the curate,

-with his hands extended as when he blessed them, had said in <i>bas</i>

-Breton as he stood beside them:</p>

-

-<p>'My children, this is the last of the Sabrans of Romaris, come back to

-us from the far west that lies in the setting of the sun. Salute him,

-and show him that in Brittany we do not forget&mdash;nay, not in a hundred

-years.'</p>

-

-<p>Many years had gone by since then, and of the last of the old race,

-Romaris had scarcely seen more than when he had been hidden from

-their sight on the other side of the heaving ocean. Sabran rarely came

-thither. There was nothing to attract a man who loved the world and

-who was sought by it, in the stormy sea coast, the strip of sea-lashed

-oak forest, that one tall tower with its gaunt walls of stone which

-was all that was left of what had once been the fortress of his race.

-Now and then they saw him, chiefly when he had heard that there was

-wild weather on the western coast, and at such times he would go out

-in their boats to distressed vessels, or steer through churning waters

-to reach a fishing-smack in trouble, with a wild courage and an almost

-fierce energy which made him for the moment one of themselves. But

-such times had been few, and all that Romaris really knew of the last

-marquis was that he was a gay gentleman away there in distant Paris.</p>

-

-<p>He had been a mere name to them. Now and then he had sent fifty

-napoleons, or a hundred, to the old priest for such as were poor or

-sick amongst them. That was all. Now after the war he came hither.

-Paris had become hateful to him; his political career was ended, at

-all events for the time; the whole country groaned in anguish; the

-vices and follies that had accompanied his past life disgusted him

-in remembrance. He had been wounded and a prisoner; he had suffered

-betrayal at unworthy hands; Cochonette had sold him to the Prussians,

-in revenge of his desertion of her.</p>

-

-<p>He was further removed from the Countess von Szalras than ever. In the

-crash with which the Second Empire had fallen and sunk out of sight for

-evermore, his own hopes had gone down like a ship that sinks suddenly

-in a dark night. All his old associations were broken, half his old

-friends were dead or ruined; gay châteaux that he had ever been welcome

-at were smoking ruins or melancholy hospitals; the past had been

-felled to the ground like the poor avenues of the Bois. It affected

-him profoundly. As far as he was capable of an impersonal sentiment

-he loved France, which had been for so many years his home, and which

-had always seemed to smile at him with indulgent kindness. Her vices,

-her disgrace, her feebleness, her fall, hurt him with an intense pain

-that was not altogether selfish, but had in it a nobler indignation, a

-nobler regret.</p>

-

-<p>When he was released by the Prussians and sent across the frontier, he

-went at once to this sad sea village of Romaris, to collect as best

-he might the shattered fragments of his life, which seemed to him as

-though it had been thrown down by an earthquake. He had resigned his

-place as deputy when he had offered his sword to France; he had now no

-career, no outlet for ambition, no occupation. Many of his old friends

-were dead or ruined; although such moderate means as he possessed were

-safe, they were too slender to give him any position adequate to his

-rank. His old life in Paris, even if Paris arose from her tribulations,

-gay and glorious once more, seemed to him altogether impossible. He had

-lost taste for those pleasures and distractions which had before the

-war&mdash;or before his sojourn on the Holy Isle&mdash;seemed to him the Alpha

-and Omega of a man's existence. '<i>Que faire?</i>' he asked himself wearily

-again and again. He did not even know whether his rooms in Paris had

-been destroyed or spared; a few thousands of francs which he had

-made by a successful speculation years before, and placed in foreign

-funds, were all he had to live on. His keen sense told him that the

-opportunity which might have replaced the Bourbon throne had been lost

-through fatal hesitation. His own future appeared to him like a blank

-dead wall that rose up in front of him barring all progress; he was no

-longer young enough to select a career and commence it. With passionate

-self-reproach he lamented all the lost irrevocable years that he had

-wasted.</p>

-

-<p>Romaris was not a place to cheer a disappointed and dejected soldier

-who had borne the burning pain of bodily wounds and the intolerable

-shame of captivity in a hostile land. Its loneliness, its darkness,

-its storms, its poverty, had nothing in them with which to restore his

-spirit to hope or his sinews to ambition. In these cold, bleak, windy

-days of a dreary and joyless spring-time, the dusky moors and the

-gruesome sea were desolate, without compensating grandeur. The people

-around him were all taciturn, dull, stupid; they had not suffered by

-the war, but they understood that, poor as they were, they would have

-to bear their share in the burden of the nation's ransom. They barred

-their doors and counted their hoarded gains in the dark with throbbing

-hearts, and stole out in the raw, wet, gusty dawns to kneel at the

-bleeding feet of their Christ. He envied them their faith; he could not

-comfort them, they could not comfort him; they were too far asunder.</p>

-

-<p>The only solace he had was the knowledge that he had done his duty by

-France, and to the memory of those whose name he bore; that he had

-rendered what service he could; that he had not fled from pain and

-peril; that he had at least worn his sword well and blamelessly; that

-he had not abandoned his discrowned city of pleasure in the day of

-humiliation and martyrdom. The only solace he had was that he felt

-Wanda von Szalras herself could have commanded him to do no more than

-he had done in this the Année Terrible.</p>

-

-<p>But, though his character had been purified and strengthened by the

-baptism of fire, and though his egotism had been destroyed by the

-endless scenes of suffering and of heroism which he had witnessed, he

-could not in a year change so greatly that he could be content with the

-mere barren sense of duty done and honour redeemed. He was deeply and

-restlessly miserable. He knew not where to turn, either for occupation

-or for consolation. Time hung on his hands like a wearisome wallet of

-stones.</p>

-

-<p>When all the habits of life are suddenly rent asunder, they are like a

-rope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or they may be

-thrown altogether aside and a new strand woven, but they will never be

-the same thing again.</p>

-

-<p>Romaris, with its few wind-tortured trees and its leaden-hued dangerous

-seas, seemed to him, indeed, a <i>champ des trépassés</i>, as it was called,

-a field of death. The naked, ugly, half-ruined towers, which no ivy

-shrouded and no broken marble ennobled, as one or the other would have

-done had it been in England or in Italy, was a dreary residence for

-a man who was used to all the elegant and luxurious habits of a man

-of the world, who was also a lover of art and a collector of choice

-trifles. His rooms had been the envy of his friends, with all their

-eighteenth century furniture, and their innumerable and unclassified

-treasures; when he had opened his eyes of a morning a pastel of La

-Tour had smiled at him, rose-coloured windows had made even a grey

-sky smile. Without, there had been the sound of wheels going down

-the gay Boulevard Haussmann. All Paris had passed by, tripping and

-talking, careless and mirthful, beneath his gilded balconies bright

-with canariensis and volubilis; and on a little table, heaped in

-their hundreds, had been cards that bade him to all the best and most

-agreeable houses, whilst, betwixt them, slipped coyly in many an

-amorous note, many an unlooked-for declaration, many an eagerly-desired

-appointment.</p>

-

-<p>'<i>Quel beau temps!</i>' he thought, as he awoke in the chill, bare,

-unlively chamber of the old tower by the sea; and it seemed to him

-that he must be dreaming: that all the months of the war had been

-a nightmare; that if he fully awakened he would find himself once

-more with the April sunshine shining through the rose glass, and

-the carriages rolling beneath over the asphalt road. But it was no

-nightmare, it was a terrible, ghastly reality to him, as to so many

-thousands. There were the scars on his breast and his loins where

-the Prussian steel had hacked and the Prussian shot had pierced him;

-there was his sword in a corner all dinted, notched, stained; there

-was a crowd of hideous ineffaceable tumultuous memories; it was all

-true enough, only too true, and he was alone at Romaris, with all his

-dreams and ambitions faded into thin air, vanished like the blown burst

-bubbles of a child's sport.</p>

-

-<p>In time to come he might recover power and nerve to recommence his

-struggle for distinction, but at present it seemed to him that all was

-over. His imprisonment had shaken and depressed him as nothing else

-in the trials of war could have done. He had been shut up for months

-alone, with his own desperation. To a man of high courage and impatient

-appetite for action there is no injury so great and in its effect so

-lasting as captivity. Joined to this he had the fever of a strong, and

-now perfectly hopeless, passion.</p>

-

-<p>Pacing to and fro the brick floor of the tower looking down on the

-sands and rocks of the coast, his thoughts were incessantly with Wanda

-von Szalras in her stately ancient house, built so high up amidst the

-mountains and walled in by the great forests and the ice slopes of the

-glaciers. In the heat and stench of carnage he had longed for a breath

-of that mountain breeze, for a glance from those serene eyes; he longed

-for them still.</p>

-

-<p>As he passed to and fro in the wild wintry weather, his heart was sick

-with hope deferred, with unavailing regret and repentance, with useless

-longings.</p>

-

-<p>It was near noonday; there was no sun; a heavy wrack of cloud was

-sweeping up from the west; on the air the odour of rotting fish and

-of fish-oil, and of sewage trickling uncovered to the beach, were too

-strong to be driven away by the pungency of the sea.</p>

-

-<p>The sea was high and moaning loud; the dusk was full of rain; the

-wind-tormented trees groaned and seemed to sigh; their boughs were

-still scarce in bud though May had come. He felt cold, weary, hopeless.

-His walk brought no warmth to his veins, and his thoughts none to

-his heart. The moisture of the air seemed to chill him to the bone,

-and he went within and mounted the broken granite stairs to his

-solitary chamber, bare of all save the simplest necessaries, gloomy

-and cheerless with the winds and the bats beating together at the high

-iron-barred casement. He wearily lighted a little oil lamp, and threw

-a log or two of drift-wood on the hearth and set fire to them with a

-faggot of dried ling.</p>

-

-<p>He dreaded his long lonely evening.</p>

-

-<p>He had set the lamp on a table while he had set fire to the wood; its

-light fell palely on a small white square thing. It was a letter. He

-took it up eagerly; he, who in Paris had often tossed aside, with a

-passing glance, the social invitations of the highest personages and

-the flattering words of the loveliest women.</p>

-

-<p>Here, any letter seemed a friend, and as he took up this his pulse

-quickened; he saw that it was sealed with armorial bearings which he

-knew&mdash;a shield bearing three vultures with two knights as supporters,

-and with the motto '<i>Gott und mein Schwert</i>;' the same arms, the same

-motto as were borne upon the great red and gold banner floating from

-the keep on the north winds at the Hohenszalrasburg. He opened it with

-a hand which shook a little and a quick throb of pleasure at his heart.

-He had scarcely hoped that she would write again to him. The sight of

-her writing filled him with a boundless joy, the purest he had ever

-known called forth by the hand of woman.</p>

-

-<p>The letter was brief, grave, kind. As he read he seemed to hear the

-calm harmonious voice of the lady of Hohenszalras speaking to him in

-her mellowed and softened German tongue.</p>

-

-<p>She sent him words of consolation, of sympathy, of congratulation, on

-the course of action he had taken in a time of tribulation, which had

-been the touchstone of character to so many.</p>

-

-<p>'Tell me something of Romaris,' she said in conclusion. 'I am sure

-you will grow to care for the place and the people, now that you seek

-both in the hour of the martyrdom of France. Have you any friends near

-you? Have you books? How do your days pass? How do you fill up time,

-which must seem so dull and blank to you after the fierce excitations

-and the rapid changes of war? Tell me all about your present life, and

-remember that we at Hohenszalras know how to honour courage and heroic

-misfortune.'</p>

-

-<p>He laid the letter down after twice reading it. Life seemed no longer

-all over for him. He had earned her praise and her sympathy. It was

-doubtful if years of the most brilliant political successes would have

-done as much as his adversity, his misadventure, and his daring had

-done for him in her esteem. She had the blood of twenty generations of

-warriors in her, and nothing appealed so forcibly to her sympathies and

-her instincts as the heroism of the sword. Those few lines too were

-a permission to write to her. He replied at once, with a gratitude

-somewhat guardedly expressed, and with details almost wholly impersonal.</p>

-

-<p>She was disappointed that he said so little of himself, but she did

-justice to the delicacy of the carefully guarded words from a man

-whose passion appealed to her by its silence, where it would only have

-alienated her by any eloquence. Of Romaris he said nothing, save that,

-had Dante ever been upon their coast, he would have added another canto

-to the 'Purgatorio,' more desolate and more unrelieved in gloom than

-any other.</p>

-

-<p>'Does he regret Cochonette?' she thought, with a jealous

-contemptuousness of which she was ashamed as soon as she felt it.</p>

-

-<p>Having once written to her, however, he thought himself privileged

-to write again, and did so several times. He wrote with ease, grace,

-and elegance: he wrote as he spoke, which gives this charm to

-correspondence, seem close at hand to the reader in intimate communion.

-The high culture of his mind displayed itself without effort, and he

-had that ability of polished expression which is in our day too often

-a neglected one. His letters became welcome to her: she answered them

-briefly, but she let him see that they were agreeable to her. There

-was in them the note of a profound depression, of an unuttered, but

-suggested hopelessness which touched her. If he had expressed it in

-plain words, it would not have appealed to her one half so forcibly.</p>

-

-<p>They remained only the letters of a man of culture to a woman capable

-of comprehending the intellectual movement of the time, but it

-was because of this limitation that she allowed them. Any show of

-tenderness would have both alarmed and alienated her. There was no

-reason after all, she thought, why a frank friendship should not exist

-between them.</p>

-

-<p>Sometimes she was surprised at herself for having conceded so much,

-and angry that she had done so. Happily he had the good taste to take

-no advantage of it. Interesting as his letters were they might have

-been read from the housetops. With that inconsistency of her sex from

-which hitherto she had always flattered herself she had been free, she

-occasionally felt a passing disappointment that they were not more

-personal as regarded himself. Reticence is a fine quality; it is the

-marble of human nature. But sometimes it provokes the impatience that

-the marble awoke in Pygmalion.</p>

-

-<p>Once only he spoke of his own aims. Then he wrote:</p>

-

-<p>'You bade me do good at Romaris. Candidly, I see no way to do it

-except in saving a crew off a wreck, which is not an occasion that

-presents itself every week. I cannot benefit these people materially,

-since I am poor; I cannot benefit them morally, because I have not

-their faith in the things unseen, and I have not their morality in the

-things tangible. They are God-fearing, infinitely patient, faithful

-in their daily lives, and they reproach no one for their hard lot,

-cast on an iron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at risk

-of their lives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What

-should I say to them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience,

-one petulant mutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only

-take them what the world always takes into solitude&mdash;discontent. It

-would be a cruel gift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any

-other. It is a homely saying that no blood comes out of a stone; so,

-out of a life saturated with the ironies, the contempt, the disbelief,

-the frivolous philosophies, the hopeless negations of what we call

-society, there can be drawn no water of hope and charity, for the

-well-head&mdash;belief&mdash;is dried up at its source. Some pretend, indeed,

-to find in humanity what they deny to exist as deity, but I should

-be incapable of the illogical exchange. It is to deny that the seed

-sprang from a root; it is to replace a grand and illimitable theism by

-a finite and vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased

-mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the

-poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a <i>vibrion</i>,

-a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere

-bundle of phosphorus and carbon? how can it contain the elements of

-worship; what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the

-weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty.

-It becomes ridiculous. The <i>carpe diem</i> of the classic sensualists, the

-morality of the "Satyricon" or the "Decamerone," are its only natural

-concomitants and outcome; but as yet it is not honest enough to say

-this. It affects the soothsayer's long robe, the sacerdotal frown, and

-is a hypocrite.'</p>

-

-<p>In answer she wrote back to him:</p>

-

-<p>'I do not urge you to have my faith: what is the use? Goethe was

-right. It is a question between a man and his own heart. No one should

-venture to intrude there. But taking life even as you do, it is surely

-a casket of mysteries. May we not trust that at the bottom of it, as

-at the bottom of Pandora's, there may be hope? I wish again to think

-with Goethe that immortality is not an inheritance, but a greatness

-to be achieved like any other greatness, by courage, self-denial, and

-purity of purpose&mdash;a reward allotted to the just. This is fanciful, may

-be, but it is not illogical. And without being either a Christian or a

-Materialist, without beholding either majesty or divinity in humanity,

-surely the best emotion that our natures know&mdash;pity&mdash;must be large

-enough to draw us to console where we can, and sustain where we can, in

-view of the endless suffering, the continual injustice, the appalling

-contrasts, with which the world is full. Whether man be the <i>vibrion</i>

-or the heir to immortality, the bundle of carbon or the care of angels,

-one fact is indisputable: he suffers agonies, mental and physical,

-that are wholly out of proportion to the brevity of his life, while he

-is too often weighted from infancy with hereditary maladies, both of

-body and of character. This is reason enough, I think, for us all to

-help each other, even though we feel, as you feel, that we are as lost

-children wandering in a great darkness, with no thread or clue to guide

-us to the end.'</p>

-

-<p>When Sabran read this answer, he mused to himself:</p>

-

-<p>'Pity! how far would her pity reach? How great offences would it cover?

-She has compassion for the evil-doers, but it is easy, since the evil

-does not touch her. She sits on the high white throne of her honour and

-purity, and surveys the world with beautiful but serene compassion.

-If the mud of its miry labyrinths reached and soiled her, would her

-theories prevail? They are noble, but they are the theories of one who

-sits in safety behind a gate of ivory and jasper, whilst outside, far

-below, the bitter tide of the human sea surges and moans too far off,

-too low down, for its sound to reach within. <i>Tout comprendre, c'est

-tout pardonner.</i> But since she would never understand, how could she

-ever pardon? There are things that the nature must understand rather

-than the mind; and her nature is as high, as calm, as pure as the snows

-of her high hills.'</p>

-

-<p>And then the impulse came over him for a passing moment to tell her

-what he had never told any living creature; to make confession to

-her and abide her judgment, even though he should never see her face

-again. But the impulse shrank and died away before the remembrance

-of her clear, proud eyes. He could not humiliate himself before her.

-He would have risked her anger; he could not brave her disdain.

-Moreover, straight and open ways were hot natural to him, though he was

-physically brave to folly. There was a subtlety and a reticence in him

-which were the enemies of candour.</p>

-

-<p>To her he was more frank than to any other because her influence

-was great on him, and a strong reverence was awakened in him that

-was touched by a timid fear quite alien to a character naturally

-contemptuously cynical and essentially proud. But even to her he could

-not bring himself to be entirely truthful in revelation of his past.

-Truthfulness is in much a habit, and he had never acquired its habit.

-When he was most sincere there was always some reserve lying behind

-it. This was perhaps one of the causes of the attraction he exercised

-on all women. All women are allured by the shadows and the suggestions

-of what is but imperfectly revealed. Even on the clear, strong nature

-of Wanda von Szalras it had its unconscious and intangible charm. She

-herself was like daylight, but the subtle vague charm of the shadows

-had their seduction for her; Night holds dreams and passions that fade

-and flee before the lucid noon, and who, at noonday wishes not for

-night?</p>

-

-<p>For himself, the letters he received from her seemed the only things

-that bound him to life at all.</p>

-

-<p>The betrayal of him by a base and mercenary woman had hurt him more

-than it was worthy to do; it had stung his pride and saddened him in

-this period of adversity with a sense of degradation. He had been sold

-by a courtezan; it seemed to him to make him ridiculous as Samson was

-ridiculous, and he had no gates of Gaza to pull down upon himself and

-her. He could only be idle, and stare at an unoccupied and valueless

-future. The summer went on, and he remained at Romaris. An old servant

-had sent him word that all his possessions were safe in Paris, and his

-apartments unharmed; but he felt no inclination to go there: he felt no

-sympathy with Communists or Versaillists, with Gambetta or Gallifet. He

-stayed on at the old storm-beaten sea-washed tower, counting his days

-chiefly by the coming to him of any line from the castle by the lake.</p>

-

-<p>She seemed to understand that and pity it, for each week brought him

-some tidings.</p>

-

-<p>At midsummer she wrote him word that she was about to be honoured again

-by a two days' visit of her Imperial friends.</p>

-

-<p>'We shall have, perforce, a large house party,' she said. 'Will you

-be inclined this time to join it? It is natural that you should

-sorrow without hope for your country, but the fault of her disasters

-lies not with you. It is, perhaps, time that you should enter the

-world again; will you commence with what for two days only will be

-worldly&mdash;Hohenszalras? Your old friends the monks will welcome you

-willingly and lovingly on the Holy Isle?'</p>

-

-<p>He replied with gratitude, but he refused. He did not make any plea or

-excuse; he thought it best to let the simple denial stand by itself.

-She would understand it.</p>

-

-<p>'Do not think, however,' he wrote, 'that I am the less profoundly

-touched by your admirable goodness to a worsted and disarmed combatant

-in a lost cause.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is the causes that are lost which are generally the noble ones,'

-she said in answer. 'I do not see why you should deem your life at an

-end because a sham empire, which you always despised, has fallen to

-pieces. If it had not perished by a blow from without, it would have

-crumbled to pieces from its own internal putrefaction.'</p>

-

-<p>'The visit has passed off very well,' she continued. 'Every one was

-content, which shows their kindness, for these things are all of

-necessity so much alike that it is difficult to make them entertaining.

-The weather was fortunately fine, and the old house looked bright.

-You did rightly not to be present, if you felt festivity out of tone

-with your thoughts. If, however, you are ever inclined for another

-self-imprisonment upon the island, you know that your friends, both at

-the monastery and at the burg, will be glad to see you, and the monks

-bid me salute you with affection.'</p>

-

-<p>A message from Mdme. Ottilie, a little news of the horses, a few

-phrases on the politics of the hour, and the letter was done. But,

-simple as it was, it seemed to him to be like a ray of sunshine amidst

-the gloom of his empty chamber.</p>

-

-<p>From her the permission to return to the monastery when he would

-seemed to say so much. He wrote her back calm and grateful words of

-congratulation and cordiality; he commenced with the German formality,

-'Most High Lady,' and ended them with the equally formal 'devoted and

-obedient servant;' but it seemed to him as if under that cover of

-ceremony she must see his heart beating, his blood throbbing; she must

-know very well, and if knowing, she suffered him to return to the Holy

-Isle, why then&mdash;he was all alone, but he felt the colour rise to his

-face.</p>

-

-<p>'And I must not go! I must not go!' he thought, and looked at his

-pistols.</p>

-

-<p>He ought sooner to blow his brains out, and leave a written confession

-for her.</p>

-

-<p>The hoarse sound of the sea surging amongst the rocks at the base of

-the tower was all that stirred the stillness; evening was spreading

-over all the monotonous inland country; a west wind was blowing and

-rustling amidst the gorse; a woman led a cow between the dolmen,

-stopping for it to crop grass here and there; the fishing-boats were

-far out to sea, hidden under the vapours and the shadows. It was all

-melancholy, sad-coloured, chill, lonesome. As he leaned against the

-embrasure of the window and looked down, other familiar scenes, long

-lost, rose up to his memory. He saw a wide green rolling river, long

-lines of willows and of larches bending under a steel-hued sky, a vast

-dim plain stretching away to touch blue mountains, a great solitude,

-a silence filled at intervals with the pathetic song of the swans,

-chanting sorrowfully because the nights grew cold, the ice began to

-gather, the food became scanty, and they were many in number.</p>

-

-<p>'I must not go!' he said to himself; 'I must never see Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>And he lit his study lamp, and held her letter to it and burnt it.

-It was his best way to do it honour, to keep it holy. He had the

-letters of so many worthless women locked in his drawers and caskets

-in his rooms in Paris. He held himself unworthy to retain hers. He

-had burned each written by her as it had come to him, in that sort

-of exaggeration of respect with which it seemed to him she was most

-fittingly treated by him. There are less worthy offerings than the

-first scruple of an unscrupulous life. It is like the first pure drops

-that fall from a long turbid and dust-choked fountain.</p>

-

-<p>As he walked the next day upon the windblown, rock-strewn strip of sand

-that parted the old oak wood from the sea, he thought restlessly of her

-in those days of stately ceremony which suited her so well. What did he

-do here, what chance had he to be remembered by her? He chafed at his

-absence, yet it seemed to him impossible that he could ever go to her.

-What had been at first keen calculation with him had now become a finer

-instinct, was now due to a more delicate sentiment, a truer and loftier

-emotion. What could he ever look to her if he sought her but a mere

-base fortune-seeker, a mere liar, with no pride and no manhood in him?

-And what else was he? he thought, with bitterness, as he paced to and

-fro the rough strip of beach, with the dusky heaving waves trembling

-under a cloudy sky, where a red glow told the place of the setting sun.</p>

-

-<p>There were few bolder men living than He, and he was cynical and

-reckless before many things that most men reverence; but at the thought

-of her possible scorn he felt himself tremble like a child. He thought

-he would rather never see her face again than risk her disdain; there

-was in him a vague romantic wishfulness rather to die, so that she

-might think well of his memory, than live in her love through any

-baseness that would be unworthy of her.</p>

-

-<p>Sin had always seemed a mere superstitious name to him, and if he had

-abstained from its coarser forms it had been rather from the revolt

-of the fine taste of a man of culture than from any principle or

-persuasion of duty. Men he believed were but ephemera, sporting their

-small hours, weaving their frail webs, and swept away by the great

-broom of destiny as spiders by the housewife. In the spineless doctrine

-of altruism he had had too robust a temperament, too clear a reason,

-to seek a guide for conduct. He had lived for himself, and had seen

-no cause to do otherwise. That he had not been more criminal had been

-due partly to indolence, partly to pride. In his love for Wanda von

-Szalras, a love with which considerable acrimony had mingled at the

-first, he yet, through all the envy and the impatience which alloyed

-it, reached a moral height which he had never touched before. Between

-her and him a great gulf yawned. He abstained from any effort to pass

-it. It was the sole act of self-denial of a selfish life, the sole

-obedience to conscience in a character which obeyed no moral laws, but

-was ruled by a divided tyranny of natural instinct and conventional

-honour.</p>

-

-<p>The long silent hours of thought in the willow-shaded cloisters of

-the Holy Isle had not been wholly without fruit. He desired, with

-passion and sincerity, that she should think well of him, but he did

-not dare to wish for more; love offered from him to her seemed to him

-as if it would be a kind of blasphemy. He remembered in his far-off

-childhood, which at times still seemed so near to him, nearer than all

-that was around him, the vague, awed, wistful reverence with which

-he had kneeled in solitary hours before the old dim picture of the

-Madonna with the lamp burning above it, a little golden flame in the

-midst of the gloom; he remembered so well how his fierce young soul and

-his ignorant yearning child's heart had gone out in a half-conscious

-supplication, how it had seemed to him that if he only knelt long

-enough, prayed well enough, she would come down to him and lay her

-hands on him. It was all so long ago, yet, when he thought of Wanda

-von Szalras, something of that same emotion rose up in him, something

-of the old instinctive worship awoke in him. In thought he prostrated

-himself once more whenever the memory of her came to him. He had no

-religion; she became one to him.</p>

-

-<p>Meanwhile, he was constantly thinking restlessly to himself, 'Did I do

-ill not to go?'</p>

-

-<p>His bodily life was at Romaris, but his mental life was at

-Hohenszalras. He was always thinking of her as she would look in those

-days of the Imperial visit; he could see the stately ceremonies of

-welcome, the long magnificence of the banquets, the great Rittersaal

-with cressets of light blazing on its pointed emblazoned roofs; he

-could see her as she would move down the first quadrille which she

-would dance with her Kaiser: she would wear her favourite ivory-white

-velvet most probably, and her wonderful old jewels, and all her orders.

-She would look as if she had stepped down off a canvas of Velasquez

-or Vandyck, and she would be a little tired, a little contemptuous, a

-little indifferent, despite her loyalty; she would be glad, he knew,

-when the brilliant gathering was broken up, and the old house, and the

-yew terrace, and the green lake were all once more quiet beneath the

-rays of the watery moon. She was so unlike other women. She would not

-care about a greatness, a compliment, a success more or less. Such

-triumphs were for the people risen yesterday, not for a Countess von

-Szalras.</p>

-

-<p>He knew the simplicity of her life and the pride of her temper,

-and they moved him to the stronger admiration because he knew also

-that those mere externals which she held in contempt had for him an

-exaggerated value. He was scarcely conscious himself of how great a

-share the splendour of her position, united to her great indifference

-to it, had in the hold she had taken on his imagination and his

-passions. He did know that there were so much greater nobilities in

-her that he was vaguely ashamed of the ascendency which her mere rank

-took in his thoughts of her. Yet he could not divest her of it, and

-it seemed to enhance both her bodily and spiritual beauty, as the

-golden calyx of the lily makes its whiteness seem the whiter by its

-neighbourhood.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>In the Iselthal the summer was more brilliant and warm than usual. The

-rains were less frequent, and the roses on the great sloping lawns

-beneath the buttresses and terraces of Hohenszalras were blooming

-freely.</p>

-

-<p>Their mistress did not for once give them much heed. She rode long and

-fast through the still summer woods, and came back after nightfall. Her

-men of business, during their interviews with her, found her attention

-less perfect, her interest less keen. In stormy days she sat in the

-library, and read Heine and Schiller often, and all the philosophers

-and men of science rarely. A great teacher has said that the Humanities

-must outweigh the Sciences at all times, and he is unquestionably

-true, if it were only for the reason that in the sweet wise lore of

-ages every human heart in pain and perplexity finds a refuge; whilst in

-love or in sorrow the sciences seem the poorest and chilliest of mortal

-vanities that ever strove to measure the universe with a foot-rule.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess watched her with wistful, inquisitive eyes, but dared

-not name the person of whom they both thought most. Wanda was herself

-intolerant of the sense of impatience with which she awaited the coming

-of the sturdy pony that brought the post-bag from Windisch-Matrey.

-He in his loneliness and emptiness of life on the barren sea-shore

-of Romaris did not more anxiously await her letters than did the

-châtelaine of Hohenszalras, amidst all her state, her wealth, and her

-innumerable occupations, await his. She pitied him intensely; there was

-something pathetic to her in the earnestness with which he had striven

-to amend his ways of life, only to have his whole career shattered by

-an insensate and unlooked-for national war. She understood that his

-poverty stood in the path of his ambition, and she divined that his

-unhappiness had broken that spring of manhood in him which would have

-enabled him to construct a new career for himself out of the ruins of

-the old. She understood why he was listless and exhausted.</p>

-

-<p>There were moments when she was inclined to send him some invitation

-more cordial, some bidding more clear; but she hesitated to take a step

-which would bind her in her own honour to so much more. She knew that

-she ought not to suggest a hope to him to which she was not prepared

-to give full fruition. And again, how could he respond? It would be

-impossible for him to accept. She was one of the great alliances of

-Europe, and he was without fortune, without career, without a future.

-Even friendship was only possible whilst they were far asunder.</p>

-

-<p>Two years had gone by since he had come across from the monastery in

-the green and gold of a summer afternoon. The monks had not forgotten

-him; throughout the French war they had prayed for him. When their

-Prior saw her, he said anxiously sometimes: 'And the Markgraf von

-Sabran, will he never come to us again? Were we too dull for him?

-Will your Excellency remember us to him, if ever you can?' And she

-had answered with a strange emotion at her heart: 'His country is

-in trouble, holy father; a good son cannot leave his land in her

-adversity. No: I do not think he was dull with you; he was quite happy,

-I believe. Perhaps he may come again some day, who knows? He shall be

-told what you say.'</p>

-

-<p>Then a vision would rise up to her of herself and him, as they would

-be perhaps when they should be quite old. Perhaps he would retire into

-this holy retreat of the Augustines, and she would be a grave sombre

-woman, not gay and pretty and witty, as the Princess was. The picture

-was gloomy; she chased it away, and galloped her horse long and far

-through the forests.</p>

-

-<p>The summer had been so brilliant that the autumn which followed was

-cold and severe, earlier than usual, and heavy storms swept over the

-Tauern, almost ere the wheat harvest could be reaped. Many days were

-cheerless and filled only with the sound of incessant rains. In the

-Pinzgau and the Salzkammergut floods were frequent. The Ache and the

-Szalzach, with all their tributary streams and wide and lonely lakes,

-were carrying desolation and terror into many parts of the land which

-in summer they made beautiful. Almost every day brought her some

-tidings of some misfortunes in the villages on the farms belonging to

-her in the more distant parts of Austria; a mill washed away, a bridge

-down, a dam burst, a road destroyed, a harvest swept into the water,

-some damage or other done by the swollen river and torrents, she heard

-of by nearly every communication that her stewards and her lawyers made

-to her at this season.</p>

-

-<p>'Our foes the rivers are more insidious than your mighty enemy the

-salt water,' she wrote to Romaris. 'The sea deals open blows, and men

-know what they must expect if they go out on the vasty deep. But here

-a little brook that laughed and chirped at noon-day as innocently as

-a child may become at nightfall or dawn a roaring giant, devouring

-all that surrounds him. We pay heavily for the glory of our mountain

-waters.'</p>

-

-<p>These autumn weeks seemed very dreary to her. She visited her horses

-chafing at inaction in their roomy stalls, and attended to her affairs,

-and sat in the library or the octagon room hearing the rain beat

-against the emblazoned leaded panes, and felt the days, and above all

-the evenings, intolerably dull and melancholy. She had never heeded

-rain before, or minded the change of season.</p>

-

-<p>One Sunday a messenger rode through the drenching storm, and brought

-her a telegram from her lawyer in Salzburg. It said: 'Idrac flooded:

-many lives lost: great distress: fear town wholly destroyed. Please

-send instructions.'</p>

-

-<p>The call for action roused her as a trumpet sounding rouses a cavalry

-charger.</p>

-

-<p>'Instructions!' she echoed as she read. 'They write as if I could bid

-the Danube subside, or the Drave shrink in its bed!'</p>

-

-<p>She penned a hasty answer.</p>

-

-<p>'I will go to Idrac myself.'</p>

-

-<p>Then she sent a message also to S. Johann im Wald for a special train

-to be got in readiness for her, and told one of her women and a trusty

-servant to be ready to go with her to Vienna in an hour. It was still

-early in the forenoon.</p>

-

-<p>'Are you mad?' cried Madame Ottilie, when she was informed of the

-intended journey.</p>

-

-<p>Wanda kissed her hand.</p>

-

-<p>'There is no madness in what I shall do, dear mother, and Bela surely

-would have gone.'</p>

-

-<p>'Can you stay the torrents of heaven? Can you arrest a river in its

-wrath?'</p>

-

-<p>'No; but lives are often lost because poor people lose their senses in

-fright. I shall be calmer than anyone there. Besides, the place belongs

-to us; we are bound to share its danger. If only Egon were not away

-from Hungary!'</p>

-

-<p>'But he is away. You have driven him away.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do not dissuade me, dearest mother. It would be cowardice not to go.'</p>

-

-<p>'What can women do in such extremities?'</p>

-

-<p>'But we of Hohenszalras must not be mere women when we are wanted in

-any danger. Remember Luitgarde von Szalras, the <i>kuttengeier.</i>'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess sighed, prayed, even wept, but Wanda was gently

-inflexible. The Princess could not see why a precious life should be

-endangered for the sake of a little half barbaric, half Jewish town,

-which was remarkable for nothing except for shipping timber and selling

-<i>salbling.</i> The population was scarcely Christian, so many Hebrews were

-there, and so benighted were the Sclavonian poor, who between them made

-up the two thousand odd souls that peopled Idrac. To send a special

-messenger there, and to give any quantity of money that the distress

-of the moment might demand, would be all right and proper; indeed,

-an obligation on the owner of the little feudal river-side town. But

-to go! A Countess von Szalras to go in person where not one out of a

-hundred of the citizens had been properly baptized or confirmed! The

-Princess could not view this Quixotism in any other light than that of

-an absolute insanity.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela lost his life in just such a foolish manner!' she pleaded.</p>

-

-<p>'So did the saints, dear mother,' said his sister, gently.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess coloured and coughed.</p>

-

-<p>'Of course, I am aware that many holy lives have been&mdash;have been&mdash;what

-appears to our finite senses wasted,' she said, with a little asperity.

-'But I am also aware, Wanda, that the duties most neglected are those

-which lie nearest home and have the least display; consideration for

-<i>me</i> might be better, though less magnificent, than so much heroism for

-Idrac.'</p>

-

-<p>'It pains me that you should put it in that light, dearest mother,'

-said Wanda, with inexhaustible patience. 'Were you in any danger I

-would stay by you first, of course; but you are in none. These poor,

-forlorn, ignorant, cowardly creatures are in the very greatest. I

-draw large revenues from the place; I am in honour bound to share

-its troubles. Pray do not seek to dissuade me. It is a matter not of

-caprice but of conscience. I shall be in no possible peril myself. I

-shall go down the river in my own vessel, and I will telegraph to you

-from every town at which I touch.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess ceased not to lament, to oppose, to bemoan her own

-powerlessness to check intolerable follies. Sitting in her easy chair

-in her warm blue-room, sipping her chocolate, the woes of a distant

-little place on the Danube, whose population was chiefly Semitic, were

-very bearable and altogether failed to appeal to her.</p>

-

-<p>Wanda kissed her, asked her blessing humbly, and took her way in the

-worst of a blinding storm along the unsafe and precipitous road which

-went over the hills to Windisch-Matrey.</p>

-

-<p>'What false sentiment it all is!' thought the Princess, left alone.

-'She has not seen this town since she was ten years old. She knows that

-they are nearly all Jews, or quite heathenish Sclavonians. She can do

-nothing at all&mdash;what should a woman do?&mdash;and yet she is so full of her

-conscience that she goes almost to the Iron Gates in quest of a duty in

-the wettest of weather, while she leaves a man like Egon and a man like

-Sabran wretched for want of a word! I must say,' thought the Princess,

-'false sentiment is almost worse than none at all!'</p>

-

-<p>The rains were pouring down from leaden skies, hiding all the sides of

-the mountains and filling the valleys with masses of vapour. The road

-was barely passable; the hill torrents dashed across it; the little

-brooks were swollen to water-courses; the protecting wall on more than

-one giddy height had been swept away; the gallop of the horses shook

-the frail swaying galleries and hurled the loosened stones over the

-precipice with loud resounding noise. The drive to Matrey and thence

-with post-horses to S. Johann im Wald, the nearest railway station, was

-in itself no little peril, but it was accomplished before the day had

-closed in, and the special train she had ordered being in readiness

-left at once for Vienna, running through the low portions of the

-Pinzgau, which were for the most part under water.</p>

-

-<p>All the way was dim and watery, and full of the sound of running

-or of falling water. The Ache and the Szalsach, both always deep

-and turbulent rivers, were swollen and boisterous, and swirled and

-thundered in their rocky beds; in the grand Pass of Lueg the gloom,

-always great, was dense as at midnight, and when they reached Salzburg

-the setting sun was bursting through ink-black clouds, and shed a

-momentary glow as of fire upon the dark sides of the Untersberg, and

-flamed behind the towers of the great castle on its rocky throne. All

-travellers know the grandeur of that scene; familiar as it was to her

-she looked upward at it with awe and pleasure commingled. Salzburg in

-the evening light needs Salvator Rosa and Rembrandt together to portray

-it.</p>

-

-<p>The train only paused to take in water; the station was crowded as

-usual, set as it is between the frontiers of empire and kingdom, but in

-the brief interval she saw one whom she recognised amongst the throng,

-and she felt the colour come into her own face as she did so.</p>

-

-<p>She saw Sabran; he did not see her. Her train moved out of the station

-rapidly, to make room for the express from Munich; the sun dropped down

-into the ink-black clouds; the golden and crimson pomp of Untersberg

-changed to black and grey; the ivory and amber and crystal of the

-castle became stone and brick and iron, that frowned sombrely over a

-city sunk in river-mists and in rain-vapours. She felt angrily that

-there was an affinity between the landscape and herself; that so, at

-sight of him, a light had come into her life which had no reality in

-fact, prismatic colours baseless as a dream.</p>

-

-<p>She had longed to speak to him; to stretch out her hand to him; to

-say at least how her thoughts and her sympathies had been with him

-throughout the war. But her carriage was already in full onward

-movement, and in another moment had passed at high speed out of the

-station into that grand valley of the Szalzach where Hohensalzburg

-seems to tower as though Friederich Barbarossa did indeed sleep there.

-With a sigh she sank backward amongst her furs and cushions, and saw

-the soaring fortress pass, into the clouds.</p>

-

-<p>The night had now closed in; the rain fell heavily. As the little

-train, oscillating greatly from its lightness, swung over the iron

-rails, there was a continual sound of splashing water audible above

-the noise of the wheels and the throb of the engine. She had often

-travelled at night and had always slept soundly; this evening she could

-not sleep. She remained wide awake watching the swaying of the lamp,

-listening to the shrill shriek of the wheels as they rushed through

-water where some hillside brook had broken bounds and spread out in a

-shallow lagoon. The skies were overcast in every direction; the rain

-was everywhere unceasing; the night seemed to her very long.</p>

-

-<p>She pondered perpetually on his presence at Salzburg, and wondered if

-he were going to the Holy Isle. Three months had gone by since she had

-sent him the semi-invitation to her country.</p>

-

-<p>The train sped on; the day dawned; she began to get glimpses of the

-grand blue river, now grey and ochre-coloured and thick with mud, its

-turbid waves heaving sullenly under the stormy October skies. She had

-always loved the great Donau; she knew its cradle well in the north

-land of the Teutons. She had often watched the baby-stream rippling

-over the stones, and felt the charm, as of some magical transformation,

-as she thought of the same stream stretching broadly under the monastic

-walls of Klosterneuberg, rolling in tempest by the Iron Gates, and

-gathering its mighty volume higher and deeper to burst at last into

-the sunlight of the eastern sea. Amidst the levelled monotony of

-modern Europe the Danube keeps something of savage grandeur, something

-of legendary power, something of oriental charm; it is still often

-tameless, a half-barbaric thing, still a Tamerlane amidst rivers: and

-yet yonder at its birthplace it is such a slender thread of rippling

-water! She and Bela had crossed it with bare feet to get forget-me-nots

-in Taunus, talking together of Chriemhilde and her pilgrimage to the

-land of the Huns.</p>

-

-<p>The little train swung on steadily through the water above and below,

-and after a night of no little danger came safely to Vienna as the dawn

-broke. She went straight to her yacht, which was in readiness off the

-Lobau and weighed anchor as the pale and watery morning broadened into

-day above the shores that had seen Aspern and Wagram. The yacht was

-a yawl, strongly built and drawing little water, made on purpose for

-the ascent and descent of the Danube, from Passau up in the north to

-as far south as the Bosphorus if needed. The voyage had been of the

-greatest joys of hers and of Bela's childhood; they had read on deck

-alternately the 'Nibelungen-Lied' and the 'Arabian Nights,' clinging

-together in delighted awe as they passed through the darkness of the

-defile of Kasan.</p>

-

-<p>Idrac was situated between Pesth and Peterwardein, lying low on marshy

-ground that was covered with willows and intersected by small streams

-flowing from the interior to the Danube.</p>

-

-<p>The little town gave its name and its seigneurie to the owner of its

-burg; an ancient place built on a steep rock that rose sheer out of

-the fast-running waves, and dominated the passage of the stream. The

-Counts of Idrac had been exceeding powerful in the old times, when

-they had stopped at their will the right of way of the river; and

-their appanages with their title had come by marriage into the House

-of Szalras some four centuries before, and although the dominion over

-the river was gone, the fortress and the little town and all that

-appertained thereto still formed a considerable possession; it had

-usually been given with its Countship to the second son of the Szalras.</p>

-

-<p>Making the passage to Pesth in fourteen hours, the yacht dropped

-anchor before the Franz Josef Quai as the first stars came out above

-the Blocksburg, for by this time the skies had lightened and the rains

-had ceased. Here she stayed the night perforce, as an accident had

-occurred to the machinery of the vessel. She did not leave the yacht,

-but sent into the inner city for stores of provisions and of the local

-cordial, the <i>slibowitza</i>, to distribute to the half-drowned people

-amongst whom she was about to go. It was noonday before the yawl got

-under weigh and left the twin-towns behind her. A little way further

-down the stream they passed a great castle, standing amidst beech woods

-on a rock that rose up from fields covered with the Carlowitz vine. She

-looked at it with a sigh: it was the fortress of Kohacs, one of the

-many possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>The weather had now cleared, but the skies were overcast, and the

-plains, which began to spread away monotonously from either shore,

-were covered with white fog. Soon the fog spread also over the river,

-and the yacht was compelled to advance cautiously and slowly, so that

-the voyage was several hours longer than usual. When the light of the

-next day broke they had come in sight of the flooded districts on their

-right: the immense flat fields that bore the flax and grain which make

-the commerce of Baja, of Neusatz, and of other riverain towns, were

-all changed to shallow estuaries. The Theiss, the Drave, and many

-minor streams, swollen by the long autumnal rains, had burst their

-boundaries and laid all the country under water for hundreds of square

-leagues. The granaries, freshly filled with the late abundant harvest,

-had at many places been flooded or destroyed: thousands of stacks of

-grain were floating like shapeless, dismasted vessels. Timber and the

-thatched roofs of the one-storied houses were in many places drifting

-too, like the flotsam and the hulls of wrecked ships.</p>

-

-<p>There are few scenes more dreary, more sad, more monotonous than those

-of a flat country swamped by flood: the sky above them was leaden

-and heavy, the Danube beneath them was turgid and discoloured; the

-shrill winds whistled through the brakes of willow, the water-birds,

-frightened, flew from their osier-beds on the islands, the bells of

-churches and watch-towers tolled dismally.</p>

-

-<p>It was late in the afternoon when she came within sight of her little

-town on the Sclavonian shore, which Ernst von Szalras had fired on

-August 29, 1526, to save it from the shame of violation by the Turks.

-Though he had perished, and most of the soldiers and townsfolk with

-him, the fortress, the <i>têtes du pont</i>, and the old water-gates and

-walls had been too strong for the flames to devour, and the town had

-been built up again by the Turks and subsequently by the Hungarians.</p>

-

-<p>The slender minarets of the Ottomans' two mosques still raised

-themselves amidst the old Gothic architecture of the mediæval

-buildings, and the straw-covered roofs and the white-plastered walls

-of the modern houses. As they steamed near it the minarets and the

-castle towers rose above what looked a world of waters, all else seemed

-swallowed in the flood; the orchards, which had surrounded all save the

-river-side of the town; were immersed almost to the summits of their

-trees. The larger vessels could never approach Idrac in ordinary times,

-the creek being too shallow on which it stood; but now the water was

-so high that though it would be too imprudent to anchor there, the

-yacht easily passed in, and hove-to underneath the water-walls, a pilot

-taking careful soundings as they steered. It was about three in the

-afternoon. The short, grey day was near its end; a shout of welcome

-rose from some people on the walls as they recognised the build and the

-ensign of the yawl. Some crowded boats were pulling away from the town,

-laden with fugitives and their goods.</p>

-

-<p>'How soon people run away! They are like rats,' she thought. 'I would

-sooner be like the stork, and not quit my nest if it were in flames.'</p>

-

-<p>She landed at the water-stairs of the castle. Men, women, and children

-came scrambling along the walls, where they were huddled together out

-of temporary reach of the flood, and threw themselves down at her

-feet and kissed her skirts with abject servility. They were half mad

-with terror, and amongst the population there were many hundreds of

-Jews, the most cowardly people in all the world. The boats were quite

-inadequate in number to the work they had to do; the great steamers

-passing up and down did not pause to help them; the flood was so

-general below Pesth that on the right shore of the river each separate

-village and township was busy with its own case and had no help for

-neighbours: the only aid came from those on the opposite shore, but

-that was scanty and unwisely ministered. The chief citizens of Idrac

-had lost their wits, as she had foreseen they would do. To ring the

-bells madly night and day, and fire off the old culverins from the

-water-gate, was all they seemed to know how to do. They told her that

-many lives had been lost, as the inland waters had risen in the night,

-and most of the houses were of only one storey. In the outlying

-flax-farms it was supposed that whole households had perished. In the

-town itself there were six feet of water everywhere, and many of the

-inhabitants were huddled together in the two mosques, which were now

-granaries, in the towers, and in the fortress itself; but several

-families had been enabled to escape, and had climbed upon the roofs,

-clinging to the chimneys for bare life.</p>

-

-<p>Her mere presence brought reviving hope and energy to the primitive

-population. Their Lady had a romantic legendary reputation amongst

-them, and they were ready to cling round the pennon of the yacht as

-their ancestors had rallied round the standard of Ernst von Szalras.</p>

-

-<p>She ascended to the Rittersaal of the fortress, and assembled a few of

-the men about her, who had the most influence and energy in the little

-place. She soon introduced some kind of system and method into the

-efforts made, promised largesse to those who should be the most active,

-and had the provisions she had brought distributed amongst those who

-most needed them. The boats of the yawl took many away to a temporary

-refuge on the opposite shore. Many others were brought in to the

-state-room of the castle for shelter. Houses were constantly falling,

-undermined by the water, and there were dead and wounded to be attended

-to, as well as the hungry and terrified living creatures. Once before,

-Idrac had been thus devastated by flood, but it had been far away in

-the previous century, and the example was too distant to have been a

-warning to the present generation.</p>

-

-<p>She passed a fatiguing and anxious night. It was impossible to

-think of sleep with so much misery around. The yacht was obliged to

-descend, the river for safe anchorage, but the boats remained. She

-went herself, now in one, now in another, to endeavour to inspire the

-paralysed people with some courage and animation. A little wine, a

-little bread, were all she took; food was very scarce. The victuals of

-the yacht's provisioning did not last long amongst so many famishing

-souls. She ordered her skipper at dawn to go down as far as Neusatz

-and purchase largely. There were five thousand people, counting those

-of the neighbourhood, or more, homeless and bereft of all shelter. The

-telegraph was broken, the poles had been snapped by the force of the

-water in many places.</p>

-

-<p>With dawn a furious storm gathered and broke, and renewed rains added

-their quota to the inundation and their discomfort to the exposed

-sufferers. The cold was great, and the chill that made them shudder

-from head to foot was past all cure by cordials. She regretted not

-to have brought Greswold with her. She was indifferent to danger,

-indefatigable in exertion, and strong as Libussa, brave as Chriemhilde.

-Because the place belonged to her in almost a feudal manner, she held

-herself bound to give her life for it if need be. Bela would have done

-what she was doing.</p>

-

-<p>Twice or thrice during the two following days she heard the people

-speak of a stranger who had arrived fifteen hours before her, and had

-wrought miracles of deliverance. Unless the stories told her were

-greatly exaggerated, this foreigner had shown a courage and devotion

-quite unequalled. He had thrown himself into the work at once on his

-arrival there in a boat from Neusatz, and had toiled night and day,

-enduring extreme fatigue and running almost every hour some dire peril

-of his life. He had saved whole families of the poorest and most

-wretched quarter; he had sprung on to roofs that were splitting and

-sinking, on to walls that were trembling and tottering, and had borne

-away in safety men, women, and children, the old, and the sick, and the

-very animals; he had infused some of his own daring and devotedness

-into the selfish and paralysed Hebrew population; priests and rabbis

-were alike unanimous in his praise, and she, as she heard, felt that

-he who had fought for France had been here for her sake. They told

-her that he was now out amongst the more distant orchards and fields,

-amidst the flooded farms where the danger was even greater than in the

-town itself. Some Czechs said that he was S. John of Nepomuc himself.

-She bade them bring him to her, that she might thank him, whenever he

-should enter the town again, and then thought of him no more.</p>

-

-<p>Her whole mind and feeling were engrossed by the spectacle of a misery

-that even all her wealth could not do very much to alleviate. The

-waters as yet showed no sign of abatement. The crash of falling houses

-sounded heavily ever and again through the gloom. The melancholy sight

-of humble household things, of drowned cattle, of dead dogs, borne down

-the discoloured flood out to the Danube renewed itself every hour.

-The lamentations of the ruined people went up in an almost continuous

-wail like the moaning of a winter wind. There was nothing grand,

-nothing picturesque, nothing exciting to redeem the dreariness and the

-desolation. It was all ugly, miserable, dull. It was more trying than

-war, which even in its hideous senselessness lends a kind of brutal

-intoxication to all whom it surrounds.</p>

-

-<p>She was incessantly occupied and greatly fatigued, so that the time

-passed without her counting it. She sent a message each day to the

-Princess at home, and promised to return as soon as the waters had

-subsided and the peril passed. For the first time in her life she

-experienced real discomfort, real privation; she had surrendered nearly

-all the rooms in the burg to the sick people, and food ran short and

-there was none of good quality, though she knew that supplies would

-soon come from the steward at Kohacs and by the yacht.</p>

-

-<p>On the fourth day the waters had sunk an inch. As she heard the good

-tidings she was looking out inland over the waste of grey and yellow

-flood; a Jewish rabbi was beside her speaking of the exertions of the

-stranger, in whom the superstitious of the townsfolk saw a saint from

-heaven.</p>

-

-<p>'And does no one even know who he is?' she asked.</p>

-

-<p>'No one has asked,' answered the Jew. 'He has been always out where the

-peril was greatest.'</p>

-

-<p>'How came he here?'</p>

-

-<p>'He came by one of the big steamers that go to Turkey. He pulled

-himself here in a little boat that he had bought; the boat in which he

-has done such good service.'</p>

-

-<p>'What is he like in appearance?'</p>

-

-<p>'He is very tall, very fair, and handsome; I should think he is

-northern.'</p>

-

-<p>Her pulse beat quicker for a moment; then she rejected the idea as

-absurd, though indeed, she reflected, she had seen him at Salzburg.</p>

-

-<p>'He must at least be a brave man,' she said quietly. 'If you see him

-bring him to me that I may thank him. Is he in the town now?'</p>

-

-<p>'No; he is yonder, where the Rathwand farms are, or were; where your

-Excellency sees those dark, long islands which are not islands at all,

-but only the summits of cherry orchards. He has carried the people

-away, carried them down to Peterwardein; and he is now about to try and

-rescue some cattle which were driven up on to the roof of a tower, poor

-beasts&mdash;that tower to the east there, very far away: it is five miles

-as the crow flies.'</p>

-

-<p>'I suppose he will come into the town again?'</p>

-

-<p>'He was here last night; he had heard of your Excellency, and asked for

-her health.'</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! I will see and thank him if he come again.'</p>

-

-<p>But no one that day saw the stranger in Idrac.</p>

-

-<p>The rains fell again and the waters again rose. The maladies which

-come of damp and of bad exhalations spread amongst the people; they

-could not all be taken to other villages or towns, for there was no

-room for them. She had quinine, wines, good food ordered by the great

-steamers, but they were not yet arrived. What could be got at Neusatz

-or Peterwardein the yacht brought, but it was not enough for so many

-sick and starving people. The air began to grow fœtid from the many

-carcases of animals, though as they floated the vultures from the hills

-fed on them. She had a vessel turned into a floating hospital, and

-the most delicate of the sick folk carried to it, and had it anchored

-off the nearest port. Her patience, her calmness, and her courage did

-more to revive the sinking hearts of the homeless creatures than the

-cordials and the food. She was all day long out in her boat, being

-steered from one spot to another. At night she rested little and passed

-from one sick bed to another. She had never been so near to hopeless

-human misery before. At Hohenszalras no one was destitute.</p>

-

-<p>One twilight hour on the ninth day, as she was rowed back to the castle

-stairs, she passed another boat in which were two lads and a man. The

-man was rowing, a dusky shadow in the gloom of the wet evening and the

-uncouthness of his waterproof pilot's dress; but she had a lantern

-beside her, and she flashed its light full on the boat as it passed

-her. When she reached the burg, she said to her servant Anton: 'Herr

-von Sabran is in Idrac; go and say that I desire to see him.'</p>

-

-<p>Anton, who remembered him well, returned in an hour, and said he could

-neither find him nor hear of him.</p>

-

-<p>All the night long, a cheerless tedious night, with the rain falling

-without and the storm that was raging in the Bosphorus sending its

-shrill echoes up the Danube, she sat by the beds of the sick women

-or paced up and down the dimly-lit Rittersaal in an impatience which

-it humiliated her to feel. It touched her that he should be here,

-so silently, so sedulously avoiding her, and doing so much for the

-people of Idrac, because they were her people. The old misgiving that

-she had been ungenerous in her treatment of him returned to her. He

-seemed always to have the finer part&mdash;the <i>beau rôle.</i> To her, royal

-in giving, imperious in conduct, it brought a sense of failure, of

-inferiority. As she read the psalms in Hungarian to the sick Magyar

-women, her mind perpetually wandered away to him.</p>

-

-<p>She did not see Sabran again, but she heard often of him. The fair

-stranger, as the people called him, was always conspicuous wherever

-the greatest danger was to be encountered. There was always peril in

-almost every movement where the undermined houses, the tottering walls,

-the stagnant water, the fever-reeking marshes presented at every turn a

-perpetual menace to life. 'He is not vainly <i>un fils des preux</i>,' she

-thought, with a thrill of personal pride, as if someone near and dear

-to her were praised, as she listened to the stories of his intrepidity

-and his endurance. Whole nights spent in soaked clothes, in half

-swamped boats; whole days lost in impotent conflict with the ignorance

-or the poltroonery of an obstinate populace, continual risk encountered

-without counting its cost to rescue some poor man's sick beast, or pull

-a cripple from beneath falling beams, or a lad from choking mud; hour

-on hour of steady laborious rowing, of passage to and fro the sullen

-river with a freight of moaning, screaming peasantry&mdash;this was not

-child's play, nor had it any of the animation and excitation which in

-war or in adventure make of danger a strong wine that goes merrily and

-voluptuously to the head. It was all dull, stupid, unlovely, and he

-had come to it for her sake. For her sake certainly, though he never

-approached her; though when Anton at last found and took her message

-to him he excused himself from obedience to it by a plea that he was

-at that moment wet and weary, and had come from a hut where typhoid

-raged. She understood the excuse; she knew that he knew well she was no

-more afraid than he of that contagion. She admired him the more for his

-isolation; in these grey, rainy, tedious, melancholy days his figure

-seemed to grow into a luminous heroic shape like one of the heroes of

-the olden time. If he had once seemed to seek a guerdon for it the

-spell would have been broken. But he never did. She began to believe

-that such a knight deserved any recompense which she could give.</p>

-

-<p>'Egon himself could have done no more,' she said in her own thoughts,

-and it was the highest praise that she could give to any man, for

-her Magyar cousin was the embodiment of all martial daring, of all

-chivalrous ardour, and had led his glittering hussars down on to the

-French bayonets, as on to the Prussian Krupp guns, with a fury that

-bore all before it, impetuous and irresistible as a stream of fired

-naphtha.</p>

-

-<p>On the twelfth morning the river had sunk so much lower that the yacht

-arriving with medicines and stores of food from Neusatz signalled that

-she could not enter the creek on which Idrac stood, and waited orders.

-It had ceased to rain, but the winds were still strong and the skies

-heavy. She descended to her boat at the water-gate, and told the men to

-take her out to the yacht. It was early, the sun behind the clouds had

-barely climbed above the distant Wallachian woods, and the scene had

-lost nothing of its melancholy. A man was standing on the water-stairs

-as she descended them, and turned rapidly away, but she had seen him

-and stretched out her long staff and touched him lightly.</p>

-

-<p>'Why do you avoid me?' she said, as he uncovered his head; 'my men

-sought you in all directions; I wished to thank you.'</p>

-

-<p>He bowed low over the hand she held out to him. 'I ventured to be near

-at hand to be of use,' he answered. 'I was afraid the exposure, and,

-the damp, and all this pestilence would make you ill: you are not ill?'</p>

-

-<p>'No; I am quite well. I have heard of all your courage and endurance.

-Idrac owes you a great debt.'</p>

-

-<p>'I only pay my debt to Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>They were both silent; a certain constraint was upon them both.</p>

-

-<p>'How did you know of the inundation? It was unkind of you not to come

-to me,' she said, and her voice was unsteady as she spoke. 'I want so

-much to tell you, better than letters can do, all that we felt for you

-throughout that awful war.'</p>

-

-<p>He turned away slightly with a shudder. 'You are too good. Thousands of

-men much better than I suffered much more.'</p>

-

-<p>The tears rose to her eyes as she glanced at him. He was looking pale

-and worn. He had lost the graceful <i>insouciance</i> of his earlier manner.

-He looked grave, weary, melancholy, like a man who had passed through

-dire disaster, unspeakable pain, and had seen his career snapped in

-two like a broken wand. But there was about him instead something

-soldierlike, proven, war-worn, which became him in her eyes, daughter

-of a race of warriors as she was.</p>

-

-<p>'You have much to tell me, and I have much to hear,' she said, after

-a pause. 'You should have come to the monastery to be cured of your

-wounds. Why were you so mistrustful of our friendship?'</p>

-

-<p>He coloured and was silent.</p>

-

-<p>'Indeed,' she said gravely, 'we can honour brave men in the Tauern and

-in Idrac too. You are very brave. I do not know how to thank you for my

-people or for myself.'</p>

-

-<p>'Pray do not speak so,' he said, in a very low voice. 'To see you again

-would be recompense for much worthier things than any I have done.'</p>

-

-<p>'But you might have seen me long ago,' she said, with a certain

-nervousness new to her, 'had you only chosen to come to the Isle. I

-asked you twice.'</p>

-

-<p>He looked at her with eyes of longing and pathetic appeal.</p>

-

-<p>'Do not tempt me,' he murmured. 'If I yielded, and if you despised

-me&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'How could I despise one who has so nobly saved the lives of my people?'</p>

-

-<p>'You would do so.'</p>

-

-<p>He spoke very low: he was silent a little while, then he said very

-softly:</p>

-

-<p>'One evening, when we spoke together on the terrace at Hohenszalras,

-you leant your hand upon the ivy there. I plucked the leaf you touched;

-you did not see. I had the leaf with me all through the war. It was

-a talisman. It was like a holy thing. When your cousin's soldiers

-stripped me in their ambulance, they took it from me.'</p>

-

-<p>His voice faltered. She listened and was moved to a profound emotion.</p>

-

-<p>'I will give you something better,' she said very gravely. He did not

-ask her what she would give.</p>

-

-<p>She looked away from him awhile, and her face flushed a little. She was

-thinking of what she would give him; a gift so great that the world

-would deem her mad to bestow it, and perhaps would deem him dishonoured

-to take it.</p>

-

-<p>'How did you hear of these floods along the Danube?' she asked him,

-recovering her wonted composure.</p>

-

-<p>'I read about them in telegrams in Paris,' he made answer. 'I had

-mustered courage to revisit my poor Paris; all I possess is there.

-Nothing has been injured; a shell burst quite close by but did not

-harm my apartments. I went to make arrangements for the sale of my

-collections, and on the second day that I arrived there I saw the news

-of the inundations of Idrac and the lower Danubian plains. I remembered

-the name of the town; I remembered it was yours. I remembered your

-saying once that where you had feudal rights you had feudal duties, so

-I came on the chance of being of service.'</p>

-

-<p>'You have been most devoted to the people.'</p>

-

-<p>'The people! What should I care though the whole town perished? Do not

-attribute to me a humanity that is not in my nature.'</p>

-

-<p>'Be as cynical as you like in words so long as you are heroic in

-action. I am going out to the yacht; will you come with me?'</p>

-

-<p>He hesitated. 'I merely came to hear from the warder of your health. I

-am going to catch the express steamer at Neusatz; all danger is over.'</p>

-

-<p>'The yacht can take you to Neusatz. Come with me.'</p>

-

-<p>He did not offer more opposition; he accompanied her to the boat and

-entered it.</p>

-

-<p>The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing more, but she could not

-forget that scores of her own people here had owed their lives to his

-intrepidity and patience, and that he had never hesitated to throw his

-life into the balance when needed. And it had been done for her sake

-alone. The love of humanity might have been a nobler and purer motive,

-but it would not have touched her so nearly as the self-abandonment of

-a man by nature selfish and cold.</p>

-

-<p>In a few moments they were taken to the yawl. He ascended the deck with

-her.</p>

-

-<p>The tidings the skipper brought, the examination of the stores, the

-discussion of ways and means, the arrangements for the general relief,

-were air dull, practical matters that claimed careful attention and

-thought. She sat in the little cabin that was brave with marqueterie

-work and blue satin and Dresden mirrors, and made memoranda and

-calculations, and consulted him, and asked his advice on this, on

-that. The government official, sent to make official estimates of the

-losses in the township, had come on board to salute and take counsel

-with her. The whole forenoon passed in these details. He wrote, and

-calculated, and drew up reports for her. No more tender or personal

-word was spoken between them; but there was a certain charm for them

-both in this intimate intercourse, even though it took no other shape

-than the study of how many boatloads of wheat were needed for so many

-hundred people, of how many florins a day might be passed to the head

-of each family, of how many of the flooded houses would still be

-serviceable with restoration, of how many had been entirely destroyed,

-of how the town would best be rebuilt, and of how the inland rivers

-could best be restrained in the future.</p>

-

-<p>To rebuild it she estimated that she would have to surrender for five

-years the revenues from her Galician and Hungarian mines, and she

-resolved to do it altogether at her own cost. She had no wish to see

-the town figure in public prints as the object of public subscription.</p>

-

-<p>'I am sure all my woman friends,' she said, 'would kindly make it

-occasion for a fancy fair or a lottery (with new costumes) in Vienna,

-but I do not care for that sort of thing, and I can very well do what

-is needed alone.'</p>

-

-<p>He was silent. He had always known that her riches were great, but

-he had never realised them as fully as he now did when she spoke of

-rebuilding an entire town as she might have spoken of building a

-carriage.</p>

-

-<p>'You would make a good prime minister,' she said, smiling; 'you have

-the knowledge of a specialist on so many subjects.'</p>

-

-<p>At noon they served her a little plain breakfast of Danubian

-<i>salbling</i>, with Carlowitzer wine and fruit sent by the steward of

-Mohacs. She bade him join her in it.</p>

-

-<p>'Had Egon himself been here he could not have done more for Idrac than

-you have done,' she said.</p>

-

-<p>'Is this Prince Egon's wine?' he said abruptly, and on hearing that it

-was so, he set the glass down untasted.</p>

-

-<p>She looked surprised, but she did not ask him his reason, for she

-divined it. There was an exaggeration in the unspoken hostility more

-like the days of Arthur and Lancelot than their own, but it did not

-displease her.</p>

-

-<p>They were both little disposed to converse during their meal; after the

-dreary and terrible scenes they had been witness of, the atmosphere

-of life seems grave and dark even to those whom the calamity had not

-touched. The most careless spirit is oppressed by a sense of the

-precariousness and the cruelty of existence.</p>

-

-<p>When they ascended to the deck the skies were lighter than they had

-been for many weeks; the fog had cleared, so that, in the distance, the

-towers of Neusatz and the fortress of Peterwardein were visible; vapour

-still hung over the vast Hungarian plain, but the Danube was clear and

-the affluents of it had sunk to their usual level.</p>

-

-<p>'You really go to-night?' she said, as they looked down the river.</p>

-

-<p>'There is no need for me to stay; the town is safe, and you are well,

-you say. If there be anything I can still do, command me.'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled a little and let her eye meet his for a moment.</p>

-

-<p>'Well, if I command you to remain then, will you do so as my viceroy?

-I want to return home; Aunt Ottilie grows daily more anxious, more

-alarmed, but I cannot leave these poor souls all alone with their

-priests, and their rabbi, who are all as timid as sheep and as stupid.

-Will you stay in the castle and govern them, and help them till they

-recover from their fright? It is much to ask, I know, but you have

-already done so much for Idrac that I am bold to ask you to do more?'</p>

-

-<p>He coloured with a mingled emotion.</p>

-

-<p>'You could ask me nothing that I would not do,' he said in a low tone.

-'I could wish you asked me something harder.'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, it will be very hard,' she said, with an indifference she did not

-feel. 'It will be very dull, and you will have no one to speak to that

-knows anything save how to grow flax and cherries. You will have to

-talk the Magyar tongue all day, and you will have nothing to eat save

-<i>kartoffeln</i> and <i>salbling</i>; and I do not know that I am even right,'

-she added, more gravely, 'to ask you to incur the risks that come from

-all that soaked, ground, which will be damp so long.'</p>

-

-<p>'The risks that you have borne yourself! Pray do not wound me by any

-such scruple as that. I shall be glad, I shall be proud, to be for ever

-so short or so long a time as you command, your representative, your

-servant.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are very good.'</p>

-

-<p>'No.'</p>

-

-<p>His eyes looked at hers with a quick flash, in which all the passion

-he dared not express was spoken. She averted her glance and continued

-calmly: 'You are very good indeed to Idrac. It will be a great

-assistance and comfort to me to know that you are here. The poor people

-already love you, and you will write to me and tell me all that may

-need to be done. I will leave you the yacht and Anton. I shall return

-by land with my woman; and when I reach home I will send you Herr

-Greswold. He is a good companion, and has a great admiration for you,

-though he wishes that you had not forsaken the science of botany.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is like all other dissection or vivisection; it spoils the artistic

-appreciation of the whole. I am yet unsophisticated enough to feel the

-charm of a bank of violets, of a cliff covered with alpen-roses. I may

-write to you?'</p>

-

-<p>'You must write to me! It is you who will know all the needs of Idrac.

-But are you sure that to remain here will not interfere with your own

-projects, your own wishes, your own duties?'</p>

-

-<p>'I have none. If I had any I would throw them away, with pleasure, to

-be of use to one of your dogs, to one of your birds.'</p>

-

-<p>She moved from his side a little.</p>

-

-<p>'Look how the sun has come out. I can see the sparkle of the brass on

-the cannon down yonder at Neusatz. We had better go now. I must see my

-sick people and then leave as soon as I can. The yacht must take me to

-Mohacs; from there I will send her back to you.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do as you will. I can have no greater happiness than to obey you.'</p>

-

-<p>'I am sure that I thank you in the way that you like best, when I say

-that I believe you.'</p>

-

-<p>She said the words in a very low tone, but so calmly that the calmness

-of them checked any other words he might have uttered. It was a royal

-acceptance of a loyal service; nothing more. The boat took them back

-to the fortress. Whilst she was occupied in her farewell to the sick

-people, and her instructions to those who attended on them, he, left

-to himself in the apartment she had made her own, instinctively went

-to an old harpsichord that stood there and touched the keys. It had a

-beautiful case, rich with the varnish of the Martins. He played with

-it awhile for its external beauty, and then let his fingers stray over

-its limited keyboard. It had still sweetness in it, like the spinet

-of Hohenszalras. It suited certain pathetic quaint old German airs he

-knew, and which he half unconsciously reproduced upon it, singing them

-as he did so in a low tone. The melody, very soft and subdued, suited

-to the place where death had been so busy and nature so unsparing, and

-where a resigned exhaustion had now succeeded to the madness of terror,

-reached the ears of the sick women in the Rittersaal and of Wanda von

-Szalras seated beside their beds.</p>

-

-<p>'It is like the saints in Heaven sighing in pity for us here,' said one

-of the women who was very feeble and old, and she smiled as she heard.

-The notes, tremulous from age but penetrating in their sweetness, came

-in slow calm movements of harmony through the stillness of the chamber;

-his voice, very low also, but clear, ascended with them. Wanda sat

-quite still, and listened with a strange pleasure. 'He alone,' she

-thought, 'can make the dumb strings speak.</p>

-

-<p>It was almost dusk when she descended to the room which she had made

-her own. In the passages of the castle oil wicks were lighted in the

-iron lamps and wall sconces, but here it was without any light, and

-in the gloom she saw the dim outline of his form as he sat by the

-harpsichord. He had ceased playing; his head was bent down and rested

-on the instrument; he was lost in thought, and his whole attitude was

-dejected. He did not hear her approach, and she looked at him some

-moments, herself unseen. A great tenderness came over her: he was

-unhappy, and he had been very brave, very generous, very loyal: she

-felt almost ashamed. She went nearer, and he raised himself abruptly.</p>

-

-<p>'I am going,' she said to him. 'Will you come with me to the yacht?'</p>

-

-<p>He rose, and though it was dusk, and in this chamber so dark that his

-face was indistinct to her, she was sure that tears had been in his

-eyes.</p>

-

-<p>'Your old harpsichord has the vernis Martin,' he said, with effort.

-'You should not leave it buried here. It has a melody in it too, faint

-and simple and full of the past, like the smell of dead rose-leaves.

-Yes, I will have the honour to come with you. I wish there were a full

-moon. It will be a dark night on the Danube.'</p>

-

-<p>'My men know the soundings of the river well. As for the harpsichord,

-you alone have found its voice. It shall go to your rooms in Paris.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are too good, but I would not take it. Let it go to Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>'Why would you not take it?</p>

-

-<p>'I would take nothing from you.'</p>

-

-<p>He spoke abruptly, and with some sternness.</p>

-

-<p>'I think there is such a thing as being too proud? she said, with

-hesitation.</p>

-

-<p>'Your ancestors would not say so,' he answered, with an effort; she

-understood the meaning that underlay the words. He turned away and

-closed the lid of the harpsichord, where little painted cupids wantoned

-in a border of metal scroll-work.</p>

-

-<p>All the men and women well enough to stand crowded on the water-stairs

-to see her departure; little children were held up in their mother's

-arms and bidden remember her for evermore; all feeble creatures lifted

-up their voices to praise her; Jew and Christian blessed her; the

-water-gate was cumbered with sobbing people, trying to see her face,

-to kiss her skirt for the last time. She could not be wholly unmoved

-before that unaffected, irrepressible emotion. Their poor lives were

-not worth much, but such as they were she, under Heaven, had saved them.</p>

-

-<p>'I will return and see you again,' she said to them, as she made a slow

-way through the eager crowd. 'Thank Heaven, my people, not me. And I

-leave my friend with you, who did much more for you than I. Respect him

-and obey him.'</p>

-

-<p>They raised with their thin trembling voices a loud <i>Eljén</i>! of homage

-and promise, and she passed away from their sight into the evening

-shadows on the wide river.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran accompanied her to the vessel, which was to take her to the town

-of Mohacs, thence to make her journey home by railway.</p>

-

-<p>'I shall not leave until you bid me, even though you should forget to

-call me all in my life!' he said, as the boat slipped through the dark

-water.</p>

-

-<p>'Such oblivion would be a poor reward.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have had reward enough. You have called me your friend.'</p>

-

-<p>She was silent. The boat ran through the dusk and the rippling rays of

-light streaming from the sides of the yacht, and they went on board. He

-stood a moment with uncovered head before her on the deck, and she gave

-him her hand.</p>

-

-<p>'You will come to the Holy Isle?' she said, as she did so.</p>

-

-<p>'If you bid me,' he said, as he bowed and kissed her hand. His lips

-trembled as he did so, and by the lamplight she saw that he was very

-pale.</p>

-

-<p>'I shall bid you,' she said, very softly, by-and-by. Farewell!'</p>

-

-<p>He bowed very low once more, then he dropped over the yacht's side into

-the boat waiting below; the splash of the oars told her he was gone

-back to Idrac. The yawl weighed anchor and began to go up the river,

-a troublesome and tedious passage at all seasons. She sat on deck

-watching the strong current of the Danube as it rolled on under the bow

-of the schooner. For more than a league she could see the beacon that

-burned by the water-gate of the fortress. When the curve of the stream

-hid it from her eyes she felt a pang of painful separation, of wistful

-attachment to the old dreary walls where she had seen so much suffering

-and so much courage, and where she had learned to read her own heart

-without any possibility of ignoring its secrets. A smile came on her

-mouth and a moisture in her eyes as she sat alone in the dark autumn

-night, while the schooner made her slow ascent through the swell that

-accompanies the influx of the Drave.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>In two days' time Hohenszalras received its mistress home.</p>

-

-<p>She was not in any way harmed by the perils she had encountered, and

-the chills and fever to which she had been exposed. On the contrary,

-her eyes had a light and her face had a bloom which for many months had

-not been there.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess heard a brief sketch of what had passed in almost

-total silence. She had disapproved strongly, and she said that her

-disapproval could not change, though a merciful heavenly host had

-spared her the realisation of her worst fears.</p>

-

-<p>The name of Sabran was not spoken. Wanda was of a most truthful temper,

-but she could not bring herself to speak of his presence at Idrac; the

-facts would reveal themselves inevitably soon enough.</p>

-

-<p>She sent Greswold to the Danube laden with stores and medicines.

-She received a letter every morning from her delegate; but he wrote

-briefly, and with scrupulous care, the statements of facts connected

-with the town and reports of what had been done. Her engineer had

-arrived from the mines by Kremnitz, and the builders estimated that

-the waters would have subsided and settled enough, if no fresh rising

-took place, for them to begin the reconstruction of the town with the

-beginning of the new month. Ague and fever were still very common, and

-fresh cases were brought in every hour to the hospital in the fortress.

-He wrote on the arrival of Herr Greswold, that, with her permission, he

-himself would still stay on, for the people had grown used to him, and

-having some knowledge of hydraulics he would be interested to see the

-plans proposed by her engineers for preserving the town from similar

-calamities.</p>

-

-<p>Three weeks passed; all that time she spoke but little either of him or

-of any other subject. She took endless rides, and she sat many hours

-doing nothing in the white room, absorbed in thought. The Princess,

-who had learned what had passed, with admirable exercise of tact and

-self-restraint made neither suggestion nor innuendo, and accepted the

-presence of a French Marquis at a little obscure town in Sclavonia as

-if it were the most natural circumstance in the world.</p>

-

-<p>'All the Szalras have been imperious, arrogant, and of complicated

-character,' she thought; 'she has the same temper, though it is

-mitigated in her by great natural nobility of disposition and strong

-purity of motives. She will do as she chooses, let all the world do

-what it may to change her. If I say a word either way it may take

-effect in some wholly unforeseen manner that I should regret. It is

-better to abstain. In doubt do nothing, is the soundest of axioms.'</p>

-

-<p>And Princess Ottilie, who on occasion had the wisdom of the serpent

-with the sweetness of the dove, preserved a discreet silence, and

-devoured her really absorbing curiosity in her own heart.</p>

-

-<p>At the end of the fourth week she heard that all was well at Idrac,

-so far as it could be so in a place almost wholly destroyed. There

-was no sign of renewed rising of the inland streams. The illness was

-diminished, almost conquered; the people had begun to take heart and

-hope, and, being aided, wished to aid themselves. The works for new

-embankments, water-gates, and streets were already planned, though

-they could not be begun until the spring. Meanwhile, strong wooden

-houses were being erected on dry places, which which could shelter

-<i>ad interim</i> many hundreds of families; the farmers were gradually

-venturing to return to their flooded lands. The town had suffered

-grievously and in much irreparably, but it began to resume its trade

-and its normal life.</p>

-

-<p>She hesitated a whole day when she heard this. Though Sabran did not

-hint at any desire of his own to leave the place, she knew it, was

-impossible to bid him remain longer, and that a moment of irrevocable

-decision was come. She hesitated all the day, slept little all the

-night, then sent him a brief telegram: 'Come to the Island.'</p>

-

-<p>Obey the summons as rapidly as he might, he could not travel by Vienna

-and Salzburg more quickly than in some thirty hours or more. The time

-passed to her in a curious confusion and anxiety. Outwardly she was

-calm enough; she visited the schools, wrote some letters, and took her

-usual long ride in the now leafless woods, but at heart she was unquiet

-and ill at ease, troubled more than by anything else at the force of

-the desire she felt to meet him once more. It was but a month since

-they had parted on the deck, and it seemed ten years. She had known

-what he had meant when he had said that he would come if she bade him;

-she had known that she would only do the sheerest cruelty and treachery

-if she called him thither only to dismiss him. It had not been a visit

-of the moment, but all his life that she had consented to take when she

-had written 'Come to the Island.'</p>

-

-<p>She would never have written it unless she had been prepared to fulfil

-all to which it tacitly pledged her. She was incapable of wantonly

-playing with any passion that moved another, least of all with his. The

-very difference of their position would have made indecision or coyness

-in her seem cruelty, humiliation. The decision hurt her curiously with

-a sense of abdication, mortification, and almost shame. To a very proud

-woman in whom the senses have never asserted their empire, there is

-inevitably an emotion of almost shame, of self-surrender, of loss of

-self-respect, in the first impulses of love. It made her abashed and

-humiliated to feel the excitation that the mere touch of his hand, the

-mere gaze of his eyes, had power to cause her. 'If this be love,' she

-thought, 'no wonder the world is lost for it.'</p>

-

-<p>Do what she would, the time seemed very long; the two evenings that

-passed were very tedious and oppressive. The Princess seemed to

-observe nothing of what she was perfectly conscious of, and her

-flute-like voice murmured on in an unending stream of commonplaces to

-which her niece replied much at random.</p>

-

-<p>In the afternoon of the third day she stood on the terrace looking down

-the lake and towards the Holy Isle, with an impatience of which she was

-in turn impatient. She was dressed in white woollen stuff with silver

-threads in it; she had about her throat an old necklace of the Golden

-Fleece, of golden shells enamelled, which had been a gift from Charles

-the Fifth to one of her house; over her shoulders, for the approach

-of evening was cold, she had thrown a cloak of black Russian sables.

-She made a figure beautiful, stately, patrician, in keeping with the

-background of the great donjon tower, and the pinnacled roofs, and the

-bronze warriors in their Gothic niches.</p>

-

-<p>When she had stood there a few minutes looking down the lake towards

-the willows of the monastery island, a boat came out from the willow

-thickets, and came over the mile-and-half of green shadowy water. There

-was only one person in it. She recognised him whilst he was still far

-off, and a smile came on her mouth that it was a pity he could not see.</p>

-

-<p>He was a bold man, but his heart stood still with awe of her, and his

-soul trembled within him at this supreme moment of his fate. For he

-believed that she would not have bidden him there unless her hand were

-ready to hold out destiny to him&mdash;the destiny of his maddest, of his

-sweetest, dreams.</p>

-

-<p>She came forward a few paces to meet him; her face was grave and pale,

-but her eyes had a soft suppressed light.</p>

-

-<p>'I have much for which to thank you,' she said, as she held out her

-hand to him. Her voice was tremulous though calm.</p>

-

-<p>He kissed her hand, then stood silent. It seemed to him that there was

-nothing to say. She knew what he would have said if he had been king,

-or hero, or meet mate for her. His pulses were beating feverishly, his

-self-possession was gone, his eyes did not dare to meet hers. He felt

-as if the green woods, the shining waters, the rain-burdened skies were

-wheeling round him. That dumbness, that weakness, in a man so facile

-of eloquence, so hardy and even cynical in courage, touched her to a

-wondering pitifulness.</p>

-

-<p>'After all,' she thought once more, 'if we love one another what is it

-to anyone else? We are both free.'</p>

-

-<p>If the gift she would give would be so great that the world would blame

-him for accepting it, what would that matter so long as she knew him

-blameless?</p>

-

-<p>They were both mute: he did not even look at her, and she might have

-heard the beating of his heart. She looked at him and the colour came

-back into her face, the smile back upon her mouth.</p>

-

-<p>'My friend,' she said very gently,'did never you think that I also&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>She paused: it was very hard to her to say what she must say, and he

-could not help her, dared not help her, to utter it.</p>

-

-<p>They stood thus another moment mute, with the sunset glow upon the

-shining water, and upon the feudal majesty of the great castle.</p>

-

-<p>Then she looked at him with a straight, clear, noble glance, and with

-the rich blood mounting in her face, stretched out her hand to him with

-a royal gesture.</p>

-

-<p>'They robbed you of your ivy leaf, my cruel Prussian cousins. Will

-you&mdash;take&mdash;this&mdash;instead?'</p>

-

-<p>Then Heaven itself opened to his eyes. He did not take her hand. He

-fell at her feet and kissed them.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>Is it wisest after all to be very unwise, dear mother mine?' she said a

-little later, with a smile that was tender and happy.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess looked up quickly, and so looking understood.</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, my beloved, is it indeed so? Yes, you are wise to listen to your

-heart; God speaks in it!'</p>

-

-<p>With tears in her eyes she stretched out her pretty hands in solemn

-benediction.</p>

-

-<p>'Be His Spirit for ever with you,' she said with great emotion. 'I

-shall be so content to know that I leave you not alone when our Father

-calls me, for I think your very greatness and dominion, my dear, but

-make you the more lonely, as sovereigns are, and it is not well to be

-alone, Wanda; it is well to have human love close about us.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is to lean on a reed, perhaps,'murmured Wanda, in that persistent

-misgiving which possessed her. 'And when the reed breaks, then though

-it has been so weak before, it becomes of iron, barbed and poisoned.'</p>

-

-<p>'What gloomy thoughts! And you have made me so happy, and surely you

-are happy yourself?'</p>

-

-<p>'Yes. My reed is in full flower, but&mdash;but&mdash;yes, I am happy; I hope that

-Bela knows.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess kissed her once again.</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! he loves you so well.'</p>

-

-<p>'That I am sure of; yet I might never have known it but for you.'</p>

-

-<p>'I did for the best.'</p>

-

-<p>'I will send him to you. I want to be alone a little. Dear mother, he

-cares for you as tenderly as though he were your son.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have been his friend always,' said the Princess, with a smile,

-whilst the tears still stood in her eyes. 'You cannot say so much,

-Wanda; you were very harsh.'</p>

-

-<p>'I know it. I will atone to him.'</p>

-

-<p>The eyes of the Princess followed her tenderly.'</p>

-

-<p>'And she will make her atonement generously, grandly,' she thought.

-'She is a woman of few protestations, but of fine impulses and of

-unerring magnanimity. She will be incapable of reminding him that

-their kingdom is hers. I have done this thing; may Heaven be with it!

-If she had loved no one, life would have grown so pale, so chill, so

-monotonous to her; she would have tired of herself, having nothing

-but herself for contemplation. Solitude has been only grand to her

-hitherto because she has been young, but as the years rolled on she

-would have died without ever having lived; now she will live. She may

-have to bear pains, griefs, infidelities, calamities that she would

-have escaped; but even so, how much better the summer day, even with

-the summer storm, than the dull, grey, quiet, windless weather! Of

-course, if she could have found sanctuary in the Church&mdash;&mdash;But her

-faith is not absolute and unwavering enough for that; she has read too

-many philosophies; she requires, too, open-air and vigorous life; the

-cloister would have been to her a prison. She is one of those whose

-religion lies in activity; she will worship God through her children.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran entered as she mused, and knelt down before her.</p>

-

-<p>'You have been my good angel, always,' he murmured. 'How can I thank

-you? I think she would never have let her eyes rest on me but for you.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess smiled.</p>

-

-<p>'My friend, you are one of those on whom the eyes of women willingly

-rest, perhaps too willingly. But you&mdash;you will have no eyes for any

-other now? You must deserve my faith in you. Is it not so?'</p>

-

-<p>'Ah, madame,' he answered with deep emotion, 'all words seem so trite

-and empty; any fool can make phrases, but when I say that my life

-shall be consecrated to her, I mean it, in the uttermost royalty, the

-uttermost gratitude.'</p>

-

-<p>'I believe you,' said the Princess, as she laid her hand lightly

-on his bent head. 'Perhaps no man can understand entirely all that

-she surrenders in admitting that she loves you; for a proud woman

-to confess so much of weakness is very hard: but I think you will

-comprehend her better than any other would. I think you will not force

-her to pass the door of disillusion; and remember that though she will

-leave you free as air&mdash;for she is not made of that poor stuff which

-would enslave what it loves&mdash;she would not soon forgive too great abuse

-of freedom. I mean if you were ever&mdash;ever unfaithful&mdash;&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'For what do you take me?' he cried, with indignant passion. 'Is there

-another woman in the world who could sit beside her, and not be

-dwarfed, paled, killed, as a candle by the sun?'</p>

-

-<p>'You are only her betrothed,' said the Princess, with a little sigh.

-'Men see their wives with different eyes; so I have been told, at

-least. Familiarity is no courtier, and time is always cruel.'</p>

-

-<p>'Nay, time shall be our dearest friend,' said Sabran, with a tenderness

-in his voice that spoke more constancy than a thousand oaths. 'She will

-be beautiful when she is old, as you are; age will neither alarm nor

-steal from her; her bodily beauty is like her spiritual, it is cast

-in lines too pure and clear not to defy the years. Oh, mother mine!

-(let me call you that) fear nothing; I will love her so well that, all

-unworthy now, I will grow worthy her, and cause her no moment's pain

-that human love can spare her.'</p>

-

-<p>'Her people shall be your people, and her God your God,' murmured the

-Princess, with her hand still lying lightly on his head, obediently

-bent.</p>

-

-<p>When late that night he went across the lake the monks were at their

-midnight orisons; their voices murmured as one man's the Latin words of

-praise and prayer, and made a sound like that of a great sea rolling

-slowly on a lonely shore.</p>

-

-<p>He believed naught that they believed. Deity was but a phrase to him;

-faith and a future life were empty syllables to him. Yet, in the

-fulness of his joy and the humiliation of his spirit, he felt his heart

-swell, his pride sink subdued. He knelt down in the hush and twilight

-of that humble place of prayer, and for the first moment in many years

-he also praised God.</p>

-

-<p>No one heeded him; he knelt behind them in the gloom unnoticed; he rose

-refreshed as men in barren lands in drought are soothed by hearing the

-glad fall of welcome rain. He had no place there, and in another hour

-would have smiled at his own weakness; but now he remembered nothing

-except that he, utterly beyond his deserts, was blessed. As the monks

-rose to their feet and their loud chanting began to vibrate in the air,

-he went out unheard, as he had entered, and stood on the narrow strip

-of land that parted the chapel from the lake. The green waters were

-rolling freshly in under a strong wind, the shadows of coming night

-were stealing on; in the south-west a pale yellow moonlight stretched

-broadly in a light serene as dawn, and against it there rose squarely

-and darkly with its many turrets the great keep of Hohenszalras.</p>

-

-<p>He looked, but it was not of that great pile and all which it

-represented and symbolised that he thought now.</p>

-

-<p>It was of the woman he loved as a woman, not as a great possessor of

-wealth and lands.</p>

-

-<p>'Almost I wish that she were poor as the saints she resembles!' he

-thought, with a tender passion that for the hour was true. It seemed

-to him that had he seen her standing in her shift in the snow, like

-our Lady of Hungary, discrowned and homeless, he would have been glad.

-He was honest with the honesty of passion. It was not the mistress of

-Hohenszalras that he loved, but his own wife.</p>

-

-<p>Such a marriage could not do otherwise than arouse by its announcement

-the most angry amazement, the most indignant protests from all the

-mighty houses with which for so many centuries the house of Szalras

-had allied itself. In a few tranquil sentences she made known her

-intentions to those of her relations whom she felt bound thus to

-honour; but she gave them clearly to understand that it was a formula

-of respect not an act of consultation. When they received her letters

-they knew that her marriage was already quite as irrevocable as though

-it had already taken place in the Hof-Kapelle of Vienna.</p>

-

-<p>All her relatives and all her order were opposed to her betrothal;

-a cold sufferance was the uttermost which any of them extended to

-Sabran. A foreigner and poor, and, with a troubled and uncertain

-past behind him, he was bitterly unwelcome to the haughty Prussian,

-Austrian, and Hungarian nobilities to which she belonged; neither his

-ancient name nor his recent political brilliancy and military service

-could place him on an equality with them in their eyes. Her trustees,

-the Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe and the Cardinal Vàsàrhely, with her

-cousin Kaulnitz, hurried in person as swiftly as special trains could

-bring them to the Iselthal, but they were too late to avert the blow.</p>

-

-<p>'It is not a marriage for her,' said Kaulnitz, angrily.</p>

-

-<p>'Why not? It is a very old family,' said the Princess, with no less

-irritation.</p>

-

-<p>'But quite decayed, long ruined,' he returned. 'This man was himself

-born in exile.'</p>

-

-<p>'As they exile everybody twice in every ten years in France!</p>

-

-<p>'And there have been stories&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'Of whom are there not stories? Calumny is the parasite of character;

-the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler.'</p>

-

-<p>'I never heard him accused of any strength, except of the wrist in

-<i>l'escrime!</i>'</p>

-

-<p>'Do you know anything dishonourable of him? If you do you are bound to

-say it.'</p>

-

-<p>'Dishonourable is a grave word. No, I cannot say that I do; the society

-he frequents is a guarantee against that; but his life has been

-indifferent, complicated, uncertain, not a life to be allied with that

-of such a woman as Wanda. My dear Princess, it has been a life <i>dans le

-milieu parisien</i>; what more would you have me say?'</p>

-

-<p>'Prince Archambaud's has been that. Yet three years since you earnestly

-pressed his suit on Wanda.'</p>

-

-<p>'Archambaud! He is one of the first alliances in Europe; he is of blood

-royal, and he has not been more vicious than other men.'</p>

-

-<p>'It would be better he should have been less so, since he lives so near

-'the fierce light that beats upon the throne;' an electric light which

-blackens while it illumines! My good Kaulnitz, you wander very far

-afield. If you know anything serious against M. de Sabran it is your

-duty to say it.'</p>

-

-<p>'He is a gambler.'</p>

-

-<p>'He has renounced gambling.'</p>

-

-<p>'He is a duellist.'</p>

-

-<p>'Society was of much better constitution when the duel was its habitual

-phlebotomy.'</p>

-

-<p>'He has been the lover of many women.'</p>

-

-<p>'I am afraid that is nothing singular.'</p>

-

-<p>'He is hardly more than an adventurer.'</p>

-

-<p>'He counts his ancestry in unbroken succession from the clays of

-Dagobert.</p>

-

-<p>'He has nothing but a <i>pignon sur rue</i> in Paris, and a league or two of

-rocks and sand in Brittany; yet, though so poor, he made money enough

-by cards and speculation to be for three years the <i>amant en titre</i> of

-Cochonette.'</p>

-

-<p>Madame Ottilie rose with a little frown.</p>

-

-<p>'I think we will say no more, my dear Baron; the matter is, after all,

-not yours or mine to decide. Wanda will assuredly do as she likes.'</p>

-

-<p>'But you have so much influence with her.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have none; no one has any: and I think you do not understand her in

-the least. It may cost her very much to avow to him that she loves him,

-but once having done that, it will cost her nothing at all to avow it

-to the world. She is much too proud a woman to care for the world.'</p>

-

-<p>'He is <i>gentilhomme de race</i>, I grant,' admitted with reluctance the

-Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe.</p>

-

-<p>'When has a noble of Brittany been otherwise?' asked the Princess

-Ottilie.</p>

-

-<p>'I know,' said the Prince; 'but you will admit that he occupies a

-difficult position&mdash;an invidious one.'</p>

-

-<p>'And he carries himself well through it. It is a difficult position

-which is the test of breeding,' said the Princess, triumphantly, 'and

-I deny entirely that it is what you call an invidious one. It is you

-who have the idea of the crowd when you lay so much stress on the mere

-absence of money.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is the idea of the crowd that dominates in this age.'</p>

-

-<p>'The more reason for us to resist it, if it be so.'</p>

-

-<p>'I think you are in love with him yourself, my sister!'</p>

-

-<p>'I should be were I forty years younger.'</p>

-

-<p>The Countess Brancka alone wrote with any sort of sympathy and pleasure

-to congratulate them both.</p>

-

-<p>'I was sure that Parsifal would win soon or late,' she said. 'Only

-remember that he is a Parsifal <i>doublé</i> by a de Morny.'</p>

-

-<p>Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than

-the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of

-the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied.

-De Morny!&mdash;a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The

-comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!</p>

-

-<p>She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or

-remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had

-so much of the '<i>éternel féminin</i>' in her that she was only the more

-resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and

-exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was

-natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All

-the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those

-who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances

-produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as

-Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again

-Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had

-no power of persuasion.</p>

-

-<p>The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more

-graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as

-might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were

-present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that

-he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The

-sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man,

-whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of

-many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had

-they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her

-hand.</p>

-

-<p>'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of

-this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of

-birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere

-difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or

-the inches of one's stature.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess shook her head.</p>

-

-<p>'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he

-is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always

-be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at

-large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'</p>

-

-<p>'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what

-matters the opinion of others?'</p>

-

-<p>'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt

-those motives?'</p>

-

-<p>Wanda did not reply.</p>

-

-<p>'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has

-been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him

-as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to

-him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the

-power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'</p>

-

-<p>As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was

-listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ

-within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of

-grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous

-years to come.</p>

-

-<p>When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:</p>

-

-<p>'I want you to promise me one thing.'</p>

-

-<p>'I promise you all things. What is this one?'</p>

-

-<p>'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those

-great fortunes which form the <i>acte d'accusation</i> of socialists against

-society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of

-Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It

-is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed

-by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious

-barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one

-of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!&mdash;Promise me that

-you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may

-enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'</p>

-

-<p>He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to

-speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still

-remained silent.</p>

-

-<p>'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is

-too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against

-me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a

-few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too

-much!'</p>

-

-<p>He stooped and kissed her hand.</p>

-

-<p>'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with

-passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that

-I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be

-right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away

-from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'</p>

-

-<p>A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her

-hands as he held them clasped in his.</p>

-

-<p>'We will drink that wafer together, and as long as we are together it

-will never be bitter, I think,' she said very softly.</p>

-

-<p>Her voice seemed to sink into his very soul, so much it said of faith,

-so much it aroused of remorse.</p>

-

-<p>Then the great joy which had entered his life, like a great dazzling

-flood of light suddenly let loose into a darkened chamber, so blinded

-consumed, and intoxicated him, that he forgot all else; all else save

-this one fact&mdash;she would be his, body and soul, night and day, in life

-and in death for ever; his children borne by her, his life spent with

-her, her whole existence surrendered to him.</p>

-

-<p>For some days after that she mused upon the possibility of rendering

-him entirely independent of herself, without insulting him by a direct

-offer of a share in her possessions. At last a solution occurred

-to her. The whole of the fiefs of Idrac constituted a considerable

-appanage apart; its title went with it. When it had come into the

-Szalras family by marriage, as far back as the fifteenth century, it

-had been a principality; it was still a seigneurie, and many curious

-feudal privileges and distinctions went with it.</p>

-

-<p>It was Idrac now that she determined to abandon to her lover.</p>

-

-<p>'He will be seigneur of Idrac,' she thought, 'and I shall be so glad

-for him to bear an Austrian name.'</p>

-

-<p>'She herself would always retain her own name, and would take no other.</p>

-

-<p>'We will go and revisit it together,' she thought, and though she

-was all alone' at that moment, a soft warmth came into her face, and

-a throb of emotion to her heart, as she remembered all that would lie

-in that one word 'together,' all the tender and intimate union of the

-years to come.</p>

-

-<p>Her trustees were furious, and sought the aid of the men of law to

-enable them to step in and arrest her in what they deemed a course

-of self-destruction, but the law could not give them so much power;

-she was her own mistress, and as sole inheritrix had received her

-possessions singularly untrammelled by restrictions. In vain Prince

-Lilienhöhe spent his severe and chilly anger, Kaulnitz his fine

-sarcasm and delicate insinuations, and the Cardinal his stately and

-authoritative wrath. She was not to be altered in her decision.</p>

-

-<p>Austrian law allowed her to give away an estate to her husband if she

-chose, and there was nothing in the private settlements of her property

-to prevent her availing herself of the law.</p>

-

-<p>Strenuous opposition was encountered by her to this project, by every

-one of her relatives, hardly excluding the Princess Ottilie; 'for,'

-said that sagacious recluse, 'your horses may show you, my dear, the

-dangers of a rein too loose.'</p>

-

-<p>'I want no rein at all,' said Wanda. 'You forget that, to my thinking,

-marriage should never be bondage; two people with independent wills,

-tastes, and habits should mutually concede a perfect independence of

-action to each other. When one must yield, it must be the woman.'</p>

-

-<p>'Those are very fine theories,' the Princess remarked with caution.</p>

-

-<p>'I hope we shall put them in practice,' said Wanda, with unruffled good

-humour. 'Dear mother, I am sure you can understand that I want him

-to feel he is wholly independent of me. To what I love best on earth

-shall I dole out a niggard largesse from my wealth? If I were capable

-of doing so he would grow in time to hate me, and his hatred would be

-justified.'</p>

-

-<p>'I never should have supposed you would become so romantic,' said the

-Princess.</p>

-

-<p>'It will make him independent of you,' objected Prince Lilienhöhe.</p>

-

-<p>'That is what, beyond all, I desire him to be,' she answered.</p>

-

-<p>'It is an infatuation,' sighed Cardinal Vàsàrhely, out of her hearing,

-'when Egon would have brought to her a fortune as large as her own.'</p>

-

-<p>'You think water should always run to the sea,' said Princess Ottilie;

-'surely that is great waste sometimes?'</p>

-

-<p>'I think you are as infatuated as she is,' murmured the Cardinal. 'You

-forget that had she not been inspired with this unhappy sentiment she

-would have most probably left Hohenszalras to the Church.'</p>

-

-<p>'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,'

-answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else,

-had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'</p>

-

-<p>That would have been better than to an adventurer.'</p>

-

-<p>'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest

-aristocracies of the world, if poor.'</p>

-

-<p>'<i>Ce que femme veut</i>,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the

-Church had been worsted by women.</p>

-

-<p>The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the

-marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any

-possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband,

-and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of

-action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the

-deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself,

-as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud

-to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your

-hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he

-will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always

-will. If not&mdash;if not&mdash;well, he must go!'</p>

-

-<p>One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment

-emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She

-spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He

-looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush

-that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow

-tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires.

-She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of

-the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before

-him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.</p>

-

-<p>'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you

-to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of

-Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their

-feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been

-lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the

-reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary

-passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'</p>

-

-<p>'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with

-those roses.'</p>

-

-<p>'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced

-flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment.

-It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'</p>

-

-<p>'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your

-coronet, to which I can add none!'</p>

-

-<p>But to please her he bent over the crabbed black letter and the antique

-blazonings of the great roll to which the great dead men had set their

-sign and seal. She watched him as he read it, then after a little time

-she put her hand with a caressing movement on his shoulder.</p>

-

-<p>'My love, I can do just as I will with Idrac. The lawyers are agreed on

-that, and the Kaiser will confirm whatever I do. Now I want to give you

-Idrac, make you wholly lord of it; indeed, the thing is already done. I

-have signed all the documents needful, and, as I say, the Emperor will

-confirm any part of them that needs his assent. My Réné, you are a very

-proud man, but you will not be too proud to take Idrac and its title

-from your wife. But for that town who can say that our lives might not

-have been passed for ever apart? Why do you look so grave? The Kaiser

-and I both want you to be Austrian. When I transfer to you the fief of

-Idrac you are its Count for evermore.'</p>

-

-<p>He drew a quick deep breath as if he had been struck a blow, and stood

-gazing at her. He did not speak, his eyes darkened as with pain. For

-the moment she was afraid that she had wounded him. With exquisite

-softness of tone and touch she took his hand and said to him tenderly:</p>

-

-<p>'Why will you be so proud? After all, what are these things? Since

-we love one another, what is mine is yours; a formula more or less

-is no offence. It is my fancy that you should have the title and the

-fief. The people know you there, and your heroic courage will be for

-ever amongst their best traditions. Dear! once I read that it needs a

-greater soul to take generously than to give. Be great so, now, for my

-sake!'</p>

-

-<p>'Great!' he echoed the word hoarsely, and a smile of bitter irony

-passed for a moment over his features. But he controlled the passionate

-self-contempt that rose in him. He knew that whatever else he was,

-he was her lover, and her hero in her sight. If the magnitude and

-magnanimity of her gifts overwhelmed and oppressed him, he was recalled

-to self-control by the sense of her absolute faith in him. He pressed

-her hands against his heavily-beating heart.</p>

-

-<p>'All the greatness is with you, my beloved,' he said with effort.

-'Since you delight to honour me, I can but strive my utmost to deserve

-your honour. It is like your beautiful and lavish nature to be prodigal

-of gifts. But when you give yourself, what need is there for aught

-else?'</p>

-

-<p>'But Idrac is my caprice. You must gratify it.'</p>

-

-<p>'I will take the title gladly at your hands then. The revenues&mdash;No.'</p>

-

-<p>'You must take it all, the town and the title, and all they bring,' she

-insisted. 'In truth, but for you there would possibly be no town at

-all. Nay, my dear, you must do me this little pleasure; it will become

-you so well that Countship of Idrac: it is as old a place as Vindobona

-itself.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do you not understand?' she added, with a flush on her face. 'I want

-you to feel that it is wholly yours; that if I die, or if you leave me,

-it remains yours still. Oh, I do not doubt you; not for one moment. But

-liberty is always good. And Idrac will make you an Austrian noble in

-your own right. If you persist in refusing it I will assign it to the

-Crown; you will pain me and mortify me.'</p>

-

-<p>'That is enough! Never wittingly in my life will I hurt you. But if you

-wish me to be lord of Idrac, invest me with the title, my Empress. I

-will take it and be proud of it; and as for the revenues&mdash;well, we will

-not quarrel for them. They shall go to make new dykes and new bastions

-for the town, or pile themselves one on another in waiting for your

-children.'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled and her face grew warm as she turned aside and took up one

-of the great swords with jewelled hilts and damascened scabbards, which

-were ranged along the wall of the Rittersaal with other stands of arms.</p>

-

-<p>She drew the sword, and as he fell on his knee before her smote him

-lightly on the shoulder with its blade.</p>

-

-<p>'Rise, Graf von Idrac!' she said, stooping and touching his forehead

-with the bouquet that she wore at her breast. He loosened one of the

-roses and held it to his lips.</p>

-

-<p>'I swear my fealty now and for ever,' he said with emotion, and his

-face was paler and his tone was graver than the playfulness of the

-moment seemed to call for in him.</p>

-

-<p>'Would to Heaven I had had no other name than this one you give me,'

-he murmured as he rose. 'Oh, my love, my lady, my guardian angel!

-Forget that ever I lived before, forget all my life when I was unworthy

-you; let me live only from the day that will make me your vassal and

-your&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'That will make you my lord!' she said softly; then she stooped, and

-for the first time kissed him.</p>

-

-<p>What caused her the only pain that disturbed the tranquillity of these

-cloudless days was the refusal of her cousin Egon to be present at

-her marriage. He sent her, with some great jewels that had come from

-Persia, a few words of sad and wistful affection.</p>

-

-<p>'My presence,' he added in conclusion, 'is no more needed for your

-happiness than are these poor diamonds and pearls needed in your

-crowded jewel-cases. You will spare me a trial, which it could be of no

-benefit to you for me to suffer. I pray that the Marquis de Sabran may

-all his life be worthy of the immense trust and honour which you have

-seen fit to give to him. For myself, I have been very little always in

-your life. Henceforth I shall be nothing. But if ever you call on me

-for any service&mdash;which it is most unlikely you ever will do&mdash;I entreat

-you to remember that there is no one living who will more gladly or

-more humbly do your bidding at all cost than I, your cousin Egon.'</p>

-

-<p>The short letter brought tears to her eyes. She said nothing of it to

-Sabran. He had understood from Mdme. Ottilie that Prince Vàsàrhely had

-loved his cousin hopelessly for many years, and could not be expected

-to be present at her marriage.</p>

-

-<p>In a week from that time their nuptials were celebrated in the Court

-Chapel of the Hofburg at Vienna, with all the pomp and splendour that

-a brilliant and ceremonious Court could lend to the espousal of one of

-the greatest ladies of the old Duchy of Austria.</p>

-

-<p>Immediately after the ceremony they left the capital for Hohenszalras.</p>

-

-<p>At the signing of the contract on the previous night, when he had taken

-up the pen he had grown very pale; he had hesitated a moment, and

-glanced around him on the magnificent crowd, headed by the Emperor and

-Empress, with a gleam of fear and of anxiety in his eyes, which Baron

-Kaulnitz, who was intently watching him, had alone perceived.</p>

-

-<p>'There is something. What is it?' had mused the astute German.</p>

-

-<p>It was too late to seek to know. Sabran had bent down over the

-parchment, and with a firm hand had signed his name and title.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>It was midsummer once more in the Iselthal, five years and a half after

-the celebration at the Imperial palace of those nuptials which had been

-so splendid that their magnificence had been noticeable even at that

-magnificent Court. The time had seemed to her like one long, happy,

-cloudless day, and if to him there had come any fatigue, any satiety,

-any unrest, such as almost always come to the man in the fruition of

-his passion, he suffered her to see none of them.</p>

-

-<p>It was one of those rare marriages in which no gall of a chain is felt,

-but a quick and perfect sympathy insures that harmony which passion

-alone is insufficient to sustain. He devoted himself with ardour to the

-care of the immense properties that belonged to his wife; he brought

-to their administration a judgment and a precision that none had looked

-for in a man of pleasure; he entered cordially into all her schemes for

-the well-being of her people dependent on her, and carried them out

-with skill and firmness. The revenues of Idrac he never touched; he

-left them to accumulate for his younger son, or expended them on the

-township itself, where he was adored.</p>

-

-<p>If he were still the same man who had been the lover of Cochonette,

-the terror of Monte Carlo, the hero of night-long baccara and frontier

-duels, he had at least so banished the old Adam that it appeared wholly

-dead. Nor was the death of it feigned. He had flung away the slough

-of his old life with a firm hand, and the peace, the dignity of his

-present existence were very precious to him. He was glad to steep

-himself in them, as a tired and fevered wayfarer was glad to bathe his

-dusty and heated limbs in the cool, clear waters of the Szalrassee. And

-he loved his wife with a great love, in which reverence, and gratitude,

-and passion were all blent. Possession had not dulled, nor familiarity

-blunted it. She was still to him a sovereign, a saint, a half divine

-creature, who had stooped to become mortal for his sake, and his

-children's.</p>

-

-<p>The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls

-and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the

-Szalrassee.</p>

-

-<p>'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath

-the great yews beside the keep.</p>

-

-<p>'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but

-watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as

-ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty

-amphitheatre.</p>

-

-<p>She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of

-whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy

-with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The

-other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months

-of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were

-all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.</p>

-

-<p>'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the

-world called so proud.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near

-her wicker chair.</p>

-

-<p>'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it,

-at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you

-it will be he who will be dearest to me.'</p>

-

-<p>As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.</p>

-

-<p>She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.</p>

-

-<p>'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that

-we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all

-the world who have passed five years and more together without once

-disagreeing?'</p>

-

-<p>'In all the world there is not another Countess Wanda!'</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! that is your only defect; you will always avoid argument by

-escaping through the side-door of compliment. It is true, to be sure,

-that your flattery is a very high and subtle art.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is like all high art then, based on what is eternally true.'</p>

-

-<p>'You will always have the last word, and it is always so graceful a

-one that it is impossible to quarrel with it. But, Réné, I want you

-to speak without compliment to me for once. Tell me, are you indeed

-never&mdash;never&mdash;a little weary of being here?'</p>

-

-<p>He hesitated a moment and a slight flush came on his face.</p>

-

-<p>She observed both signs, slight as they were, and sighed; it was the

-first sigh she had ever breathed since her marriage.</p>

-

-<p>'Of course you are, of course you must be,' she said quickly. 'It has

-been selfish and blameable of me never to think of it before. It is

-paradise to me, but no doubt to you, used as you have been to the stir

-of the world, there, must be some tedium, some dulness in this mountain

-isolation. I ought to have remembered that before.'</p>

-

-<p>'You need do nothing of the kind, now,' he said. 'Who has been talking

-to you? Who has brought this little snake into our Eden?'</p>

-

-<p>'No one; and it is not a snake at all, but a natural reflection.

-Hohenszalras and you are the world to me, but I cannot expect that

-Hohenszalras and I can be quite as much to yourself. It is always the

-difference between the woman and the man. You have great talents; you

-are ambitious.'</p>

-

-<p>'Were I as ambitious as Alexander, surely I have gained wherewithal to

-be content!'</p>

-

-<p>'That is only compliment again, or if truth it is only a side of the

-truth. Nay, love, I do not think for a moment you are tired of me;

-I am too self-satisfied for that! But I think it is possible that

-this solitude may have grown, or may grow, wearisome to you; that you

-desire, perhaps without knowing it, to be more amidst the strife,

-the movement, and the pleasures of men. Aunt Ottilie calls this

-"confinement to a fortress;" now that is a mere pleasantry, but if ever

-you should feel tempted to feel what she feels, have confidence enough

-in my good sense and in my affection to say so to me, and then&mdash;&mdash;.'</p>

-

-<p>'And then? We will suppose I have this ingratitude and bad taste, what

-then?'</p>

-

-<p>'Why then, my own wishes should not stand for one instant in the way

-of yours, or rather I would make yours mine. And do not use the word

-ingratitude, my dearest; there can be no question of that betwixt you

-and me.'</p>

-

-<p>'Yes,' said Sabran, as he stooped towards her and touched her hair

-with his lips. 'When you gave me yourself, you made me your debtor

-for all time; would have made me so had you been as poor as you are

-rich. When I speak of gratitude it is of <i>that</i> gift, I think, not of

-Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>A warmth of pleasure flushed her cheek for a moment, and she smiled

-happily.</p>

-

-<p>'You shall not beg the question so,' she said, with gentle insistence

-after a moment's pause. 'I have not forgotten your eloquence in the

-French Chamber.' You are that rare thing a born orator. You are

-not perhaps fitted to be a statesman, for I doubt if you would have

-the application or bear the tedium necessary, but you have every

-qualification for a diplomatist, a foreign minister.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have not the first qualification, I have no country!'</p>

-

-<p>She looked at him, in surprise&mdash;he spoke with bitterness and

-self-contempt; but in a moment he had added quickly:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'France is nothing to me now, and though I am Austrian by all ties and

-affections, I am not an Austrian before the law.'</p>

-

-<p>'That is hardly true,' she answered, satisfied with the explanation.

-'Since France is little to you you could be naturalised here whenever

-you chose, even if Idrac have not made you a Croat noble, as I believe

-the lawyers would say it had; and the Emperor, who knows and admires

-you, would, I think, at once give you gladly any mission you preferred;

-you would make so graceful, so perfect, so envied an ambassador!

-Diplomacy has indeed little force now, yet tact still tells wherever

-it be found, and it is as rare as blue roses in the unweeded garden of

-the world. I do not speak for myself, dear; that you know. Hohenszalras

-is my beloved home, and it was enough for me before I knew you, and

-nowhere else could life ever seem to me so true, so high, so simple,

-and so near to God as here. But I do remember that men weary even of

-happiness when it is unwitnessed, and require the press and stir of

-emulation and excitation; and, if you feel that want, say so. Have

-confidence enough in me to believe that your welfare will be ever my

-highest law. Promise me this.'</p>

-

-<p>He changed colour slightly at her generous and trustful words, but he

-answered without a moment's pause:</p>

-

-<p>'Whenever I am so thankless to fate I will confess it. No; the world

-and I never valued one another much. I am far better here in the heart

-of your mountains. Here only have I known peace and rest.'</p>

-

-<p>He spoke with a certain effort and emotion, and he stooped over his

-little son and raised him on her knees.</p>

-

-<p>'These children shall grow up at Hohenszalras,' he continued, 'and you

-shall teach them your love of the open air, the mountain solitudes, the

-simple people, the forest creatures, the influences and the ways of

-nature. You care for all those things, and they make up true wisdom,

-true contentment. As for myself, if you always love me I shall ask no

-more of fate.'</p>

-

-<p>'If! Can you be afraid?'</p>

-

-<p>'Sometimes. One always fears to lose what one has never merited.'</p>

-

-<p>'Ah, my love, do not be so humble! If you saw yourself as I see you,

-you would be very proud.'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled as she spoke, and stretched her hand out to him over the

-golden head of her child.</p>

-

-<p>He took it and held it against his heart, clasped in both his own.

-Bela, impatient, slipped off his mother's lap to pursue his capture of

-the daisies; the butterflies were forbidden joys, and he was obedient,

-though in his own little way he was proud and imperious. But there

-was a blue butterfly just in front of him, a Lycœna Adonis, like a

-little bit of the sky come down and dancing about; he could not resist,

-he darted at it. As he was about to seize it she caught his fingers.</p>

-

-<p>'I have told you, Bela, you are never to touch anything that flies or

-moves. You are cruel.'</p>

-

-<p>He tried to get away, and his face grew very warm and passionate.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela will be cruel, if he like,' he said, knitting his pretty brows.</p>

-

-<p>Though he was not more than four years old he knew very well that he

-was the Count Bela, to whom all the people gave homage, crowding to

-kiss his tiny hand after Mass on holy-days. He was a very beautiful

-child, and all the prettier for his air of pride and resolution; he had

-been early put on a little mountain pony, and could ride fearlessly

-down the forest glades with Otto. All the imperiousness of the great

-race which had dealt out life and death so many centuries at their

-caprice through the Hohe Tauern seemed to have been inherited by him,

-coupled with a waywardness and a vanity that were not traits of the

-house of Szalras. It was impossible, even though those immediately

-about him were wise and prudent, to wholly prevent the effects of the

-adulation with which the whole household was eager to wait on every

-whim of the little heir.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his

-desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that

-to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it

-his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition,

-and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very

-affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.</p>

-

-<p>With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he

-said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'</p>

-

-<p>Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very

-frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been

-four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.</p>

-

-<p>'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'</p>

-

-<p>Then he burst into tears.</p>

-

-<p>'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his

-father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his

-nurse, who came for him.</p>

-

-<p>'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him

-more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give

-you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'</p>

-

-<p>It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil

-qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son,

-and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was

-unworthy to beget <i>her</i> children,' he thought, with the self-reproach

-that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his

-satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what

-trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years

-to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his

-blood?</p>

-

-<p>'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to

-see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It

-hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own

-little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill;

-do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is

-your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud

-of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows

-older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to

-enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy

-that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry

-passions, of my degraded humanity?'</p>

-

-<p>'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think

-me.'</p>

-

-<p>'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'</p>

-

-<p>'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a <i>beau défaut</i>,

-and I would not have you lose it.'</p>

-

-<p>'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and

-passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'</p>

-

-<p>She looked at him surprised, and vaguely troubled at the self-reproach

-and the self-scorn of his passionate utterance. Seeing that surprise

-and trouble in her glance, he controlled the emotion that for the

-moment mastered him.</p>

-

-<p>'Ah, love!' he said quickly and truly, 'if you could but guess how

-gross and base a man's life seems to him contrasted with the life of

-a pure and noble woman! Being born of you, those children, I think,

-should be as faultless and as soilless as those pearls that lie on your

-breast. But then they are mine also; so already on that boy's face one

-sees the sins of revolt, of self-will, of cruelty&mdash;being mine also,

-your living pearls are dulled and stained!'</p>

-

-<p>A greater remorse than she dreamed of made his heart ache as he said

-these words; but she heard in them only the utterance of that extreme

-and unwavering devotion to her which he had shown in all his acts and

-thoughts from the first hours of their union.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>The Princess Ottilie was scarcely less happy than they in the

-realisation of her dreams and prophecies. Those who had been most

-bitterly opposed to her alliance with him could find no fault in his

-actions and his affections.</p>

-

-<p>'I always said that Wanda ought to marry, since she had plainly no

-vocation for the cloister,' she said a hundred times a year. 'And I was

-certain that M. de Sabran was the person above all others to attract

-and to content her. She has much more imagination than she would be

-willing to allow and he is capable at once of fascinating her fancy

-and of satisfying her intellect. No one can be dull where he is; he is

-one of those who make <i>la pluie et le beau temps</i> by his absence or

-presence; and, besides that, no commonplace affection would have ever

-been enough for her. And he loves her like a poet, which he is at once

-whenever he leaves the world for Beethoven and Bach. I cannot imagine

-why you should have opposed the marriage, merely because he had not two

-millions in the Bank of France.'</p>

-

-<p>'Not for that,' answered the Grand Duke; 'rather because he broke the

-bank of Monte Carlo, and other similar reasons. A great player of

-baccara is scarcely the person to endow with the wealth of the Szalras.'</p>

-

-<p>'The wealth is tied up tightly enough at the least, and you will admit

-that he was yet more eager than you that it should be so.'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, yes! he behaved very well. I never denied it. But she has placed

-it in his power to make away with the whole of Idrac, if he should ever

-choose. That was very unwise, but we had no power to oppose.'</p>

-

-<p>'You may be quite sure that Idrac will go intact to the second son, as

-it has always done; and I believe but for his own exertions Idrac would

-now be beneath the Danube waters. Perhaps you never heard all that

-story of the flood?'</p>

-

-<p>'I only hope that if I have detractors you will defend me from them,'

-said Prince Lilienhöhe, giving up argument.</p>

-

-<p>Fair weather is always especially fair in the eyes of those who have

-foretold at sunset that the morrow would be fine; and so the married

-life of Wanda von Szalras was especially delightful as an object of

-contemplation, as a theme of exultation, to the Princess, who alone had

-been clear-sighted enough to foresee the future. She really also loved

-Sabran like a son, and took pride and pleasure in the filial tenderness

-he showed her, and in his children, with the beautiful blue eyes that

-had gleams of light in them like sapphires. The children themselves

-adored her; and even the bold and wilful Bela was as quiet as a

-startled fawn beside this lovely little lady, with her snow-white hair

-and her delicate smile, whose cascades of lace always concealed such

-wonderful bon-bon boxes, and gilded cosaques, and illuminated stories

-of the saints.</p>

-

-<p>Almost all their time was spent at Hohenszalras. A few winter months

-in Vienna was all they had ever passed away from it, except one visit

-to Idrac and the Hungarian estates. The children never left it for

-a day. He shared her affection for the place, and for the hardy and

-frank mountain people around them. He seemed to her to entirely forget

-Romaris, and beyond the transmission of moneys to its priest, he

-took no heed of it. She hesitated to recall it to him, since to do

-so might have seemed to remind him that it was she, not he, who was

-suzerain in the Hohe Tauern. Romaris was but a bleak rock, a strip of

-sea-swept sand; it was natural that it should have no great hold on his

-affections, only recalling as it did all that its lords had lost.</p>

-

-<p>'I hate its name,' he said impetuously once; and seeing the surprise

-upon her face, he added: 'I was very lonely and wretched there; I

-tried to take interest in it because you bade me, but I failed; all

-I saw, all I thought of, was yourself, and I believed you as far and

-for ever removed from me as though you had dwelt in some other planet.

-No! perhaps I am superstitious: I do not wish you to go to Romaris. I

-believe it would bring us misfortune. The sea is full of treachery, the

-sands are full of graves.'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled.</p>

-

-<p>'Superstition is a sort of parody of faith; I am sure you are not

-superstitious. I do not care to go to Romaris; I like to cheat myself

-into the belief that you were born and bred in the Iselthal. Otto said

-to me the other day, "My lord must be a son of the soil, or how could

-he know our mountains so well as he does, and how could he anywhere

-have learned to shoot like that?"'</p>

-

-<p>'I am very glad that Otto does me so much honour. When he first met

-me, he would have shot me like a fox, if you had given the word. Ah, my

-love! how often I think of you that day, in your white serge, with your

-girdle of gold, and your long gold-headed staff, and your little ivory

-horn. You were truly a châtelaine of the old mystical German days.

-You had some <i>Schlüsselblumen</i> in your hand. They were indeed the key

-flower to my soul, though, alas! treasures, I fear, you found none on

-your entrance there.'</p>

-

-<p>'I shall not answer you, since to answer would be to flatter you, and

-Aunt Ottilie already, does that more than is good for you,' she said

-smiling, as she passed her fingers over the waves of his hair. 'By the

-way, whom shall we invite to meet the Lilienhöhe? Will you make out a

-list?'</p>

-

-<p>'The Grand Duke does not share Frau Ottilie's goodness for me.'</p>

-

-<p>'What would you? He has been made of buckram and parchment; besides

-which; nothing that is not German has, to his mind, any right to exist.

-By the way, Egon wrote to me this morning; he will be here at last.'</p>

-

-<p>He looked up quickly in unspoken alarm: 'Your cousin Egon? Here?'</p>

-

-<p>'Why are you so surprised? I was sure that sooner or later he would

-conquer that feeling of being unable to meet you. I begged him to come

-now; it is eight whole years since I have seen him. When once you have

-met you will be friends&mdash;for my sake.'</p>

-

-<p>He was silent; a look of trouble and alarm was still upon his face.</p>

-

-<p>'Why should you suppose it any easier to him now than then?' he said at

-length. 'Men who love <i>you</i> do not change. There are women who compel

-constancy, <i>sans le vouloir</i>. The meeting can but be painful to Prince

-Vàsàrhely.'</p>

-

-<p>'Dear Réné,' she answered in some surprise, 'my nearest male relative

-and I cannot go on for ever without seeing each other. Even these years

-have done Egon a great deal of harm. He has been absent from the Court

-for fear of meeting us. He has lived with his hussars, or voluntarily

-confined to his estates, until he grows morose and solitary. I am

-deeply attached to him. I do not wish to have the remorse upon me of

-having caused the ruin of his gallant and brilliant life. When he

-has been once here he will like you: men who are brave have always

-a certain sympathy. When he has seen you here he will realise that

-destiny is unchangeable, and grow reconciled to the knowledge that I am

-your wife.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran gave an impatient gesture of denial, and began to write the list

-of invitations for the autumn circle of guests who were to meet the

-Prince and Princess of Lilienhöhe.</p>

-

-<p>Once every summer and every autumn Hohenszalras was filled with a

-brilliant house-party, for she sacrificed her own personal preferences

-to what she believed to be for the good of her husband. She knew that

-men cannot always live alone; that contact with the world is needful to

-their minds and bracing for it. She had a great dread lest the ghost

-<i>ennui</i> should show his pale face over her husband's shoulder, for

-she realised that from the life of the asphalte of the Champs-Élysées

-to the life amidst the pine forests of the Iselthal was an abrupt

-transition that might easily bring tedium in its train. And tedium is

-the most terrible and the most powerful foe love ever encounters.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran completed the list, and when he had corrected it into due

-accordance with all Lilienhöhe's personal and political sympathies and

-antipathies, despatched the invitations, 'for eight days,' written on

-cards that bore the joint arms of the Counts of Idrac and the Counts of

-Szalras. He had adopted the armorial bearings of the countship of Idrac

-as his own, and seemed disposed to abandon altogether those of the

-Sabrans of Romaris.</p>

-

-<p>When they were written he went out by himself and rode long and fast

-through the mists of a chilly afternoon, through dripping forest ways

-and over roads where little water-courses spread in shining shallows.

-The coming of Egon Vàsàrhely troubled him and alarmed him. He had

-always dreaded his first meeting with the Magyar noble; and as the

-years had dropped by one after another, and her cousin had failed

-to find courage to see her again, he had begun to believe that they

-and Vàsàrhely would remain always strangers. His wish had begotten

-his thought. He knew that she wrote at intervals to her cousin, and

-he to her; he knew that at the birth of each of their children some

-magnificent gift, with a formal letter of felicitation, had come from

-the Colonel of the White Hussars; but as time had gone on and Prince

-Egon had avoided all possibility of meeting them, he had grown to

-suppose that the wound given her rejected lover was too profound ever

-to close; nor did he wonder that it was so: it seemed to him that any

-man who loved her must do so for all eternity, if eternity there should

-be. To learn suddenly that within another month Vàsàrhely would be his

-guest, distressed and alarmed him in a manner she never dreamed. They

-had been so happy. On their cloud less heaven there seemed to him to

-rise a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but bearing with it disaster

-and a moonless night.</p>

-

-<p>'Perhaps he will have forgotten,' he thought, as he strove to shake off

-his forebodings. 'We were so young then. He was not even as old as I!'</p>

-

-<p>And he rode fast and furiously homewards as the day drew in, and the

-lighted windows of the great castle seemed to smile at him as lie saw

-it high up above the darkness of the woods and of the evening mists,

-his home, beloved, sacred, infinitely dear to him; dear as the soil of

-the mother country which the wrecked mariner reaches after facing death

-on the deep sea.</p>

-

-<p>'God save her from suffering by me!' he said, in an unconscious prayer,

-as he drew rein before the terrace of Hohenszalras. Almost he believed

-in God through her.</p>

-

-<p>When, after dressing, he went into, the Saxe room, the peace and

-beauty of the scene had never struck him so strongly as it did now,

-coming out of the shadows of the wet woods and the gloom of his own

-anxieties; anxieties the heavier and the more wearing because they

-could be shared by no one. The soft, full light of the wax candles fell

-on the Louis Seize embroideries and the white woodwork of the panelling

-and the china borders of the mirrors. The Princess Ottilie sat making

-silk-netting for the children's balls; his wife was reading, and Bela

-and Gela, who were there for their privileged half-hour before dinner,

-were fitting together on a white bearskin, playing with the coloured

-balls of the game of solitaire. The soft light from the chandeliers

-and sconces of the Saxe Royale china fell on the golden heads and the

-velvet frocks of the children, on the old laces and the tawny-coloured

-plush of their mothers skirts, on the great masses of flowers in the

-Saxe bowls, and on the sleeping forms of the big dogs Donau and Neva.

-It was an interior that would have charmed Chardin, that would have

-been worthy of Vandyck.</p>

-

-<p>As he looked at it he thought with a sort of ecstasy, 'All that is

-mine;' and then his heartstrings tightened as he thought again, 'If she

-knew&mdash;&mdash;?'</p>

-

-<p>She looked up at his entrance with a welcome on her face that needed no

-words.</p>

-

-<p>'Where have you been in the rain all this long afternoon?' You see we

-have a fire, even though it is midsummer. Bela, rise, and make your

-obeisance, and push that chair nearer the hearth.'</p>

-

-<p>The two little boys stood up and kissed his hand, one after another,

-with the pretty formality; of greeting on which she always insisted;

-then they went back to their coloured glass balls, and he sank into a

-low chair beside his wife with a sigh half of fatigue, half of content.</p>

-

-<p>'Yes, I have been riding all the time,' he said to her. 'I am not sure

-that Siegfried approved it. But it does one good sometimes, and after

-the blackness and the wetness of that forest how charming it is to come

-home!'</p>

-

-<p>She looked at him with wistfulness.</p>

-

-<p>'I wish you were not vexed that Egon is coming! I am sure you have been

-thinking of it as you rode.'</p>

-

-<p>'Yes, I have; but I am ashamed of doing so. He is your cousin, that

-shall be enough for me. I will do my best to make him welcome. Only

-there is this difficulty; a welcome from me to him will seem in itself

-an insult.'</p>

-

-<p>'An insult! when you are my husband? One would think you were my

-<i>jägermeister.</i> Dear mother mine, help me to scold him.'</p>

-

-<p>'I am a stranger,' he said, under his breath.</p>

-

-<p>She smiled a little, but she said with a certain hauteur:</p>

-

-<p>'You are master of Hohenszalras, as your son will be when our places

-shall know us no more. Do not let the phantom of Egon come between us,

-I beseech you. His real presence never will do so, that is certain.'</p>

-

-<p>'Nothing shall come between us,' said Sabran, as his hand took and

-closed upon hers. 'Forgive me if I have brought some gloomy <i>nix</i> out

-of the dark woods with me; he will flee away in, the light of this

-beloved white-room. No evil spirits could dare stay by your hearth.'</p>

-

-<p>'There are <i>nixes</i> in the forests,' said Bela in a whisper to his

-brother.</p>

-

-<p>'Ja!' said Gela, not comprehending.</p>

-

-<p>'We will kill them all when we are big,' said Bela.</p>

-

-<p>'Ja! ja!' said Gela.</p>

-

-<p>Bela knew very well what a <i>nix</i> was. Otto had told him all about

-kobolds and sprites, as his pony trotted down the drives.</p>

-

-<p>'Or we will take them prisoners,' he added, remembering that his mother

-never allowed anything to be killed, not even butterflies.</p>

-

-<p>'Ja!' said Gela again, rolling the pretty blue and pink and amber balls

-about in the white fur of the bearskin.</p>

-

-<p>Gela's views of life were simplified by the disciple's law of

-imitation; they were restricted to doing whatever Bela did, when that

-was possible, when it was not possible he remained still adoring Bela,

-with his little serious face as calm as a god's.</p>

-

-<p>She used to think that when they should grow up Bela would be a great

-soldier like Wallenstein or Condé, and Gela would stay at home and

-take care of his people here in the green, lone, happy Iselthal.</p>

-

-<p>Time ran on and the later summer made the blooming hay grow brown on

-all the alpine meadows, and made the garden of Hohenszalras blossom

-with a million autumnal glories; it brought also the season of the

-first house-party. Egon Vàsàrhely was to arrive one day before the

-Lilienhöhe and the other guests.</p>

-

-<p>'I want Egon so much to see Bela!' she said, with the thoughtless

-cruelty of a happy mother forgetful of the pain of a rejected lover.</p>

-

-<p>'I fear Bela will find little favor in your cousin's eyes, since he is

-mine too,' said Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, Egon is content to be only our cousin by this&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'You think so? You do not know yourself if you imagine that.'</p>

-

-<p>'Egon is very loyal. He would not come here if he could not greet you

-honestly.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran's face flushed a little, and he turned away. He vaguely dreaded

-the advent of Egon Vàsàrhely, and there were so many innocent words

-uttered in the carelessness of intimate intercourse which stabbed him

-to the quick; she had so wounded him all unconscious of her act.</p>

-

-<p>'Shall we have a game of billiards?' he asked her as they stood in the

-Rittersaal, whilst the rain fell fast without. She played billiards

-well, and could hold her own against him, though his game was one that

-had often been watched by a crowded <i>galerie</i> in Paris with eager

-speculation and heavy wager. An hour afterwards they were still playing

-when the clang of a great bell announced the approach of the carriage

-which had been sent to Windisch-Matrey.</p>

-

-<p>'Come!' she said joyously, as she put back her cue in its rest; but

-Sabran drew back.</p>

-

-<p>'Receive your cousin first alone,' he said. 'He must resent my presence

-here. I will not force it on him on the threshold of your house.'</p>

-

-<p>'Of our house! Why will you use wrong pronouns? Believe me, dear, Egon

-is too generous to bear you the animosity you think.'</p>

-

-<p>'Then he never loved you,' said Sabran, somewhat impatiently, as he

-sent one ball against another with a sharp collision. 'I will come if

-you wish it,' he added; 'but I think it is not in the best taste to so

-assert myself.'</p>

-

-<p>'Egon is only my cousin and your guest. You are the master of

-Hohenszalras. Come! you were not so difficult when you received the

-Emperor.'</p>

-

-<p>'I had done the Emperor no wrong,' said Sabran, controlling the

-impatience and the reluctance he still felt.</p>

-

-<p>'You have done Egon none. I should not have been his wife had I never

-been yours.'</p>

-

-<p>'Who knows?' murmured Sabran, as he followed her into the entrance

-hall. The stately figure of Egon Vàsàrhely enveloped in furs was just

-passing through the arched doorway.</p>

-

-<p>She went towards him with a glad welcome and both hands outstretched.</p>

-

-<p>Prince Egon bowed to the ground: then took both her hands in his and

-kissed her on the cheek.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran, who grew very pale, advanced and greeted him with ceremonious

-grace.</p>

-

-<p>'My wife has bade me welcome you, Prince, but it would be presumptuous

-in me, a stranger, to do that. All her kindred must be dear and sacred

-here.'</p>

-

-<p>Egon Vàsàrhely, with an effort to which he had for years been vainly

-schooling himself, stretched out his hand to take her husband's; but

-as he did so, and his glance for the first time dwelt on Sabran, a

-look surprised and indefinitely perplexed came on his own features.

-Unconsciously he hesitated a moment; then, controlling himself, he

-replied with a few fitting words of courtesy and friendship. That

-there should be some embarrassment, some constraint, was almost

-inevitable, and did not surprise her: she saw both, but she also saw

-that both were hidden under the serenity of high breeding and worldly

-habit. The most difficult moment had passed: they went together into

-the Rittersaal, talked together a little on a few indifferent topics,

-and in a little space Prince Egon withdrew to his own apartments to

-change his travelling clothes. Sabran left him on the threshold of his

-chamber.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely locked the doors, locking out even his servant, threw off

-his furs and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. The meeting had

-cost him even more than he had feared that it would do. For five years

-he had dreaded this moment, and its pain was as sharp and as fresh to

-him as though it had been unforeseen. To sleep under the same roof

-with the husband of Wanda von Szalras! He had overrated his power of

-self-control, underrated his power of suffering, when to please her he

-had consented after five years to visit Hohenszalras. What were five

-years?&mdash;half a century would not have changed him.</p>

-

-<p>Under the plea of fatigue, he, who had sat in his saddle eighteen hours

-at a stretch, and was braced to every form of endurance in the forest

-chase and in the tented field, sent excuses to his host for remaining

-in his own rooms until the Ave Maria rung. When he at length went

-down to the blue-room where she was, he had recovered, outwardly at

-least, his tranquillity and his self-possession, though here, in this

-familiar, once beloved chamber, where every object had been dear to him

-from his boyhood, a keener trial than any he had passed through awaited

-him, as she led forward to meet him a little boy clad in white velvet,

-with a cloud of light golden hair above deep blue luminous eyes, and

-said to him:</p>

-

-<p>'Egon, this is my Bela. You will love him a little, for my sake?'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely felt a chill run through him like the cold of death as he

-stooped towards the child; but he smiled and touched the boy's forehead

-with his lips.</p>

-

-<p>'May the spirit of our lost Bela be with him and dwell in his heart,'

-he murmured; 'better I cannot wish him.'</p>

-

-<p>With an effort he turned to Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'Your little son is a noble child; you may with reason be proud of him.

-He is very like you in feature. I see no trace of the Szalras.'</p>

-

-<p>'The other boy is more like Wanda,' replied Sabran, sensible of a

-certain tenacity of observation with which Vàsàrhely was gazing at

-him. 'As for my daughter, she is too young for anyone to say whom she

-will resemble. All I desire is that she should be like her mother,

-physically and spiritually.'</p>

-

-<p>'Of course,' said the Prince, absently, still looking from Sabran to

-the child, as if in the endeavour to follow some remembrance that

-eluded-him. The little face of Bela was a miniature of his father's,

-they were as alike as it is possible for a child and a man to be so,

-and Egon Vàsàrhely perplexedly mused and wondered at vague memories

-which rose up to him as he gazed on each.</p>

-

-<p>'And what do you like best to do, my little one?' he asked of Bela, who

-was regarding him with curious and hostile eyes.</p>

-

-<p>'To ride,' answered Bela at once, in his pretty uncertain German.</p>

-

-<p>'There you are a true Szalras at least. And your brother Gela, can he

-ride yet? Where is Gela, by the way?'</p>

-

-<p>'He is asleep,' said Bela, with some contempt. 'He is a little thing.

-Yes; he rides, but it is in a chair-saddle. It is not real riding.'</p>

-

-<p>'I see. Well, when you come and see me you shall have some real riding,

-on wild horses if you like;' and he told the child stories of the great

-Magyar steppes, and the herds of young horses, and the infinite delight

-of the unending gallop over the wide hushed plain; and all the while

-his heart ached bitterly, and the sight of the child&mdash;who was her

-child, yet had that stranger's face&mdash;was to him like a jagged steel

-being turned and twisted inside a bleeding wound. Bela, however, was

-captivated by the new visions that rose before him.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela will come to Hungary,' he said with condescension, and then with

-an added thought, continued: 'I think Bela has great lands there. Otto

-said so.'</p>

-

-<p>'Bela has nothing at all,' said Sabran, sternly. 'Bela talks great

-nonsense sometimes, and it would be better he should go to sleep with

-his brother.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela looked up shyly under his golden cloud of hair. 'Folko is Bela's,'

-he said under his breath. Folko was his pony.</p>

-

-<p>'No,' said Sabran; 'Folko belongs to your mother. She only allows you

-to have him so long as you are good to him.'</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is always good to him,' he said decidedly.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is faultless in his own estimation,' said his mother, with a

-smile. 'He is too little to be wise enough to see himself as he is.'</p>

-

-<p>This view made Bela's blue eyes open very wide and fill very

-sorrowfully. It was humiliating. He longed to get back to Gela, who

-always listened to him dutifully, and never said anything in answer

-except an entirely acquiescent 'Ja! ja!' which was indeed about the

-limitation of Gela's lingual powers. In a few moments, indeed, his

-governess came for him and took him away, a little dainty figure in his

-ivory velvet and his blue silk stockings, with his long golden curls

-hanging to his waist.</p>

-

-<p>'It is so difficult to keep him from being spoilt,' she said, as the

-door closed on him. 'The people make a little prince, a little god, of

-him. He believes himself to be something wonderful. Gela, who is so

-gentle and quiet, is left quite in the shade.'</p>

-

-<p>'I suppose Gela takes your title?' said Vàsàrhely to his host. 'It

-is usual with the Austrian families for the second son to have some

-distant appellation?'</p>

-

-<p>'They are babies,' said Sabran, impatiently.</p>

-

-<p>'It will be time enough to settle those matters when they are old

-enough to be court-pages or cadets. They are Bela and Gela at present.

-The only real republic is childhood.'</p>

-

-<p>'I am afraid Bela is the <i>tyrannus</i> to which all republics succumb,'

-said Wanda, with a smile. He is extremely autocratic in his notions,

-and in his family. In all his "make believe" games he is crowned.'</p>

-

-<p>'He is a beautiful child,' said her cousin, and she answered, still

-smiling:</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, yes: he is so like Réné!'</p>

-

-<p>Egon Vàsàrhely turned his face from her. The dinner was somewhat dull,

-and the evening seemed tedious, despite the efforts of Sabran to

-promote conversation, and the <i>écarté</i> which he and his guest played

-together. They, were all sensible that some chord was out of tune, and

-glad that on the morrow a large house-party would be there to spare

-them a continuation of this difficult intercourse.</p>

-

-<p>'Your cousin will never forgive me,' said Sabran to her when they were

-alone. 'I think, beside his feeling that I stand for ever between you

-and him there is an impatience of me as a stranger and one unworthy

-you.'</p>

-

-<p>'You do yourself and him injustice,' she answered. 'I shall be unhappy

-if you and he be not friends.'</p>

-

-<p>'Then unhappy you will be, my beloved. We both adore you.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do not say that. He would not be here if it were so.'</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! look at him when he looks at Bela!'</p>

-

-<p>She sighed; she had felt a strong emotion on the sight of her cousin,

-for Egon Vàsàrhely was much changed by these years of pain. His grand

-carriage and his martial beauty were unaltered, but all the fire and

-the light of earlier years were gone out of his face, and a certain

-gloom and austerity had come there. To all other women he would have

-been the more attractive for the melancholy which was in such apt

-contrast with the heroic adventures of his life, but to her the change

-in him was a mute reproach which filled her with remorse though she had

-done no wrong.</p>

-

-<p>Meantime Prince Egon, throwing open his window, leaned out into the

-cold rainy night, as though a hand were at his throat and suffocating

-him. And amidst all the tumult of his pain and revolt, one dim thought

-was incessantly intruding itself; he was always thinking, as he

-recalled the face of Sabran and of Sabran's little son, 'Where have I

-seen those blue eyes, those level brows, those delicate curved lips?'</p>

-

-<p>They were so familiar, yet so strange to him. When he would have given

-a name to them they receded into the shadows of some far away past of

-his own, so far away he could not follow them. He sat up half the night

-letting the wind beat and the rain fall on him. He could not sleep.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>In the morrow thirty or forty people arrived, amongst them Baron

-Kaulnitz <i>en congé</i> from his embassy.</p>

-

-<p>'What think you of Sabran?' he asked of Egon Vàsàrhely, who answered:</p>

-

-<p>'He is a perfect gentleman. He is a charming companion. He plays

-admirably at <i>écarté.</i></p>

-

-<p>'<i>Écarté</i>! I spoke of his moral worth: what is your impression of that?'</p>

-

-<p>'If he had not satisfied her as to that, Wanda would not be his wife,'

-answered the Prince gravely. 'He has given her beautiful children, and

-it seems to me that he renders her perfectly happy. We should all be

-grateful to him.'</p>

-

-<p>'The children are certainly very beautiful,' said Baron Kaulnitz, and

-said no more.</p>

-

-<p>'The people all around are unfeignedly attached to him,' Vàsàrhely

-continued with generous effort. 'I hear nothing but his praise. Nor do

-I think it the conventional compliment which loyalty leads them to pay

-the husband of their Countess; it is very genuine attachment. The men

-of the old Archduchy are not easily won; it is only qualities of daring

-and manliness which appeal to their sympathies. That he has gained

-their affections is as great testimony to his character in one way as

-that he has gained Wanda's is in another. At Idrac also the people

-adore him, and Croats are usually slow to see merit in strangers.'</p>

-

-<p>'In short, he is a paragon,' said the ambassador, with a little dubious

-smile. 'So much the better, since he is irrevocably connected with us.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran was at no time seen to greater advantage than when he was

-required to receive and entertain a large house-party. Always graceful,

-easily witty, endowed with that winning tact which is to society as

-cream is to the palate, the charm he possessed for women and the

-ascendency he could, at times, exercise over men&mdash;even men who were

-opposed to him&mdash;were never more admirably displayed than when he was

-the master of Hohenszalras, with crowned heads, and princes, and

-diplomatists, and beauties gathered beneath his roof. His mastery,

-moreover, of all field sports, and his skill at all games that demanded

-either intelligence or audacity, made him popular with a hardy and

-brilliant nobility; his daring in a boar hunt at noon was equalled by

-his science at whist in the evening. Strongly prejudiced against him at

-the onset, the great nobles who were his guests had long ceased to feel

-anything for him except respect and regard; whilst the women admired

-him none the less for that unwavering devotion to his wife which made

-even the conventionalities of ordinary flirtation wholly impossible to

-him. With all his easy gallantry and his elegant homage to them, they

-all knew that, at heart, he was as cold as the rocks to all women save

-one.</p>

-

-<p>'It is really the knight's love for his lady,' said the Countess

-Brancka once; and Sabran, overhearing, said: 'Yes, and, I think that if

-there were more like my lady on earth, knighthood might revive on other

-scenes than Wagner's.'</p>

-

-<p>Between him and the Countess Brancka there was a vague intangible

-enmity, veiled under the perfection of courtesy. They could ill have

-told why they disliked each other; but they did so. Beneath their

-polite or trivial or careless speech they often aimed at each other's

-feelings or foibles with accuracy and malice. She had stayed at

-Hohenszalras more or less time each year in the course of her flight

-between France and Vienna, and was there now. He admired his wife's

-equanimity and patience under the trial of Mdme. Olga's frivolities,

-but he did not himself forbear from as much sarcasm as was possible

-in a man of the world to one who was his guest, and by marriage his

-relative, and he was sensible of her enmity to himself, though she

-paid him many compliments, and sometimes too assiduously sought his

-companionship. '<i>Elle fait le ronron, mais gare à ses pattes!</i>' he said

-once to his wife concerning her.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran appraised her indeed with unflattering accuracy. He knew

-by heart all the wiles and wisdom of such a woman as she was. Her

-affectations did not blind him to her real danger, and her exterior

-frivolity did not conceal from him the keen and subtle self-interest

-and the strong passions which laboured beneath it.</p>

-

-<p>She felt that she had an enemy in him, and partly in self-protection,

-partly in malice, she set herself to convert a foe into a friend,

-perhaps, without altogether confessing it to herself, into a lover as

-well.</p>

-

-<p>The happiness that prevailed at Hohenszalrasburg annoyed her for

-no other reason than that it wearied her to witness it. She did

-not envy it, because she did not want happiness at all; she wanted

-perpetual change, distraction, temptation, passion, triumph&mdash;in a word,

-excitement, which becomes the drug most unobtainable to those who have

-early exhausted all the experiences and varieties of pleasure.</p>

-

-<p>Mdme. Brancka had always an unacknowledged resentment against her

-sister-in-law, for being the owner of all the vast possessions of the

-Szalras. 'If Gela had lived!' she thought constantly. 'If I had only

-had a son by him before he died, this woman would have had her dower

-and nothing more.' That his sister should possess all, whilst she had

-by her later marriage lost her right even to a share in that vast

-wealth, was a perpetual bitterness to her.</p>

-

-<p>Stefan Brancka was indeed rich, but he was an insensate gambler. She

-was extravagant to the last degree, with all the costly caprices of

-a <i>cocodette</i> who reigned in the two most brilliant capitals of the

-world. They were often troubled by their own folly, and again and again

-the generosity of his elder brother had rescued them from humiliating

-embarrassments. At such moments she had almost hated Wanda von Szalras

-for these large possessions, of which, according to her own views,

-her sister-in-law made no use whatever. Meantime, she wished Egon

-Vàsàrhely to die childless, and to that end had not been unwilling

-for the woman he loved to marry anyone else. She had reasoned that the

-Szalras estates would go to the Crown or the Church if Wanda did not

-marry; whilst all the power and possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely must, if

-he had no sons, pass in due course to his brother. She had the subtle

-acuteness of her race, and she had the double power of being able at

-once to wait very patiently and to spring with swift rage on what she

-needed. To her sister-in-law she always appeared a mere flutterer on

-the breath of fashion. The grave and candid nature of the one could not

-follow or perceive the intricacies of the other.</p>

-

-<p>'She is a cruel woman and a perilous one,' Sabran said one day to his

-wife's surprise.</p>

-

-<p>She answered him that Olga Brancka had always seemed to her a mere

-frivolous <i>mondaine</i>, like so many others of their world.</p>

-

-<p>'No,' he persisted. 'You are wrong; she is not a butterfly. She has too

-much energy. She is a profoundly immoral woman also. Look at her eyes.'</p>

-

-<p>'That is Stefan's affair,' she answered, 'not ours. He is indifferent.'</p>

-

-<p>'Or unsuspicious? Did your brother care for her?'</p>

-

-<p>'He was madly in love with her. She was only sixteen when he married

-her. He fell at Solferino half a year later. When she married my

-cousin it shocked and disgusted me. Perhaps I was foolish to take it

-thus, but it seemed such a sin against Gela. To die <i>so</i>, and not to be

-even remembered!'</p>

-

-<p>'Did your cousin Egon approve this second marriage?'</p>

-

-<p>'No,' he opposed it; he had our feeling about it. But Stefan, though

-very young, was beyond any control. He had the fortune as he had the

-title of his mother, the Countess Brancka, and Olga bewitched him as

-she had done my brother.'</p>

-

-<p>'She <i>is</i> a witch, a wicked witch,' said Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>The great autumn party was brilliant and agreeable. All things went

-well, and the days were never monotonous. The people were well

-assorted, and the social talent of their host made their outdoor sports

-and their indoor pastimes constantly varied, whilst Hungarian musicians

-and Viennese comedians played waltzes that would have made a statue

-dance, and represented the little comedies for which he himself had

-been famous at the Mirlitons.</p>

-

-<p>He was not conscious of it, but he was passionately eager for Egon

-Vàsàrhely to be witness, not only of his entire happiness, but of his

-social powers. To Vàsàrhely he seemed to put forward the perfection

-of his life with almost insolence; with almost exaggeration to exhibit

-the joys and the gifts with which nature and chance had so liberally

-dowered him. The stately Magyar soldier, sitting silent and melancholy

-apart, watched him with a curious pang, that in a lesser nature would

-have been a consuming envy. Now and then, though Sabran and his wife

-spoke rarely to each other in the presence of others, a glance, a

-smile, a word passed between them that told of absolute unuttered

-tenderness, profound and inexhaustible as the deep seas; in the very

-sound of their laughter, in the mere accent of their voices, in a

-careless caress to one of their children, in a light touch of the hand

-to one another as they rode, or as they met in a room, there was the

-expression of a perfect joy, of a perfect faith between them, which

-pierced the heart of the watcher of it. Yet would he not have had it

-otherwise at her cost.</p>

-

-<p>'Since she has chosen him as the companion of her life, it is well

-that he should be what she can take pride in, and what all men can

-praise,' he thought, and yet the happiness of this man seemed to him an

-audacity, an insolence. What human lover could merit her?</p>

-

-<p>Between himself and Sabran there was the most perfect courtesy, but no

-intimacy. They both knew that if for fifty years they met continually

-they would never be friends. All her endeavours to produce sympathy

-between them failed. Sabran was conscious of a constant observation of

-him by her cousin, which seemed to him to have a hostile motive, and

-which irritated him extremely, though he did not allow his irritation

-any visible vent. Olga Brancka perceived, and with the objectless

-malice of women of her temperament, amused herself with fanning, the

-slumbering enmity, as children play at fire.</p>

-

-<p>'You cannot expect Egon to love you,' she said once to her host. 'You

-know he was the betrothed of Wanda from her childhood&mdash;at least in his

-own hopes, and in the future sketched for them by their families.'</p>

-

-<p>'I was quite aware of that before I married,' he answered her

-indifferently. 'But those family arrangements are tranquil disposals of

-destiny which, if they be disturbed, leave no great trace of trouble.

-The Prince is young still, and a famous soldier as well as a great

-noble. He has no lack of consolation if he need it, and I cannot

-believe that he does.'</p>

-

-<p>Mdme. Olga laughed.</p>

-

-<p>'You know as well as I do that Egon adores the very stirrup your wife's

-foot touches!'</p>

-

-<p>'I know he is her much beloved cousin,' said Sabran, in a tone which

-admitted of no reply.</p>

-

-<p>To Vàsàrhely his sister-in-law said confidentially:</p>

-

-<p>'Dear Egon, why did you not stay on the <i>pusztas</i> or remain with your

-hussars? You make <i>le beau</i> Sabran jealous.'</p>

-

-<p>'Jealous!' asked Vàsàrhely, with a bitter smile. 'He has much cause,

-when she has neither eye nor ear, neither memory nor thought of any

-kind for any living thing except himself and those children who are

-all his very portraits! Why do you say these follies, Olga? You know

-that my cousin Wanda chose her lord out of all the world, and loves

-him as no one would have supposed she had it in her to love any mortal

-creature.'</p>

-

-<p>He spoke imperiously, harshly, and she was silenced.</p>

-

-<p>'What do you think of him?' she said with hesitation.</p>

-

-<p>'Everyone asks me that question. I am not his keeper!'</p>

-

-<p>'But you must form some opinion. He is virtual lord of Hohenszalras,

-and I believe she has made over to him all the appanages of Idrac, and

-his children will have everything.'</p>

-

-<p>'Are they not her natural heirs? Who should inherit from her if not her

-sons?'</p>

-

-<p>'Of course, of course they will inherit, only they inherit nothing

-from him. It was certainly a great stroke of fortune for a landless

-gentleman to make. Why does the <i>gentilhomme pauvre</i> always so

-captivate women?'</p>

-

-<p>'What do you mean to insinuate, Olga?' he asked her, with a stern

-glance of his great black eyes.'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, nothing; only his history was peculiar. I remember his arrival

-in France, his first appearance in society; it is many years ago now.

-All the Faubourg received him, but some said at the time that it was

-too romantic to be true&mdash;those Mexican forests, that long exile of the

-Sabran, the sudden appearance of this beautiful young marquis; you

-will grant it was romantic. I suppose it was the romance that made

-even Wanda's clear head turn a little. It is a <i>vin capiteux</i> for many

-women. And then such a life in Paris after it&mdash;duels, baccara, bonnes

-fortunes, clever comedies, a touch like Liszt's, a sudden success in

-the Chamber&mdash;it was all so romantic; it was bound to bring him at

-last to his haven, the Prince Charmant of an enchanted castle! Only

-enchanted castles sometimes grow dull, and Princes Charmants are not

-always amusable by the same châtelaine!'</p>

-

-<p>Egon Vàsàrhely, with his eyes sombre under their long black lashes,

-listened to the easy bantering phrases with the vague suspicion of an

-honest and slow-witted man that a woman is trying to drop poison into

-his ear which she wishes to pass as <i>eau sucrée.</i> He did not altogether

-follow her insinuation, but he understood something of her drift. They

-were alone in a corner of the ball-room, whilst the cotillon was at its

-height, conducted by Sabran, who had been famous for its leadership in

-Paris and Vienna. He stooped his head and looked her full in her eyes.</p>

-

-<p>'Look here, Olga. I am not sure what you mean, but I believe you are

-tired of seeing my cousin's happiness, merely because it is something

-with which you cannot interfere. For myself I would protect her

-happiness as I would her honour if I thought either endangered. Whether

-you or I like the Marquis de Sabran is wholly beyond the question. She

-loves him, and she has made him one of us. His honour is now ours.

-For myself I would defend him in his absence as though he were my own

-brother. Not for his sake at all&mdash;for hers. I do not express myself

-very well, but you know what I mean. Here is Max returning to claim

-you.'</p>

-

-<p>Silenced and a little alarmed the Countess Brancka rose and went off to

-her place in the cotillon.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely, sitting where she had left him, watched the mazes of the

-cotillon, the rhythm of the tzigane musicians coming to his ear

-freighted with a thousand familiar memories of the czardas danced madly

-in the long Hungarian nights. Time had been when the throb of the

-tzigane strings had stirred all his pulses like magic, but now all his

-bold bright life seemed numb and frozen in him.</p>

-

-<p>His eyes rested on his cousin, where she stood conversing with a crown

-prince, who was her chief guest, and passed from her to follow the

-movements of Sabran, who with supreme ease and elegance was leading a

-new intricate measure down the ball-room.</p>

-

-<p>She was happy, that he could not doubt. Every action, every word, every

-glance said so with a meaning not to be doubted. He thought she had

-never looked so handsome as she did to-night since that far away day

-in her childhood when he had seen her with the red and white roses in

-her lap and the crown upon her curls. She had the look of her childhood

-in her eyes, that serene and glad light which had been dimmed by her

-brothers' death, but now shone there again tranquil, radiant, and pure

-as sunlight is. She wore white velvet and white brocade; her breast

-was hidden in white roses; she wore her famous pearls and the ribbons

-of the Starred Cross of Austria and of the Prussian Order of Merit;

-she held in her hand a large painted fan which had belonged to Maria

-Theresa. Every now and then, as she talked with her royal guest, her

-glance strayed down the room to where her husband was, and lingered

-there a moment with a little smile.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely watched her for awhile, then rose abruptly, and made his way

-out of the ball-room and the state apartments down the corridors of the

-old house he knew so well towards his own chamber. He thought he would

-write to her and leave upon the morrow. What need was there for him to

-stay on in this perpetual pain? He had done enough for the world, which

-had seen him under the roof of Hohenszalras.</p>

-

-<p>As he took his way through the long passages, tapestry-hung or

-oak-panelled, which led across the great building to his own set of

-rooms in the clock tower, he passed an open door out of which a light

-was streaming. As he glanced within he saw it was the children's

-sleeping apartment, of which the door was open because the night was

-warm, unusually warm for the heart of the Gross Glöckner mountains. An

-impulse he could not have explained made him pause and enter. The three

-little white beds of carved Indian work, with curtains of lace, looked

-very snowy and peaceful in the pale light from a hanging lamp. The

-children were all asleep; the one nearest the door was Bela.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely stood and looked at him. His head was thrown back on his

-pillow and his arms were above his head. His golden hair, which was

-cut straight and low over his forehead, had been pushed back in his

-slumber; he looked more like his father than in his waking hours,

-for as he dreamed there was a look of coldness and of scorn upon his

-childish face, which made him so resemble Sabran that the man who

-looked on him drew his breath hard with pain.</p>

-

-<p>The night-nurse rose from her seat, recognising Prince Egon, whom she

-had known from his childhood.</p>

-

-<p>'The little Count is so like the Marquis,' she said, approaching; 'so

-is Herr Gela. Ah, my Prince, you remember the noble gentlemen whose

-names they bear? God send they may be like them in their lives and not

-their deaths!'</p>

-

-<p>'An early death is good,' said Vàsàrhely, as he stood beside the

-child's bed. He thought how good it would have been if he had fallen

-at Sadowa or Königsgrätz, or earlier by the side of Gela and Victor,

-charging with his White Hussars.</p>

-

-<p>The old nurse rambled on, full of praise and stories of the children's

-beauty, and strength, and activity, and intelligence. Vàsàrhely did not

-hear her; he stood lost in thought looking down on the sleeping figure

-of Bela, who, as if conscious of strange eyes upon him, moved uneasily

-in his slumber, and ruffled his golden hair with his hands, and thrust

-off his coverings from his beautiful round white limbs.</p>

-

-<p>'Count Bela is not like our saint who died,' said the old nurse. 'He

-is always masterful, and loves his own way. My lady is strict with

-him, and wisely so, for he is a proud rebellious child. But he is very

-generous, and has noble ways. Count Gela is a little angel; he will be

-like the Heilige Graf.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely did not hear anything she said. His gaze was bent on the

-sleeping child, studying the lines of the delicate brows, of the

-curving lips, of the long black lashes. It was so familiar, so

-familiar! Suddenly as he gazed a light seemed to leap out of the

-darkness of long forgotten years, and the memory which had haunted him

-stood out clear before him.</p>

-

-<p>'He is like Vassia Kazán!' he cried, half aloud. The face of the child

-had recalled what in the face of the man had for ever eluded his

-remembrance.</p>

-

-<p>He thrust a gold coin in the nurse's hand, and hurried from the

-chamber. A sudden inconceivable, impossible suspicion had leaped up

-before him as he had gazed on the sleeping loveliness of Sabran's

-little son.</p>

-

-<p>The old woman saw his sudden pallor, his uncertain gesture, and

-thought, 'Poor gallant gentleman! He wishes these pretty boys were his

-own. Well, it might have been better if he had been master here, though

-there is nothing to say against the one who is so. Still, a stranger is

-always a stranger, and foreign blood is bad.'</p>

-

-<p>Then she drew the coverings over Bela's naked little limbs, and passed

-on to make sure that the little Ottilie, who had been born when the

-primroses where first out in the Iselthal woods, was sleeping soundly,

-and wanted nothing.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely made his way to his own chamber, and there sat down heavily,

-mechanically, like a man waking out from a bad dream.</p>

-

-<p>His memory went back to twenty years before, when he, a little lad, had

-accompanied his father on a summer visit to the house of a Russian,

-Prince Paul Zabaroff. It was a house, gay, magnificent, full of idle

-men and women of facile charm; it was not a house for youth; but

-both the Prince Vàsàrhely and the Prince Zabaroff were men of easy

-morals&mdash;<i>viveurs</i>, gamesters, and philosophers, who at fifteen years

-old themselves had been lovers and men of the world. At that house

-had been present a youth, some years older than he was, who was known

-as Vassia Kazán: a youth whose beauty and wit made him the delight of

-the women there, and whose skill at games and daring in sports won him

-the admiration of the men. It was understood without even being said

-openly that Vassia Kazán was a natural son of the Prince Zabaroff. The

-little Hungarian prince, child as he was, had wit enough and enough

-knowledge of life to understand that this brilliant companion, of his

-was base-born. His kind heart moved him to pity, but his intense pride

-curbed his pity with contempt. Vassia Kazán had resented the latter too

-bitterly to even be conscious of the first. The gentlemen assembled had

-diverted themselves by the unspoken feud that had soon risen between

-the boys, and the natural intelligence of the little Magyar noble had

-been no match for the subtle and cultured brain of the Parisian Lycéen.</p>

-

-<p>One day one of the lovely ladies there, who plundered Zabaroff and

-caressed his son, amused herself with a war of words between the lads,

-and so heated, stung, spurred and tormented the Hungarian boy that,

-exasperated by the sallies and satires of his foe, and by the presence

-of this lovely goddess of discord, he so far forgot his chivalry that

-he turned on Vassia with a taunt. 'You would be a serf if you were in

-Russia!' he said, with his great black eyes flashing the scorn of the

-noble on the bastard. Without a word, Vassia, who had come in from

-riding and had his whip in his hand, sprang on him, held him in a grip

-of steel, and thrashed him. The fiery Magyar, writhing under the blows

-of one who to him was as a slave, as a hound, freed his right arm,

-snatched from a table near an oriental dagger lying there with other

-things of value, and plunged it into the shoulder of his foe. The

-cries of the lady, alarmed at her own work, brought the men in from

-the adjoining room; the boys were forced apart and carried to their

-chambers.</p>

-

-<p>Prince Vàsàrhely left the house that evening with his son, still

-furious and unappeased. Vassia Kazán remained, made a hero of and

-nursed by the lovely woman who had thrown the apple of strife. His

-wound was healed in three weeks' time; soon after his father's

-house-party was scattered, and he himself returned to his college. Not

-a syllable passed between him and Zabaroff as to his quarrel with the

-little Hungarian magnate. To the woman who had wrought the mischief

-Zabaroff said: 'Almost I wish he were my lawful son. He is a true wolf

-of the steppes. Paris has only combed his hide and given him a silken

-coat; he is still a wolf, like all true Russians.'</p>

-

-<p>Looking on the sleeping child of Sabran, all that half-forgotten scene

-had risen up before the eyes of Egon Vàsàrhely. He seemed to see the

-beautiful fair face of Vassia Kazán, with the anger on the knitted

-brows, and the ferocity on the delicate stern lips as he had raised his

-arm to strike. Twenty years had gone by; he himself, whenever he had

-remembered the scene, had long grown ashamed of the taunt he had cast,

-not of the blow he had given, for the sole reproof his father had ever

-made him was to say: 'A noble, only insults his equals. To insult an

-inferior is ungenerous, it is derogatory; whom you offend you raise for

-the hour to a level with yourself. Remember to choose your foes not

-less carefully than you choose your friends.'</p>

-

-<p>Why with the regard, the voice, the air of Sabran had some vague

-intangible remembrance always come before him?'</p>

-

-<p>Why, as he had gazed on the sleeping child had the vague uncertainty

-suddenly resolved itself into distinct revelation?</p>

-

-<p>'He is Vassia Kazán! He is Vassia Kazán!' he said to himself a score

-of times stupidly, persistently, as one speaks in a dream. Yet he knew

-he must be a prey to delusion, to phantasy, to accidental resemblance.

-He told himself so. He resisted his own folly, and all the while a

-subtler inner consciousness seemed to be speaking in him, and saying to

-him:</p>

-

-<p>'That man is Vassia Kazán. Surely he is Vassia Kazán.'</p>

-

-<p>And then the loyal soul of him strengthened itself and made him think:</p>

-

-<p>'Even if he be Vassia Kazán he is her husband. He is what she loves; he

-is the father of those children that are hers.'</p>

-

-<p>He never went to his bed that night. When the music ceased at an hour

-before dawn, and the great house grew silent, he still sat there by

-the open casement, glad of the cold air that blew in from over the

-Szalrassee, as with daybreak a fine film of rain began to come down the

-mountain sides.</p>

-

-<p>Once he heard the voice of Sabran, who passed the door on his way to

-his own apartment. Sabran was saying in German with a little laugh:</p>

-

-<p>'My lady!' I am jealous of your crown prince. When I left him now in

-his chamber I was disposed to immortalise myself by regicide. He adores

-you!'</p>

-

-<p>Then he heard Wanda laugh in answer, with some words that did not

-reach his ear as they passed on further down the corridor. Vàsàrhely

-shivered, and instinctively rose to his feet. He felt as if he must

-seek him out and cry out to him:</p>

-

-<p>'Am I mad or is it true? Let me see your shoulder&mdash;have you the mark of

-the wound that I gave? Your little child has the face of Vassia Kazán.

-Are you Vassia Kazán? Are you the bastard of Zabaroff? Are you the wolf

-of the steppes?'</p>

-

-<p>He had desired to go from Hohenszalras, where every hour was pain to

-him, but now he felt an irresistible fascination in the vicinity of

-Sabran. His mind was in that dual state which at once rejects a fact as

-incredible, and believes in it absolutely. His reason told him that his

-suspicion was a folly; his instinct told him that it was a truth.</p>

-

-<p>When in the forenoon the castle again became animated, and the guests

-met to the mid-day breakfast in the hall of the knights, he descended,

-moved by an eagerness that made him for the first time in his life

-nervous. When Sabran addressed him he felt himself grow pale; he

-followed the movements, he watched the features, he studied the tones

-of his successful rival, with an intense absorption in them. Through

-the hunting breakfast, at which only men were present, he was conscious

-of nothing that was addressed to him; he only seemed to hear a voice in

-his ear saying perpetually&mdash;&mdash;'Yonder is Vassia Kazán.'</p>

-

-<p>The day was spent in sport, sport rough and real, that gave fair play

-to the beasts and perilous exposure to the hunters. For the first time

-in his life, Egon Vàsàrhely let a brown bear go by him untouched,

-and missed more than one roebuck. His eyes were continually seeking

-his host; a mile off down a forest glade the figure of Sabran seemed

-to fill his vision, a figure full of grace and dignity, clad in a

-hunting-dress of russet velvet, with a hunting-horn slung at his side

-on a broad chain of gold, the gift of his wife in memory of the fateful

-day when he had aimed at the <i>kuttengeier</i> in her woods.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran of necessity devoted himself to the crown prince throughout

-the day's sport; only in the twilight as they returned he spoke to

-Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>'Wanda is so full of regret that you wish to leave us,' he said, with

-graceful cordiality; 'if only I can persuade you to remain, I shall

-take her the most welcome of all tidings from the forest. Stay at the

-least another week, the weather has cleared.'</p>

-

-<p>As he spoke he thought that Vàsàrhely looked at him strangely; but

-he knew that he could not be much loved by his wife's cousin, and

-continued with good humour to persist in his request. Abruptly, the

-other answered him at last.</p>

-

-<p>'Wanda wishes me to stay? Well, I will stay then. It seems strange to

-hear a stranger invite <i>me</i> to Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran coloured; he said with hauteur:</p>

-

-<p>'That I am a stranger to Prince Vàsàrhely is not my fault. That I have

-the right to invite him to Hohenszalras is my happiness, due to his

-cousin's goodness, which has been far beyond my merit.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely's eyes dwelt on him gloomily; he was sensible of the dignity,

-the self-command, and the delicacy of reproof which were blent in the

-answer he had received; he felt humbled and convicted of ill-breeding.

-He said after a pause:</p>

-

-<p>'I should ask your pardon. My cousin would be the first to condemn my

-words; they sounded ill, but I meant them literally. Hohenszalras has

-been one of my homes from boyhood; it will be your son's when we are

-both dead. How like he is to you; he has nothing of his mother.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran, somewhat surprised, smiled as he answered:</p>

-

-<p>'He is very like me. I regret it; but you know the poets and the

-physiologists are for once agreed as to the cause of that. It is a

-truth proved a million times: <i>l'enfant de l'amour ressemble toujours

-au père.</i>'</p>

-

-<p>Egon Vàsàrhely grew white under the olive hue of his sun-bronzed

-cheek. The <i>riposte</i> had been made with a thrust that went home. Otto

-at that moment approached his master for orders for the morrow. They

-were no more alone. They entered the house; the long and ceremonious

-dinner succeeded. Vàsàrhely was silent and stern. Sabran was the most

-brilliant of hosts, the happiest of men; all the women present were in

-love with him, his wife the most of all.</p>

-

-<p>'Réné tells me you will stay, Egon. I am so very glad,' his cousin said

-to him during the evening, and she added with a little hesitation, 'If

-you would take time to know him well, you would find him so worthy of

-your regard; he has all the qualities that most men esteem in each

-other. It would make me so happy if you were friends at heart, not only

-in mere courtesy.'</p>

-

-<p>'You know that can never be,' said Vàsàrhely, almost rudely. 'Even you

-cannot work miracles. He is your husband. It is a reason that I should

-respect him, but it is also a reason why I shall for ever hate him.'</p>

-

-<p>He said the last words in a tone scarcely audible, but low as it was,

-there was a force in it that affected her painfully.</p>

-

-<p>'What you say there is quite unworthy of you,' she said with gentleness

-but coldness. 'He has done you no wrong. Long ere I met him I told you

-that what you wished was not what I wished, never would be so. You are

-too great a gentleman, Egon, to nourish an injustice in your heart.'</p>

-

-<p>He looked down; every fibre in him thrilled and burned under the sound

-of her voice, the sense of her presence.</p>

-

-<p>'I saw your children asleep last night,' he said abruptly. 'They have

-nothing of you in them; they are his image.'</p>

-

-<p>'Is it so unusual for children to resemble their father?' she said with

-a smile, whilst vaguely disquieted by his tone.</p>

-

-<p>'No, I suppose not; but the Szalras have always been of one type. How

-came your husband by that face? I have seen it amongst the Circassians,

-the Persians, the Georgians; but you say he is a Breton.'</p>

-

-<p>'The Sabrans of Romaris are Bretons; you have only to consult history.

-Very beautiful faces like his have seldom much impress of nationality;

-they always seem as though they followed the old Greek laws, and were

-cast in the divine heroic mould of another time than ours.'</p>

-

-<p>'Who was his mother?'</p>

-

-<p>'A Spanish Mexican.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely was silent.</p>

-

-<p>His cousin left him and went amongst her guests. A vague sense of

-uneasiness went with her at her consciousness of his hostility to

-Sabran. She wished she had not asked him to remain.</p>

-

-<p>'You have never offended Egon?' she asked Sabran anxiously that night.

-'You have always been forbearing and patient with him?'</p>

-

-<p>'I have obeyed you in that as all things, my angel,', he answered her

-lightly. 'What would you? He is in love with you still, and I have

-married you! It is even a crime in his eyes that my children resemble

-me! One can never argue with a passion that is unhappy. It is a kind of

-frenzy.'</p>

-

-<p>She heard with some impatience.</p>

-

-<p>'He has no right to cherish such a resentment. He keeps it alive by

-brooding on it. I had hoped that when he saw you here, saw how happy

-you render me, saw your children too, he would grow calmer, wiser, more

-reconciled to the inevitable.'</p>

-

-<p>'You did not know men, my love,' said Sabran, with a smile.</p>

-

-<p>To him the unhappiness and the ill-will of Egon Vàsàrhely were matters

-of supreme indifference; in a manner they gratified him, they even

-supplied that stimulant of rivalry which a man's passion needs to keep

-at its height in the calm of safe possession. That Egon Vàsàrhely saw

-his perfect happiness lent it pungency and a keener sense of victory.

-When he kissed his wife's hand in the sight of her cousin, the sense

-of the pain it dealt to the spectator gave the trivial action to him

-all the sweetness and the ardour of the first caresses of his accepted

-passion.</p>

-

-<p>Of that she knew nothing. It would have seemed to her ignoble, as so

-much that makes up men's desire always does seem to a woman of her

-temperament, even whilst it dominates and solicits her, and forces her

-to share something of its own intoxication.</p>

-

-<p>'Egon is very unreasonable,' said Mdme. Ottilie. 'He believes that

-if you had not met Réné you would have in time loved himself. It is

-foolish. Love is a destiny. Had you married him you would not have

-loved him. He would soon have perceived that and been miserable, much

-more miserable than he is now, for he would have been unable to release

-you. I think he should not have come here at all if he could not have

-met M. de Sabran with at least equanimity.'</p>

-

-<p>'I think so, too,' said Wanda, and an impatience against her cousin

-began to grow into anger; without being conscious of it, she had placed

-Sabran so high in her own esteem that she could forgive none who did

-not adore her own idol. It was a weakness in her that was lovely and

-touching in a character that had had before hardly enough of the usual

-foibles of humanity. Every error of love is lovable.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely could not dismiss from his mind the impression which haunted

-him.</p>

-

-<p>'I conclude you knew the Marquis de Sabran well in France?' he said one

-day to Baron Kaulnitz, who was still there.</p>

-

-<p>Kaulnitz demurred.</p>

-

-<p>'No, I cannot say that I did. I knew him by repute; that was not very

-pure. However, the Faubourg always received and sustained him; the

-Comte de Chambord did the same; they were the most interested. One

-cannot presume to think they could be deceived.'</p>

-

-<p>'Deceived!' echoed Prince Egon. 'What a singular word to use. Do you

-mean to imply the possibility of&mdash;of any falsity on his part&mdash;any

-intrigue to appear what he is not?'</p>

-

-<p>'No,' said Kaulnitz, with hesitation. 'Honestly, I cannot say so much.

-An impression was given me at the moment of his signing his marriage

-contract that he concealed something; but it was a mere suspicion. As I

-told you, the whole Legitimist world, the most difficult to enter, the

-most incredulous of assumption, received him with open arms. All his

-papers were of unimpeachable regularity. There was never a doubt hinted

-by anyone, and yet I will confess to you, my dear Egon, since we are

-speaking in confidence, that I have had always my own doubts as to his

-marquisate of Sabran.'</p>

-

-<p>'<i>Grosser Gott!</i>' exclaimed Vàsàrhely, as he started from his seat.

-'Why did you not stop the marriage?'</p>

-

-<p>'One does not stop a marriage by a mere baseless suspicion,' replied

-Kaulnitz. 'I have not one shadow of reason for my probably quite

-unwarranted conjecture. It merely came into my mind also at the

-signing of the contracts. I had already done all I could to oppose

-the marriage, but Wanda was inflexible&mdash;you are witness of the charm

-he still possesses for her&mdash;and even the Princess was scarcely

-less infatuated. Besides, it must be granted that few men are more

-attractive in every way; and as he <i>is</i> one of us, whatever else he be,

-his honour is now our honour, as you said yourself the other day.'</p>

-

-<p>'One could always kill him,' muttered Vàsàrhely, 'and set her free so,

-if one were sure.'</p>

-

-<p>'Sure of what?' said Kaulnitz, rather alarmed at the effect of his own

-words. 'You Magyar gentlemen always think that every knot can be cut

-with a sword. If he were a mere adventurer (which is hardly possible)

-it would not mend matters for you to run him through the heart; there

-are his children.'</p>

-

-<p>'Would the marriage be legal if his name were assumed?'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, no! She could have it annulled, of course, both by Church and Law.

-All those pretty children would have no rights and no name. But we are

-talking very wildly and in a theatrical fashion. He is as certainly

-Marquis de Sabran as I am Karl von Kaulnitz.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely said nothing; his mind was in tumult, his heart oppressed by

-a sense of secrecy and of a hope that was guilty and mean.</p>

-

-<p>He did not speak to his companion of Vassia Kazán, but his conjecture

-seemed to hover before his sight like a black cloud which grew bigger

-every hour.</p>

-

-<p>He remained at Hohenszalras throughout the autumnal festivities. He

-felt as if he could not go away with that doubt still unsolved, that

-suspicion either confirmed or uprooted. His cousin grew as uneasy at

-his presence there as she had before been uneasy at his absence. Her

-instinct told her that he was the foe of the one dearest to her on

-earth. She felt that the gallant and generous temper of him had changed

-and grown morose; he was taciturn, moody, solitary.</p>

-

-<p>He spent almost all his time out of doors, and devoted himself to the

-hardy sport of the mountains and forests with a sort of rage. Guests

-came and went at the castle; some were imperial, some royal people;

-there was always a brilliant circle of notable persons there, and

-Sabran played his part as their host, with admirable tact, talent, and

-good humour. His wit, his amiability, his many accomplishments, and

-his social charm were in striking contrast to the sombre indifference

-of Vàsàrhely, whom men had no power to amuse and women no power to

-interest. Prince Egon was like a magnificent picture by Rembrandt,

-as he sat in his superb uniform in a corner of a ball-room with the

-collars of his orders blazing with jewels, and his hands crossed on

-the diamond-studded hilt of his sword; but he was so mute, so gloomy,

-so austere, that the vainest, coquette there ceased to hope to please

-him, and his most cordial friends found his curt contemptuous replies

-destroy their desire for his companionship.</p>

-

-<p>Wanda, who was frankly and fondly attached to him, began to long for

-his departure. The gaze of his black eyes, fixed in their fire and

-gloom on the little gay figures of her children, filled her with a

-vague apprehension.</p>

-

-<p>'If he would only find some one and be happy,' she thought, with anger

-at this undesired and criminal love which clung to her so persistently.</p>

-

-<p>'Am I made of wax?' he said to her with scorn, when she ventured to

-hint at her wishes.</p>

-

-<p>'How I wish I had not asked him to remain here!' she said to herself

-many times. It was not possible for her to dismiss her cousin, who had

-been from his infancy accustomed to look on the Hohenszalrasburg as his

-second home. But as circle after circle of guests came, went, and were

-replaced by others, and Egon Vàsàrhely still retained the rooms in the

-west tower that had been his from boyhood, his continual presence grew

-irksome and irritating to her.</p>

-

-<p>'He forgets that it is now my husband's house!' she thought.</p>

-

-<p>There was only one living creature in all the place to whom Vàsàrhely

-unbent from his sullen and haughty reserve, and that one was the child

-Bela.</p>

-

-<p>Bela was as beautiful as the morning, with his shower of golden hair,

-and his eyes like sapphires, and his skin like a lily. With curious

-self-torture Vàsàrhely would attract the child to him by tales of

-daring and of sport, and would watch with intent eyes every line of

-the small face, trying therein to read the secret of the man by whom

-this child had been begotten. Bela, all unconscious, was proud of this

-interest displayed in him by this mighty soldier, of whose deeds in war

-Ulrich and Hubert and Otto told such Homeric tales.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela will fight with you when he is big,' he would say, trying to

-inclose the jewelled hilt of Vàsàrhely's sword in his tiny fingers, or

-trotting after him through the silence of the tapestried corridors.

-When she saw them thus together she felt that she could understand the

-superstitious fear of oriental women when their children are looked at

-fixedly.</p>

-

-<p>'You are very good to my boy,' she said once to Vàsàrhely, when he had

-let the child chatter by his side for hours.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely turned away abruptly.</p>

-

-<p>'There are times when I could kill your son, because he is his,' he

-muttered, 'and there are times when I could worship him, because he is

-yours.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do not talk so, Egon,'she said, gravely. 'If you will feel so, it is

-best&mdash;I must say it&mdash;it is best that you should see neither my child

-nor me.'</p>

-

-<p>He took no notice of her words.</p>

-

-<p>'The children would always be yours,' he muttered. 'You would never

-leave him, never disgrace him for their sake; even if one knew&mdash;it

-would be of no use.'</p>

-

-<p>'Dear Egon,' she said in real distress, 'what strange things are you

-saying? Are you mad? Whose disgrace do you mean?'</p>

-

-<p>'Let us suppose an extreme case,' he said, with a hard laugh. 'Suppose

-their father were base, or vile, or faithless, would you hate the

-children? Surely you would.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have not imagination enough to suppose any such thing,'she said very

-coldly. 'And you do not know what a mother's love is, my cousin.'</p>

-

-<p>He walked away, leaving her abruptly.</p>

-

-<p>'How strange he grows!' she thought. 'Surely his mind must be touched;

-jealousy is a sort of madness.'</p>

-

-<p>She bade the children's attendants keep Count Bela more in the

-nurseries; she told them that the child teased her guests, and must

-not be allowed to run so often at his will and whim over the house.'

-She never seriously feared that Egon would harm the child: his noble

-and chivalrous nature could not have changed so cruelly as that; but

-it hurt her to see his eyes fixed on the son of Sabran with such

-persistent interrogation and so strange an intensity of observation. It

-made her think of old Italian tales of the evil eye.</p>

-

-<p>She did not know that Vàsàrhely had come thither with a sincere and

-devout intention to conquer his jealous hatred of her husband, and

-to habituate himself to the sight of her in the new relations of her

-life. She did not know that he would probably have honestly tried to

-do his duty, and honestly striven to feel at least esteem for one so

-near to her, if the suspicion which had become almost certainty in his

-own mind had not made him believe that he saw in Sabran a traitor,

-a bastard, and a criminal whose offences were the deepest of all

-possible offences, and whose degradation was the lowest of all possible

-degradation, in the sight of the haughty magnate of Hungary, steeped

-to the lips in all the traditions and the convictions of an unsullied

-nobility. If what he believed were, indeed, the truth, he would hold

-Sabran lower than any beggar crouching at the gate of his palace in

-Buda, than any gipsy wandering in the woods of his mountain fortress

-of Taróc. If what he believed were the truth, no leper would seem to

-him so loathsome as this brilliant and courtly gentleman to whom his

-cousin had given her hand, her honour, and her life.</p>

-

-<p>'Doubt, like a raging tooth,' gnawed at his heart, and a hope, which

-he knew was dishonourable to his chivalry, sprang up in him, vague,

-timid, and ashamed. If, indeed, it were as he believed, would not such

-crime, proven on the sinner, part him for ever from the pure, proud

-life of Wanda von Szalras? And then, as he thought thus, he groaned in

-spirit, remembering the children&mdash;the children with their father's face

-and their father's taint in them, for ever living witnesses of their

-mother's surrender to a lying hound.</p>

-

-<p>'Your cousin cannot be said to contribute to the gaiety of your

-house parties, my love,' Sabran observed with a smile one day, when

-they received the announcement of an intended visit from one of the

-archdukes. Egon Vàsàrhely was still there, and even his cousin, much

-as she longed for his departure, could not openly urge it upon him;

-relationship and hospitality alike forbade.</p>

-

-<p>'He is sadly changed,' she answered. 'He was always silent, but he is

-now morose. Perhaps he lives too much at Taróc, where all is very wild

-and solitary.'</p>

-

-<p>'He lives too much in your memory,' said Sabran, with no compassion.

-'Could he determine to forgive my marriage with you, there would be a

-chance for him to recover his peace of mind. Only, my Wanda, it is not

-possible for any man to be consoled for the loss of you.'</p>

-

-<p>'But that is nothing new,' she answered, with impatience. 'If he felt

-so strongly against you, why did he come here? It was not like his

-high, chivalrous honour.'</p>

-

-<p>'Perhaps he came with the frank will to be reconciled to his fate,'

-said Sabran, not knowing how closely he struck the truth, 'and at the

-sight of you, of all that he lost and that I gained, he cannot keep his

-resolution.'</p>

-

-<p>'Then he should go away,' she said, with that indifference to all

-others save the one beloved which all love begets.</p>

-

-<p>'I think he should. But who can tell him so?'</p>

-

-<p>'I did myself the other day. I shall tell him so more plainly, if

-needful. Who cannot honour you shall be no friend of mine, no guest of

-ours.'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, my love!' said Sabran, whose conscience was touched. 'Do not have

-feud with your relatives for my sake. They are worthier than I.'</p>

-

-<p>The Archduke, with his wife, arrived there on the following day, and

-Hohenszalras was gorgeous in the September sun, with all the pomp with

-which the lords of it had always welcomed their Imperial friends.

-Vàsàrhely looked on as a spectator at a play when he watched its

-present master receive the Imperial Prince with that supreme ease,

-grace, and dignity which were so admirably blent in him.</p>

-

-<p>'Can he be but a marvellous comedian?' wondered the man, to whom a

-bastard was less even than a peasant.</p>

-

-<p>There was nothing of vanity, of effort, of assumption visible in the

-perfect manner of his host. He seemed to the backbone, in all the

-difficult subtleties of society, as in the simple, frank intercourse

-of man and man, that which even Kaulnitz had conceded that he was,

-<i>gentilhomme de race.</i> Could he have been born a serf&mdash;bred from the

-hour's caprice of a voluptuary for a serving-woman?</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely sat mute, sunk so deeply in his own thoughts that all the

-festivities round him went by like a pageantry on a stage, in which he

-had no part.</p>

-

-<p>'He looks like the statue of the Commendatore,' said Olga Brancka, who

-had returned for the archducal visit, as she glanced at the sombre,

-stately figure of her brother-in-law, Sabran, to whom she spoke,

-laughed with a little uneasiness. Would the hand of Egon Vàsàrhely ever

-seize him and drag him downward like the hand of the statue in <i>Don

-Giovanni?</i></p>

-

-<p>'What a pity that Wanda did not marry him, and that I did not marry

-you!' said Mdme. Brancka, saucily, but with a certain significance of

-meaning.</p>

-

-<p>'You do me infinite honour!' he answered. 'But, at the risk of seeming

-most ungallant, I must confess the truth. I am grateful that the gods

-arranged matters as they are. You are enchanting, Madame Olga, as a

-guest, but as a wife&mdash;alas! who can drink <i>kümmel</i> every day?'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled enchantingly, showing her pretty teeth, but she was bitterly

-angered. She had wished for a compliment at the least. 'What can these

-men see in Wanda?' she thought savagely. 'She is handsome, it is true;

-but she has no coquetry, no animation, no passion. She is dressed by

-Worth, and has a marvellous quantity of old jewels; but for that no one

-would say anything of her except that she was much too tall and had a

-German face!' And she persuaded herself that it was so; if the Venus

-de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her

-waist was large.</p>

-

-<p>Mdme. Olga was still very lovely, and took care to be never seen except

-at her loveliest. She always treated Sabran with a great familiarity,

-which his wife was annoyed by, though she did not display her

-annoyance. Mdme Brancka always called him <i>mon cousin</i> or <i>beau cousin</i>

-in the language she usually used, and affected much more previous

-knowledge of him than their acquaintance warranted, since it had been

-merely such slight intimacy as results from moving in the same society.

-She was small and slight, but of great spirit; she shot, fished, rode,

-and played billiards with equal skill; she affected an adoration of

-the most dangerous sports, and even made a point of sharing the bear

-and the boar hunt. Wanda, who, though a person of much greater real

-courage, abhorred all the cruelties and ferocities that perforce

-accompany sport, saw her with some irritation go out with Sabran on

-these expeditions.</p>

-

-<p>'Women are utterly out of place in such sport as that, Olga,' she urged

-to her; 'and indeed are very apt to bring the men into peril, for of

-course no man can take care of himself whilst he has the safety of a

-woman to attend to; she must of necessity distract and trouble him.'</p>

-

-<p>But the Countess Stefan only laughed, and slipped with affectation her

-jewelled hunting-knife into its place in her girdle.</p>

-

-<p>Throughout the Archduke's visit, and after the Prince's departure,

-Vàsàrhely continued to stay on, whilst a succession of other guests

-came and went, and the summer deepened into autumn. He felt that he

-could not leave his cousin's house with that doubt unsolved; yet he

-knew that he might stay on for ever with no more certainty to reward

-him and confirm his suspicions than he possessed now. His presence

-annoyed his host, but Sabran was too polished a gentleman to betray

-his irritation; sometimes Vàsàrhely shunned his presence and his

-conversation for days together, at other times he sought them and rode

-with him, shot with him, and played cards with him, in the vain hope of

-gathering from some chance admission or allusion some clue to Sabran's

-early days. But a perfectly happy man is not given at any time to

-retrospection, and Sabran less than most men loved his past. He would

-gladly have forgotten everything that he had ever done or said before

-his marriage at the Hofburg.</p>

-

-<p>The intellectual powers and accomplishments of Sabran dazzled Vàsàrhely

-with a saddened sense of inferiority. Like most great soldiers he

-had a genuine humility in his measurement of himself. He knew that he

-had no talents except as a leader of cavalry. 'It is natural that she

-never looked at me,' he thought, 'when she had once seen this man, with

-his wit, his grace, his facility.' He could not even regard the skill

-of Sabran in the arts, in the salon, in the theatre with the contempt

-which the 'Wild Boar of Taróc' might have felt for a mere maker of

-music, a squire of dames, a writer of sparkling little comedies, a

-painter of screens, because he knew that both at Idrac and in France

-Sabran had showed himself the possessor of those martial and virile

-qualities, by the presence or the absence of which the Hungarian noble

-measured all men. He himself could only love well and live well: he

-reflected sadly that honesty and honour are not alone enough to draw

-love in return.</p>

-

-<p>As the weeks passed on, his host grew so accustomed to his presence

-there that it ceased to give him offence or cause him anxiety.</p>

-

-<p>'He is not amusing, and he is not always polite,' he said to his

-wife, 'but if he likes to consume his soul in gazing at you, I am not

-jealous, my Wanda; and so taciturn a rival would hardly ever be a

-dangerous one.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do not jest about it,' she answered him, with some real pain. 'I

-should be very vexed at his remaining here, were it not that I feel

-sure he will in time learn to live down his regrets, and to esteem and

-appreciate you.'</p>

-

-<p>'Who knows but his estimation of me may not be the right one?' said

-Sabran, with a pang of sad self-knowledge. And although he did not

-attach any significance to the prolonged sojourn of the lord of Taróc

-and Mohacs, he began to desire once more that his guest would return

-to the solitudes of the Carlowitz vineyards, or of the Karpathian

-mountains and gorges of snow.</p>

-

-<p>When over seven weeks had passed by, Vàsàrhely himself began to think

-that to stay in the Iselthal was useless and impossible, and he had

-heard from Taróc tidings which annoyed him&mdash;that his brother Stefan

-and his wife, availing themselves of his general permission to visit

-any one of his places when they chose had so strained the meaning of

-the permission that they had gone to his castle, with a score of their

-Parisian friends, and were there keeping high holiday and festival,

-to the scandal of his grave old stewards, and their own exceeding

-diversion. Hospitable to excess as he was, the liberty displeased him,

-especially as his, men wrote him word that his favourite horses; were

-being ruined by over-driving, and in the list of the guests which they

-sent him were the names of more than one too notorious lady, against

-whose acquaintance he had repeatedly counselled Olga Brancka. He would

-not have cared much what they had done at any other of his houses, but

-at Taróc, his mother, whom he had adored, had lived and died, and the

-place was sacred to him.</p>

-

-<p>He determined to tear himself away from Hohenszalras, and go and

-scatter these gay unbidden revellers in the dusky Karpathian ravines.

-'I cannot stay here for ever,' he thought, 'and I might be here for

-years without acquiring any more certainty than my own conviction.

-Either I am wrong, or he has nothing to conceal, or if I be right he is

-too wary to betray himself. If only I could see his shoulder where I

-struck the dagger&mdash;but I cannot go into his bath-room and say to him,

-"You are Vassia Kazán!"'</p>

-

-<p>He resolved to leave on the day after the morrow. For the next day

-there was organised on a large scale a hunting party, to which the

-nobility of the Tauern had been bidden. There were only some half-dozen

-men then staying in the Burg, most of them Austrian soldiers. The delay

-gave him the chance he longed for, which but for an accident he might

-never have had, though he had tarried there half a century.</p>

-

-<p>Early in the morning there was a great breakfast in the Rittersaal,

-at which Wanda did not appear. Sabran received the nobles and gentry

-of the province, and did the honours of his table with his habitual

-courtliness and grace. He was not hospitable in Vàsàrhely's sense of

-the word: he was too easily wearied by others, and too contemptuous of

-ordinary humanity; but he was alive to the pleasure of being lord of

-Hohenszalras, and sensible of the favour with which he was looked upon

-by a nobility commonly so exclusive and intolerant of foreign invasion.</p>

-

-<p>Breakfast over, the whole party went out and up into the high woods.

-The sport at Hohenszalras always gave fair play to beast and bird. In

-deference to the wishes of his wife, Sabran would have none of those

-battues which make of the covert or the forest a slaughterhouse. He

-himself disdained that sort of sport, and liked danger and adventure

-to mingle with his out-of-door pastimes. Game fairly found by the

-spaniel or the pointer; the boar, the wolf, the bear, honestly started

-and given its fair chance of escape or revenge; the steinbock stalked

-in a long hard day with peril and effort&mdash;these were all delightful

-to him on occasion; but for the crowded drive, the horde of beaters,

-the terrified bewildered troop of forest denizens driven with sticks

-on to the very barrels of the gunners, for this he had the boundless

-contempt of a man who had chased the buffalo over the prairie, and

-lassoed the wild horse and the wild bull leaning down from the saddle

-of his mustang. The day passed off well, and his guests were all

-content: he alone was not, because a large brown bear which he had

-sighted and tired at twice had escaped him, and roused that blood-lust

-in him which is in the hearts of all men.</p>

-

-<p>'Will you come out alone with me to-morrow and try for that grand

-brute?' he said to Vàsàrhely, as the last of his guests took their

-departure.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely hesitated.</p>

-

-<p>'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since

-you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'</p>

-

-<p>He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught

-at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of

-Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had

-suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had

-intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving

-directions to the <i>jägermeister</i> for the next day.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is

-impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance

-resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a

-child.</p>

-

-<p>In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where

-the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a

-rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and

-mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in

-the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with

-no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their

-rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went

-through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a

-mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and

-capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big

-game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting

-and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and

-drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper

-woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian

-pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above

-some underground.</p>

-

-<p>'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper

-to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should

-be his host's.</p>

-

-<p>'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my

-guest.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him

-to contrive to sting and wound him.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not

-observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed

-upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both

-in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron,

-good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about

-a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low

-hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and

-would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached.

-The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.</p>

-

-<p>'Well done,' cried Sabran, but scarcely were the words off his lips

-when another bear burst through the boughs ahead of him by fifty yards.

-He levelled his rifle and received its approach with two bullets in

-rapid succession. But neither had entered a vital part, and the animal,

-only rendered furious by pain, reared and came towards him with

-deadliest intent, its great fangs grinning. He fired again, and this

-shot struck home. The poor brute fell with a crash, the blood pouring

-from its mouth. It was not dead and its agony was great.</p>

-

-<p>'I will give it the <i>coup de grâce</i>,' said Sabran, who, for his wife's

-sake', was as humane as any hunter ever can be to the beasts he slew.</p>

-

-<p>'Take care,' said Vàsàrhely. 'It is dangerous to touch a wounded bear.

-I have known one that looked stone dead rise up and kill a man.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran did not heed. He went up to the poor, panting, groaning mass of

-fur and flesh, and drew his hunting-knife to give it the only mercy

-that it was now possible for it to receive. But as he stooped to

-plunge the knife into its heart the bear verified the warning he had

-been given. Gathering all its oozing strength in one dying effort to

-avenge its murder, it leaped on him, dashed him to the earth, and clung

-to him with claw and tooth fast in his flesh. He freed his right arm

-from its ponderous weight, its horrible grip, and stabbed it with his

-knife as it clung to and lacerated him where he lay upon the grass.

-In an instant, Vàsàrhely and the jäger who was with them were by his

-side, freed him from the animal, and raised him from the ground. He

-was deluged with its blood and his own. Vàsàrhely, for one moment of

-terrible joy, for which he loathed himself afterwards, thought, 'Is he

-dead?' Men had died of lesser things than this.</p>

-

-<p>He stood erect and smiled, and said that it was nothing, but even as he

-spoke a faintness came over him, and his lips turned grey.</p>

-

-<p>The jäger supported him tenderly, and would have had him sit down upon

-a boulder of rock, but he resisted.</p>

-

-<p>'Let me get to that water, he said feebly, looking to a spot a few

-yards off, where one of the many torrents of the Hohe Tauern tumbled

-from the wooded cliff above through birch and beechwood, and rushing

-underground left a clear round brown pool amongst the ferns. He took a

-draught from the flask of brandy; tendered him by the lad, and leaning

-on the youth, and struggling against the sinking swoon that was coming

-on him, walked to the edge of the pool, and dropped down there on one

-of the mossy stones which served as a rough chair.</p>

-

-<p>'Strip me, and wash the blood away, he said to the huntsman, whilst the

-green wood and the daylight, and the face of the man grew dim to him,

-and seemed to recede further and further in a misty darkness. The youth

-obeyed, and cut away the velvet coat, the cambric shirt, till he was

-naked to his waist; then, making sponges of handkerchiefs, the jäger

-began to wash the blood from him and staunch it as best he could.</p>

-

-<p>Egon Vàsàrhely stood by, without offering any aid; his eyes were

-fastened on the magnificent bust of Sabran, as the sunlight fell on the

-fair blue-veined flesh, the firm muscles, the symmetrical throat, the

-slender, yet sinewy arms, round one of which was clasped a bracelet of

-fair hair. He had the chance he needed.</p>

-

-<p>He approached and told the lad roughly to leave the Marquis to him,

-he was doing him more harm than good; he himself had seen many

-battle-fields, and many men bleeding to death upon their mother earth.

-By this time Sabran's eyes were closed; he was hardly conscious of

-anything, a great numbness and infinite exhaustion had fallen upon him;

-his lips moved feebly. 'Wanda!' he said once or twice,'Wanda!'</p>

-

-<p>The face of the man who leaned above him grew dark as night; he gnashed

-his teeth as he begun his errand of mercy.</p>

-

-<p>Leave me with your lord,' he said to the young jäger. 'Go you to the

-castle. Find Herr Greswold, bring him; do not alarm the Countess, and

-say nothing to the household.'</p>

-

-<p>The huntsman went, fleet as a roe. Vàsàrhely remained alone with

-Sabran, who only heard the sound of the rushing water magnified a

-million times on his dulled ear.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely tore the shirt in shreds, and laved and bathed the wounds,

-and then began to bind them with the skill of a soldier who had often

-aided his own wounded troopers. But first of all, when he had washed

-the blood away, he searched with keen and eager eyes for a scar on the

-white skin&mdash;and found it.</p>

-

-<p>On the right shoulder was a small triangular mark; the mark of what,

-to a soldier's eyes, told of an old wound. When he saw it he smiled a

-cruel smile, and went on with his work of healing.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran leaned against the rock behind him; his eyes were still closed,

-the pulsations of his heart were irregular. He had lost a great

-quantity of blood, and the pool at his feet was red. They were but

-flesh wounds, and there was no danger in them themselves, but great

-veins had been severed, and the stream of life had hurried forth in

-torrents. Vàsàrhely thrust the flask between his lips, but he could not

-swallow.</p>

-

-<p>All had been done that could be for the immediate moment. The stillness

-of the deep woods was around them; the body of the brown bear lay on

-the soaked grass; a vulture scenting death, was circling above against

-the blue sky. Over the mind of his foe swept at the sight of them one

-of those hideous temptations which assail the noblest natures in an

-hour of hatred. If he tore the bandages he had placed there off the

-rent veins of the unconscious man whom he watched, the blood would

-leap out again in floods, and so weaken the labouring heart that in

-ten minutes more its powers would fall so low that all aid would be

-useless. Never more would the lips of Sabran meet his wife! Never

-more would his dreams be dreamed upon her breast! For the moment the

-temptation seemed to curl about him like a flame; he shuddered, and

-crossed himself. Was he a soldier to slay in cold blood by treachery a

-powerless rival?</p>

-

-<p>He leaned over Sabran again, and again tried to force the mouthpiece

-of his wine-flask through his teeth. A few drops passed them, and

-he revived a little, and swallowed a few drops more. The blood was

-arrested in its escape, and the pulsations of the heart were returning

-to their normal measure; after a while he unclosed his eyes, and looked

-up at the green leaves, at the blue sky.</p>

-

-<p>'Do not alarm Wanda,' he said feebly. 'It is a scratch; it will be

-nothing. Take me home.'</p>

-

-<p>With his left hand he felt for the hair bracelet on his right arm,

-between the shoulder and the wrist. It was stiff with his own blood.</p>

-

-<p>Then Vàsàrhely leaned over him and met his upward gaze, and said in his

-ear, that seemed still filled with the rushing of many waters, 'You are

-Vassia Kazán!'</p>

-

-<p>When a little later the huntsman returned, bringing the physician, whom

-he had met a mile nearer the house in the woods, and some peasants

-bearing a litter made out of pine branches and wood moss, they found

-Sabran stretched insensible beside the water-pool; and Egon Vàsàrhely,

-who stood erect beside him, said in a strange tone:</p>

-

-<p>'I have stanched the blood, and he has swooned, you see. I commit him

-to your hands. I am not needed.'</p>

-

-<p>And, to their surprise, he turned and walked away with swift steps into

-the green gloom of the dense forest.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>Sabran was still insensible when he was carried to the house.</p>

-

-<p>When he regained consciousness he was on his own bed, and his wife was

-bending over him. A convulsion of grief crossed his face as he lifted

-his eyelids and looked at her.</p>

-

-<p>'Wanda,' he murmured feebly, 'Wanda, you will forgive&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>She kissed him passionately, while her tears fell like rain upon his

-forehead. She did not hear his words distinctly; she was only alive to

-the intense joy of his recovered consciousness, of the sound of his

-voice, of the sense of his safety. She kneeled by his bed, covering his

-hands with caresses, prodigal of a thousand names of love, given up to

-an abandonment of terror and of hope which broke down all the serenity

-and self-command of her habitual temper. She was not even aware of the

-presence of others. The over-mastering emotions of anguish and of joy

-filled her soul, and made her seem deaf, indifferent to all living

-things save one.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran lay motionless. He felt her lips, he heard her voice; he did not

-look up again, nor did he speak again. He shut his eyes, and slowly

-remembered all that had passed. Greswold approached him and held his

-fingers on his wrist, and held a little glass to his mouth. Sabran put

-it away. 'It is an opiate,' he said feebly; 'I will not have it.'</p>

-

-<p>He was resolute; he closed his teeth, he thrust the calming draught

-away.</p>

-

-<p>He was thinking to himself: 'Sometimes in unconsciousness one speaks.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are not in great pain?' asked the physician. He made a negative

-movement of his head. What were the fire and the smart of his lacerated

-flesh, of his torn muscles, to the torments of his fears, to the agony

-of his long stifled conscience?</p>

-

-<p>'Do not torment him, let him be still,' she said to the physician; she

-held his hand in both her own and pressed it to her heart. His languid

-eyes thanked her, then closed again.</p>

-

-<p>Herr Greswold withdrew to a little distance and waited. It seemed to

-him strange that a man of the high courage and strong constitution of

-Sabran should be thus utterly broken down by any wound that was not

-mortal; should be thus sunk into dejection and apathy, making no effort

-to raise himself, even to console and reassure his wife. It was not

-like his careless and gallant temper, his virile and healthful strength.</p>

-

-<p>It was true, the doctor reflected, that he had lost a great amount of

-blood. Such a loss he knew sometimes affects the heart and shatters the

-nervous system in many unlooked-for ways. Yet, he thought, there was

-something beyond this; the attitude and the regard of Egon Vàsàrhely

-had been unnatural at such an hour of peril. 'When he said just now

-"forgive," what did he mean?' reflected the old man, whose ear had

-caught the word which had escaped that of Wanda, who had been only

-alive to the voice she adored.</p>

-

-<p>The next four days were anxious and terrible. Sabran did not recover as

-the physician expected that he would, seeing the nature of his wounds

-and the naturally elastic and sanguine temperament he possessed. He

-slept little, had considerable fever, woke from the little rest he

-had, startled, alarmed, bathed in cold sweats; at other times he lay

-still in an apathy almost comatose, from which all the caresses and

-entreaties of his wife failed to rouse him. They began to fear that the

-discharge from the arteries had in some subtle and dangerous manner

-affected the action of the heart, the composition of the blood, and

-produced aneurism or pyæmia. 'The hero of Idrac to be prostrated by a

-mere flesh wound!' thought Herr Greswold in sore perplexity. He sent

-for a great man of science from Vienna, who, when he came, declared the

-treatment admirable, the wounds healthy, the heart in a normal state,

-but added it was evident the nervous system had received a severe

-shock, the effects of which still remained.</p>

-

-<p>'But it is that which I cannot understand,' said the old man in

-despair. 'If you only knew the Marquis de Sabran as I know him; the

-most courageous, the most gay, the most resolute of men! A man to laugh

-at death in its face! A man absolutely without fear!'</p>

-

-<p>The other assented.</p>

-

-<p>'Every one knows what he did in the floods at Idrac,' he answered; 'but

-he has a sensitive temperament for all that. If you did not tell me it

-is impossible, I should say that he had had some mental shock, some

-great grief. The prostration seems to me more of the mind than the

-body. But you have assured me it is impossible?'</p>

-

-<p>'Impossible! There does not live on earth a man so happy, so fortunate,

-so blessed in all the world as he.'</p>

-

-<p>'Men have a past that troubles them sometimes,' said the Vienna

-physician. 'Nay, I mean nothing, but I believe that M. de Sabran was a

-man of pleasure. The cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must

-drink long afterwards. I do not mean anything; I merely suggest. The

-prostration has to my view its most probable origin in mental trouble;

-but it would do him more harm than good to excite him by any effort to

-certify this. To the Countess von Szalras I have merely said, that his

-state is the result of the large loss of blood, and, indeed, after all

-it may be so.'</p>

-

-<p>On the fifth day, Sabran, still lying in that almost comatose silence

-which had been scarcely broken since his accident, said in a scarce

-audible voice to his wife:</p>

-

-<p>'Is your cousin here?'</p>

-

-<p>She stooped towards him and answered:</p>

-

-<p>'Yes; he is here, love. All the others went immediately, but Egon

-remained. I suppose he thought it looked kinder to do so. I have

-scarcely seen him, of course.'</p>

-

-<p>The pallor of his face grew greyer; he turned his head away restlessly.</p>

-

-<p>'Why does he not go?' he muttered in his throat. 'Does he wait for my

-death?'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, Réné! hush, hush!' she said, with horror and amaze. 'My love, how

-can you say such things? You are in no danger; the doctor assures me

-so. In a week or two you will be well, you will be yourself.'</p>

-

-<p>'Send your cousin away.'</p>

-

-<p>She hesitated; troubled by his unreasoning, restless jealousy, which

-seemed to be the only consciousness of life remaining with him. 'I will

-obey you, love; you are lord here,' she said softly; 'but will it not

-look strange? No guest can well be told to go.'</p>

-

-<p>'A guest!&mdash;he is an enemy!'</p>

-

-<p>She sighed, knowing how hopelessly reason can struggle against the

-delusions of a sick bed. 'I will tell him to go to-morrow,' she said,

-to soothe him. 'To-night it is too late.'</p>

-

-<p>'Write to him&mdash;do not leave me.'</p>

-

-<p>There was a childlike appeal in his voice, that from a man so strong

-had a piteous pathos. Her eyes swam with tears as she heard.</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, my dearest, I will not leave you!' she said passionately, 'not for

-one moment whilst I live; and oh, my beloved! what could death ever

-change in <i>me</i>? Have you so little faith?'</p>

-

-<p>'You do not know,' he said, so low that his breath scarcely stirred the

-air.</p>

-

-<p>She thought that he was tormented by a doubt that she would not be

-faithful to him if he died. She stooped and kissed him.</p>

-

-<p>'My own, I would sooner be faithless to you in your life than after

-death. Surely you know me well enough to know that at the least?'</p>

-

-<p>He was silent. A great sigh struggled from his breast and escaped his

-pale lips like a parting breath.</p>

-

-<p>'Kiss me again,' he murmured; 'kiss me again, whilst&mdash;&mdash;That gives me

-life,' he said, as he drew her head down upon his bosom, where his

-heart throbbed labouredly. A little while later he fell asleep. He

-slept some hours. When he awoke he was consumed by a nameless fear.</p>

-

-<p>'Is your cousin gone?' he asked.</p>

-

-<p>She told him that it was one o'clock in the same night; she had not

-written yet.</p>

-

-<p>'Let him stay,' he said feverishly. 'He shall not think I fear him. Do

-you hear me? Let him stay.'</p>

-

-<p>The words seemed to her the causeless caprice of a jealousy magnified

-and distorted by the weakness of fever. She strove to answer him

-calmly. 'He shall go or stay as you please,' she assured him. 'What

-does it matter, dear, what Egon does? You always speak of Egon. You

-have never spoken of the children once.'</p>

-

-<p>She wanted to distract his thoughts. She was pained to think how deep,

-though unspoken, his antagonism to her cousin must have been, that now

-in his feebleness it&mdash;was the one paramount absorbing thought.</p>

-

-<p>A great sadness came upon his face as she spoke; his lips trembled a

-little.</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! the children,' he repeated. 'Yes, bring them to me to-morrow. Bela

-is too like me. Poor Bela, it will be his curse.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is my joy of joys,' she murmured, afraid to see how his mind seemed

-astray.</p>

-

-<p>A shudder that was almost a spasm passed over him. He did not reply. He

-turned his face away from her, and seemed to sleep.</p>

-

-<p>The day following he was somewhat calmer, somewhat stronger, though his

-fever was high.</p>

-

-<p>The species of paralysis that had seemed to; fall on all his faculties

-had in a great measure left him. 'You wish, me to recover,' he said to

-her. 'I will do so, though perhaps it were, better not?'</p>

-

-<p>'He says strange things,' she said to Greswold. 'I cannot think why he

-has such thoughts.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is not he, himself, that has them, it is his fever,' answered the

-doctor. 'Why, in fever, do people often hate what they most adore when

-they are in health?'</p>

-

-<p>She was reassured, but not contented.</p>

-

-<p>The children were brought to see him. Bela had with him an ivory

-air-gun, with which he was accustomed to blow down his metal soldiers;

-he looked at his father with awed, dilated eyes, and said that he would

-go out with the gun and kill the brothers of the bear that had done the

-harm.</p>

-

-<p>'The bear was quite right,' said Sabran. 'It was I who was wrong to

-take a life not my own.'</p>

-

-<p>'That is beyond Bela,' said his wife. 'But I will translate it to him

-into language he shall understand, though I fear very much, say what I

-will, he will be a hunter and a soldier one day.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela looked from one to the other, knitting, his fair brows as he sat

-on the edge of the bed.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela will be like Egon,' he said, 'with all gold and fur to dress up

-in, and a big jewelled sword, and ten hundred men and horses, and Bela

-will be a great killer of things!'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran smiled languidly, but she saw that he flinched at her cousin's

-name.</p>

-

-<p>'I shall not love you, Bela, if you are a killer of things that are

-God's dear creatures,' she said, as she sent the child away.</p>

-

-<p>His blue eyes grew dark with anger.</p>

-

-<p>'God only cares about Bela,' he said in innocent profanity, with

-a profound sense of his own vastness in the sight of heaven, 'and

-Gela,' he added, with the condescending tenderness wherewith he always

-associated his brother and himself.</p>

-

-<p>'Where could he get all that overwhelming pride?' she said, as he was

-led away. 'I have tried to rear him so simply. Do what I may he will

-grow arrogant and selfish.'</p>

-

-<p>'My dear,' said Sabran, very bitterly, 'what avails that he was borne

-in your bosom? He is my son!'</p>

-

-<p>'Gela is your son, and he is so different,' she answered, not seeking

-to combat the self-censure to which she was accustomed in him, and

-which she attributed to faults or follies of a past life, magnified by

-a conscience too sensitive.</p>

-

-<p>'He is all yours then,' he said, with a wan smile. 'You have prevailed

-over evil.'</p>

-

-<p>In a few days later his recovery had progressed so far that he had

-regained his usual tone and look; his wounds were healing, and his

-strength was returning. He seemed to the keen eyes of Greswold to have

-made a supreme effort to conquer the moral depression into which he had

-sunk, and to have thrust away his malady almost by force of will. As he

-grew better he never spoke of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>On the fifteenth day from his accident he was restored enough to health

-for apprehension to cease. He passed some hours seated at an open

-window in his own room. He never asked if Vàsàrhely were still there or

-not.</p>

-

-<p>Wanda, who never left him, wondered at that silence, but she forbore to

-bring forward a name which had had such power to agitate him. She was

-troubled at the nervousness which still remained to him. The opening of

-a door, the sound of a step, the entrance of a servant made him start

-and turn pale. When she spoke of it with anxiety to Herr Joachim, he

-said vague sentences as to the nervousness which was consequent on

-great loss of blood, and brought forward instances of soldiers who had

-lost their nerve from the same cause. It did not satisfy her. She was

-the descendant of a long line of warriors; she could not easily believe

-that her husband's intrepid and careless courage could have been

-shattered by a flesh wound.</p>

-

-<p>'Did you really mean,' he said abruptly to her that afternoon, as he

-sat for the first time beside the open panes of the oriel; 'did you

-really mean that were I to die you would never forget me for any other?'</p>

-

-<p>She rose quickly as if she had been stung, and her face flushed.</p>

-

-<p>'Do I merit that doubt from you? she said. 'I think not.'</p>

-

-<p>She spoke rather in sadness than in anger. He had hurt her, he could

-not anger her. He felt the rebuke.</p>

-

-<p>'Even if I were dead, should I have all your life?' he murmured, in

-wonder at that priceless gift.</p>

-

-<p>'You and your children,' she said gravely. 'Ah! what can death do

-against great love? Make its bands stronger perhaps, its power purer.

-Nothing else.'</p>

-

-<p>'I thank you,' he said very low, with great humility, with intense

-emotion. For a moment he thought&mdash;&mdash;should he tell her, should he trust

-this deep tenderness which could brave death; and might brave even

-shame unblenching? He looked at her from under his drooped eyelids, and

-then&mdash;he dared not. He knew the pride which was in her better than she

-did&mdash;&mdash;her pride, which was inherited by her firstborn, and had been

-the sign manual of all her imperious race.</p>

-

-<p>He looked at her where she stood with the light falling on her through

-the amber hues of painted glass; worn, wan, and tired by so many days

-and nights of anxious vigil, she yet looked a woman whom a nation

-might salute with the <i>pro rege nostro!</i> that Maria Theresa heard. All

-that a great race possesses and rejoices in of valour, of tradition,

-of dignity, of high honour, and of blameless truth were expressed in

-her; every movement, attitude, and gesture spoke of the aristocracy of

-blood. All that potent and subtle sense of patrician descent which had

-most allured and intoxicated him in other days now awed and daunted

-him. He dared not tell her of his treason. He dared not. He was as a

-false conspirator before a great queen he has betrayed.</p>

-

-<p>'Are you faint, my love?' she asked him, alarmed to see the change upon

-his face and the exhaustion with which he sunk, backward against the

-cushions of his chair.</p>

-

-<p>'Mere weakness; it will pass,' he said, smiling as best he might, to

-reassure her. He felt like a man who slides down a crevasse, and has

-time and consciousness enough to see the treacherous ice go by him,

-the black abyss yawning below him, the cold, dark death awaiting him

-beyond, whilst on the heights the sun is shining.</p>

-

-<p>That night he entreated her to leave him and rest. He assured her he

-felt well; he feigned a need of sleep. For fifteen nights she had not

-herself lain down. To please him she obeyed, and the deep slumber of

-tired nature soon fell upon her. When he thought she slept, he rose

-noiselessly and threw on a long velvet coat, sable-lined, that was by

-his bedside, and looked at his watch. It was midnight.</p>

-

-<p>He crossed the threshold of the open door into his wife's chamber and

-stood beside her bed for a moment, gazing at her as she slept. She

-seemed like the marble statue of some sleeping saint; she lay in the

-attitude of S. Cecilia on her bier at Home. The faint lamplight made

-her fair skin white as snow. Bound her arm was a bracelet of his hair

-like the one which he wore of hers. He stood and gazed on her, then

-slowly turned away. Great tears fell down his cheeks as he left her

-chamber. He opened the door of his own room, the outer one which led

-into the corridor, and walked down the long tapestry-hung gallery

-leading to the guest-chambers. It was the first time that he had walked

-without assistance; his limbs felt strange and broken, but he held on,

-leaning now and then to rest against the arras. The whole house was

-still.</p>

-

-<p>He took his way straight to the apartments set aside for guests. All

-was dark. The little lamp he carried shed a circle of light about his

-steps but none beyond him. When he reached the chamber which he knew

-was Egon Vàsàrhely's he did not pause. He struck on its panels with a

-firm hand.</p>

-

-<p>The voice of Vàsàrhely asked from within, 'Who is there? Is there

-anything wrong?'</p>

-

-<p>'It is I! Open,' answered Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>In a moment more the door unclosed. Vàsàrhely stood within it; he was

-not undressed. There were a dozen wax candles burning in silver sconces

-on the table within. The tapestried figures on the walls grew pale and

-colossal in their light. He did not speak, but waited.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran entered and closed the door behind him. His face was bloodless,

-but he carried himself erect despite the sense of faintness which

-assailed him.</p>

-

-<p>'You know who I am?' he said simply, without preface or supplication.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely gave a gesture of assent.</p>

-

-<p>'How did you know it?'</p>

-

-<p>'I remembered,' answered the other.</p>

-

-<p>There was a moment's silence. If Vàsàrhely could have withered to the

-earth by a gaze of scorn the man before him, Sabran would have fallen

-dead. As it was his eyes dropped beneath the look, but the courage and

-the dignity of his attitude did not alter. He had played his part of

-a great noble for so long that it had ceased to be assumption and had

-become his nature.</p>

-

-<p>'You will tell her?' he said, and his voice did not tremble, though his

-very soul seemed to swoon within him.</p>

-

-<p>'I shall not tell her!'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely spoke with effort; his words were hoarse and stern.</p>

-

-<p>'You will not?'</p>

-

-<p>An immense joy, unlooked for, undreamed of, sprang up in him, checked

-as it rose by incredulity.</p>

-

-<p>'But you loved her!' he said, on an impulse which he regretted even

-as the exclamation escaped him. Vàsàrhely threw his head back with a

-gesture of fine anger.</p>

-

-<p>'If I loved' her what is that to you?' he said, with a restrained

-violence vibrating in his words. 'It is, perhaps, because I once loved

-her that your foul secret is safe with me now. I shall not tell her. I

-waited to say this to you. I could not write it lest it should meet her

-eyes. You came to ask me this? Be satisfied and go.'</p>

-

-<p>'I came to ask you this because, had you said otherwise, I would have

-shot myself ere she could have heard.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely said nothing; a great scorn was still set like the grimness

-of death upon his face. He looked far away at the dim figures on the

-tapestries; he shrunk from the sight of his boyhood's enemy as from

-some loathly unclean thing he must not kill.</p>

-

-<p>'Suicide!' he thought, 'the Slav's courage, the serf's refuge!</p>

-

-<p>Before the sight of Sabran the room went round, the lights grew dull,

-the figures on the walls became, fantastic and unreal. His heart beat

-with painful effort, yet his ears, his throat, his brain seemed full

-of blood. The nerves of his whole body seemed to shrink and thrill and

-quiver, but the force of habit kept him composed and erect before this

-man who was his foe, yet did for him what few friends would have done.</p>

-

-<p>'I do not thank you,' he said at last. 'I understand; you spare me for

-her sake, not mine.'</p>

-

-<p>'But for her, I would treat you so.'</p>

-

-<p>As he spoke he broke in two a slender agate ruler which lay on the

-writing-table at his elbow.</p>

-

-<p>'Go,' he added, 'you have had my word; though we live fifty years you

-are safe from me, because&mdash;&mdash;because&mdash;&mdash;God forgive you! you are hers.'</p>

-

-<p>He made a gesture towards the door. Sabran shivered under the insult

-which his conscience could not resent, his hand dared not avenge.</p>

-

-<p>Hearing this there fell away from him the arrogance that had been his

-mask, the courage that had been his shield. He saw himself for the

-first time as this man saw him, as all the world would see him if once

-it knew his secret. For the first time his past offences rose up like

-ghosts naked from their graves. The calmness, the indifference, the

-cynicism, the pride which had been so long in his manner and in his

-nature deserted him. He felt base-born before a noble, a liar before a

-gentleman, a coward before a man of honour.</p>

-

-<p>Where he stood, leaning on a high caned chair to support himself

-against the sickly weakness which still came on him from his scarce

-healed wounds, he felt for the first time to cower and shrink before

-this man who was his judge, and might become his accuser did he choose.

-Something in the last words of Egon Vàsàrhely suddenly brought home

-to him the enormity of his own sin, the immensity of the other's

-forbearance. He suddenly realised all the offence to honour, all the

-outrage to pride, all the ineffaceable indignity which he had brought

-upon a great race: all that he had done, never to be undone by any

-expiation of his own, in making Wanda von Szalras the mother of his

-sons. Submissive, he turned without a word of gesture or of pleading,

-and felt his way out of the chamber through the dusky mists of the

-faintness stealing on him.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against

-the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his

-clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.</p>

-

-<p>She was still asleep.</p>

-

-<p>When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever.

-He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a

-moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his

-desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.</p>

-

-<p>But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.</p>

-

-<p>Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned

-to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had

-left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person,

-as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no

-importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said

-nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental

-impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian

-mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use

-to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife

-attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial

-always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength

-returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a

-gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened

-upon her with a strange appeal.</p>

-

-<p>One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was

-certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following

-words to his foe and his judge:</p>

-

-<p>'Sir,&mdash;&mdash;You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I

-send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical

-weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time

-or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof

-absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that

-the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue

-it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but

-shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of

-action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present

-permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have

-governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or

-chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern

-both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse

-at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia

-Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to

-nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the

-great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was

-taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never

-saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years

-old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I

-remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you,

-and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then

-returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him.

-One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the

-Prince Zabaroff was dead&mdash;my protector, as they termed him&mdash;and that

-I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make

-you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always

-been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family,

-could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts,

-the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then,

-thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father.

-I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my

-fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother

-Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year

-after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You

-see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things

-or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had

-a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices,

-like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the

-love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit

-which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of

-me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive

-tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in

-my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those

-three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me

-with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be

-rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did

-me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a

-word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis

-with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold

-some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque

-going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down

-with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone

-reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe,

-and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread,

-fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I

-neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me

-popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name

-of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went

-there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the

-moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I

-liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely

-more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his

-fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior.

-Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left

-for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his

-hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the

-Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the

-solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts

-the hiss of an Indian's arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he

-lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of

-him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows

-of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher

-in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been

-subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having

-wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died

-of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to

-think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life

-with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed

-me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the

-dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history

-of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was

-glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike

-as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on

-the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the

-steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men

-I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I

-loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican <i>ranch</i> near,

-within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us

-and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost

-inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps

-covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it

-all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be

-gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies

-which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight

-whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector

-and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose

-heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he

-died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything

-he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would

-collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France.

-For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss.

-I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and

-his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of

-cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave.

-I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the

-temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all

-those which had been brought with him from France by his Jesuit tutors,

-and the certificates of his own and his father's births and marriages,

-with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper

-containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and

-patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden

-in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had

-desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great

-sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine:

-he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human

-being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed

-to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots

-not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had

-the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was

-born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible

-reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years

-I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and

-purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris,

-yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in

-many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong

-which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that

-I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it

-seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had

-deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and

-had given me all he held most dear&mdash;&mdash;the fruits of his researches.

-To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation.

-I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as

-the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew

-that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke

-no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was

-recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned

-to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance

-with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to

-me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not

-having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I

-went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had

-been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The

-priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the

-name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing&mdash;&mdash;Bretons

-never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead

-men who had gone down when the <i>Estelle</i> had foundered off the Pinos.

-I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so

-much during my seven years' absence from Paris that I did not suppose

-anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran.

-And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known

-me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred

-of me as your cousin's husband; and had you even had suspicions you

-could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in

-the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down

-the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me

-take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune

-involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have

-done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and

-some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What

-was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over

-with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is

-my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious

-and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense

-perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it

-as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying

-ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to

-justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware

-that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true

-that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed

-me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to

-me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I

-had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely

-closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became

-almost by necessity a <i>fainéant</i>, and fate smiled upon me more than I

-merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all

-his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me.

-I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I

-can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so

-natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made

-me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to

-act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and

-irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call

-<i>flair.</i> I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on

-the Bourse. I was also, famous for <i>la main heureuse</i> in all forms of

-gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept

-always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed

-to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded

-the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should

-not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was

-a man of honour until&mdash;&mdash;I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to

-defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware

-of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied

-your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her.

-You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It

-is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions

-of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to

-me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia,

-but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am

-base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting

-elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and

-mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten

-by a great lord's momentary <i>ennui</i> and caprice! But if you will stoop

-so far&mdash;&mdash;if you will consider me ennobled by <i>her</i> enough to meet

-you as an equal would do&mdash;&mdash;we can find with facility some pretext

-of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me.

-You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are

-the only male champion&mdash;what her brothers would surely have taken had

-they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have

-passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your

-commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to

-their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet

-you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother's

-than their father's, and she will rear them in all noble ways.'</p>

-

-<p>Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed

-it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return

-of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace

-with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his

-own cowardice and shame.</p>

-

-<p>It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of

-Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief:&mdash;&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for

-she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.</p>

-

-<p style="margin-left: 60%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.'</p>

-

-<p>To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:</p>

-

-<p>'Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did

-not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has

-seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return.

-It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a

-prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go

-to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If

-ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope

-this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen

-you.' Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to

-be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name.

-Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your

-husband, and give me a remembrance in your prayers.</p>

-

-<p style="margin-left: 70%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'EGON.'</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn

-shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and

-to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of

-her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to

-play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and

-eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this

-unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it

-plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian

-world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it

-was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman,

-which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon

-her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and

-what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at

-Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of

-it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation.

-If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again

-paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and

-her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.</p>

-

-<p>'Wanda has ruined him!' she always thought angrily. 'He always expects

-every other woman to have a soul above <i>chiffons</i> and to bury herself

-in the country with children and horses.'</p>

-

-<p>Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which

-his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to

-her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the

-pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him.

-Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed

-measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to

-entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and

-was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law.

-She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only

-came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild

-forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely,

-and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope,

-which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for

-her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the

-post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and

-soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was

-called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish

-literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race

-of Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>What was in that letter?</p>

-

-<p>She attended to none of her own, so absorbed was she in the impression

-which gained upon her that the packet which had brought so much

-surprise and even emotion upon his face came from the hand of Wanda.

-'If even she should be no saint at all?' she thought, with a malicious

-amusement. She did not see Egon Vàsàrhely for many hours, but she

-did not lose her curiosity nor cease to cast about for a method of

-gratifying it. At the close of the day when she came back from hunting

-she went into the library, which was then empty. She did not seriously

-expect to see anything that would reward her enterprise, but she knew

-he read his letters there and wrote the few he was obliged to write:

-like most soldiers he disliked using pen and ink. It was dusk, and

-there were a few lights burning in the old silver sconces fixed upon

-the horns of forest animals against the walls. With a quick, calm

-touch, she moved all the litter of papers lying on the huge table

-where he was wont to do such business as he was compelled to transact.

-She found nothing that gratified her inquisitiveness. She was about

-to leave the room in baffled impatience&mdash;&mdash;impatience of she knew not

-what&mdash;&mdash;when her eyes fell upon a pile of charred paper lying on the

-stove.</p>

-

-<p>It was one of those monumental polychrome stoves of fifteenth-century

-work in which the country-houses of Central Europe are so rich; a

-grand pile of fretted pottery, towering half way to the ceiling, with

-the crown and arms of the Vàsàrhely princes on its summit. There was

-no fire in it, for the weather was not cold, and Vàsàrhely, who alone

-used the room, was an ascetic in such matters; but upon its jutting

-step, which was guarded by lions of gilded bronze, there had been some

-paper burned: the ashes lay there in a little heap. Almost all of

-it was ash, but a few torn pieces were only blackened and coloured.

-With the eager curiosity of a woman who is longing to find another

-woman at fault, she kneeled down by the stove and patiently examined

-these pieces. Only one was so little burned that it had a word or two

-legible upon it; two of those words were Vassia Kazán. Nothing else was

-traceable; she recognised the handwriting of Sabran. She attached no

-importance to it, yet she slipped the little scrap, burnt and black as

-it was, within one of her gauntlets; then, as quickly as she had come

-there, she retreated and in another half hour, smiling and radiant,

-covered with jewels, and with no trace of fatigue or of weather, she

-descended the great banqueting-hall, clad as though the heart of the

-Greater Karpathians was the centre of the Boulevard S. Germain.</p>

-

-<p>Who was Vassia Kazán?</p>

-

-<p>The question floated above all her thoughts all that evening. Who was

-he, she, or it, and what could Sabran have to say of him, or her, or

-it to Egon Vàsàrhely? A less wise woman might have asked straightway

-what the unknown name might mean, but straight ways are not those

-which commend themselves to temperaments like hers. The pleasure and

-the purpose of her life was intrigue. In great things she deemed

-it necessity; in trifles it was an amusement; without it life was

-flavourless.</p>

-

-<p>The next day her brother-in-law abandoned Taróc, to join his hussars

-and prepare for the autumn manœuvres in the plains, and left her and

-Stefan in possession of the great place, half palace, half fortress,

-which had withstood more than one siege of Ottoman armies, where it

-stood across a deep gorge with the water foaming black below. But she

-kept the charred, torn, triangular scrap of paper; and she treasured

-in her memory the two words Vassia Kazán; and she said again and again

-and again to herself: 'Why should he write to Egon? Why should Egon

-burn what he writes?' Deep down in her mind there was always at work

-a bitter jealousy of Wanda von Szalras; jealousy of her regular and

-perfect beauty, of her vast possessions, of her influence at the Court,

-of her serene and unspotted repute, and now of her ascendency over the

-lives of Sabran and of Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>'Why should they both love that woman so much?' she thought very often.

-'She is always alike. She has no temptations. She goes over life as if

-it were frozen snow. She did one senseless thing, but then she was rich

-enough to do it with impunity. She is so habitually fortunate that she

-is utterly uninteresting; and yet they are both her slaves!'</p>

-

-<p>She went home and wrote to a cousin of her own who had been a member

-of the famous Third Section at Petersburg. She said in her letter: 'Is

-there anyone known in Russia as Vassia Kazán? I want you to learn for

-me to what or to whom this name belongs. It is certainly Russian, and

-appears to me to have been taken by some one who has been named <i>more

-hebrœo</i> from the city of Kazán. You, who know everything past,

-present, and to come, will be able to know this.'</p>

-

-<p>In a few days she received an answer from Petersburg. Her cousin wrote:

-'I cannot give you the information you desire. It must be a thing of

-the past. But I will keep it in mind, and sooner or later you shall

-have the knowledge you wish. You will do us the justice to admit that

-we are not easily baffled.'</p>

-

-<p>She was not satisfied, but knew how to be patient.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>Strangely enough the consciousness that one person lived who knew

-his secret unnerved him. He had said truly that so much were all his

-instincts and temper those of an aristocrat that he had long ceased to

-remember that he was not the true Marquis de Sabran. The admiration men

-frankly gave him, and the ascendency he exercised over women, had alike

-concurred in fostering his self-delusion. Since his recognition by the

-foe of his boyhood a vivid sense of his own shamefulness, however, had

-come upon him; a morbid consciousness that he was not what he seemed,

-and what all the world believed him, had returned to him. Egon would

-never speak, but he himself could never forget. He said to himself in

-his solitude, 'I am Vassia Kazán! and what he had done appeared to him

-intolerable, infamous, beyond all expiation.</p>

-

-<p>It was like an impalpable but impassable wall built up between himself

-and her. Nothing was changed except that one man knew his secret, but

-this one fact seemed to change the face of the world. For the first

-time all the deference, all the homage with which the people of the

-Tauern treated him seemed to him a derision. Naturally of proud temper,

-and of an intellect which gave him ascendency over others, he had from

-the first moment he had assumed the marquisate of Sabran received

-all the acknowledgments of his rank with an honest unconsciousness

-of imposture. After all he had in his veins blood as patrician as

-that of the Sabrans; but now that Egon Vàsàrhely knew the truth he

-was perpetually conscious of not being what he seemed. The mere sense

-that about the world there was another living being who knew what he

-knew, shook down all the self-possession and philosophy which had so

-long made him assure himself that the assumption of a name was an

-immaterial circumstance, which, harming no one, could concern no one.

-Egon Vàsàrhely seemed to have seized his sophisms in a rude grasp, and

-shaken them down as blossoms fall in wind. He thought with bitter

-self-contempt how true the cynic was who said that no sin exists so

-long as it is not found out; that discovery is the sole form which

-remorse takes.</p>

-

-<p>At times his remorse made him almost afraid of Wanda, almost shrink

-from her, almost tremble at her regard; at other times it intensified

-his passion and infused into his embraces a kind of ferocity of

-triumph. He would show an almost brutal ardour in his caresses, and

-would think with an almost cruel exultation, 'I was born a serf, and I

-am her lover, her lord! Strangely enough, she began to lose something

-of her high influence upon him, of her spiritual superiority in his

-sight. She was so entirely, so perpetually his, that she became in a

-manner tainted with his own degradation. She could no longer check him

-with a word, calm him with a gesture of restraint. She was conscious of

-a change in him which she could not explain to herself. His sweetness

-of temper was broken by occasional irritability that she had never seen

-before. He was at times melancholy and absorbed; he at times displayed

-a jealousy which appeared unworthy of herself and him; at other moments

-he adored her, submitted to her with too great a humility. They were

-still happy, but their happiness was more uncertain, more disturbed by

-passing shadows. She told herself that it was always so in marriage,

-that in the old trite phrase nothing mortal was ever perfect long. But

-this philosophy failed to reconcile her. She found herself continually

-pondering on the alteration that she perceived in him, without being

-able to explain it to herself in any satisfactory manner.</p>

-

-<p>One day he announced to her without preface that he had decided to

-renounce the name of Sabran; that he preferred to any other the title

-which she had given him in the Countship of Idrac. She was astonished,

-but on reflection only saw, in his choice, devotion and deference to

-herself. Perhaps, too, she reflected with a pang, he desired some

-foreign mission such as she had once proposed to him; perhaps the life

-at Hohenszalras was monotonous and too quiet for a man so long used

-to the movement and excitation of Paris. She suggested the invitation

-of a circle of guests more often, but he rejected the idea with some

-impatience. He, who had previously amused himself so well with the

-part of host to a brilliant society, now professed that he saw nothing

-but trouble and <i>ennui</i> in a house full of people, who changed every

-week, and of royal personages who exacted ceremonious observances

-that were tedious and burdensome. So they remained alone, for even

-the Princess Ottilie had gone away to Lilienslust. For her own part

-she asked nothing better. Her people, her lands, her occupations, her

-responsibilities, were always interest enough. She loved the stately,

-serene tread of Time in these mountain solitudes. Life always seemed

-to her a purer, graver, more august thing when no echo of the world

-without jarred on the solemnity of the woods and hills. She wanted her

-children to grow up to love Hohenszalras, as she had always done, far

-above all pomps and pleasures of courts and cities.</p>

-

-<p>The winter went by, and he spent most of the days out of doors in

-violent exercise, sledging, skating, wolf hunting. In the evenings he

-made music for her in the white room: beautiful, dreamy music, that

-carried her soul from earth. He played for hours and hours far into the

-night; he seemed more willing to do anything than to converse. When he

-talked to her she was sensible of an effort of constraint; it was no

-longer the careless, happy, spontaneous conversation of a man certain

-of receiving sympathy in all his opinions, indulgence in all his

-errors, comprehension in even his vaguest or most eccentric ideas: a

-certain charm was gone out of their intercourse. She thought sometimes

-humbly enough, was it because a man always wearies of a woman? Yet

-she could scarcely think that, for his reverential deference to her

-alternated with a passion that had lost nothing of its voluptuous

-intensity.</p>

-

-<p>So the winter passed away. Madame Ottilie was in the South for her

-health, with her relatives of Lilienhöhe; they invited no one, and so

-no one could approach them. The children grew and throve. Bela and his

-brother had a little sledge of their own, drawn by two Spanish donkeys,

-white as the snows that wrapped the Iselthal in their serenity and

-silence. In their little sable coats and their sable-lined hoods the

-two little boys looked like rosebuds wrapped in brown moss. They were a

-pretty spectacle upon the ice, with their stately Heiduck, wrapped in

-his scarlet and black cloak, walking by the gilded shell-shaped sledge.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela loves the ice best. Bela wishes the summer never was!' said the

-little heir of the Counts of Szalras one day, as he leaped out from

-under the bearskin of his snow-carriage. His father heard him, and

-smiled a little bitterly.</p>

-

-<p>'You have the snow in your blood,' he thought. 'I, too, know how I

-loved the winter with all its privations, how I skimmed like a swallow

-down the frozen Volga, how I breasted the wind of the North Sea, sad

-with the dying cries of the swans! But I had an empty stomach and

-naked limbs under my rough goatskin, and you ride there in your sables

-and velvets, a proud little prince, and yet you are my son!'</p>

-

-<p>Was he almost angered against his own child for the great heirship to

-which he was born, as kings are often of their dauphins? Bela looked up

-at him a little timidly, always being in a certain awe of his father.</p>

-

-<p>'May Bela go with you some day with the big black horses, one day when

-you go very far?'</p>

-

-<p>'Ask your mother,' said Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'She will like it,' said the child. 'Yesterday she said you never do

-think of Bela. She did not say it <i>to</i> Bela, but he heard.'</p>

-

-<p>'I will think of him,' said Sabran, with some emotion: he had a certain

-antagonism to the child, of which he was vaguely ashamed; he was sorry

-that she should have noticed it. He disliked him because Bela so

-visibly resembled himself that he was a perpetual reproach; a living

-sign of how the blood of a Russian lord and of a Persian peasant had

-been infused into the blood of the Austrian nobles.</p>

-

-<p>The next day he took the child with him on a drive of many leagues,

-through the frozen highways winding through the frosted forests under

-the huge snow-covered range of the Glöckner mountains. Bela was in

-raptures; the grand black Russian horses, whose speed was as the wind,

-were much more to his taste than the sedate and solemn Spanish asses.

-When they returned, and Sabran lifted him out of the sledge in the

-twilight, the child kissed his hand.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela loves you,' he said timidly.</p>

-

-<p>'Why do you?' said his father, surprised and touched. 'Because you are

-your mother's child?'</p>

-

-<p>Bela did not understand. He said, after a moment of reflection:</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is afraid, when you are angry; very afraid. But Bela does love

-you.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran laid his hand on the child's shoulder. 'I shall never be angry

-if Bela obey his mother, and never pain her. Remember that.'</p>

-

-<p>'He will remember,' said Bela. 'And may he go with the big black horses

-very soon again?'</p>

-

-<p>'Your mother's horses are just as big, and just as black. Is it not the

-same thing to go with her?'</p>

-

-<p>'No. Because she takes Bela often; you never.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are ungrateful,' said Sabran, in the tone which always alarmed and

-awed the bold, bright spirit of his child. 'Your mother's love beside

-mine is like the great mountain beside the speck of dust. Can you

-understand? You will when you are a man. Obey her and adore her. So you

-will best please me.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela looked at him with troubled suffused eyes; he went within doors a

-little sadly, led away by Hubert, and when he reached his nursery and

-had his furs taken from off him he was still serious, and for once he

-did not tell his thoughts to Gela, for they were too many for him to

-be able to master them in words. His father was a beautiful, august,

-terrible, magnificent figure in his eyes; with the confused fancies

-of a child's scarce-opened mind he blended together in his admiration

-Sabran and the great marble form of S. Johann of Prague which stretched

-its arm towards the lake from the doors of the great entrance, and, as

-Bela always understood, controlled the waters and the storms at will.

-Bela feared no one else in all the world, but he feared his father,

-and for that reason loved him as he loved nothing else in his somewhat

-selfish and imperious little life.</p>

-

-<p>'It is so good of you to have given Bela that pleasure,' his wife said

-to him when he entered the white room. 'I know you cannot care to hear

-a child chatter as I do. It can only be tiresome to you.'</p>

-

-<p>'I will drive him every day if it please <i>you</i>,' said Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'No, no; that would be too much to exact from you. Besides, he would

-soon despise his donkeys, and desert poor Gela. I take him but seldom

-myself for that reason. He has an idea that he is immeasurably older

-than Gela. It is true a year at their ages is more difference than are

-ten years at ours.'</p>

-

-<p>'The child said something to me, as if he had heard you say I do not

-care for him?'</p>

-

-<p>'You do not, very much. Surely you are inclined to be harsh to him?'</p>

-

-<p>'If I be so, it is only because I see so much of myself in him.'</p>

-

-<p>He looked at her, assailed once more by the longing which at times came

-over him to tell her the truth of himself, to risk everything rather

-than deceive her longer, to throw himself upon her mercy, and cut short

-this life which had so much of duplicity, so much of concealment, that

-every year added to it was a stone added to the mountain of his sins.

-But when he looked at her he dared not. The very grace and serenity

-of her daunted him; all the signs of nobility in her, from the repose

-of her manner to the very beauty of her hands, with their great rings

-gleaming on the long and slender fingers, seemed to awe him into

-silence. She was so proud a woman, so great a lady, so patrician in

-all her prejudices, her habits, her hereditary qualities, he dared not

-tell her that he had betrayed her thus. An infidelity, a folly, even

-any other crime he thought he could have summoned courage to confess

-to her; but to say to her, the daughter of a line of princes: 'I, who

-have made you the mother of my children, I was born a bastard and a

-serf!' How could he dare say that? Anything else she might forgive,

-he thought, since love is great, but never that. Nay, a cold sickness

-stole over him as he thought again that she came of great lords who had

-meted justice out over whole provinces for a thousand years; and he

-had wronged her so deeply that the human tongue scarcely held any word

-of infamy enough to name his crime. The law would set her free, if she

-chose, from a man who had so betrayed her, and his children would be

-bastards like himself.</p>

-

-<p>He had stretched himself on a great couch, covered with white

-bear-skins. He was in shadow; she was in the light that came from the

-fire on the wide hearth, and from the oriel window near, a red warm

-dusky light, that fell on the jewels on her hands, the furs on her

-skirts, the very pearls about her throat.</p>

-

-<p>She glanced at him anxiously, seeing how motionless he lay there, with

-his head turned backward on the cushions.</p>

-

-<p>'I am afraid you are weak still from that wound,' she said, as she rose

-and approached him. 'Greswold assures me it has left no trace, but I am

-always afraid. And you look often so pale. Perhaps you exert yourself

-too much? Let the wolves be. Perhaps it is too cold for you? Would you

-like to go to the south? Do not think of me; my only happiness is to do

-whatever you wish.'</p>

-

-<p>He kissed her hand with deep unfeigned emotion. 'I believe in angels

-since I knew you,' he murmured. 'No; I will not take you away from the

-winter and the people that you love. I am well enough. Greswold is

-right. I could not master those horses if I were not strong; be sure of

-that.'</p>

-

-<p>'But I always fear that it is dull here for you?'</p>

-

-<p>'Dull! with you? "Custom cannot stale her infinite variety." That was

-written in prophecy of your charm for me.'</p>

-

-<p>'You will always flatter me! And I am not "various" at all; I am too

-grave to be entertaining. I am just the German house-mother who cares

-for the children and for you.'</p>

-

-<p>He laughed.</p>

-

-<p>'Is that your portrait of yourself? I think Carolus Duran's is truer,

-my grand châtelaine. When you are at Court the whole circle seems to

-fade to nothing before your presence. Though there are so many women

-high-born and beautiful there, you eclipse them all.'</p>

-

-<p>'Only in your eyes! And you know I care nothing for courts. What I like

-is the life here, where one quiet day is the pattern of all the other

-days. If I were sure that you were content in it&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'Why should you think of that?'</p>

-

-<p>'My love, tell me honestly, do you never miss the world?'</p>

-

-<p>He rose and walked to the hearth. He, whose life was a long lie, never

-lied to her if he could avoid it; and he knew very well that he did

-miss the world with all its folly, stimulant, and sin. Sometimes the

-moral air here seemed to him too pure, too clear.</p>

-

-<p>'Did I do so I should be thankless indeed&mdash;thankless as madmen are who

-do not know the good done to them. I am like a ship that has anchored

-in a fair haven after press of weather. I infinitely prefer to see

-none but yourself: when others are here we are of necessity so much

-apart. If the weather,' he added more lightly, 'did not so very often

-wear Milton's grey sandals, there would be nothing one could ever

-wish changed in the life here. For such great riders as we are, that

-is a matter of regret. Wet saddles are too often our fate, but in

-compensation our forests are so green.'</p>

-

-<p>She did not press the question.</p>

-

-<p>But the next day she wrote a letter to a relative who was a great

-minister and had preponderating influence in the council chamber of the

-Austrian Empire. She did not speak to Sabran of the letter that she

-sent.</p>

-

-<p>She had not known any of that disillusion which befalls most women in

-their love. Her husband had remained her lover, passionately, ardently,

-jealously; and the sincerity of his devotion to her had spared her

-all that terrible consciousness of the man's satiety which usually

-confronts a woman in the earliest years of union. She shrank now with

-horror from the fear which came to her that this passion might, like so

-many others, alter and fade under the dulness of habit. She had high

-courage and clear vision; she met half-way the evil that she dreaded.</p>

-

-<p>In the spring a Foreign Office despatch from Vienna came to him and

-surprised and moved him strongly. With it in his hand he sought her at

-once.</p>

-

-<p>'You did this!' he said quickly. 'They offer me the Russian mission.'</p>

-

-<p>She grew a little pale, but had courage to smile. She had seen by a

-glance at his face the pleasure the offer gave him.</p>

-

-<p>'I only told my cousin Kunst that I thought you might be persuaded to

-try public life, if he proposed it to you.'</p>

-

-<p>'When did you say that?'</p>

-

-<p>'One day in the winter, when I asked you if you did not miss the world.'</p>

-

-<p>'I never thought I betrayed that I did so.'</p>

-

-<p>'You were only over eager to deny it. And I know your generosity, my

-love. You miss the world; we will go back to it for a little. It will

-only make our life here dearer&mdash;I hope.'</p>

-

-<p>He was silent; emotion mastered him. 'You have the most unselfish

-nature that was!' he said brokenly. 'It will be a cruel sacrifice to

-you, and yet you urge it for my sake.'</p>

-

-<p>'Dear, will you not understand? What is for your sake is what is most

-for mine. I see you long, despite yourself, to be amidst men once more,

-and use your rare talents as you cannot use them here. It is only right

-that you should have the power to do so. If our life here has taken

-the hold on your heart then, I think you will come back to it all the

-more gladly. And then I too have my vanity; I shall be proud for the

-world to see how you can fill a great station, conduct a difficult

-negotiation, distinguish yourself in every way. When they praise you,

-I shall be repaid a thousand times for any sacrifice of my own tastes

-that there may be.'</p>

-

-<p>He heard her with many conflicting emotions, of which a passionate

-gratitude was the first and highest.</p>

-

-<p>'You make me ashamed,' he said in a low voice. 'No man can be worthy of

-such goodness as yours; and I&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>Once more the avowal of the truth rose to his lips, but stayed

-unuttered. His want of courage took refuge in procrastination.</p>

-

-<p>'We need not decide for a day or two,' he added; 'they give me time; we

-will think well. When do you think I must reply?'</p>

-

-<p>'Surely soon; your delay would seem disrespect. You know we Austrians

-are very ceremonious.'</p>

-

-<p>'And if I accept, it will not make you unhappy?'</p>

-

-<p>'My love, no, a thousand times, no; your choice is always mine.'</p>

-

-<p>He stooped and kissed her hand.</p>

-

-<p>'You are ever the same,' he murmured. 'The noblest, the most

-generous&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled bravely. 'I am quite sure you have decided already. Go to my

-table yonder, and write a graceful acceptance to my cousin Kunst. You

-will be happier when it is posted.'</p>

-

-<p>'No, I will think a little. It is not a thing to be done in haste. It

-will be irrevocable.'</p>

-

-<p>'Irrevocable? A diplomatic mission? You can throw it up when you

-please. You are not bound to serve longer than you choose.'</p>

-

-<p>He was silent: what he had thought himself had been of the irrevocable

-insult he would be held to have offered to the emperor, the nation, and

-the world, if ever they knew.</p>

-

-<p>'It will not be liked if I accept for a mere caprice. One must never

-treat a State as Bela treats his playthings,' he said as he rang, and

-when the servant answered the summons ordered them to saddle his horse.</p>

-

-<p>'No; there is no haste. Glearemberg is not definitely recalled, I

-think.'</p>

-

-<p>But as she spoke she knew very well that, unknown to himself, he had

-already decided; that the joy and triumph the offer had brought to him

-were both too great for him eventually to resist them. He sat down and

-re-read the letter.</p>

-

-<p>She had said the truth to him, but she had not said all the truth. She

-had a certain desire that he should justify her marriage in the eyes of

-the world by some political career brilliantly followed; but this was

-not her chief motive in wishing him to return to the life of cities.

-She had seen that he was in a manner disquieted, discontented, and

-attributed it to discontent at the even routine of their lives. The

-change in his moods and tempers, the arbitrary violence of his love

-for her, vaguely alarmed and troubled her; she seemed to see the germ

-of much that might render their lives far less happy. She realised

-that she had given herself to one who had the capacity of becoming a

-tyrannical possessor, and retained, even after six years of marriage,

-the irritable ardour of a lover. She knew that it was better for them

-both that the distraction and the restraint of the life of the world

-should occupy some of his thoughts, and check the over-indulgence of

-a passion which in solitude grew feverish and morbid. She had not the

-secret of the change in him, of which the result alone was apparent to

-her, and she could only act according to her light. If he grew morose,

-tyrannical, violent, all the joy of their life would be gone. She knew

-that men alter curiously under the sense of possession. She felt that

-her influence, though strong, was not paramount as it had been, and she

-perceived that he no longer took much interest in the administration

-of the estates, in which he had shown great ability in the first years

-of their marriage. She had been forced to resume her old governance

-of all those matters, and she knew that it was not good for him to

-live without occupation. She feared that the sameness of the days, to

-her so delightful, to him grew tiresome. To ride constantly, to hunt

-sometimes, to make music in the evenings&mdash;&mdash;this was scarcely enough to

-fill up the life of a man who had been a <i>viveur</i> on the bitumen of the

-boulevards for so long.</p>

-

-<p>A woman of a lesser nature would have been too vain to doubt the

-all-sufficiency of her own presence to enthral and to content him; but

-she was without vanity, and had more wisdom than most women. It did

-not even once occur to her, as it would have done incessantly to most,

-that the magnificence of all her gifts to him were title-deeds to his

-content for life.</p>

-

-<p>Public life would be her enemy, would take her from the solitudes she

-loved, would change her plans for her children's education, would bring

-the world continually betwixt herself and her husband; but since he

-wished it that was all she thought of, all her law.</p>

-

-<p>'Surely he will accept?' said Mdme. Ottilie, who had returned from the

-south of France.</p>

-

-<p>'Yes, he will accept,' said his wife. 'He does not know it, but he

-will.'</p>

-

-<p>'I cannot imagine why he should affect to hesitate. It is the career

-he is made for, with his talents, his social graces.'</p>

-

-<p>'He does not affect; he hesitates for my sake. He knows I am never

-happy away from Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>'Why did you write then to Kunst?'</p>

-

-<p>'Because it will be better for him; he is neither a poet nor a

-philosopher, to be able to live away from the world.'</p>

-

-<p>'Which are you?'</p>

-

-<p>'Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the

-people she&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'Reigns over,' added the Princess. 'Admit, my beloved, that a part of

-your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be

-quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!'</p>

-

-<p>Wanda von Szalras smiled. 'Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed

-with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.'</p>

-

-<p>'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural

-life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.'</p>

-

-<p>At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great

-avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before

-coming into his wife's presence. He would no more have gone to her with

-the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in

-such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.</p>

-

-<p>When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with

-vivacity:</p>

-

-<p>'Well! you accept, of course?</p>

-

-<p>'I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the

-carpet.</p>

-

-<p>'Wanda is a hermit,' she said; 'she should have dwelt in a cave, and

-lived on berries with S. Scholastica. What is the use of leaving it to

-her? She will say No. She loves her mountains.'</p>

-

-<p>'Then she shall stay amidst her mountains.'</p>

-

-<p>'And you will throw all your future away?'</p>

-

-<p>'Dear mother, I have no future&mdash;&mdash;should have had none but for her.'</p>

-

-<p>'All that is very pretty, but after nearly six years of marriage it is

-not necessary to <i>faire des madrigaux.</i>'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess sat a little more erect, angrily, and continued to tap her

-foot upon the floor. His wife was silent for a little while; then she

-went over to her writing-table, and wrote with a firm hand a few lines

-in German. She rose and gave the sheet to Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'Copy that,' she said, 'or give it as many graces of style as you like.'</p>

-

-<p>His heart beat, his sight seemed dim as he read what she had written.</p>

-

-<p>It was an acceptance.</p>

-

-<p>'See, my dear Réné!' said the Princess, when she understood;

-'never combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon&mdash;

-unselfishness! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort.'</p>

-

-<p>The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her&mdash;&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of

-<i>faisant des madrigaux!</i>'</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna,

-and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called

-her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who

-showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and

-welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the

-most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the

-prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified

-and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware

-that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands

-for <i>finesse</i> and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make

-upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his

-wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and

-splendour it required.</p>

-

-<p>He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when

-the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his

-nerve, his self-command, his <i>insouciance</i>; he was once more capable of

-honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman

-he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of

-his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates

-a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must

-always exist, <i>sub rosa</i>, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance

-with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for

-every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul

-Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen

-politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The

-prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of

-a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff

-as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle

-projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social

-honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the

-minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in

-all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the

-purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of

-Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked <i>moujik</i> in the

-<i>isba</i> of a Persian peasant.</p>

-

-<p>Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like

-all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify

-his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort

-that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and

-perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men

-was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public

-career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to

-be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor

-had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.</p>

-

-<p>'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition

-that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which

-had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from

-circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of

-his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the

-social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better

-moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess

-von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;'

-and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless

-and ill at ease.</p>

-

-<p>He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold

-by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more

-prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if

-ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate,

-dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him

-with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed

-to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he

-been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his

-own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have

-always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion

-of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his

-own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any

-such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly,

-that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a

-suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always

-reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.</p>

-

-<p>This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life;

-not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a

-jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his

-ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it

-touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the

-felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the

-contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and

-witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and

-too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on

-his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed

-of constancy.</p>

-

-<p>'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of

-dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly

-degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is

-always hers and my love.'</p>

-

-<p>Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of

-her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty

-life led there under the show summits of her hills.</p>

-

-<p>He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's

-caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not

-infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most

-use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the

-daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.</p>

-

-<p>As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the

-Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and

-a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour

-and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he

-had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world

-beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had

-beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He

-went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now

-and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some

-portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some

-quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.</p>

-

-<p>On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:</p>

-

-<p>'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.</p>

-

-<p style="margin-left: 70%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'WANDA.'</p>

-

-<p>No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches

-could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful

-affection.</p>

-

-<p>'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.</p>

-

-<p>The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the

-season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the

-sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and

-the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and

-magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present

-at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation,

-as the ambassador-designate to Russia.</p>

-

-<p>Court dress became him, and his great height and elegance of manner

-made him noticeable even in that brilliant crowd of notables. All the

-greatest ladies distinguished him with their smiles, but he gave them

-no more than courtesy. He saw only before the 'eye of memory' his wife

-as he had seen her at the last court ball, with the famous pearls about

-her throat, and her train of silver tissue sown with pearls and looped

-up with white lilac.</p>

-

-<p>'It is the flower I like best,' she had said to him. 'It brought me

-your first love-message in Paris, do you remember? It said little; it

-was very discreet, but it said enough!'</p>

-

-<p>'You are always thinking of Wanda!' said the Countess Brancka to him

-now, with a tinge of impatience in her tone.</p>

-

-<p>He coloured a little, and said with that hauteur with which he always

-repressed any passing jest at his love for his wife:</p>

-

-<p>'When both one's duty and joy point the same way it is easy to follow

-them in thought.'</p>

-

-<p>'I hope you follow them in action too,' said Mdme. Brancka.</p>

-

-<p>'If I do not, I am at least only responsible to Wanda.'</p>

-

-<p>'Who would be a lenient judge you mean? said the Countess, with a

-certain smile that displeased him. 'Do not be too sure; she is a von

-Szalras. They are not agreeable persons when they are angered.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have not been so unhappy as to see her so,' said Sabran coldly,

-with a vague sense of uneasiness. As much as it is possible for a man

-to dislike a woman who is very lovely, and young enough to be still

-charming in the eyes of the world, he disliked Olga Brancka. He had

-known her for many years in Paris, not intimately, but by force of

-being in the same society, and, like many men who do not lead very

-decent lives themselves, he frankly detested <i>cocodettes.</i></p>

-

-<p>'If we want these manners we have our <i>lionnes</i>,' he was wont to say,

-at a time when Cochonette was seen every day behind his horses by the

-Cascade, and it had been the height of the Countess Olga's ambition at

-that time to be called like Cochonette. A certain resemblance there

-was between the great lady and the wicked one; they had the same small

-delicate sarcastic features, the same red gold curls, the same perfect

-colourless complexion; but where Cochonette had eyes of the slightest

-blue, the wife of Count Stefan had the luminous piercing black eyes of

-the Muscovite physiognomy. Still the likeness was there, and it made

-the sight of Mdme. Brancka distasteful to him, since his memories of

-the other were far from welcome. It was for Cochonette that he had

-broken the bank at Monte Carlo, and into her lap that he had thrown

-all the gold rouleaux at a time when in his soul he had already adored

-Wanda von Szalras, and had despised himself for returning to the slough

-of his old pleasures. It was Cochonette who had sold his secrets to

-the Prussians, and brought them down upon him in the farmhouse amongst

-the orchards of the Orléannais, whilst she passed safely through, the

-German lines and across the frontier, laden with her jewels and her

-<i>valeurs</i> of all kinds, saying in her teeth as she went: 'He will

-never see that Austrian woman again!' That had been the end of all he

-had known of Cochonette, and a presentiment of perfidy, of danger, of

-animosity always came over him whenever he saw the <i>joli petit minois</i>

-which in profile was so like Cochonette's, looking up from under the

-loose auburn curls that Mdme. Olga had copied from her.</p>

-

-<p>Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more

-admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds;

-and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette

-would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels

-flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams.

-There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her

-breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.</p>

-

-<p>Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an <i>étourdissement</i>

-that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.</p>

-

-<p>'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda,

-<i>mon beau</i> cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are

-really going to Russia?'</p>

-

-<p>'I believe so.'</p>

-

-<p>'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in

-paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'</p>

-

-<p>'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'</p>

-

-<p>'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy

-enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money

-that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'</p>

-

-<p>'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played

-since my marriage.'</p>

-

-<p>'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A

-saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature,

-though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by

-marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean

-nothing.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he

-was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.</p>

-

-<p>'Call me at least <i>cousinette</i>,' said Mdme. Olga; 'we are cousins, you

-know, thanks to Wanda. Oh! she will be very unhappy in St. Petersburg;

-she will not amuse herself, she never does. She is incapable of a

-flirtation; she never touches a card. When she dances it is only

-because she must, and then it is only a quadrille or a contre-dance.

-She always reminds me of Marie Thérèse's "In our position nothing is a

-trifle." You remember the Empress's letters to Versailles?'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran was very much angered, but he was afraid to express his anger

-lest it should seem to make him absurd.</p>

-

-<p>'Madame,' he said, with ill-repressed irritation, 'I know you speak

-only in jest, but I must take the liberty to tell you&mdash;&mdash;however

-bourgeois it appear&mdash;&mdash;that I do not allow a jest even from you upon my

-wife. Anything she does is perfect in my sight, and if she be imbued

-with the old traditions of gentle blood, too many ladies desert them in

-these days for me not to be grateful to her for her loyalty.'</p>

-

-<p>She listened, with her bright black eyes fixed on him; then she leaned

-a little more closely on his arm.</p>

-

-<p>'Do you know that you said that very well? Most men are ridiculous

-when they are in love with their wives, but it becomes you, Wanda is

-perfect, we all know that; you are not alone in thinking so. Ask Egon!'</p>

-

-<p>The face of Sabran changed as he heard that name. As she saw the

-change she thought: 'Can it be possible that he is jealous?'</p>

-

-<p>Aloud she said with a little laugh: 'I almost wonder Egon did not

-run you through the heart before you married. Now, of course, he

-is reconciled to the inevitable; or, if not reconciled, he has to

-submit to it as we all have to do. He grows very <i>farouche</i>; he lives

-between his troopers and his castle of Taróc, like a barbaric lord

-of the Middle Ages. Were you ever at Taróc? It is worth seeing&mdash;&mdash;a

-huge fortress, old as the days of Ottokar, in the very heart of the

-Karpathians. He leads a wild, fierce life enough there. If he keep the

-memory of Wanda with him it is as some men keep an idolatry for what is

-dead.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran listened with a sombre irritation. 'Suppose we leave my wife's

-name in peace,' he said coldly. 'The <i>grosser cotillon</i> is about to

-begin; may I aspire to the honour?'</p>

-

-<p>As he led her out, and the light fell on her red gold curls, on her

-dazzling butterflies, her armour of diamonds, her snow-white skin, a

-thousand memories of Cochonette came over him, though the scene around

-him was the ball-room of the Hofburg, and the woman whose great bouquet

-of <i>rêve d'or</i> roses touched his hand was a great lady who had been the

-wife of Gela von Szalras, and the daughter of the Prince Serriatine.

-He distrusted her, he despised her, he disliked her so strongly that

-he was almost ashamed of his own antagonism; and yet her contact, her

-grace of movement, the mere scent of the bouquet of roses had a sort of

-painful and unwilling intoxication for the moment for him.</p>

-

-<p>He was glad when the long and gorgeous figures of the cotillon had

-tired out even her steel-like nerves, and he was free to leave the

-palace and go home to sleep. He looked at a miniature of his wife as

-he undressed; the face of it, with its tenderness and its nobility,

-seemed to him, after the face of this other woman, like the pure high

-air of the Iselthal after the heated and unhealthy atmosphere of a

-gambling-room.</p>

-

-<p>The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence

-was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which

-had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was

-brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural

-gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the

-sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some

-with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the

-empire.</p>

-

-<p>As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way

-slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through

-the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and

-odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After

-all, I may do her some honour before I die.'</p>

-

-<p>When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached

-him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said

-that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought

-it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the

-staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants

-away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.</p>

-

-<p>There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:</p>

-

-<p>'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to

-him, under secrecy, what I know.'</p>

-

-<p>They were fully signed&mdash;&mdash;'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a

-courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph.

-They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the

-Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>As the carriage of the Countess Olga rolled home through the Graben

-after the military spectacle, she stopped it suddenly, and signed to an

-old man in the crowd who was waiting to cross the road until a regiment

-of cuirassiers had rolled by. He was eyeing them critically, as only an

-old soldier does look at troops.</p>

-

-<p>'Is it you, Georg?' said Madame Olga. 'What brings you here?'</p>

-

-<p>'I came from Taróc with a letter from the Prince, my master,' answered

-the man, an old hussar who had carried Vàsàrhely in his arms off the

-field of Königsgrätz, after dragging him from under a heap of dead men

-and horses.</p>

-

-<p>'A letter! To whom?' asked Olga, who always was curious and persistent

-in investigation of all her brother-in-law's movements and actions.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely had not laid any injunction as to secrecy, only as to speed,

-upon his faithful servant; so that Georg replied, unwitting of harm,

-'To the Markgraf von Sabran, my Countess.'</p>

-

-<p>'A letter that could not go by post&mdash;how strange! And from Egon to

-Wanda's husband!' she thought, with her inquisitive eagerness awakened.

-Aloud she bade the old trooper call at her palace for a packet for

-Taróc, to make excuse for having stopped and questioned him, and drove

-onward lost in thought.</p>

-

-<p>'Perhaps it is a challenge late in the day!' she thought, with a laugh;

-but she was astonished and perplexed that any communication should take

-place between these men; she perplexed her mind in vain in the effort

-to imagine what tie could connect them, what mystery mutually affecting

-them could lie beneath the secret of Vassia Kazán.</p>

-

-<p>When, on the morrow, she heard at Court that the Emperor was deeply

-incensed at the caprice and disrespect of the Count von Idrac, as

-he was called at Court, who, at the eleventh hour, had declined a

-mission already accepted by him, and of which the offer had been in

-itself an unprecedented mark of honour and confidence, her swift

-sagacity instantly associated the action, apparently so excuseless and

-inexcusable, with the letter sent up from Taróc. It was still as great

-a mystery to her as it had been before what the contents of the letter

-could have been, but she had no doubt that in some way or another it

-had brought about the resignation of the appointment. It awakened a

-still more intense curiosity in her, but she was too wise to whisper

-her suspicion to anyone. To her friends at the Court she said, with

-laughter: 'A night or two ago I chanced to tell Sabran that his wife

-would be wretched at St. Petersburg. That is sure to have been enough

-for him. He is such a devoted husband.'</p>

-

-<p>No one of course believed her, but they received the impression that

-she knew the real cause of his resignation, though she could not be

-induced to say it.</p>

-

-<p>What did it matter to her? Nothing, indeed. But the sense of a secret

-withheld from her was to Mdme. Olga like the slot of the fox to a young

-hound. She might have a thousand secrets of her own if it pleased her,

-but she could not endure anyone else to guard one. Besides, in a vague,

-feverish, angry way, she was almost in love with the man who was so

-faithful to his wife that he had looked away from her as from some

-unclean thing when she had wished to dazzle him. She had no perception

-that the secret could concern him himself very nearly, but she thought

-it was probably one which he and Egon Vàsàrhely, for reasons of their

-own, chose to share and keep hidden. And if it were a secret that

-prevented Sabran from going to the Court of Russia? Then, surely, it

-was one worth knowing? And if she gained a knowledge of it, and his

-wife had none?&mdash;&mdash;what a superiority would be hers, what a weapon

-always to hand!</p>

-

-<p>She did not intend any especial cruelty or compass any especial end:

-she was actuated by a vague desire to interrupt a current of happiness

-that flowed on smoothly without her, to interfere where she had no

-earthly title or reason to do so, merely because she was disregarded

-by persons content with each other. It is not always definite motives

-which have the most influence; the subtlest poisons are those which

-enter the system we know not how, and penetrate it ere we are aware.

-The only thing which had ever held her back from any extremes of evil

-had been the mere habit of good-breeding and an absolute egotism which

-had saved her from all strong passions. Now something that was like

-passion had touched her under the sting of Sabran's indifference, and

-with it she became tenacious, malignant, and unsparing: adroit she had

-always been. Instinct is seldom at fault when we are conscious of an

-enemy, and Sabran's had not erred when it had warned him against the

-wife of Stefan Brancka as the serpent who would bring woe and disaster

-to his paradise.</p>

-

-<p>In some three months' time she received a more explicit answer from her

-cousin in St. Petersburg. Giving the precise dates, he told her that

-Vassia Kazán was the name given to the son of Count Paul Ivanovitch

-Zabaroff by a wayside amour with one of his own serfs at a village

-near the border line of Astrachan. He narrated the early history of

-the youth, and said that he had been amongst the passengers on board a

-Havre ship, which had foundered with all hands. So far the brief record

-of Vassia Kazán was clear and complete. But it told her nothing. She

-was unreasonably enraged, and looked at the little piece of burnt paper

-as though she would wrench the secret out of it.</p>

-

-<p>'There must be so much more to know,' she thought. 'What would a mere

-drowned boy be to either of those men&mdash;&mdash;a boy dead too all these years

-before?'</p>

-

-<p>She wrote insolently to her cousin, that the Third Section, with

-its eyes of Argus and its limbs of Vishnoo, had always been but an

-overgrown imbecile, and set her woman's wits to accomplish what the

-Third Section had failed to do for her. So much she thought of it that

-the name seemed forced into her very brain; she seemed to hear every

-one saying&mdash;&mdash;'Vassia Kazán.' It was a word to conjure with, at least:

-she could at the least try the effect of its utterance any day upon

-either of those who had made it the key of their correspondence. Russia

-had written down Vassia Kazán as dead, and the mystery which enveloped

-the name would not open to her. She knew her country too well not to

-know that this bold statement might cover some political secret, some

-story wholly unlike that which was given her. Vassia Kazán might have

-lived and have incurred the suspicions of the police, and be dwelling

-far away in the death in life of Siberian mines, or deep sunk in some

-fortress, like a stone at the bottom of a well. The reply not only

-did not beget her belief in it, but gave her range for the widest and

-wildest conjectures of imagination. 'It is some fault, some folly, some

-crime, who can tell? And Vassia Kazán is the victim or the associate,

-or the confidant of it. But what is it? And how does Egon know of it?'</p>

-

-<p>She passed the summer in pleasures of all kinds, but the subject did

-not lose its power over her, nor did she forget the face of Sabran as

-he had turned it away from her in the ball-room of the Hofburg.</p>

-

-<p>He himself had left the capital, after affirming to the minister that

-private reasons, which he could not enter into, had induced him to

-entreat the Imperial pardon for so sudden a change of resolve, and to

-solicit permission to decline the high honour that had been vouchsafed

-to him.</p>

-

-<p>'What shall I say to Wanda?' he asked himself incessantly, as the

-express train swung through the grand green country towards Salzburg.</p>

-

-<p>She was sitting on the lake terrace with the Princess, when a telegram

-from her cousin Kunst was brought to her. Bela and Gela were playing

-near with squadrons of painted cuirassiers, and the great dogs were

-lying on the marble pavement at her feet. It was a golden close to a

-sunless but fine day; the snow peaks were growing rosy as the sun shone

-for an instant behind the Venediger range, and the lake was calm and

-still and green, one little boat going noiselessly across it from the

-Holy Isle to the further side.</p>

-

-<p>'What a pity to leave it all!' she thought as she took the telegram.</p>

-

-<p>The Minister's message was curt and angered:</p>

-

-<p>'Your husband has resigned; he makes himself and me ridiculous. Unable

-to guess his motive, I am troubled and embarrassed beyond expression.'</p>

-

-<p>The other, from Sabran, said simply: 'I am coming home. I give up

-Russia.'</p>

-

-<p>'Any bad news?' the Princess asked, seeing the seriousness of her face.

-Her niece rose and gave her the papers.</p>

-

-<p>'Is Réné mad!' she exclaimed as she read. His wife, who was startled

-and dismayed at the affront to her cousin and to her sovereign, yet had

-been unable to repress a movement of personal gladness, hastened to say

-in his defence:</p>

-

-<p>'Be sure he has some grave, good reason, dear mother. He knows the

-world too well to commit a folly. Unexplained, it looks strange,

-certainly; but he will be home to-night or in the early morning; then

-we shall know; and be sure we shall find him right.'</p>

-

-<p>'Right!' echoed the Princess, lifting the little girl who was her

-namesake off her knee, a child white as a snowdrop, with golden curls,

-who looked as if she had come out of a band of Correggio's baby angels.</p>

-

-<p>'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who

-had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard

-suspended in the air.</p>

-

-<p>'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme

-displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when

-through him you are probably <i>brouillée</i> with your Sovereign for life.'</p>

-

-<p>She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a

-caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon.

-I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible

-excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such

-vast importance.'</p>

-

-<p>'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would

-condemn Réné unheard?'</p>

-

-<p>'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'</p>

-

-<p>'Perhaps none. I know it is a very grave offence that he has committed,

-and yet I cannot help being happy,' said his wife with a smile, as she

-lifted up the little Ottilie, and murmured over the child's fair curls,

-'Ah, my dear little dove! We are not going to Russia after all. You

-little birds will not leave your nest!'</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is not going to the snow palace?' said he, whose ears were very

-quick, and to whom his attendants had told marvellous narratives of an

-utterly imaginary Russia.</p>

-

-<p>'No; are not you glad, my dear?'</p>

-

-<p>He thought very gravely for a moment.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is not sure. Marc says Bela would have slaves in Russia, and

-might beat them.'</p>

-

-<p>'Bela would be beaten himself if he did, and by my own hand, said his

-mother very gravely. 'Oh, child! where did you get your cruelty?'</p>

-

-<p>'He is not cruel,' said the Princess. 'He is only masterful.'</p>

-

-<p>'Alas! it is the same thing.'</p>

-

-<p>She sent the children indoors, and remained after the sun-glow had all

-faded, and Mdme. Ottilie had gone away to her own rooms, and paced

-to and fro the length of the terrace, troubled by an anxiety which

-she would have owned to no one. What could have happened to make

-him so offend alike the State and the Court? She tormented herself

-with wondering again and again whether she had used any incautious

-expression in her letters which could have betrayed to him the poignant

-regret the coming exile gave her. No! she was sure she had not done

-so. She had only written twice, preferring telegrams as quicker, and,

-to a man, less troublesome than letters. She knew courts and cabinets

-too well not to know that the step her husband had taken was one which

-would wholly ruin the favour he enjoyed with the former, and wholly

-take away all chance of his being ever called again to serve the

-latter. Personally she was indifferent to that kind of ambition; but

-her attachment to the Imperial house was too strong, and her loyalty

-to it too hereditary, for her not to be alarmed at the idea of losing

-its good-will. Disquieted and afraid of all kinds of formless unknown

-ills, she went with a heavy heart into the Rittersaal to a dinner for

-which she could find no appetite. The Princess also, so talkative and

-vivacious at other times, was silent and pre-occupied. The evening

-passed tediously. He did not come.</p>

-

-<p>It was past midnight, and she had given up all hope of his arrival,

-when she heard the returning trot of the horses, who had been sent over

-to Matrey in the evening on the chance of his being there. She was in

-her own chamber, having dismissed her women, and was trying in vain to

-keep her thoughts to nightly prayer. At the sound of the horses' feet

-without, she threw on a <i>négligé</i> of white satin and lace, and went,

-out on to the staircase to meet him. As he came up the broad stairs,

-with Donau and Neva gladly leaping on him, he looked up and saw her

-against the background of oak and tapestry and old armour, with the

-light of a great Persian lamp in metal that swung above shed full upon

-her. She had never looked more lovely to him than as she stood so, her

-eyes eagerly searching the dim shadow for him, and the loose white

-folds embroidered in silk with pale roses flowing downward from her

-throat to her feet. He drew her within her chamber, and took her in his

-arms with a passionate gesture.</p>

-

-<p>'Let us forget everything,' he murmured, 'except that we have been

-parted nearly a month!'</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>In the morning, after breakfast in the little Saxe room, she said to

-him with gentle firmness: 'Réné, you must tell me now&mdash;why have you

-refused Russia?'</p>

-

-<p>He had known that the question must come, and all the way on his

-homeward journey he had been revolving in his mind the answer he would

-give to it. He was very pale, but otherwise he betrayed no agitation as

-he turned and looked at her.</p>

-

-<p>'That is what I cannot tell you,' he replied.</p>

-

-<p>She could not believe she heard aright.</p>

-

-<p>'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'I have had a message from Kunst;

-he is deeply angered. I understand that, after all was arranged, you

-abruptly resigned the Russian mission. I ask your reasons. It is a very

-grave step to have taken. I suppose your motives must be very strong

-ones?'</p>

-

-<p>'They are so,' said Sabran; and he continued in the forced and measured

-tone of one who recites what he has taught himself to say: 'It is quite

-natural that your cousin Kunst should be offended; the Emperor also.

-You perhaps will be the same when I say to you that I cannot tell you,

-as I cannot tell them, the grounds of my withdrawal. Perhaps you, like

-them, will not forgive it.'</p>

-

-<p>Her nostrils dilated and her breast heaved: she was startled,

-mortified, amazed. 'You do not choose to tell <i>me</i>!' she said in

-stupefaction.</p>

-

-<p>'I cannot tell you.'</p>

-

-<p>'She gazed at him with the first bitterness of wrath that he had ever

-seen upon her face. She had been used to perfect submission of others

-all her life. She had the blood in her of stern princes, who had meted

-out rule and justice against which there had been no appeal. She was

-accustomed even in him to deference, homage, consideration, to be

-consulted always, deferred to often. His answer for the moment seemed

-to her an unwarrantable insult.</p>

-

-<p>Her influence, her relatives, her sovereign, had given him one of the

-highest honours conceivable, and he did not choose to even say why he

-was thankless for it! Passionate and withering words rose to her lips,

-but she restrained their utterance. Not even in that moment could she

-bring herself to speak what might seem to rebuke him with the weight

-of all his debt to her. She remained silent, but he understood all the

-intense indignation that held her speechless there. He approached her

-more nearly, and spoke with emotion, but with a certain sternness in

-his voice&mdash;&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'I know very well that I must offend and even outrage you. But I

-cannot tell you my motives. It is the first time that I have ever

-acted independently of you or failed to consult your wishes. I only

-venture to remind you that marriage does give to the man the right to

-do so, though I have never availed myself of it. Nay, even now, I owe

-you too much to be ingrate enough to take refuge in my authority as

-your husband. I prefer to owe more, as I have owed so much, to your

-tenderness. I prefer to ask of you, by your love for me, not to press

-me for an answer that I am not in a position to make; to be content

-with what I say&mdash;that I have relinquished the Russian mission because I

-have no choice but to do so.'</p>

-

-<p>He spoke firmly, because he spoke only the truth, although not all the

-truth.</p>

-

-<p>A great anger rose up in her, the first that she had ever been moved to

-by him. All the pride of her temper and all her dignity were outraged

-by this refusal to have confidence in her. It seemed incredible

-to her. She still thought herself the prey of some dream, of some

-hallucination. Her lips parted to speak, but again she withheld the

-words she was about to utter. Her strong justice compelled her to admit

-that he was but within his rights, and her sense of duty was stronger

-than her sense of self-love.</p>

-

-<p>She did not look at him, nor could she trust her voice. She turned

-from him without a syllable, and left the room. She was afraid of the

-violence of the anger that she felt.</p>

-

-<p>'If it had been only to myself I would pardon it,' she thought; 'but an

-insult to my people, to my country, to my sovereign!&mdash;an insult without

-excuse, or explanation, or apology&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>She shut herself alone within her oratory and passed the most bitter

-hour of her life. The imperious and violent temper of the Szalras

-was dormant in her character, though she had chastened and tamed it,

-and the natural sweetness and serenity of her disposition had been a

-counterpoise to it so strong that the latter had become the only thing

-visible in her. But all the wrath of her race was now aroused and in

-arms against what she loved best on earth.</p>

-

-<p>'If it had been anything else,' she thought; 'but a public act like

-this&mdash;an ingratitude to the Crown itself! A caprice for all the world

-to chatter of and blame!'</p>

-

-<p>It would have been hard enough to bear, difficult enough to explain

-away to others, if he had told her his reasons, however captious,

-unwise, or selfish they might be; but to have the door of his soul

-thus shut upon her, his thoughts thus closed to her, hurt her with

-intolerable pain, and filled her with a deep and burning indignation.</p>

-

-<p>She passed all the early morning hours alone in her little temple of

-prayer, striving in vain against the bitterness of her heart; above

-her the great ivory Crucifixion, the work of Angermayer, beneath which

-so many generations of the women of the House of Szalras had knelt in

-their hours of tribulation or bereavement.</p>

-

-<p>When she left the oratory she had conquered herself. Though she could

-not extinguish the human passions that smarted and throbbed within her,

-she knew her duty well enough to know that it must lie in submission

-and in silence.</p>

-

-<p>She sought for him at once. She found him in the library: he was

-playing to himself a long dreamy concerto of Schubert's, to soothe the

-irritation of his own nerves and pass away a time of keen suspense. He

-rose as she came into the room, and awaited her approach with a timid

-anxiety in his eyes, which she was too absorbed by her own emotions to

-observe. He had assumed a boldness that he had not, and had used his

-power to dominate her rather in desperation than in any sense of actual

-mastery. In his heart it was he who feared her.</p>

-

-<p>'You were quite right,' she said simply to him. 'Of course, you are

-master of your own actions, and owe no account of them to me. We will

-say no more about it. For myself, you know I am content enough to

-escape exile to any embassy.'</p>

-

-<p>He kissed her hand with an unfeigned reverence and humility.</p>

-

-<p>'You are as merciful as you are great,' he murmured. 'If I be silent it

-is my misfortune.' He paused abruptly.</p>

-

-<p>A sudden thought came over her as he spoke.</p>

-

-<p>'It is some State secret that he knows and cannot speak of, and that

-has made him unwilling to go. Why did I never think of that before?'</p>

-

-<p>An explanation that had its root in honour, a reticence that sprang

-from conscience, were so welcome to her, and to her appeared so

-natural, that they now consoled her at once, and healed the wounds to

-her own pride.</p>

-

-<p>'Of course, if it be so, he is right not to speak even to me,' she

-mused, and her only desire was now to save him from the insistence and

-the indignation of the Princess, and the examination which these were

-sure to entail upon him when he should meet her at the noon breakfast

-now at hand.</p>

-

-<p>To that end she sought out her aunt in her own apartments, taking

-with her the tiny Ottilie, who always disarmed all irritation in her

-godmother by the mere presence of her little flower-like face.</p>

-

-<p>'Dear mother,' she said softly, when the child had made her morning

-obeisance, 'I am come to ask of you a great favour and kindness to me.

-Réné returned last night. He has done what he thought right. I do not

-even ask his reasons. He has acted from <i>force majeure</i> by dictate of

-his own honour. Will you do as I mean to do? Will you spare him any

-interrogation? I shall be so grateful to you, and so will he.'</p>

-

-<p>Mdme. Ottilie, opening her bonbonnière for her namesake, drew up her

-fragile figure with a severity unusual to her.</p>

-

-<p>'Do I hear you aright? You do not even know the reasons of the insult

-M. de Sabran has passed upon the Crown and Cabinet, and you do not even

-mean to ask them?'</p>

-

-<p>'I do mean that; and what I do not ask I feel sure you will admit no

-one else has any right to ask of him.'</p>

-

-<p>'No one certainly except His Majesty.'</p>

-

-<p>'I presume His Majesty has had all information due to him as our

-Imperial master. All I entreat of you, dearest mother, is to do as

-I have done; assume, as we are bound to assume, that Réné has acted

-wisely and rightly, and not weary him with questions to which it will

-be painful to him not to respond.'</p>

-

-<p>'Questions! I never yet indulged in anything so vulgar as curiosity,

-that you should imagine I shall be capable of subjecting your husband

-to a cross-examination. If you be satisfied, I can have no right to

-be more exacting than yourself. The occurrence is to me lamentable,

-inexcusable, unintelligible; but if explanation be not offered me you

-may rest assured I shall not intrude my request for it.'</p>

-

-<p>'Of that I am sure; but I am not contented only with that. I want you

-to feel no dissatisfaction, no doubt, no anger against him. You may be

-sure that he has acted from conviction, because he was most desirous to

-go to Russia, as you saw when you urged him to accept the mission.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have said the utmost that I can say,' replied the Princess, with a

-chill light in her blue eyes. 'This little child is no more likely to

-ask questions than I am, after what you have stated. But you must not

-regard my silence as any condonation of what must always appear to me a

-step disrespectful to the Crown, contrary to all usages of etiquette,

-and injurious to his own future and that of his children. His scruples

-of conscience came too late.'</p>

-

-<p>'I did not say they were exactly that. I believe he learned something

-which made him consider that his honour required him to withdraw.'</p>

-

-<p>'That may be,' said the Princess, frigidly. 'As I observed, it came

-lamentably late. You will excuse me if I breakfast in my own rooms this

-morning.'</p>

-

-<p>Wanda left her, gave the child to a nurse who waited without, and

-returned to the library. She had offended and pained Mdme. Ottilie,

-but she had saved her husband from annoyance. She knew that though

-the Princess was by no means as free from curiosity as she declared

-herself, she was too high-bred and too proud to solicit a confidence

-withheld from her.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran was seated at the piano where she had left him, but his forehead

-rested on the woodwork of it, and his whole attitude was suggestive

-of sad and absorbed thought and abandonment to regrets that were

-unavailing.</p>

-

-<p>'It has cost him so much,' she reflected as she looked at him. 'Perhaps

-it has been a self-sacrifice, a heroism even; and I, from mere wounded

-feeling, have been angered against him and almost cruel!'</p>

-

-<p>With the exaggeration in self-censure of all generous natures, she was

-full of remorse at having added any pain to the disappointment which

-had been his portion; a disappointment none the less poignant, as she

-saw, because it had been voluntarily, as she imagined, accepted.</p>

-

-<p>As he heard her approach he started and rose, and the expression of his

-face startled her for a moment; it was so full of pain, of melancholy,

-almost (could she have believed it) of despair. What could this matter

-be to affect him thus, since being of the State it could be at its

-worst only some painful and compromising secret of political life which

-could have no personal meaning for him? It was surely impossible that

-mere disappointment&mdash;&mdash;a disappointment self-inflicted&mdash;&mdash;could bring

-upon him such suffering? But she threw these thoughts away. In her

-great loyalty she had told herself that she must not even think of this

-thing, lest she should let it come between them once again and tempt

-her from her duty and obedience. Her trust in him was perfect.</p>

-

-<p>The abandonment of a coveted distinction was in itself a bitter

-disappointment, but it seemed to him as nothing beside the sense of

-submission and obedience compelled from him to Vàsàrhely. He felt as

-though an iron hand, invisible, weighed on his life, and forced it into

-subjection. When he had almost grown secure that his enemy's knowledge

-was a buried harmless thing, it had risen and barred his way, speaking

-with an authority which it was not possible to disobey. With all his

-errors he was a man of high courage, who had always held his own with

-all men. How the old forgotten humiliation of his earliest years

-revived, and enforced from him the servile timidity of the Slav blood

-which he had abjured. He had never for an instant conceived it possible

-to disregard the mandate he received; that an apparently voluntary

-resignation was permitted to him was, his conscience acknowledged, more

-mercy than he could have expected. That Vàsàrhely would act thus had

-not occurred to him; but before the act he could not do otherwise than

-admit its justice and obey.</p>

-

-<p>But the consciousness of that superior will compelling him, left in him

-a chill tremor of constant fear, of perpetual self-abasement. What was

-natural to him was the reckless daring which many Russians, such as

-Skobeleff, have shown in a thousand ways of peril. He was here forced

-only to crouch and to submit; it was more galling, more cruel to him

-than utter exposure would have been. The sense of coercion was always

-upon him like a dragging chain. It produced on him a despondency, which

-not even the presence of his wife or the elasticity of his own nature

-could dispel.</p>

-

-<p>He had to play a part to her, and to do this was unfamiliar and hateful

-to him. In all the years before he had concealed a fact from her, but

-he had never been otherwise false. Though to his knowledge there had

-been always between them the shadow of a secret untold, there had

-never been any sense upon him of obligation to measure his words, to

-feign sentiments he had not, to hide behind a carefully constructed

-screen of untruth. Now, though he had indeed not lied with his lips,

-he had to sustain a concealment which was a thousand times more trying

-to him than that concealment of his birth and station to which he had

-been so long accustomed that he hardly realised it as any error. The

-very nobility with which she had accepted his silence, and given it,

-unasked, a worthy construction, smote him with a deeper sense of shame

-than even that which galled him when he remembered the yoke laid on him

-by the will of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>He roused himself to meet her with composure.</p>

-

-<p>She rested her hand caressingly on his.</p>

-

-<p>'We will never speak of Russia any more. I should be sorry were the

-Kaiser to think you capricious or disloyal, but you have too much

-ability to have incurred this risk. Let it all be as though there had

-never arisen any question of public life for you. I have explained

-to Aunt Ottilie; she will not weary you with interrogation; she

-understands that you have acted as your honour bade you. That is enough

-for those who love you as do she and I.'</p>

-

-<p>Every word she spoke entered his very soul with the cruellest irony,

-the sharpest reproach. But of these he let her see nothing. Yet he

-was none the less abjectly ashamed, less passionately self-condemned,

-because he had to consume his pain in silence, and had the self-control

-to answer, still with a smile, as he touched a chord or two of music:</p>

-

-<p>'When the Israelites were free they hankered after the flesh-pots of

-Egypt. They deserved eternal exile, eternal bondage. So do I, for

-having ever been ingrate enough to dream of leaving Hohenszalras for

-the world of men!'</p>

-

-<p>Then he turned wholly towards the Erard keyboard, and with splendour

-and might there rolled forth under his touch the military march of

-Rákóczi: he was glad of the majesty and passion of the music which

-supplanted and silenced speech.</p>

-

-<p>'That is very grand,' she said, when the last notes had died away.

-'One seems to hear the <i>Eljén!</i> of the whole nation in it. But play me

-something more tender, more pathetic&mdash;&mdash;some <i>lieder</i> half sorrow and

-half gladness, you know so many of all countries.'</p>

-

-<p>He paused a moment; then his hands wandered lightly across the notes,

-and called up the mournful folk-songs that he had heard so long, so

-long, before; songs of the Russian peasants, of the maidens borne off

-by the Tartar in war, of the blue-eyed children carried away to be

-slaves, of the homeless villagers beholding their straw-roofed huts

-licked up by the hungry hurrying flame lit by the Kossack or the Kurd;

-songs of a people without joy, that he had heard in his childish days,

-when the great rafts had drifted slowly down the Volga water, and

-across the plains the lines of chained prisoners had crept as slowly

-through the dust; or songs that he had sung to himself, not knowing

-why, where the winter was white on all the land, and the bay of the

-famished wolves afar off had blent with the shrill sad cry of the wild

-swans dying of cold and of hunger and of thirst on the frozen rivers,

-and the reeds were grown hard as spears of iron, and the waves were

-changed to stone.</p>

-

-<p>The intense melancholy penetrated her very heart. She listened with

-the tears in her eyes, and her whole being stirred and thrilled by a

-pain not her own. A kind of consciousness came to her, borne on that

-melancholy melody, of some unspoken sorrow which lived in this heart

-which beat so near her own, and whose every throb she had thought she

-knew. A sudden terror seized her lest all this while she who believed

-his whole life hers was in truth a stranger to his deepest grief, his

-dearest memories.</p>

-

-<p>When the last sigh of those plaintive songs without words had died

-away, she signed to him to approach her.</p>

-

-<p>'Tell me,' she said very gently, 'tell me the truth. Réné, did you ever

-care for any woman, dead or lost, more than, or as much as, you care

-for me? I do not ask you if you loved others. I know all men have many

-caprices, but was any one of them so dear to you that you regret her

-still? Tell me the truth; I will be strong to bear it.'</p>

-

-<p>He, relieved beyond expression that she but asked him that on which his

-conscience was clear and his answer could be wholly sincere, sat down

-at her feet and leaned his head against her knee.</p>

-

-<p>'Never, so hear me God!' he said simply. 'I have loved no woman as I

-love you.'</p>

-

-<p>'And there is not one that you regret?'</p>

-

-<p>'There is not one.'</p>

-

-<p>'Then what is it that you do regret? Something more weighs on you than

-the mere loss of diplomatic life, which; after all, to you is no more

-than the loss of a toy to Bela.'</p>

-

-<p>'If I do regret,' he said, with a smile, 'it is foolish and thankless.

-The happiness you give me here is worth all the fret and fever of

-the world's ambitions. You are so great and good to be so little

-angered with me for my reticence. All my life, such as it is, shall be

-dedicated to my gratitude.'</p>

-

-<p>Once more an impulse to tell her all passed over him&mdash;&mdash;a sense that

-he might trust her absolutely for all tenderness and all pity came

-upon him; but with the weakness which so constantly holds back human

-souls from their own deliverance, his courage once again failed him.

-He once more looking at her thought: 'Nay! I dare not. She would never

-understand, she would never pardon, she would never listen. At the

-first word she would abhor me.'</p>

-

-<p>He did not dare; he bent his face down on her knees as any child might

-have done.</p>

-

-<p>'What I ever must regret is not to be worthy of you!' he murmured; and

-the subterfuge was also a truth.</p>

-

-<p>She looked down at him wistfully with doubt and confusion mingled. She

-sighed, for she understood that buried in his heart there was some pain

-he would not share, perchance some half involuntary unfaithfulness he

-did not dare confess. She thrust this latter thought away quickly; it

-hurt her as the touch of a hot iron hurts tender flesh; she would not

-harbour it. It might well be, she knew.</p>

-

-<p>She was silent some little time, then she said calmly:</p>

-

-<p>'I think you worthy. Is not that enough? Never say to me what you do

-not wish to say. But&mdash;&mdash;but&mdash;&mdash;if there be anything you believe that I

-should blame, be sure of this, love: I am no fair weather friend. Try

-me in deep water, in dark storm!'</p>

-

-<p>And still he did not speak.</p>

-

-<p>His evil angel held him back and said to him, 'Nay! she would never

-forgive.'</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>One day in this winter time she sat alone in her octagon-room whilst he

-was out driving in the teeth of a strong wind blowing from the north

-and frequent bursts of snowstorm. Rapid exercise, eager movements, were

-necessary to him at once as tonic and as anodyne, and the northern

-blood that was in him made the bitter cold, the keen and angry air, the

-conflict with the frantic horses tearing at their curbs welcome and

-wholesome to him. Paul Zabaroff had many a day driven so over the hard

-snows of Russian plains.</p>

-

-<p>She sat at home as the twilight drew on, her feet buried in the furs

-before her chair, the fragrance shed about her from a basket of forced

-narcissus and bowls full of orange flowers and of violets, the light

-of the burning wood shining on the variegated and mellow hues of the

-tiles of the hearth. The last poems of Coppée were on her lap, but

-her thoughts had wandered away from those to Sabran, to her children,

-to a thousand happy trifles connected with one or the other. She was

-dreaming idly in that vague reverie which suits the last hour of the

-reclining day in the grey still winter of a mountain-land. She was

-almost sorry when Hubert entered and brought her the mail-bag, which

-had just come through the gloomy defiles and the frosted woods which

-stretched between them and Matrey.</p>

-

-<p>'It grows late,' she said to him. 'I fear it will be a stormy night.

-Have you heard the Marquis return?</p>

-

-<p>He told her that Sabran had not yet driven in, and ventured to add

-his hope that his master would not be out long; then he asked if she

-desired the lamps lit, and on being told she did not, withdrew, leaving

-the leather bag on a table close to one of the Saxe bowls of violets.

-There was plenty of light from the fire, and even from the windows, to

-read her letters by; she went first to one of the casements and looked

-at the night, which was growing very wild and dark. Though day still

-lingered, she could hear the wind go screaming down the lake, and

-the rush of the swollen water swirling against the terrace buttresses

-below. All beyond, woods, hills, mountains, were invisible under the

-grey mist.</p>

-

-<p>'I hope he will not be late,' she thought, but she was too keen a

-mountaineer to be apprehensive. Sabran now knew every road and path

-through all the Tauern as well as she did. She returned to her seat and

-unlocked the leather bag; there were several newspapers, two letters

-for the Princess, three or four for Sabran, and one only for herself.

-She laid his aside for him, sent those of the Princess to her room,

-and opened her own. The writing of it she did not recognise; it was

-anonymous, and was very brief.</p>

-

-

-<p>'If you wish to know why the Marquis de Sabran did not go to Russia,

-ask Egon Vàsàrhely.'</p>

-

-

-<p>That was all: so asps are little.</p>

-

-<p>She sat quite still, and felt as if a bolt had fallen on her from the

-leaden skies without. Vàsàrhely knew, the writer of the letter knew,

-and she&mdash;&mdash;<i>she&mdash;&mdash;</i> did not know! That was her first distinct thought.</p>

-

-<p>If Sabran had entered the room at that instant she would have held to

-him this letter, and would have said, 'I ask you, not him.' He was

-absent, and she sat motionless, keeping the unsigned note in her hand,

-and staring down on it. Then she turned and looked at the post-mark.

-It was 'Vienna,' A city of a million souls! What clue to the writer

-was there? She read it again and again, as even the wisest will read

-such poisonous things, as though by repeated study that mystery would

-be compelled to stand out clearly revealed. It did not say enough to

-have been the mere invention of the sender; it was not worded as an

-insinuation, but as a fact. For that reason it took a hold upon her

-mind which would at once have rejected a fouler or a darker suggestion.

-Although free from any baseness of suspicion there was yet that in the

-name of her cousin, in juxtaposition with her husband's, which could

-not do otherwise than startle and carry with it a corroboration of the

-statement made. A wave of the deep anger which had moved her on her

-husband's first refusal swept over her again. Her hand clenched, her

-eyes hashed, where she sat alone in the gathering shadows.</p>

-

-<p>There came a sound at the door of the room and a small golden head came

-from behind the tapestry.</p>

-

-<p>'May we come in?' said Bela; it was the children's hour.</p>

-

-<p>She rose, and put him backward.</p>

-

-<p>'Not now, my darling; I am occupied. Go away for a little while.'</p>

-

-<p>The women who were with them took the children back to their

-apartments. She sat down with the note still in her hand. What could

-it mean? No good thing was ever said thus. She pondered long, and was

-unable to imagine any sense or meaning it could have, though all the

-while memories thronged upon, her of words, and looks, and many trifles

-which had told her of the enmity that was existent between her cousin

-and Sabran. That she saw; but there her knowledge ceased, her vision

-failed. She could go no further, conjecture nothing more.</p>

-

-<p>'Ask Egon!' Did they think she would ask him or any living being that

-which Sabran had refused to confide in her? Whoever wrote this knew her

-little, she thought. Perhaps there were women who would have done so.

-She was not one of them.</p>

-

-<p>With a sudden impulse of scorn she cast the sheet of paper into the

-fire before her. Then she went to her writing-table and enclosed the

-envelope in another, which she addressed to her lawyers in Salzburg.

-She wrote with it: 'This is the cover to an anonymous letter which I

-have received. Try your uttermost to discover the sender.'</p>

-

-<p>Then she sat down again and thought long, and wearily, and vainly. She

-could make nothing of it. She could see no more than a wayfarer whom a

-blank wall faces as he goes. The violets and orange blossoms were close

-at her elbow; she never in after time smelt their perfume without a

-sick memory of the stunned, stupefied bewilderment of that hour.</p>

-

-<p>The door unclosed again, a voice again spoke behind as a hand drew back

-the folds of the tapestry.</p>

-

-<p>'What, are you in darkness here? I am very cold. Have you no tea for

-me?' said Sabran, as he entered, his eyes brilliant; his cheeks warm,

-from the long gallop against the wind. He had changed his clothes, and

-wore a loose suit of velvet; the servants, entering behind him, lit the

-candelabra, and brought in the lamps; warmth, and gladness, and light

-seemed to come with him; she looked up and thought, 'Ah! what does any

-thing matter? He is home in safety!'</p>

-

-<p>The impulse to ask of him what she had been bidden to ask of Egon

-Vàsàrhely had passed with the intense surprise of the first moment. She

-could not ask of him what she had promised never to seek to know; she

-could not reopen a long-closed wound. But neither could she forget the

-letter lying burnt there amongst the flames of the wood. He noticed

-that her usual perfect calm was broken as she welcomed him, gave him

-his letters, and bade the servants bring tea; but he thought it mere

-anxiety, and his belated drive; and being tired with a pleasant fatigue

-which made rest sweet, he stretched his limbs out on a low couch beside

-the hearth, and gave himself up to that delicious dreamy sense of

-<i>bien-être</i> which a beautiful woman, a beautiful room, tempered warmth

-and light, and welcome repose, bring to any man after some hours effort

-and exposure in wild weather and intense cold and increasing darkness.</p>

-

-<p>'I almost began to think I should not see you to-night,' he said

-happily, as he took from her hand the little cup of Frankenthal china

-which sparkled like a jewel in the light. 'I had fairly lost my way,

-and Josef knew it no better than I; the snow fell with incredible

-rapidity, and it seemed to grow night in an instant. I let the horses

-take their road, and they brought us home; but if there be any poor

-pedlars or carriers on the hills to-night I fear they will go to their

-last sleep.'</p>

-

-<p>She shuddered and looked at him with dim, fond eyes, 'He is here; he is

-mine,' she thought; 'what else matters?'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran stretched out his fingers and took some of the violets from the

-Saxe bowl and fastened them in his coat as he went on speaking of the

-weather, of the perils of the roads whose tracks were obliterated, and

-of the prowess and intelligence of his horses, who had found the way

-home when he and his groom, a man born and bred in the Tauern, had both

-been utterly at a loss. The octagon-room had never looked lovelier and

-gayer to him, and his wife had never looked more beautiful than both

-did now as he came to them out of the darkness and the snowstorm and

-the anxiety of the last hour.</p>

-

-<p>'Do not run those risks,' she murmured. 'You know all that your life is

-to me.'</p>

-

-<p>The letter which lay burnt in the fire, and the dusky night of ice

-and wind without, had made him dearer to her than ever. And yet the

-startled, shocked sense of some mystery, of some evil, was heavy upon

-her, and did not leave her that evening nor for many a day after.</p>

-

-<p>'You are not well?' he said to her anxiously later, as they left the

-dinner-table. She answered evasively.</p>

-

-<p>'You know I am not always quite well now. It is nothing. It will pass.'</p>

-

-<p>'I was wrong to alarm you by being out so late in such weather,' he

-said with self-reproach. 'I will go out earlier in future.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do not wear those violets,' she said, with a trivial caprice wholly

-unlike her, as she took them from his coat. 'They are Bonapartist

-emblems&mdash;<i>fleurs de malheur</i>.'</p>

-

-<p>He smiled, but he was surprised, for he had never seen in her any one

-of those fanciful whims and vagaries that are common to women.</p>

-

-<p>'Give me any others instead,' he said; 'I wear but your symbol, O my

-lady!'</p>

-

-<p>She took some myrtle and lilies of the valley from one of the large

-porcelain jars in the Rittersaal.</p>

-

-<p>'These are our flowers,' she said as she gave them to him. 'They mean

-love and peace.'</p>

-

-<p>He turned from her slightly as he fastened them where the others had

-been.</p>

-

-<p>All the evening she was pre-occupied and nervous. She could not forget

-the intimation she had received. It was intolerable to her to have

-anything of which she could not speak to her husband. Though they had

-their own affairs apart one from the other, there had been nothing

-of moment in hers that she had ever concealed from him. But here it

-was impossible for her to speak to him, since she had pledged herself

-never to seek to know the reason of an action which, however plausibly

-she explained it to herself, remained practically inexplicable and

-unintelligible. It was terrible to her, too, to feel that the lines

-of a coward who dared not sign them had sunk so deeply into her mind

-that she did not question their veracity. They had at once carried

-conviction to her that Egon Vàsàrhely did know what they said he did.

-She could not have told why this was, but it was so. It was what hurt

-her most&mdash;&mdash;others knew; she did not.</p>

-

-<p>She felt that if she could have spoken to Sabran of it, the matter

-would have become wholly indifferent to her; but the obligation of

-reticence, the sense of separation which it involved, oppressed her

-greatly. She was also haunted by the memory of the enmity which existed

-between these men, whose names were so strangely coupled in the

-anonymous counsel given her.</p>

-

-<p>She stayed long in her oratory that night, seeking vainly for calmness

-and patience under this temptation; seeking beyond all things for

-strength to put the poison of it wholly from her mind. She dreaded lest

-it should render her irritable and suspicious. She reproached herself

-for having been guilty of even so much insinuation of rebuke to him

-as her words with the flower had carried in them. She had ideas of

-the duties of a woman to her husband widely different to those which

-prevail in the world. She allowed herself neither irritation nor irony

-against him. 'When the thoughts rebel, the acts soon revolt,' she was

-wont to say to herself, and even in her thoughts she would never blame

-him.</p>

-

-<p>Prayer, even if it have no other issue or effect, rarely fails to

-tranquillise and fortify the heart which is lifted up ever so vaguely

-in search of a superhuman aid. She left her oratory strengthened and

-calmed, resolved in no way to allow such partial success to their

-unknown foe as would be given if the treacherous warning brought any

-suspicion or bitterness to her mind. She passed through the open

-archway in the wall which divided his rooms from hers, and looked at

-him where he lay already asleep upon his bed, early fatigued by the

-long cold drive from which he had returned at nightfall. He was never

-more handsome than sleeping calmly thus, with the mellow light of a

-distant lamp reaching the fairness of his face. She looked at him with

-all her heart in her eyes; then stooped and kissed him without awaking

-him.</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! my love,' she thought, 'what should ever come between us? Hardly

-even death, I think, for if I lost you I should not live long without

-you.'</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>The Salzburg lawyers employed all the resources of the Viennese police

-to discover the sender of the envelope, but vainly; nothing was

-learned by all the efforts made. But the letter constantly haunted her

-thoughts. It produced in her an uneasiness and an apprehensiveness

-wholly foreign to her temper. The impossibility also of saying anything

-about it increased the weight of it on her memory. Yet she never once

-thought of asking Vàsàrhely. She wrote to him now and then, as she had

-always done, to give him tidings of her health or of her movements,

-but she never once alluded in the most distant terms to the anonymous

-information she had received. If he had been there beside her she would

-not have spoken of it. Of the two, she would sooner have reopened the

-subject to her husband. But she never did so. She had promised him

-to be silent, and to her creed a promise was inviolate, never to be

-retracted, be the pressure or the desire to do so what it would.</p>

-

-<p>It was these grand lines on which her character and her habits were

-cast that awed him, and made him afraid to tell her his true history.

-Had he revered her less he would probably have deceived her less. Had

-she been of a less noble temperament she would also probably have been

-much less easy to deceive.</p>

-

-<p>Her health was at this time languid, and more uncertain than usual,

-and the two lines of the letter were often present to her thoughts,

-tormenting her with idle conjecture, painful doubt, none the less

-painful because it could take no definite shape. Sometimes when she

-was not well enough to accompany him out of doors or drive her own

-sleigh through the keen clear winter air, she sat doing nothing, and

-thinking only of this thing, in the same room, with the same smell of

-violets about her, musing on what it might by any possibility mean. Any

-secret was safe with Egon, but then since the anonymous writer was in

-possession of it the secret was not only his. She wondered sometimes in

-terror whether it could be anything that might in after years affect

-her children's future, and then as rapidly discarded the bare thought

-as so much dishonour to their father. 'It is only because I am now

-nervous and impressionable,' she said to herself,'that this folly takes

-such a hold upon me. When I am well again I shall not think of it. Who

-is it says of anonymous letters that they are like "<i>les immondices des

-rues: il faut boucher le nez, tourner la tête et passer outre?</i>"'</p>

-

-<p>But '<i>les immondices</i>' spoiled the odours of the new year violets to

-her.</p>

-

-<p>In the early spring of the year she gave birth to another son. She

-suffered more than she had ever done before, and recovered less

-quickly. The child was like all the others, fair, vigorous, and full

-of health. She wished to give him her husband's name, but Sabran so

-strenuously opposed the idea that she yielded, and named him after her

-brother Victor, who had fallen at Magenta.</p>

-

-<p>There were the usual rejoicings throughout the estates, rejoicings

-that were the outcome of genuine affection and fealty to the race of

-Szalras, whose hold on the people of the Tauern had resisted all the

-revolutionary movements of the earlier part of the century, and had

-fast root in the hearts of the staunch and conservative mountaineers.

-But for the first time as she heard the hearty '<i>Hoch!</i>' of the

-assembled peasantry echoing beneath her windows, and the salvos fired

-from the old culverins on the keep, a certain fear mingled with her

-maternal pride, and she thought: 'Will the people love them as well

-twenty years hence, fifty years hence, when I shall be no more? Will my

-memory be any shield to them? Will the traditions of our race outlast

-the devouring changes of the world?'</p>

-

-<p>Meantime the Princess, happy and smiling, showed the little new-born

-noble to the stalwart chamois hunters, the comely farmers and

-fishermen, the clear-eyed stout-limbed shepherds and labourers gathered

-bareheaded round the Schloss.</p>

-

-<p>Bela stood by contemplating the crowd he knew so well; he did not see

-why they should cheer any other child beside himself. He stood with his

-little velvet cap in his hand, because he was always told to do so, but

-he felt very inclined to put it on; if his father had not been present

-there he would have done so.</p>

-

-<p>'If I have ever so many brothers,' he said at last thoughtfully to

-Greswold, who was by his side, 'it will not make any difference, will

-it? I shall always be <i>the</i> one?'</p>

-

-<p>'What do you mean?' asked the physician.</p>

-

-<p>'They will none of them be like me? They will none of them be as great

-as I am? Not if I have twenty?'</p>

-

-<p>'You will be always the eldest son, of course,' said the old man,

-repressing a smile. 'Yes; you will be their head, their chief, their

-leading spirit; but for that reason you will have much more expected of

-you than will be expected of them; you will have to learn much more,

-and try to be always good. Do you follow me, Count Bela?'</p>

-

-<p>Bela's little rosy mouth shut itself up contemptuously. 'I shall be

-always the eldest, and I shall do whatever I like. I do not see why

-they want any others than me.'</p>

-

-<p>'You will not do always what you like, Count Bela.'</p>

-

-<p>'Who shall prevent me?'</p>

-

-<p>'The law, which you will have to obey like everyone else.'</p>

-

-<p>'I shall make the laws when I am a little older,' said Bela. 'And they

-will be for my brothers and all the people, but not for me. I shall do

-what I like.'</p>

-

-<p>'That will be very ungenerous,' said Greswold, quietly. 'Your mother,

-the Countess, is very different. She is stern to herself, and indulgent

-to all others. That is why she is beloved. If you will think of

-yourself so much when you are grown up, you will be hated.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela flushed a little guiltily and angrily.</p>

-

-<p>'That will not matter,' he said sturdily. 'I shall please myself

-always.'</p>

-

-<p>'And be unkind to your brothers?'</p>

-

-<p>'Not if they do what I tell them; I will be very kind if they are good.

-Gela always does what I tell him,' he added after a little pause; 'I do

-not want any but Gela.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is natural you should be fondest of Gela, as he is nearest your

-age, but you must love all the brothers you may have, or you will

-distress your mother very greatly.'</p>

-

-<p>'Why does she want any but me?' said Bela, clinging to his sense of

-personal wrong. And he was not to be turned from that.</p>

-

-<p>'She wants others beside you,' said the physician, adroitly, 'because

-to be happy she needs children who are tender-hearted, unselfish, and

-obedient. You are none of those things, my Count Bela, so Heavens ends

-her consolation.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela opened his blue eyes very wide, and he coloured with mortification.</p>

-

-<p>'She always loves me best!' he said haughtily. 'She always will!'</p>

-

-<p>'That will depend on yourself, my little lord,' said Greswold, with a

-significance which was not lost on the quick intelligence of the child;

-and he never forgot this day when his brother Victor was shown to the

-people.</p>

-

-<p>'There will be no lack of heirs to Hohenszalras,' said the Princess

-meanwhile to his father.</p>

-

-<p>He thought as he heard:</p>

-

-<p>'And if ever she know she can break her marriage like a rotten thread!

-Those boys can all be made as nameless as I was! Would she do it?

-Perhaps not, for the children's sake. God knows&mdash;&mdash;she might change

-even to them; she might hate them as she loves them now, because they

-are mine.'</p>

-

-<p>Even as he sat beside her couch with her hand in his these thoughts

-pursued and haunted him. Remorse and fear consumed him. When she looked

-at the blue eyes of her new-born son, and said to him with a happy

-smile: 'He will be just as much like you as the others are,' he could

-only think with a burning sense of shame, 'Like me! like a traitor!

-like a liar! like a thief!'&mdash;&mdash;and the faces of these children seemed

-to him like those of avenging angels.</p>

-

-<p>He thought with irrepressible agony of the fact that her country's

-laws would divorce her from him if she chose, did ever the truth come

-to her ear. He had always known this indeed, as he had known all the

-other risks he ran in doing what he did. Put it had been far away,

-indistinct, unasserted; whenever the memory of it had passed over him

-he had thrust it away. Now when another knew his secret, he could

-not do so. He had a strange sensation of having fallen from some

-great height; of having all his life slide away like melting ice out

-of his hands. He never once doubted for an instant the good faith of

-Egon Vàsàrhely. He knew that his lips would no more unclose to tell

-his secret than the glaciers yonder would find human voice. But the

-consciousness that one man lived, moved, breathed, rose with each day,

-and went amongst other men, bearing with him that fatal knowledge,

-made it now impossible for himself ever to forget it. A dull remorse,

-a sharp apprehension, were for ever his companions, and never left him

-for long even in his sweetest hours. He did justice to the magnificent

-generosity of the one who spared him. Egon Vàsàrhely knew, as he knew,

-that she, hearing the truth, could annul the marriage if she chose.

-His children would have no rights, no name, if their mother chose to

-separate herself from him. The law would make her once more as free

-as though she had never wedded him. He knew that, and the other man

-who loved her knew it too. He could measure the force of Vàsàrhely's

-temptation as that simple and heroic soldier could not stoop to measure

-his.</p>

-

-<p>He was deeply unhappy, but he concealed it from her. Even when his

-heart beat against hers it seemed to him always that there was an

-invisible wall between himself and her. He longed to tell the whole

-truth to her, but he was afraid; if the whole pain and shame had been

-his own that the confession would have caused, he would have dared it;

-but he had not the heart to inflict on her such suffering, not the

-courage to destroy their happiness with his own hand. Egon Vàsàrhely

-alone knew, and he for her sake would never speak. As for the reproach

-of his own conscience, as for the remorse that the words of his

-children might at any moment call up in him, these lie must bear. He

-was a man of cool judgment and of ready resource, and though he had

-never foreseen the sharp repentance which his better nature now felt,

-he knew that he would be able to live it down as he had crushed out so

-many other scruples. He vowed to himself that as far as in him lay he

-would atone for his act. The moral influence of his wife had not been

-without effect on him. Not altogether, but partially, he had grown to

-believe in what she believed in, of the duty of human life to other

-lives; he had not her sympathy for others, but he had admired it, and

-in his own way followed it, though without her faith.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>Life went on in its old pathways at Hohenszalras. Nothing more, was

-said by him, or to him, as to his rejection of the Russian mission. She

-was niggard in nothing, and when she offered her faith or pledged her

-silence, gave both entirely and ungrudgingly. Sabran to her showed an

-increase of devotion, an absolute adoration which would in themselves

-have sufficed to console any woman; and if the most observant member

-of their household, Greswold, perceived in him a preoccupation, a

-languor, a gloom, which boded ill for their future peace, the old man

-was too loyal in his attachment not to endeavour to shake off his own

-suspicions and discredit his own penetration.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess had been favoured by a note from Olga Brancka, in which

-that lady wrote: 'Have you discovered the nature of his refusal of

-Russia? Myself, I believe that I was to blame. I hinted to him that

-he would be tempted to his old sins in St. Petersburg, and that Wanda

-would be very miserable there. It seems that this was enough for the

-tender heart of this devoted lover, and too much for his wisdom and

-his judgment; he rejected the mission after accepting it. I believe

-the Court is furious. I am not <i>de service</i> now, so that I have no

-opportunity of endeavouring to restore him to favour; but I imagine the

-Emperor will not quarrel for ever with the Hohenszalrasburg.</p>

-

-<p>The letter restored him at least to the favour of Mdme. Ottilie.

-Exaggerated as such a scruple appeared it did not seem to her

-impossible in a man whose devotion to his wife she daily witnessed,

-shown in a hundred traits. She blamed him still severely in her own

-thoughts for what she held an inexcusable disrespect to the Crown, but

-she kept her word scrupulously and never spoke to him on the subject.</p>

-

-<p>'Where else in the wide world would any man have found such

-forbearance?' he thought with gratitude, and he knew that nowhere

-would such delicate sentiment have existed outside the pale of that

-fine patrician dignity which is as incapable of the vulgarity of

-inquisitiveness and interrogation as was the Spartan of lament.</p>

-

-<p>The months went by. They did not leave home; he seemed to have lost

-all wish for any absence, and even repulsed the idea of inviting the

-usual house parties of the year. She supposed that he was averse to

-meeting people who might recur to his rejection of the post he had

-once accepted. The summer passed and the autumn came; he spent his

-time in occasional sport, the keen and perilous sport of the Austrian

-mountains, and more often and more faithfully beguiled himself with

-those arts of which he was a brilliant master, though he would call

-himself no more than a mere amateur. From the administration of the

-estates he had altogether withdrawn himself.</p>

-

-<p>'You are so much wiser than I,' he always said to her; and when she

-would have referred to him, replied: 'You have your lawyers; they are

-all honest men. Consult them rather than me.'</p>

-

-<p>With the affairs of Idrac only he continued to concern himself a

-little, and was persistent in setting aside all its revenues to

-accumulate for his second son.</p>

-

-<p>'I wish you cared more about all these things,' she said to him one

-day, when she had in her hand the reports from the mines of Galicia.

-He answered angrily, 'I have no right to them. They are not mine. If

-you chose to give them all away to the Crown I should say nothing.'</p>

-

-<p>'Not even for the children's sake?'</p>

-

-<p>'No: you would be entirely justified if you liked to give the children

-nothing.'</p>

-

-<p>'I really do not understand you,' she said in great surprise.</p>

-

-<p>'Everything is yours,' he said abruptly.</p>

-

-<p>'And the children too, surely!' she said, with a smile: but the

-strangeness of the remark disquieted her. 'It is over-sensitiveness,'

-she thought; 'he can never altogether forget that he was poor. It is

-for that reason public life would have been so good for him; dignities

-which he enjoyed of his own, honours that he arrived at through his own

-attainments.'</p>

-

-<p>Chagrined to have lost, the opportunity of winning personal honours

-in a field congenial to him, the sense that everything was hers could

-hardly fail to gall him sometimes constantly, though she strove to

-efface any remembrance or reminder that it was so.</p>

-

-<p>In the midsummer of that year, whilst they were quite alone, they were

-surprised by another letter from Mdme. Brancka, in which she proposed

-to take Hohenszalras on her way from France to Tsarköe Selo, where she

-was about to pay a visit which could not be declined by her.</p>

-

-<p>When in the spring he had written with formality to her to announce the

-birth of his son Victor, she had answered with a witty coquettish reply

-such as might well have been provocative of further correspondence.

-But he had not taken up the invitation. Mortified and irritated, she

-had compared his writing with the piece of burnt paper, and been more

-satisfied than ever that he had penned the name of Vassia Kazán. But

-even were it so, what, she wondered, had it to do with Russia? He

-and Egon Vàsàrhely were not friends so intimate that they had any

-common interests one with the other. The mystery had interested her

-intensely when her rapid intuition had connected the resignation of

-Sabran's appointment with the messenger sent to him from Taróc. Her

-impatience to be again in his presence grew intense. She imagined a

-thousand stories, to cast each aside in derision as impossible. All her

-suppositions were built upon no better basis than a fragment of charred

-paper; but her shrewd intuition bore her into the region of truth,

-though the actual truth of course never suggested itself to her even in

-her most fantastic and dramatic visions. Finally she thus proposed to

-visit Hohenszalras in the midsummer months.</p>

-

-<p>'Last year you had such a crowd about you,' she wrote, 'that I

-positively saw nothing of you, <i>liebe</i> Wanda. You are alone now, and

-I venture to propose myself for a fortnight. You cannot exactly be

-said to be in the way to anywhere, but I shall make you so. When one

-is going to Russia, a matter of another five hundred miles or so is a

-bagatelle.'</p>

-

-<p>'We must let her come,' said Wanda, as she gave the letter to Sabran,

-who, having read it, said with much sincerity&mdash;&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'For heaven's sake, do not. A fortnight of Madame Olga! as well

-have&mdash;&mdash;a century of "Madame Angot!"'</p>

-

-<p>'Can I prevent her?'</p>

-

-<p>'You can make some excuse. I do not like Mdme. Brancka.'</p>

-

-<p>'Why?'</p>

-

-<p>He hesitated; he could not tell her what he had felt at the ball of

-the Hofburg. 'She reminds me of a woman who drew me into a thousand

-follies, and to cap her good deeds betrayed me to the Prussians. If you

-must let her come I will go away. I will go and see your haras on the

-Pusztas.'</p>

-

-<p>'Are you serious?'</p>

-

-<p>'Quite serious. Were I not ashamed of such a weakness, I should use a

-feminine expression. I should say "<i>elle me donne des nerfs.</i>"'</p>

-

-<p>'I think she has a great admiration for you, and she does not conceal

-it.'</p>

-

-<p>'Merely because she is sensible that I do not like her. Such women as

-she are discontented if only one person fail to admit their charm. She

-is accustomed to admiration, and she is not scrupulous as to how she

-obtains it.'</p>

-

-<p>'My dear! pray remember that she is our guest, and doubly our relative.'</p>

-

-<p>'I will try and remember it; but, believe me, all honour is wholly

-wasted upon Mdme. Olga. You offer her a coin of which the person and

-the superscription are alike unknown to her.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are very severe,' said his wife.</p>

-

-<p>She looked at him, and perceived that he was not jesting, that he

-was on the contrary disturbed and annoyed, and she remembered the

-persistence with which Olga Brancka had sought his companionship and

-accompanied him on his sport in the summer of her visit there.</p>

-

-<p>'If she had not married first my brother and then my cousin, she would

-never have been an intimate friend of mine,' she continued. 'She is of

-a world wholly opposed to all my tastes. For you to be absent, if she

-came, would be too marked, I think; but we can both leave, if you like.

-I am well enough for any movement now, and I can leave the child with

-his nurse. Shall we make a tour in Hungary? The haras will interest

-you. There are the mines, too, that one ought to visit.'</p>

-

-<p>He received her assent with gratitude and delight. He felt that he

-would have gone to the uttermost ends of the earth rather than run the

-risk of spending long lonely summer days in the excitation of Mdme.

-Brancka's presence. He detested her, he would always detest her; and

-yet when he shut his eyes he saw her so clearly, with the malicious

-light in her dusky glance, and the jewelled butterfly trembling about

-her breasts.</p>

-

-<p>'She shall never come under Wanda's roof if I can prevent it,' he

-thought, remembering her as she had been that night.</p>

-

-<p>A few days later the Countess Brancka, much to her rage, had a note

-from the Hohenszalrasburg, which said that they were on the point of

-leaving for Hungary and Galicia, but that if she would come there in

-their absence, the Princess Ottilie, who remained, would be charmed to

-receive her. Of course she excused herself, and did not go. A visit to

-the solitudes of the Iselthal, where she would, see no one but a lady

-of eighty years old and four little children, had few attractions for

-the adventurous and vivacious wife of Stefan Brancka.</p>

-

-<p>'It is only Wanda's jealousy,' she thought, and was furious; but she

-looked at herself in the mirror, and was almost consoled as she thought

-also, 'He avoids me. Therefore he is afraid of me!'</p>

-

-<p>She went to her god, <i>le monde</i>, and worshipped at all its shrines and

-in all its fashions; but in the midst of the turmoil and the triumphs,

-the worries and the intoxications of her life, she did not lose her

-hold on her purpose, nor forget that he had slighted her. His beautiful

-face, serene and scornful, was always before her. He might have been at

-her feet, and he chose to dwell beside his wife under those solitary

-forests, amongst those solitary mountains of the High Tauern!</p>

-

-<p>'With a woman he has lived with all these eight years!' she thought,

-with furious impatience. 'With a woman who has grafted the Lady of La

-Garaye on Libussa, who never gives him a moment's jealousy, who is

-as flawless as an ivory statue or a marble throne, who suckles her

-children and could spin their clothes if she wanted, who never cares

-to go outside the hills of her own home&mdash;&mdash;the Teuton <i>Hausfrau</i> to

-her finger-tips.' And she was all the more bitter and the more angered

-because, always as she tried to think thus, the image of Wanda rose up

-before her, as she had seen her so often at Vienna or Hohenszalras,

-with the great pearls on her hair and on her breast.</p>

-

-<p style="margin-left: 20%;">

-A planet at whose passing, lo!<br />

-All lesser stars recede, and night<br />

-Grows clear as day thus lighted up<br />

-By all her loveliness, which burns<br />

-With pure white flame of chastity;<br />

-And fires of fair thought....<br />

-</p>

-

-

-<h4>END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.</h4>

-<hr class="full" />

-<p style="margin-left: 20%; font-size: 0.8em;">

-CONTENTS<br /><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a><br />

-</p>

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-<pre>

-

-

-

-

-

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-

-

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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52136 ***</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
+</div>
+<h1>WANDA</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>OUIDA</h2>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>'Doch!&mdash;alles was dazu mich trieb;</i><br />
+<i>Gott!&mdash;war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20%;">Goethe</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h4>IN THREE VOLUMES</h4>
+
+<h4>VOL. II.</h4>
+
+
+<h5>London</h5>
+
+<h5>CHATTO &amp; WINDUS, PICCADILLY</h5>
+
+<h5>1883</h5>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<h3><a name="WANDA" id="WANDA">WANDA.</a></h3>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>On her return she spoke of her royal friends, of her cousins, of
+society, of her fears for the peace of Europe, and her doubts as to
+the strength of the empire; but she did not speak of the one person of
+whom, beyond all others, Mdme. Ottilie was desirous to hear. When some
+hours had passed, and still she had never alluded to the existence of,
+the Princess could bear silence no longer, and casting prudence to the
+winds, said boldly and with impatience:</p>
+
+<p>'And your late guest? Have you nothing to tell me? Surely you have seen
+him?'</p>
+
+<p>'He called once,' she answered, 'and I heard him speak at the Chamber.'</p>
+
+<p>'And was that all?' cried the Princess, disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>'He speaks very well in public,' added Wanda, 'and he said many tender
+and grateful things of you, and sent you many messages&mdash;such grateful
+ones that my memory is too clumsy a tray to hold such eggshell china.'</p>
+
+<p>She was angered with herself as she spoke, but the fragrance of the
+white lilac and the remembrance of its donor pursued her&mdash;angered
+with herself, too, because Hohenszalras seemed for the moment sombre,
+solitary, still, almost melancholy, wrapped in that winter whiteness
+and stillness which she had always loved so well.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning she saw all her people, visited her schools and her
+stables, and tried to persuade herself that she was as contented as
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>The aurist came from Paris shortly after her, and consoled the Princess
+by assuring her that the slight deafness she suffered from occasionally
+was due to cold.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course!' she said, with some triumph. 'These mountains, all this
+water, rain whenever there is not snow, snow whenever there is not
+rain; it is a miracle, and the mercy of Heaven, if one saves any of
+one's five senses uninjured in a residence here.'</p>
+
+<p>She had her satin hood trebly wadded, and pronounced the aurist a
+charming person. Herr Greswold in an incautious moment had said to her
+that deafness was one of the penalties of age and did not depend upon
+climate. A Paris doctor would not have earned his fee of two hundred
+napoleons if he had only produced so ungallant a truism. She heard a
+little worse after his visit, perhaps, but if so, she said that was
+caused by the additional wadding in her hood. He had told her to use a
+rose-water syringe, and Herr Greswold was forbidden her presence for a
+week because he averred that you might as well try to melt the glacier
+with a lighted pastille.</p>
+
+<p>The aurist gone, life at Hohenszalras resumed its even tenor; and
+except for, the post, the tea-cups, and the kind of dishes served at
+dinner, hardly differed from what life had been there in the sixteenth
+century, save that there were no saucy pages playing in the court, and
+no destriers stamping in the stalls, and no culverins loaded on the
+bastions.</p>
+
+<p>'It is like living between the illuminated leaves of one of the Hours,'
+thought the Princess, and though her conscience told her that to dwell
+so in a holy book like a pressed flower was the most desirable life
+that could be granted by Heaven to erring mortality, still she felt it
+was dull. A little gossip, a little movement, a little rolling of other
+carriage-wheels than her own, had always seemed desirable to her.</p>
+
+<p>Life here was laid down on broad lines. It was stately, austere,
+tranquil; one day was a mirror of all the rest. The Princess fretted
+for some little <i>frou-frou</i> of the world to break its solemn silence.</p>
+
+<p>When Wanda returned from her ride one forenoon she said a little
+abruptly to her aunt:</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose you will be glad to hear you have convinced me. I have
+telegraphed to Ludwig to open and air the house in Vienna; we will go
+there for three months. It is, perhaps, time I should be seen at Court.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is a very sudden decision!' said Madame Ottilie, doubting that she
+could hear aright.</p>
+
+<p>'It is the fruit of your persuasions, dear mother mine! The only
+advantage in having houses in half a dozen different places is to be
+able to go to them without consideration. You think me obstinate,
+whimsical, barbaric; the Kaiserin thinks so too. I will endeavour to
+conquer my stubbornness. We will go to Vienna next week. You will see
+all your old friends, and I all my old jewels.'</p>
+
+<p>The determination once made, she adhered to it. She had felt a vague
+annoyance at the constancy and the persistency with which regret for
+the lost society of Sabran recurred to her. She had attributed it to
+the solitude in which she lived: that solitude which is the begetter
+and the nurse of thought may also be the hotbed of unwise fancies.
+It was indeed a solitude filled with grave duties, careful labours,
+high desires and endeavours; but perhaps, she thought, the world for a
+while, even in its folly, might be healthier, might preserve her from
+the undue share which the memory of a stranger had in her musings.</p>
+
+<p>Her people, her lands, her animals, would none of them suffer by
+a brief absence; and perhaps there were duties due as well to her
+position as to her order. She was the only representative of the great
+Counts of Szalras. With the whimsical ingratitude to fate common
+to human nature, she thought she would sooner have been obscure,
+unnoticed, free. Her rank began to drag on her with something like the
+sense of a chain. She felt that she was growing irritable, fanciful,
+thankless; so she ordered the huge old palace in the Herrengasse to be
+got ready, and sought the world as others sought the cloister.</p>
+
+<p>In a week's time she was installed in Vienna, with a score of horses,
+two score of servants, and all the stir and pomp that attend a great
+establishment in the most aristocratic city of Europe, and she made her
+first appearance at a ball at the Residenz covered with jewels from
+head to foot; the wonderful old jewels that for many seasons had lain
+unseen in their iron coffers&mdash;opals given by Rurik, sapphires taken
+from Kara Mustafa, pearls worn by her people at the wedding of Mary of
+Burgundy, diamonds that had been old when Maria Theresa had been young.</p>
+
+<p>She had three months of continual homage, of continual flattery, of
+what others called pleasure, and what none could have denied was
+splendour. Great nobles laid their heart and homage before her feet,
+and all the city looked after her for her beauty as she drove her
+horses round the Ringstrasse. It left her all very cold and unamused
+and indifferent.</p>
+
+<p>She was impatient to be back at Hohenszalras, amidst the stillness of
+the woods, the sound of the waters.</p>
+
+<p>'You cannot say now that I do not care for the world, because I have
+forgotten what it was like,' she observed to her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish you cared more,' said the Princess. 'Position has its duties.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never dispute that; only I do not see that being wearied by society
+constitutes one of them. I cannot understand why people are so afraid
+of solitude; the routine of the world is quite as monotonous.'</p>
+
+<p>'If you only appreciated the homage that you receive&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Surely one's mind is something like one's conscience: if one can be
+not too utterly discontented with what it says one does not need the
+verdict of others.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with
+your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your
+overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the
+one I possess.'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be
+pride&mdash;the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely
+better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are not all simpletons.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very
+stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well
+as of the Wurstel-Prater.'</p>
+
+<p>The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the
+Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw
+the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she
+was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something
+wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up,
+nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.</p>
+
+<p>The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain,
+and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging
+primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of
+the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging
+with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass
+was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale
+sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras,
+and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she
+returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.</p>
+
+<p>'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold,
+as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the
+Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias
+and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between
+the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of
+their stalls.</p>
+
+<p>'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert,
+as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with
+tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with
+'<i>Willkommen</i>' written on it.</p>
+
+<p>She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single
+word.</p>
+
+<p>How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that
+day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been
+sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.</p>
+
+<p>'That is the Stanhopea tigrina,' said Herr Greswold, touching one with
+reverent fingers; 'they are all very rare. It is a welcome worthy of
+you, my lady.'</p>
+
+<p>'A very extravagant one,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a certain
+displeasure that mingled with a softened emotion. 'Who brought it?'</p>
+
+<p>'The Marquis de Sabran, by <i>extra-poste</i>, himself this morning,'
+answered Hubert&mdash;an answer she did not expect. 'But he would not wait;
+he would not even take a glass of tokayer, or let his horses stay for a
+feed of corn.'</p>
+
+<p>'What knight-errantry!' said the Princess well pleased.</p>
+
+<p>'What folly!' said Wanda, but she had the basket of orchids taken to
+her own octagon room.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as if he had divined how much of late she had thought of him.
+She was touched, and yet she was angered a little.</p>
+
+<p>'Surely she will write to him,' thought the Princess wistfully very
+often: but she did not write. To a very proud woman the dawning
+consciousness of love is always an irritation, an offence, a failure, a
+weakness: the mistress of Hohenszalras could not quickly pardon herself
+for taking with pleasure the message of the orchids.</p>
+
+<p>A little while later she received a letter from Olga Brancka. In it she
+wrote from Paris:</p>
+
+<p>'Parsifal is doing wonders in the Chamber, that is, he is making Paris
+talk; his party will forbid him doing anything else. You certainly
+worked a miracle. I hear he never plays, never looks at an actress,
+never does anything wrong, and when a grand heiress was offered to
+him by her people refused her hand blandly but firmly. What is one to
+think? That he washed his soul white in the Szalrassee?'</p>
+
+<p>It was the subtlest flattery of all, the only flattery to which she
+would have been accessible, this entire alteration in the current
+of a man's whole life; this change in habit, inclination, temper,
+and circumstance. If he had approached her its charm would have been
+weakened, its motive suspected; but aloof and silent as he remained,
+his abandonment of all old ways, his adoption of a sterner and worthier
+career, moved her with its marked, mute homage of herself.</p>
+
+<p>When she read his discourses in the French papers she felt a glow
+of triumph, as if she had achieved some personal success; she felt
+a warmth at her heart as of something near and dear to her, which
+was doing well and wisely in the sight of men. His cause did not,
+indeed, as Olga Brancka had said, render tangible, practical, victory
+impossible for him, but he had the victories of eloquence, of
+patriotism, of high culture, of pure and noble language, and these
+blameless laurels seemed to her half of her own gathering.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you never reward him?' the Princess ventured to say at last,
+overcome by her own impatience to rashness. 'Never? Not even by a word?'</p>
+
+<p>'Hear mother,' said Wanda, with a smile which perplexed and baffled the
+Princess, 'if your hero wanted reward he would not be the leader of a
+lost cause. Pray do not suggest to me a doubt of his disinterestedness.
+You will do him very ill service.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess was mute, vaguely conscious that she had said something
+ill-timed or ill-advised.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed on and brought beautiful weather in the month of June,
+which here in the High Tauern means what April does in the south.
+Millions of song-birds were shouting in the woods, and thousands of
+nests were suspended on the high branches of the forest trees, or
+hidden in the greenery of the undergrowth; water-birds perched and
+swung in the tall reeds where the brimming streams tumbled; the purple,
+the white, and the grey herons were all there, and the storks lately
+flown home from Asia or Africa were settling in bands by the more
+marshy grounds beside the northern shores of the Szalrassee.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon she had been riding far and fast, and on her return a
+telegram from Vienna had been brought to her, sent on from Lienz.
+Having opened it, she approached her aunt and said with an unsteady
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>'War is declared between France and Prussia!'</p>
+
+<p>'We expected it; we are ready for it,' said the Princess, with all
+her Teutonic pride in her eyes. 'We shall show her that we cannot be
+insulted with impunity.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is a terrible calamity for the world,' said Wanda, and her face was
+very pale.</p>
+
+<p>The thought which was present to her was that Sabran would be foremost
+amidst volunteers. She did not hear a word of all the political
+exultation with which Princess Ottilie continued to make her militant
+prophecies. She shivered as with cold in the warmth of the midsummer
+sunset.</p>
+
+<p>'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her
+house.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess demurred.</p>
+
+<p>'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all
+the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial.
+You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the
+especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge
+Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from
+her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.</p>
+
+<p>In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War
+is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss
+of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I
+shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw
+bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every
+sword she has.'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:</p>
+
+<p>'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her
+soil is bound to arm.'</p>
+
+<p>More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her
+grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,'
+written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were
+filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that
+was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a
+child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian
+campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made
+her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal
+conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she
+became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had
+at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from
+the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the
+shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the
+command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their
+own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was
+congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of
+his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally,
+in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name
+mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That
+was all.</p>
+
+<p>The autumn began to deepen into winter, and complete silence covered
+all his life. She thought with a great remorse&mdash;if he were dead?
+Perhaps he was dead? Why had she been always so cold to him? She
+suffered intensely; all the more intensely because it was not a sorrow
+which she could not confess even to herself. When she ceased altogether
+to hear anything of or from him, she realised the hold which he had
+taken on her life.</p>
+
+<p>These months of suspense did more to attach her to him than years
+of assiduous and ardent homage could have done. She, a daughter of
+soldiers, had always felt any man almost unmanly who had not received
+the baptism of fire.</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Ottilie talked of him constantly, wondered frequently if he were
+wounded, slain, or in prison; she never spoke his name, and dreaded to
+hear it.</p>
+
+<p>Greswold, who perceived an anxiety in her that, he did not dare to
+allude to, ransacked every journal that was published in German to find
+some trace of Sabran's name. At the first he saw often some mention of
+the Cuirassiers d'Orléans, and of their intrepid Colonel Commandant:
+some raid, skirmish, or charge in which they had been conspicuous for
+reckless gallantry. But after the month of November he could find
+nothing. The whole regiment seemed to have been obliterated from
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>Winter settled down on Central Austria with cold silence, with roads
+blocked and mountains impassable. The dumbness, the solitude around
+her, which she had always loved so well, now grew to her intolerable.
+It seemed like death.</p>
+
+<p>Paris capitulated. The news reached her at the hour of a violent
+snowstorm; the postillion of her post-sledge bringing it had his feet
+frozen.</p>
+
+<p>Though her cousins of Lilienhöhe were amongst those who entered the
+city as conquerors, the fate of Paris smote her with a heavy blow. She
+felt as if the cold of the outer world had chilled her very bones, her
+very soul. The Princess, looking at her, was afraid to rejoice.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day she wrote to her cousin Hugo of Lilienhöhe, who
+was in Paris with the Imperial Guard. She asked him to inquire for and
+tell her the fate of a friend, the Marquis de Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>In due time Prince Hugo answered:</p>
+
+<p>'The gentleman you asked for was one of the most dangerous of our
+enemies. He commanded a volunteer cavalry regiment, which was almost
+cut to pieces by the Bavarian horse in an engagement before Orleans.
+Two or three alone escaped; their Colonel was severely wounded in
+the thigh, and had his charger shot dead under him. He was taken
+prisoner by the Bavarians after a desperate resistance. Whilst he
+lay on the ground he shot three of our men with his revolver. He was
+sent to a fortress, I think Ehrenbreitstein, but I will inquire more
+particularly. I am sorry to think that you have any French friends.</p>
+
+<p>By-and-by she heard that he had been confined not at Ehrenbreitstein
+but at a more obscure and distant fortress on the Elbe; that his wounds
+had been cured, and that he would shortly be set free like other
+prisoners of war. In the month of March in effect she received a brief
+letter from his own hand, gloomy and profoundly dejected.</p>
+
+<p>'Our plans were betrayed,' he wrote. 'We were surprised and surrounded
+just as we had hobbled our horses and lain down to rest, after being
+the whole day in the saddle. Bavarian cavalry, outnumbering us four to
+one, attacked us almost ere we could mount our worn-out beasts. My
+poor troopers were cut to pieces. They hunted me down when my charger
+dropped, and I was made a prisoner. When they could they despatched
+me to one of their places on the Elbe. I have been here December and
+January. I am well. I suppose I must be very strong; nothing kills
+me. They are now about to send me back to the frontier. My beautiful
+Paris! What a fate! But I forget, I cannot hope for your sympathy; your
+kinsmen are our conquerors. I know not whether the house I lived in
+there exists, but if you will write me a word at Romaris, you will be
+merciful, and show me that you do not utterly despise a lost cause and
+a vanquished soldier.'</p>
+
+<p>She wrote to him at Romaris, and the paper she wrote on felt her tears.
+In conclusion she said:</p>
+
+<p>'Whenever you will, come and make sure for yourself that both the
+Princess Ottilie and I honour courage and heroism none the less because
+it is companioned by misfortune.'</p>
+
+<p>But he did not come.</p>
+
+<p>She understood why he did not. An infinite pity for him overflowed her
+heart. His public career interrupted, his country ruined, his future
+empty, what remained to him? Sometimes she thought, with a blush on her
+face, though she was all alone: 'I do.' But then, if he never came to
+hear that?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The little hamlet of Romaris, on the coast of Finisterre, was very dull
+and dark and silent. A few grave peasant women knitted as they walked
+down the beach or sat at their doors; a few children did the same. Out
+on the <i>landes</i> some cows were driven through the heather and broom;
+out on the sea some fishing-boats with rough, red sails were rocking to
+and fro. All was melancholy, silent, poor; life was hard at Romaris for
+all. The weatherbeaten church looked grey and naked on a black rock;
+the ruins of the old <i>manoir</i> faced it amidst sands and surfs; the only
+thing of beauty was the bay, and that for the folk of Romaris had no
+beauty; they had seen it kill so many.</p>
+
+<p>There was never any change at Romaris, unless it were a change in the
+weather, a marriage, a birth, or a death. Therefore the women and
+children who were knitting had lifted up their heads as a stranger,
+accompanied by their priest, had come down over the black rocks, on
+which the church stood, towards the narrow lane that parted the houses
+where they clustered together face to face on the edge of the shore.</p>
+
+<p>Their priest, an old man much loved by them, came slowly towards them,
+conversing in low tones with the stranger, who had been young and
+handsome, and a welcome sight, since a traveller to Romaris always
+needed a sailing-boat or a rowing-boat, a guide over the moors, or a
+drive in an ox-waggon through the deep-cut lanes of the country.</p>
+
+<p>But they had ceased to think of such things as these when the curate,
+with his hands extended as when he blessed them, had said in <i>bas</i>
+Breton as he stood beside them:</p>
+
+<p>'My children, this is the last of the Sabrans of Romaris, come back to
+us from the far west that lies in the setting of the sun. Salute him,
+and show him that in Brittany we do not forget&mdash;nay, not in a hundred
+years.'</p>
+
+<p>Many years had gone by since then, and of the last of the old race,
+Romaris had scarcely seen more than when he had been hidden from
+their sight on the other side of the heaving ocean. Sabran rarely came
+thither. There was nothing to attract a man who loved the world and
+who was sought by it, in the stormy sea coast, the strip of sea-lashed
+oak forest, that one tall tower with its gaunt walls of stone which
+was all that was left of what had once been the fortress of his race.
+Now and then they saw him, chiefly when he had heard that there was
+wild weather on the western coast, and at such times he would go out
+in their boats to distressed vessels, or steer through churning waters
+to reach a fishing-smack in trouble, with a wild courage and an almost
+fierce energy which made him for the moment one of themselves. But
+such times had been few, and all that Romaris really knew of the last
+marquis was that he was a gay gentleman away there in distant Paris.</p>
+
+<p>He had been a mere name to them. Now and then he had sent fifty
+napoleons, or a hundred, to the old priest for such as were poor or
+sick amongst them. That was all. Now after the war he came hither.
+Paris had become hateful to him; his political career was ended, at
+all events for the time; the whole country groaned in anguish; the
+vices and follies that had accompanied his past life disgusted him
+in remembrance. He had been wounded and a prisoner; he had suffered
+betrayal at unworthy hands; Cochonette had sold him to the Prussians,
+in revenge of his desertion of her.</p>
+
+<p>He was further removed from the Countess von Szalras than ever. In the
+crash with which the Second Empire had fallen and sunk out of sight for
+evermore, his own hopes had gone down like a ship that sinks suddenly
+in a dark night. All his old associations were broken, half his old
+friends were dead or ruined; gay châteaux that he had ever been welcome
+at were smoking ruins or melancholy hospitals; the past had been
+felled to the ground like the poor avenues of the Bois. It affected
+him profoundly. As far as he was capable of an impersonal sentiment
+he loved France, which had been for so many years his home, and which
+had always seemed to smile at him with indulgent kindness. Her vices,
+her disgrace, her feebleness, her fall, hurt him with an intense pain
+that was not altogether selfish, but had in it a nobler indignation, a
+nobler regret.</p>
+
+<p>When he was released by the Prussians and sent across the frontier, he
+went at once to this sad sea village of Romaris, to collect as best
+he might the shattered fragments of his life, which seemed to him as
+though it had been thrown down by an earthquake. He had resigned his
+place as deputy when he had offered his sword to France; he had now no
+career, no outlet for ambition, no occupation. Many of his old friends
+were dead or ruined; although such moderate means as he possessed were
+safe, they were too slender to give him any position adequate to his
+rank. His old life in Paris, even if Paris arose from her tribulations,
+gay and glorious once more, seemed to him altogether impossible. He had
+lost taste for those pleasures and distractions which had before the
+war&mdash;or before his sojourn on the Holy Isle&mdash;seemed to him the Alpha
+and Omega of a man's existence. '<i>Que faire?</i>' he asked himself wearily
+again and again. He did not even know whether his rooms in Paris had
+been destroyed or spared; a few thousands of francs which he had
+made by a successful speculation years before, and placed in foreign
+funds, were all he had to live on. His keen sense told him that the
+opportunity which might have replaced the Bourbon throne had been lost
+through fatal hesitation. His own future appeared to him like a blank
+dead wall that rose up in front of him barring all progress; he was no
+longer young enough to select a career and commence it. With passionate
+self-reproach he lamented all the lost irrevocable years that he had
+wasted.</p>
+
+<p>Romaris was not a place to cheer a disappointed and dejected soldier
+who had borne the burning pain of bodily wounds and the intolerable
+shame of captivity in a hostile land. Its loneliness, its darkness,
+its storms, its poverty, had nothing in them with which to restore his
+spirit to hope or his sinews to ambition. In these cold, bleak, windy
+days of a dreary and joyless spring-time, the dusky moors and the
+gruesome sea were desolate, without compensating grandeur. The people
+around him were all taciturn, dull, stupid; they had not suffered by
+the war, but they understood that, poor as they were, they would have
+to bear their share in the burden of the nation's ransom. They barred
+their doors and counted their hoarded gains in the dark with throbbing
+hearts, and stole out in the raw, wet, gusty dawns to kneel at the
+bleeding feet of their Christ. He envied them their faith; he could not
+comfort them, they could not comfort him; they were too far asunder.</p>
+
+<p>The only solace he had was the knowledge that he had done his duty by
+France, and to the memory of those whose name he bore; that he had
+rendered what service he could; that he had not fled from pain and
+peril; that he had at least worn his sword well and blamelessly; that
+he had not abandoned his discrowned city of pleasure in the day of
+humiliation and martyrdom. The only solace he had was that he felt
+Wanda von Szalras herself could have commanded him to do no more than
+he had done in this the Année Terrible.</p>
+
+<p>But, though his character had been purified and strengthened by the
+baptism of fire, and though his egotism had been destroyed by the
+endless scenes of suffering and of heroism which he had witnessed, he
+could not in a year change so greatly that he could be content with the
+mere barren sense of duty done and honour redeemed. He was deeply and
+restlessly miserable. He knew not where to turn, either for occupation
+or for consolation. Time hung on his hands like a wearisome wallet of
+stones.</p>
+
+<p>When all the habits of life are suddenly rent asunder, they are like a
+rope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or they may be
+thrown altogether aside and a new strand woven, but they will never be
+the same thing again.</p>
+
+<p>Romaris, with its few wind-tortured trees and its leaden-hued dangerous
+seas, seemed to him, indeed, a <i>champ des trépassés</i>, as it was called,
+a field of death. The naked, ugly, half-ruined towers, which no ivy
+shrouded and no broken marble ennobled, as one or the other would have
+done had it been in England or in Italy, was a dreary residence for
+a man who was used to all the elegant and luxurious habits of a man
+of the world, who was also a lover of art and a collector of choice
+trifles. His rooms had been the envy of his friends, with all their
+eighteenth century furniture, and their innumerable and unclassified
+treasures; when he had opened his eyes of a morning a pastel of La
+Tour had smiled at him, rose-coloured windows had made even a grey
+sky smile. Without, there had been the sound of wheels going down
+the gay Boulevard Haussmann. All Paris had passed by, tripping and
+talking, careless and mirthful, beneath his gilded balconies bright
+with canariensis and volubilis; and on a little table, heaped in
+their hundreds, had been cards that bade him to all the best and most
+agreeable houses, whilst, betwixt them, slipped coyly in many an
+amorous note, many an unlooked-for declaration, many an eagerly-desired
+appointment.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Quel beau temps!</i>' he thought, as he awoke in the chill, bare,
+unlively chamber of the old tower by the sea; and it seemed to him
+that he must be dreaming: that all the months of the war had been
+a nightmare; that if he fully awakened he would find himself once
+more with the April sunshine shining through the rose glass, and
+the carriages rolling beneath over the asphalt road. But it was no
+nightmare, it was a terrible, ghastly reality to him, as to so many
+thousands. There were the scars on his breast and his loins where
+the Prussian steel had hacked and the Prussian shot had pierced him;
+there was his sword in a corner all dinted, notched, stained; there
+was a crowd of hideous ineffaceable tumultuous memories; it was all
+true enough, only too true, and he was alone at Romaris, with all his
+dreams and ambitions faded into thin air, vanished like the blown burst
+bubbles of a child's sport.</p>
+
+<p>In time to come he might recover power and nerve to recommence his
+struggle for distinction, but at present it seemed to him that all was
+over. His imprisonment had shaken and depressed him as nothing else
+in the trials of war could have done. He had been shut up for months
+alone, with his own desperation. To a man of high courage and impatient
+appetite for action there is no injury so great and in its effect so
+lasting as captivity. Joined to this he had the fever of a strong, and
+now perfectly hopeless, passion.</p>
+
+<p>Pacing to and fro the brick floor of the tower looking down on the
+sands and rocks of the coast, his thoughts were incessantly with Wanda
+von Szalras in her stately ancient house, built so high up amidst the
+mountains and walled in by the great forests and the ice slopes of the
+glaciers. In the heat and stench of carnage he had longed for a breath
+of that mountain breeze, for a glance from those serene eyes; he longed
+for them still.</p>
+
+<p>As he passed to and fro in the wild wintry weather, his heart was sick
+with hope deferred, with unavailing regret and repentance, with useless
+longings.</p>
+
+<p>It was near noonday; there was no sun; a heavy wrack of cloud was
+sweeping up from the west; on the air the odour of rotting fish and
+of fish-oil, and of sewage trickling uncovered to the beach, were too
+strong to be driven away by the pungency of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The sea was high and moaning loud; the dusk was full of rain; the
+wind-tormented trees groaned and seemed to sigh; their boughs were
+still scarce in bud though May had come. He felt cold, weary, hopeless.
+His walk brought no warmth to his veins, and his thoughts none to
+his heart. The moisture of the air seemed to chill him to the bone,
+and he went within and mounted the broken granite stairs to his
+solitary chamber, bare of all save the simplest necessaries, gloomy
+and cheerless with the winds and the bats beating together at the high
+iron-barred casement. He wearily lighted a little oil lamp, and threw
+a log or two of drift-wood on the hearth and set fire to them with a
+faggot of dried ling.</p>
+
+<p>He dreaded his long lonely evening.</p>
+
+<p>He had set the lamp on a table while he had set fire to the wood; its
+light fell palely on a small white square thing. It was a letter. He
+took it up eagerly; he, who in Paris had often tossed aside, with a
+passing glance, the social invitations of the highest personages and
+the flattering words of the loveliest women.</p>
+
+<p>Here, any letter seemed a friend, and as he took up this his pulse
+quickened; he saw that it was sealed with armorial bearings which he
+knew&mdash;a shield bearing three vultures with two knights as supporters,
+and with the motto '<i>Gott und mein Schwert</i>;' the same arms, the same
+motto as were borne upon the great red and gold banner floating from
+the keep on the north winds at the Hohenszalrasburg. He opened it with
+a hand which shook a little and a quick throb of pleasure at his heart.
+He had scarcely hoped that she would write again to him. The sight of
+her writing filled him with a boundless joy, the purest he had ever
+known called forth by the hand of woman.</p>
+
+<p>The letter was brief, grave, kind. As he read he seemed to hear the
+calm harmonious voice of the lady of Hohenszalras speaking to him in
+her mellowed and softened German tongue.</p>
+
+<p>She sent him words of consolation, of sympathy, of congratulation, on
+the course of action he had taken in a time of tribulation, which had
+been the touchstone of character to so many.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me something of Romaris,' she said in conclusion. 'I am sure
+you will grow to care for the place and the people, now that you seek
+both in the hour of the martyrdom of France. Have you any friends near
+you? Have you books? How do your days pass? How do you fill up time,
+which must seem so dull and blank to you after the fierce excitations
+and the rapid changes of war? Tell me all about your present life, and
+remember that we at Hohenszalras know how to honour courage and heroic
+misfortune.'</p>
+
+<p>He laid the letter down after twice reading it. Life seemed no longer
+all over for him. He had earned her praise and her sympathy. It was
+doubtful if years of the most brilliant political successes would have
+done as much as his adversity, his misadventure, and his daring had
+done for him in her esteem. She had the blood of twenty generations of
+warriors in her, and nothing appealed so forcibly to her sympathies and
+her instincts as the heroism of the sword. Those few lines too were
+a permission to write to her. He replied at once, with a gratitude
+somewhat guardedly expressed, and with details almost wholly impersonal.</p>
+
+<p>She was disappointed that he said so little of himself, but she did
+justice to the delicacy of the carefully guarded words from a man
+whose passion appealed to her by its silence, where it would only have
+alienated her by any eloquence. Of Romaris he said nothing, save that,
+had Dante ever been upon their coast, he would have added another canto
+to the 'Purgatorio,' more desolate and more unrelieved in gloom than
+any other.</p>
+
+<p>'Does he regret Cochonette?' she thought, with a jealous
+contemptuousness of which she was ashamed as soon as she felt it.</p>
+
+<p>Having once written to her, however, he thought himself privileged
+to write again, and did so several times. He wrote with ease, grace,
+and elegance: he wrote as he spoke, which gives this charm to
+correspondence, seem close at hand to the reader in intimate communion.
+The high culture of his mind displayed itself without effort, and he
+had that ability of polished expression which is in our day too often
+a neglected one. His letters became welcome to her: she answered them
+briefly, but she let him see that they were agreeable to her. There
+was in them the note of a profound depression, of an unuttered, but
+suggested hopelessness which touched her. If he had expressed it in
+plain words, it would not have appealed to her one half so forcibly.</p>
+
+<p>They remained only the letters of a man of culture to a woman capable
+of comprehending the intellectual movement of the time, but it
+was because of this limitation that she allowed them. Any show of
+tenderness would have both alarmed and alienated her. There was no
+reason after all, she thought, why a frank friendship should not exist
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she was surprised at herself for having conceded so much,
+and angry that she had done so. Happily he had the good taste to take
+no advantage of it. Interesting as his letters were they might have
+been read from the housetops. With that inconsistency of her sex from
+which hitherto she had always flattered herself she had been free, she
+occasionally felt a passing disappointment that they were not more
+personal as regarded himself. Reticence is a fine quality; it is the
+marble of human nature. But sometimes it provokes the impatience that
+the marble awoke in Pygmalion.</p>
+
+<p>Once only he spoke of his own aims. Then he wrote:</p>
+
+<p>'You bade me do good at Romaris. Candidly, I see no way to do it
+except in saving a crew off a wreck, which is not an occasion that
+presents itself every week. I cannot benefit these people materially,
+since I am poor; I cannot benefit them morally, because I have not
+their faith in the things unseen, and I have not their morality in the
+things tangible. They are God-fearing, infinitely patient, faithful
+in their daily lives, and they reproach no one for their hard lot,
+cast on an iron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at risk
+of their lives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What
+should I say to them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience,
+one petulant mutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only
+take them what the world always takes into solitude&mdash;discontent. It
+would be a cruel gift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any
+other. It is a homely saying that no blood comes out of a stone; so,
+out of a life saturated with the ironies, the contempt, the disbelief,
+the frivolous philosophies, the hopeless negations of what we call
+society, there can be drawn no water of hope and charity, for the
+well-head&mdash;belief&mdash;is dried up at its source. Some pretend, indeed,
+to find in humanity what they deny to exist as deity, but I should
+be incapable of the illogical exchange. It is to deny that the seed
+sprang from a root; it is to replace a grand and illimitable theism by
+a finite and vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased
+mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the
+poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a <i>vibrion</i>,
+a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere
+bundle of phosphorus and carbon? how can it contain the elements of
+worship; what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the
+weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty.
+It becomes ridiculous. The <i>carpe diem</i> of the classic sensualists, the
+morality of the "Satyricon" or the "Decamerone," are its only natural
+concomitants and outcome; but as yet it is not honest enough to say
+this. It affects the soothsayer's long robe, the sacerdotal frown, and
+is a hypocrite.'</p>
+
+<p>In answer she wrote back to him:</p>
+
+<p>'I do not urge you to have my faith: what is the use? Goethe was
+right. It is a question between a man and his own heart. No one should
+venture to intrude there. But taking life even as you do, it is surely
+a casket of mysteries. May we not trust that at the bottom of it, as
+at the bottom of Pandora's, there may be hope? I wish again to think
+with Goethe that immortality is not an inheritance, but a greatness
+to be achieved like any other greatness, by courage, self-denial, and
+purity of purpose&mdash;a reward allotted to the just. This is fanciful, may
+be, but it is not illogical. And without being either a Christian or a
+Materialist, without beholding either majesty or divinity in humanity,
+surely the best emotion that our natures know&mdash;pity&mdash;must be large
+enough to draw us to console where we can, and sustain where we can, in
+view of the endless suffering, the continual injustice, the appalling
+contrasts, with which the world is full. Whether man be the <i>vibrion</i>
+or the heir to immortality, the bundle of carbon or the care of angels,
+one fact is indisputable: he suffers agonies, mental and physical,
+that are wholly out of proportion to the brevity of his life, while he
+is too often weighted from infancy with hereditary maladies, both of
+body and of character. This is reason enough, I think, for us all to
+help each other, even though we feel, as you feel, that we are as lost
+children wandering in a great darkness, with no thread or clue to guide
+us to the end.'</p>
+
+<p>When Sabran read this answer, he mused to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'Pity! how far would her pity reach? How great offences would it cover?
+She has compassion for the evil-doers, but it is easy, since the evil
+does not touch her. She sits on the high white throne of her honour and
+purity, and surveys the world with beautiful but serene compassion.
+If the mud of its miry labyrinths reached and soiled her, would her
+theories prevail? They are noble, but they are the theories of one who
+sits in safety behind a gate of ivory and jasper, whilst outside, far
+below, the bitter tide of the human sea surges and moans too far off,
+too low down, for its sound to reach within. <i>Tout comprendre, c'est
+tout pardonner.</i> But since she would never understand, how could she
+ever pardon? There are things that the nature must understand rather
+than the mind; and her nature is as high, as calm, as pure as the snows
+of her high hills.'</p>
+
+<p>And then the impulse came over him for a passing moment to tell her
+what he had never told any living creature; to make confession to
+her and abide her judgment, even though he should never see her face
+again. But the impulse shrank and died away before the remembrance
+of her clear, proud eyes. He could not humiliate himself before her.
+He would have risked her anger; he could not brave her disdain.
+Moreover, straight and open ways were hot natural to him, though he was
+physically brave to folly. There was a subtlety and a reticence in him
+which were the enemies of candour.</p>
+
+<p>To her he was more frank than to any other because her influence
+was great on him, and a strong reverence was awakened in him that
+was touched by a timid fear quite alien to a character naturally
+contemptuously cynical and essentially proud. But even to her he could
+not bring himself to be entirely truthful in revelation of his past.
+Truthfulness is in much a habit, and he had never acquired its habit.
+When he was most sincere there was always some reserve lying behind
+it. This was perhaps one of the causes of the attraction he exercised
+on all women. All women are allured by the shadows and the suggestions
+of what is but imperfectly revealed. Even on the clear, strong nature
+of Wanda von Szalras it had its unconscious and intangible charm. She
+herself was like daylight, but the subtle vague charm of the shadows
+had their seduction for her; Night holds dreams and passions that fade
+and flee before the lucid noon, and who, at noonday wishes not for
+night?</p>
+
+<p>For himself, the letters he received from her seemed the only things
+that bound him to life at all.</p>
+
+<p>The betrayal of him by a base and mercenary woman had hurt him more
+than it was worthy to do; it had stung his pride and saddened him in
+this period of adversity with a sense of degradation. He had been sold
+by a courtezan; it seemed to him to make him ridiculous as Samson was
+ridiculous, and he had no gates of Gaza to pull down upon himself and
+her. He could only be idle, and stare at an unoccupied and valueless
+future. The summer went on, and he remained at Romaris. An old servant
+had sent him word that all his possessions were safe in Paris, and his
+apartments unharmed; but he felt no inclination to go there: he felt no
+sympathy with Communists or Versaillists, with Gambetta or Gallifet. He
+stayed on at the old storm-beaten sea-washed tower, counting his days
+chiefly by the coming to him of any line from the castle by the lake.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to understand that and pity it, for each week brought him
+some tidings.</p>
+
+<p>At midsummer she wrote him word that she was about to be honoured again
+by a two days' visit of her Imperial friends.</p>
+
+<p>'We shall have, perforce, a large house party,' she said. 'Will you
+be inclined this time to join it? It is natural that you should
+sorrow without hope for your country, but the fault of her disasters
+lies not with you. It is, perhaps, time that you should enter the
+world again; will you commence with what for two days only will be
+worldly&mdash;Hohenszalras? Your old friends the monks will welcome you
+willingly and lovingly on the Holy Isle?'</p>
+
+<p>He replied with gratitude, but he refused. He did not make any plea or
+excuse; he thought it best to let the simple denial stand by itself.
+She would understand it.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not think, however,' he wrote, 'that I am the less profoundly
+touched by your admirable goodness to a worsted and disarmed combatant
+in a lost cause.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is the causes that are lost which are generally the noble ones,'
+she said in answer. 'I do not see why you should deem your life at an
+end because a sham empire, which you always despised, has fallen to
+pieces. If it had not perished by a blow from without, it would have
+crumbled to pieces from its own internal putrefaction.'</p>
+
+<p>'The visit has passed off very well,' she continued. 'Every one was
+content, which shows their kindness, for these things are all of
+necessity so much alike that it is difficult to make them entertaining.
+The weather was fortunately fine, and the old house looked bright.
+You did rightly not to be present, if you felt festivity out of tone
+with your thoughts. If, however, you are ever inclined for another
+self-imprisonment upon the island, you know that your friends, both at
+the monastery and at the burg, will be glad to see you, and the monks
+bid me salute you with affection.'</p>
+
+<p>A message from Mdme. Ottilie, a little news of the horses, a few
+phrases on the politics of the hour, and the letter was done. But,
+simple as it was, it seemed to him to be like a ray of sunshine amidst
+the gloom of his empty chamber.</p>
+
+<p>From her the permission to return to the monastery when he would
+seemed to say so much. He wrote her back calm and grateful words of
+congratulation and cordiality; he commenced with the German formality,
+'Most High Lady,' and ended them with the equally formal 'devoted and
+obedient servant;' but it seemed to him as if under that cover of
+ceremony she must see his heart beating, his blood throbbing; she must
+know very well, and if knowing, she suffered him to return to the Holy
+Isle, why then&mdash;he was all alone, but he felt the colour rise to his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>'And I must not go! I must not go!' he thought, and looked at his
+pistols.</p>
+
+<p>He ought sooner to blow his brains out, and leave a written confession
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>The hoarse sound of the sea surging amongst the rocks at the base of
+the tower was all that stirred the stillness; evening was spreading
+over all the monotonous inland country; a west wind was blowing and
+rustling amidst the gorse; a woman led a cow between the dolmen,
+stopping for it to crop grass here and there; the fishing-boats were
+far out to sea, hidden under the vapours and the shadows. It was all
+melancholy, sad-coloured, chill, lonesome. As he leaned against the
+embrasure of the window and looked down, other familiar scenes, long
+lost, rose up to his memory. He saw a wide green rolling river, long
+lines of willows and of larches bending under a steel-hued sky, a vast
+dim plain stretching away to touch blue mountains, a great solitude,
+a silence filled at intervals with the pathetic song of the swans,
+chanting sorrowfully because the nights grew cold, the ice began to
+gather, the food became scanty, and they were many in number.</p>
+
+<p>'I must not go!' he said to himself; 'I must never see Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>And he lit his study lamp, and held her letter to it and burnt it.
+It was his best way to do it honour, to keep it holy. He had the
+letters of so many worthless women locked in his drawers and caskets
+in his rooms in Paris. He held himself unworthy to retain hers. He
+had burned each written by her as it had come to him, in that sort
+of exaggeration of respect with which it seemed to him she was most
+fittingly treated by him. There are less worthy offerings than the
+first scruple of an unscrupulous life. It is like the first pure drops
+that fall from a long turbid and dust-choked fountain.</p>
+
+<p>As he walked the next day upon the windblown, rock-strewn strip of sand
+that parted the old oak wood from the sea, he thought restlessly of her
+in those days of stately ceremony which suited her so well. What did he
+do here, what chance had he to be remembered by her? He chafed at his
+absence, yet it seemed to him impossible that he could ever go to her.
+What had been at first keen calculation with him had now become a finer
+instinct, was now due to a more delicate sentiment, a truer and loftier
+emotion. What could he ever look to her if he sought her but a mere
+base fortune-seeker, a mere liar, with no pride and no manhood in him?
+And what else was he? he thought, with bitterness, as he paced to and
+fro the rough strip of beach, with the dusky heaving waves trembling
+under a cloudy sky, where a red glow told the place of the setting sun.</p>
+
+<p>There were few bolder men living than He, and he was cynical and
+reckless before many things that most men reverence; but at the thought
+of her possible scorn he felt himself tremble like a child. He thought
+he would rather never see her face again than risk her disdain; there
+was in him a vague romantic wishfulness rather to die, so that she
+might think well of his memory, than live in her love through any
+baseness that would be unworthy of her.</p>
+
+<p>Sin had always seemed a mere superstitious name to him, and if he had
+abstained from its coarser forms it had been rather from the revolt
+of the fine taste of a man of culture than from any principle or
+persuasion of duty. Men he believed were but ephemera, sporting their
+small hours, weaving their frail webs, and swept away by the great
+broom of destiny as spiders by the housewife. In the spineless doctrine
+of altruism he had had too robust a temperament, too clear a reason,
+to seek a guide for conduct. He had lived for himself, and had seen
+no cause to do otherwise. That he had not been more criminal had been
+due partly to indolence, partly to pride. In his love for Wanda von
+Szalras, a love with which considerable acrimony had mingled at the
+first, he yet, through all the envy and the impatience which alloyed
+it, reached a moral height which he had never touched before. Between
+her and him a great gulf yawned. He abstained from any effort to pass
+it. It was the sole act of self-denial of a selfish life, the sole
+obedience to conscience in a character which obeyed no moral laws, but
+was ruled by a divided tyranny of natural instinct and conventional
+honour.</p>
+
+<p>The long silent hours of thought in the willow-shaded cloisters of
+the Holy Isle had not been wholly without fruit. He desired, with
+passion and sincerity, that she should think well of him, but he did
+not dare to wish for more; love offered from him to her seemed to him
+as if it would be a kind of blasphemy. He remembered in his far-off
+childhood, which at times still seemed so near to him, nearer than all
+that was around him, the vague, awed, wistful reverence with which
+he had kneeled in solitary hours before the old dim picture of the
+Madonna with the lamp burning above it, a little golden flame in the
+midst of the gloom; he remembered so well how his fierce young soul and
+his ignorant yearning child's heart had gone out in a half-conscious
+supplication, how it had seemed to him that if he only knelt long
+enough, prayed well enough, she would come down to him and lay her
+hands on him. It was all so long ago, yet, when he thought of Wanda
+von Szalras, something of that same emotion rose up in him, something
+of the old instinctive worship awoke in him. In thought he prostrated
+himself once more whenever the memory of her came to him. He had no
+religion; she became one to him.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, he was constantly thinking restlessly to himself, 'Did I do
+ill not to go?'</p>
+
+<p>His bodily life was at Romaris, but his mental life was at
+Hohenszalras. He was always thinking of her as she would look in those
+days of the Imperial visit; he could see the stately ceremonies of
+welcome, the long magnificence of the banquets, the great Rittersaal
+with cressets of light blazing on its pointed emblazoned roofs; he
+could see her as she would move down the first quadrille which she
+would dance with her Kaiser: she would wear her favourite ivory-white
+velvet most probably, and her wonderful old jewels, and all her orders.
+She would look as if she had stepped down off a canvas of Velasquez
+or Vandyck, and she would be a little tired, a little contemptuous, a
+little indifferent, despite her loyalty; she would be glad, he knew,
+when the brilliant gathering was broken up, and the old house, and the
+yew terrace, and the green lake were all once more quiet beneath the
+rays of the watery moon. She was so unlike other women. She would not
+care about a greatness, a compliment, a success more or less. Such
+triumphs were for the people risen yesterday, not for a Countess von
+Szalras.</p>
+
+<p>He knew the simplicity of her life and the pride of her temper,
+and they moved him to the stronger admiration because he knew also
+that those mere externals which she held in contempt had for him an
+exaggerated value. He was scarcely conscious himself of how great a
+share the splendour of her position, united to her great indifference
+to it, had in the hold she had taken on his imagination and his
+passions. He did know that there were so much greater nobilities in
+her that he was vaguely ashamed of the ascendency which her mere rank
+took in his thoughts of her. Yet he could not divest her of it, and
+it seemed to enhance both her bodily and spiritual beauty, as the
+golden calyx of the lily makes its whiteness seem the whiter by its
+neighbourhood.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the Iselthal the summer was more brilliant and warm than usual. The
+rains were less frequent, and the roses on the great sloping lawns
+beneath the buttresses and terraces of Hohenszalras were blooming
+freely.</p>
+
+<p>Their mistress did not for once give them much heed. She rode long and
+fast through the still summer woods, and came back after nightfall. Her
+men of business, during their interviews with her, found her attention
+less perfect, her interest less keen. In stormy days she sat in the
+library, and read Heine and Schiller often, and all the philosophers
+and men of science rarely. A great teacher has said that the Humanities
+must outweigh the Sciences at all times, and he is unquestionably
+true, if it were only for the reason that in the sweet wise lore of
+ages every human heart in pain and perplexity finds a refuge; whilst in
+love or in sorrow the sciences seem the poorest and chilliest of mortal
+vanities that ever strove to measure the universe with a foot-rule.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess watched her with wistful, inquisitive eyes, but dared
+not name the person of whom they both thought most. Wanda was herself
+intolerant of the sense of impatience with which she awaited the coming
+of the sturdy pony that brought the post-bag from Windisch-Matrey.
+He in his loneliness and emptiness of life on the barren sea-shore
+of Romaris did not more anxiously await her letters than did the
+châtelaine of Hohenszalras, amidst all her state, her wealth, and her
+innumerable occupations, await his. She pitied him intensely; there was
+something pathetic to her in the earnestness with which he had striven
+to amend his ways of life, only to have his whole career shattered by
+an insensate and unlooked-for national war. She understood that his
+poverty stood in the path of his ambition, and she divined that his
+unhappiness had broken that spring of manhood in him which would have
+enabled him to construct a new career for himself out of the ruins of
+the old. She understood why he was listless and exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>There were moments when she was inclined to send him some invitation
+more cordial, some bidding more clear; but she hesitated to take a step
+which would bind her in her own honour to so much more. She knew that
+she ought not to suggest a hope to him to which she was not prepared
+to give full fruition. And again, how could he respond? It would be
+impossible for him to accept. She was one of the great alliances of
+Europe, and he was without fortune, without career, without a future.
+Even friendship was only possible whilst they were far asunder.</p>
+
+<p>Two years had gone by since he had come across from the monastery in
+the green and gold of a summer afternoon. The monks had not forgotten
+him; throughout the French war they had prayed for him. When their
+Prior saw her, he said anxiously sometimes: 'And the Markgraf von
+Sabran, will he never come to us again? Were we too dull for him?
+Will your Excellency remember us to him, if ever you can?' And she
+had answered with a strange emotion at her heart: 'His country is
+in trouble, holy father; a good son cannot leave his land in her
+adversity. No: I do not think he was dull with you; he was quite happy,
+I believe. Perhaps he may come again some day, who knows? He shall be
+told what you say.'</p>
+
+<p>Then a vision would rise up to her of herself and him, as they would
+be perhaps when they should be quite old. Perhaps he would retire into
+this holy retreat of the Augustines, and she would be a grave sombre
+woman, not gay and pretty and witty, as the Princess was. The picture
+was gloomy; she chased it away, and galloped her horse long and far
+through the forests.</p>
+
+<p>The summer had been so brilliant that the autumn which followed was
+cold and severe, earlier than usual, and heavy storms swept over the
+Tauern, almost ere the wheat harvest could be reaped. Many days were
+cheerless and filled only with the sound of incessant rains. In the
+Pinzgau and the Salzkammergut floods were frequent. The Ache and the
+Szalzach, with all their tributary streams and wide and lonely lakes,
+were carrying desolation and terror into many parts of the land which
+in summer they made beautiful. Almost every day brought her some
+tidings of some misfortunes in the villages on the farms belonging to
+her in the more distant parts of Austria; a mill washed away, a bridge
+down, a dam burst, a road destroyed, a harvest swept into the water,
+some damage or other done by the swollen river and torrents, she heard
+of by nearly every communication that her stewards and her lawyers made
+to her at this season.</p>
+
+<p>'Our foes the rivers are more insidious than your mighty enemy the
+salt water,' she wrote to Romaris. 'The sea deals open blows, and men
+know what they must expect if they go out on the vasty deep. But here
+a little brook that laughed and chirped at noon-day as innocently as
+a child may become at nightfall or dawn a roaring giant, devouring
+all that surrounds him. We pay heavily for the glory of our mountain
+waters.'</p>
+
+<p>These autumn weeks seemed very dreary to her. She visited her horses
+chafing at inaction in their roomy stalls, and attended to her affairs,
+and sat in the library or the octagon room hearing the rain beat
+against the emblazoned leaded panes, and felt the days, and above all
+the evenings, intolerably dull and melancholy. She had never heeded
+rain before, or minded the change of season.</p>
+
+<p>One Sunday a messenger rode through the drenching storm, and brought
+her a telegram from her lawyer in Salzburg. It said: 'Idrac flooded:
+many lives lost: great distress: fear town wholly destroyed. Please
+send instructions.'</p>
+
+<p>The call for action roused her as a trumpet sounding rouses a cavalry
+charger.</p>
+
+<p>'Instructions!' she echoed as she read. 'They write as if I could bid
+the Danube subside, or the Drave shrink in its bed!'</p>
+
+<p>She penned a hasty answer.</p>
+
+<p>'I will go to Idrac myself.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she sent a message also to S. Johann im Wald for a special train
+to be got in readiness for her, and told one of her women and a trusty
+servant to be ready to go with her to Vienna in an hour. It was still
+early in the forenoon.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you mad?' cried Madame Ottilie, when she was informed of the
+intended journey.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'There is no madness in what I shall do, dear mother, and Bela surely
+would have gone.'</p>
+
+<p>'Can you stay the torrents of heaven? Can you arrest a river in its
+wrath?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; but lives are often lost because poor people lose their senses in
+fright. I shall be calmer than anyone there. Besides, the place belongs
+to us; we are bound to share its danger. If only Egon were not away
+from Hungary!'</p>
+
+<p>'But he is away. You have driven him away.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not dissuade me, dearest mother. It would be cowardice not to go.'</p>
+
+<p>'What can women do in such extremities?'</p>
+
+<p>'But we of Hohenszalras must not be mere women when we are wanted in
+any danger. Remember Luitgarde von Szalras, the <i>kuttengeier.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess sighed, prayed, even wept, but Wanda was gently
+inflexible. The Princess could not see why a precious life should be
+endangered for the sake of a little half barbaric, half Jewish town,
+which was remarkable for nothing except for shipping timber and selling
+<i>salbling.</i> The population was scarcely Christian, so many Hebrews were
+there, and so benighted were the Sclavonian poor, who between them made
+up the two thousand odd souls that peopled Idrac. To send a special
+messenger there, and to give any quantity of money that the distress
+of the moment might demand, would be all right and proper; indeed,
+an obligation on the owner of the little feudal river-side town. But
+to go! A Countess von Szalras to go in person where not one out of a
+hundred of the citizens had been properly baptized or confirmed! The
+Princess could not view this Quixotism in any other light than that of
+an absolute insanity.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela lost his life in just such a foolish manner!' she pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>'So did the saints, dear mother,' said his sister, gently.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess coloured and coughed.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, I am aware that many holy lives have been&mdash;have been&mdash;what
+appears to our finite senses wasted,' she said, with a little asperity.
+'But I am also aware, Wanda, that the duties most neglected are those
+which lie nearest home and have the least display; consideration for
+<i>me</i> might be better, though less magnificent, than so much heroism for
+Idrac.'</p>
+
+<p>'It pains me that you should put it in that light, dearest mother,'
+said Wanda, with inexhaustible patience. 'Were you in any danger I
+would stay by you first, of course; but you are in none. These poor,
+forlorn, ignorant, cowardly creatures are in the very greatest. I
+draw large revenues from the place; I am in honour bound to share
+its troubles. Pray do not seek to dissuade me. It is a matter not of
+caprice but of conscience. I shall be in no possible peril myself. I
+shall go down the river in my own vessel, and I will telegraph to you
+from every town at which I touch.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess ceased not to lament, to oppose, to bemoan her own
+powerlessness to check intolerable follies. Sitting in her easy chair
+in her warm blue-room, sipping her chocolate, the woes of a distant
+little place on the Danube, whose population was chiefly Semitic, were
+very bearable and altogether failed to appeal to her.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda kissed her, asked her blessing humbly, and took her way in the
+worst of a blinding storm along the unsafe and precipitous road which
+went over the hills to Windisch-Matrey.</p>
+
+<p>'What false sentiment it all is!' thought the Princess, left alone.
+'She has not seen this town since she was ten years old. She knows that
+they are nearly all Jews, or quite heathenish Sclavonians. She can do
+nothing at all&mdash;what should a woman do?&mdash;and yet she is so full of her
+conscience that she goes almost to the Iron Gates in quest of a duty in
+the wettest of weather, while she leaves a man like Egon and a man like
+Sabran wretched for want of a word! I must say,' thought the Princess,
+'false sentiment is almost worse than none at all!'</p>
+
+<p>The rains were pouring down from leaden skies, hiding all the sides of
+the mountains and filling the valleys with masses of vapour. The road
+was barely passable; the hill torrents dashed across it; the little
+brooks were swollen to water-courses; the protecting wall on more than
+one giddy height had been swept away; the gallop of the horses shook
+the frail swaying galleries and hurled the loosened stones over the
+precipice with loud resounding noise. The drive to Matrey and thence
+with post-horses to S. Johann im Wald, the nearest railway station, was
+in itself no little peril, but it was accomplished before the day had
+closed in, and the special train she had ordered being in readiness
+left at once for Vienna, running through the low portions of the
+Pinzgau, which were for the most part under water.</p>
+
+<p>All the way was dim and watery, and full of the sound of running
+or of falling water. The Ache and the Szalsach, both always deep
+and turbulent rivers, were swollen and boisterous, and swirled and
+thundered in their rocky beds; in the grand Pass of Lueg the gloom,
+always great, was dense as at midnight, and when they reached Salzburg
+the setting sun was bursting through ink-black clouds, and shed a
+momentary glow as of fire upon the dark sides of the Untersberg, and
+flamed behind the towers of the great castle on its rocky throne. All
+travellers know the grandeur of that scene; familiar as it was to her
+she looked upward at it with awe and pleasure commingled. Salzburg in
+the evening light needs Salvator Rosa and Rembrandt together to portray
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The train only paused to take in water; the station was crowded as
+usual, set as it is between the frontiers of empire and kingdom, but in
+the brief interval she saw one whom she recognised amongst the throng,
+and she felt the colour come into her own face as she did so.</p>
+
+<p>She saw Sabran; he did not see her. Her train moved out of the station
+rapidly, to make room for the express from Munich; the sun dropped down
+into the ink-black clouds; the golden and crimson pomp of Untersberg
+changed to black and grey; the ivory and amber and crystal of the
+castle became stone and brick and iron, that frowned sombrely over a
+city sunk in river-mists and in rain-vapours. She felt angrily that
+there was an affinity between the landscape and herself; that so, at
+sight of him, a light had come into her life which had no reality in
+fact, prismatic colours baseless as a dream.</p>
+
+<p>She had longed to speak to him; to stretch out her hand to him; to
+say at least how her thoughts and her sympathies had been with him
+throughout the war. But her carriage was already in full onward
+movement, and in another moment had passed at high speed out of the
+station into that grand valley of the Szalzach where Hohensalzburg
+seems to tower as though Friederich Barbarossa did indeed sleep there.
+With a sigh she sank backward amongst her furs and cushions, and saw
+the soaring fortress pass, into the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>The night had now closed in; the rain fell heavily. As the little
+train, oscillating greatly from its lightness, swung over the iron
+rails, there was a continual sound of splashing water audible above
+the noise of the wheels and the throb of the engine. She had often
+travelled at night and had always slept soundly; this evening she could
+not sleep. She remained wide awake watching the swaying of the lamp,
+listening to the shrill shriek of the wheels as they rushed through
+water where some hillside brook had broken bounds and spread out in a
+shallow lagoon. The skies were overcast in every direction; the rain
+was everywhere unceasing; the night seemed to her very long.</p>
+
+<p>She pondered perpetually on his presence at Salzburg, and wondered if
+he were going to the Holy Isle. Three months had gone by since she had
+sent him the semi-invitation to her country.</p>
+
+<p>The train sped on; the day dawned; she began to get glimpses of the
+grand blue river, now grey and ochre-coloured and thick with mud, its
+turbid waves heaving sullenly under the stormy October skies. She had
+always loved the great Donau; she knew its cradle well in the north
+land of the Teutons. She had often watched the baby-stream rippling
+over the stones, and felt the charm, as of some magical transformation,
+as she thought of the same stream stretching broadly under the monastic
+walls of Klosterneuberg, rolling in tempest by the Iron Gates, and
+gathering its mighty volume higher and deeper to burst at last into
+the sunlight of the eastern sea. Amidst the levelled monotony of
+modern Europe the Danube keeps something of savage grandeur, something
+of legendary power, something of oriental charm; it is still often
+tameless, a half-barbaric thing, still a Tamerlane amidst rivers: and
+yet yonder at its birthplace it is such a slender thread of rippling
+water! She and Bela had crossed it with bare feet to get forget-me-nots
+in Taunus, talking together of Chriemhilde and her pilgrimage to the
+land of the Huns.</p>
+
+<p>The little train swung on steadily through the water above and below,
+and after a night of no little danger came safely to Vienna as the dawn
+broke. She went straight to her yacht, which was in readiness off the
+Lobau and weighed anchor as the pale and watery morning broadened into
+day above the shores that had seen Aspern and Wagram. The yacht was
+a yawl, strongly built and drawing little water, made on purpose for
+the ascent and descent of the Danube, from Passau up in the north to
+as far south as the Bosphorus if needed. The voyage had been of the
+greatest joys of hers and of Bela's childhood; they had read on deck
+alternately the 'Nibelungen-Lied' and the 'Arabian Nights,' clinging
+together in delighted awe as they passed through the darkness of the
+defile of Kasan.</p>
+
+<p>Idrac was situated between Pesth and Peterwardein, lying low on marshy
+ground that was covered with willows and intersected by small streams
+flowing from the interior to the Danube.</p>
+
+<p>The little town gave its name and its seigneurie to the owner of its
+burg; an ancient place built on a steep rock that rose sheer out of
+the fast-running waves, and dominated the passage of the stream. The
+Counts of Idrac had been exceeding powerful in the old times, when
+they had stopped at their will the right of way of the river; and
+their appanages with their title had come by marriage into the House
+of Szalras some four centuries before, and although the dominion over
+the river was gone, the fortress and the little town and all that
+appertained thereto still formed a considerable possession; it had
+usually been given with its Countship to the second son of the Szalras.</p>
+
+<p>Making the passage to Pesth in fourteen hours, the yacht dropped
+anchor before the Franz Josef Quai as the first stars came out above
+the Blocksburg, for by this time the skies had lightened and the rains
+had ceased. Here she stayed the night perforce, as an accident had
+occurred to the machinery of the vessel. She did not leave the yacht,
+but sent into the inner city for stores of provisions and of the local
+cordial, the <i>slibowitza</i>, to distribute to the half-drowned people
+amongst whom she was about to go. It was noonday before the yawl got
+under weigh and left the twin-towns behind her. A little way further
+down the stream they passed a great castle, standing amidst beech woods
+on a rock that rose up from fields covered with the Carlowitz vine. She
+looked at it with a sigh: it was the fortress of Kohacs, one of the
+many possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>The weather had now cleared, but the skies were overcast, and the
+plains, which began to spread away monotonously from either shore,
+were covered with white fog. Soon the fog spread also over the river,
+and the yacht was compelled to advance cautiously and slowly, so that
+the voyage was several hours longer than usual. When the light of the
+next day broke they had come in sight of the flooded districts on their
+right: the immense flat fields that bore the flax and grain which make
+the commerce of Baja, of Neusatz, and of other riverain towns, were
+all changed to shallow estuaries. The Theiss, the Drave, and many
+minor streams, swollen by the long autumnal rains, had burst their
+boundaries and laid all the country under water for hundreds of square
+leagues. The granaries, freshly filled with the late abundant harvest,
+had at many places been flooded or destroyed: thousands of stacks of
+grain were floating like shapeless, dismasted vessels. Timber and the
+thatched roofs of the one-storied houses were in many places drifting
+too, like the flotsam and the hulls of wrecked ships.</p>
+
+<p>There are few scenes more dreary, more sad, more monotonous than those
+of a flat country swamped by flood: the sky above them was leaden
+and heavy, the Danube beneath them was turgid and discoloured; the
+shrill winds whistled through the brakes of willow, the water-birds,
+frightened, flew from their osier-beds on the islands, the bells of
+churches and watch-towers tolled dismally.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon when she came within sight of her little
+town on the Sclavonian shore, which Ernst von Szalras had fired on
+August 29, 1526, to save it from the shame of violation by the Turks.
+Though he had perished, and most of the soldiers and townsfolk with
+him, the fortress, the <i>têtes du pont</i>, and the old water-gates and
+walls had been too strong for the flames to devour, and the town had
+been built up again by the Turks and subsequently by the Hungarians.</p>
+
+<p>The slender minarets of the Ottomans' two mosques still raised
+themselves amidst the old Gothic architecture of the mediæval
+buildings, and the straw-covered roofs and the white-plastered walls
+of the modern houses. As they steamed near it the minarets and the
+castle towers rose above what looked a world of waters, all else seemed
+swallowed in the flood; the orchards, which had surrounded all save the
+river-side of the town; were immersed almost to the summits of their
+trees. The larger vessels could never approach Idrac in ordinary times,
+the creek being too shallow on which it stood; but now the water was
+so high that though it would be too imprudent to anchor there, the
+yacht easily passed in, and hove-to underneath the water-walls, a pilot
+taking careful soundings as they steered. It was about three in the
+afternoon. The short, grey day was near its end; a shout of welcome
+rose from some people on the walls as they recognised the build and the
+ensign of the yawl. Some crowded boats were pulling away from the town,
+laden with fugitives and their goods.</p>
+
+<p>'How soon people run away! They are like rats,' she thought. 'I would
+sooner be like the stork, and not quit my nest if it were in flames.'</p>
+
+<p>She landed at the water-stairs of the castle. Men, women, and children
+came scrambling along the walls, where they were huddled together out
+of temporary reach of the flood, and threw themselves down at her
+feet and kissed her skirts with abject servility. They were half mad
+with terror, and amongst the population there were many hundreds of
+Jews, the most cowardly people in all the world. The boats were quite
+inadequate in number to the work they had to do; the great steamers
+passing up and down did not pause to help them; the flood was so
+general below Pesth that on the right shore of the river each separate
+village and township was busy with its own case and had no help for
+neighbours: the only aid came from those on the opposite shore, but
+that was scanty and unwisely ministered. The chief citizens of Idrac
+had lost their wits, as she had foreseen they would do. To ring the
+bells madly night and day, and fire off the old culverins from the
+water-gate, was all they seemed to know how to do. They told her that
+many lives had been lost, as the inland waters had risen in the night,
+and most of the houses were of only one storey. In the outlying
+flax-farms it was supposed that whole households had perished. In the
+town itself there were six feet of water everywhere, and many of the
+inhabitants were huddled together in the two mosques, which were now
+granaries, in the towers, and in the fortress itself; but several
+families had been enabled to escape, and had climbed upon the roofs,
+clinging to the chimneys for bare life.</p>
+
+<p>Her mere presence brought reviving hope and energy to the primitive
+population. Their Lady had a romantic legendary reputation amongst
+them, and they were ready to cling round the pennon of the yacht as
+their ancestors had rallied round the standard of Ernst von Szalras.</p>
+
+<p>She ascended to the Rittersaal of the fortress, and assembled a few of
+the men about her, who had the most influence and energy in the little
+place. She soon introduced some kind of system and method into the
+efforts made, promised largesse to those who should be the most active,
+and had the provisions she had brought distributed amongst those who
+most needed them. The boats of the yawl took many away to a temporary
+refuge on the opposite shore. Many others were brought in to the
+state-room of the castle for shelter. Houses were constantly falling,
+undermined by the water, and there were dead and wounded to be attended
+to, as well as the hungry and terrified living creatures. Once before,
+Idrac had been thus devastated by flood, but it had been far away in
+the previous century, and the example was too distant to have been a
+warning to the present generation.</p>
+
+<p>She passed a fatiguing and anxious night. It was impossible to
+think of sleep with so much misery around. The yacht was obliged to
+descend, the river for safe anchorage, but the boats remained. She
+went herself, now in one, now in another, to endeavour to inspire the
+paralysed people with some courage and animation. A little wine, a
+little bread, were all she took; food was very scarce. The victuals of
+the yacht's provisioning did not last long amongst so many famishing
+souls. She ordered her skipper at dawn to go down as far as Neusatz
+and purchase largely. There were five thousand people, counting those
+of the neighbourhood, or more, homeless and bereft of all shelter. The
+telegraph was broken, the poles had been snapped by the force of the
+water in many places.</p>
+
+<p>With dawn a furious storm gathered and broke, and renewed rains added
+their quota to the inundation and their discomfort to the exposed
+sufferers. The cold was great, and the chill that made them shudder
+from head to foot was past all cure by cordials. She regretted not
+to have brought Greswold with her. She was indifferent to danger,
+indefatigable in exertion, and strong as Libussa, brave as Chriemhilde.
+Because the place belonged to her in almost a feudal manner, she held
+herself bound to give her life for it if need be. Bela would have done
+what she was doing.</p>
+
+<p>Twice or thrice during the two following days she heard the people
+speak of a stranger who had arrived fifteen hours before her, and had
+wrought miracles of deliverance. Unless the stories told her were
+greatly exaggerated, this foreigner had shown a courage and devotion
+quite unequalled. He had thrown himself into the work at once on his
+arrival there in a boat from Neusatz, and had toiled night and day,
+enduring extreme fatigue and running almost every hour some dire peril
+of his life. He had saved whole families of the poorest and most
+wretched quarter; he had sprung on to roofs that were splitting and
+sinking, on to walls that were trembling and tottering, and had borne
+away in safety men, women, and children, the old, and the sick, and the
+very animals; he had infused some of his own daring and devotedness
+into the selfish and paralysed Hebrew population; priests and rabbis
+were alike unanimous in his praise, and she, as she heard, felt that
+he who had fought for France had been here for her sake. They told
+her that he was now out amongst the more distant orchards and fields,
+amidst the flooded farms where the danger was even greater than in the
+town itself. Some Czechs said that he was S. John of Nepomuc himself.
+She bade them bring him to her, that she might thank him, whenever he
+should enter the town again, and then thought of him no more.</p>
+
+<p>Her whole mind and feeling were engrossed by the spectacle of a misery
+that even all her wealth could not do very much to alleviate. The
+waters as yet showed no sign of abatement. The crash of falling houses
+sounded heavily ever and again through the gloom. The melancholy sight
+of humble household things, of drowned cattle, of dead dogs, borne down
+the discoloured flood out to the Danube renewed itself every hour.
+The lamentations of the ruined people went up in an almost continuous
+wail like the moaning of a winter wind. There was nothing grand,
+nothing picturesque, nothing exciting to redeem the dreariness and the
+desolation. It was all ugly, miserable, dull. It was more trying than
+war, which even in its hideous senselessness lends a kind of brutal
+intoxication to all whom it surrounds.</p>
+
+<p>She was incessantly occupied and greatly fatigued, so that the time
+passed without her counting it. She sent a message each day to the
+Princess at home, and promised to return as soon as the waters had
+subsided and the peril passed. For the first time in her life she
+experienced real discomfort, real privation; she had surrendered nearly
+all the rooms in the burg to the sick people, and food ran short and
+there was none of good quality, though she knew that supplies would
+soon come from the steward at Kohacs and by the yacht.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth day the waters had sunk an inch. As she heard the good
+tidings she was looking out inland over the waste of grey and yellow
+flood; a Jewish rabbi was beside her speaking of the exertions of the
+stranger, in whom the superstitious of the townsfolk saw a saint from
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p>'And does no one even know who he is?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'No one has asked,' answered the Jew. 'He has been always out where the
+peril was greatest.'</p>
+
+<p>'How came he here?'</p>
+
+<p>'He came by one of the big steamers that go to Turkey. He pulled
+himself here in a little boat that he had bought; the boat in which he
+has done such good service.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is he like in appearance?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is very tall, very fair, and handsome; I should think he is
+northern.'</p>
+
+<p>Her pulse beat quicker for a moment; then she rejected the idea as
+absurd, though indeed, she reflected, she had seen him at Salzburg.</p>
+
+<p>'He must at least be a brave man,' she said quietly. 'If you see him
+bring him to me that I may thank him. Is he in the town now?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; he is yonder, where the Rathwand farms are, or were; where your
+Excellency sees those dark, long islands which are not islands at all,
+but only the summits of cherry orchards. He has carried the people
+away, carried them down to Peterwardein; and he is now about to try and
+rescue some cattle which were driven up on to the roof of a tower, poor
+beasts&mdash;that tower to the east there, very far away: it is five miles
+as the crow flies.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose he will come into the town again?'</p>
+
+<p>'He was here last night; he had heard of your Excellency, and asked for
+her health.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! I will see and thank him if he come again.'</p>
+
+<p>But no one that day saw the stranger in Idrac.</p>
+
+<p>The rains fell again and the waters again rose. The maladies which
+come of damp and of bad exhalations spread amongst the people; they
+could not all be taken to other villages or towns, for there was no
+room for them. She had quinine, wines, good food ordered by the great
+steamers, but they were not yet arrived. What could be got at Neusatz
+or Peterwardein the yacht brought, but it was not enough for so many
+sick and starving people. The air began to grow fœtid from the many
+carcases of animals, though as they floated the vultures from the hills
+fed on them. She had a vessel turned into a floating hospital, and
+the most delicate of the sick folk carried to it, and had it anchored
+off the nearest port. Her patience, her calmness, and her courage did
+more to revive the sinking hearts of the homeless creatures than the
+cordials and the food. She was all day long out in her boat, being
+steered from one spot to another. At night she rested little and passed
+from one sick bed to another. She had never been so near to hopeless
+human misery before. At Hohenszalras no one was destitute.</p>
+
+<p>One twilight hour on the ninth day, as she was rowed back to the castle
+stairs, she passed another boat in which were two lads and a man. The
+man was rowing, a dusky shadow in the gloom of the wet evening and the
+uncouthness of his waterproof pilot's dress; but she had a lantern
+beside her, and she flashed its light full on the boat as it passed
+her. When she reached the burg, she said to her servant Anton: 'Herr
+von Sabran is in Idrac; go and say that I desire to see him.'</p>
+
+<p>Anton, who remembered him well, returned in an hour, and said he could
+neither find him nor hear of him.</p>
+
+<p>All the night long, a cheerless tedious night, with the rain falling
+without and the storm that was raging in the Bosphorus sending its
+shrill echoes up the Danube, she sat by the beds of the sick women
+or paced up and down the dimly-lit Rittersaal in an impatience which
+it humiliated her to feel. It touched her that he should be here,
+so silently, so sedulously avoiding her, and doing so much for the
+people of Idrac, because they were her people. The old misgiving that
+she had been ungenerous in her treatment of him returned to her. He
+seemed always to have the finer part&mdash;the <i>beau rôle.</i> To her, royal
+in giving, imperious in conduct, it brought a sense of failure, of
+inferiority. As she read the psalms in Hungarian to the sick Magyar
+women, her mind perpetually wandered away to him.</p>
+
+<p>She did not see Sabran again, but she heard often of him. The fair
+stranger, as the people called him, was always conspicuous wherever
+the greatest danger was to be encountered. There was always peril in
+almost every movement where the undermined houses, the tottering walls,
+the stagnant water, the fever-reeking marshes presented at every turn a
+perpetual menace to life. 'He is not vainly <i>un fils des preux</i>,' she
+thought, with a thrill of personal pride, as if someone near and dear
+to her were praised, as she listened to the stories of his intrepidity
+and his endurance. Whole nights spent in soaked clothes, in half
+swamped boats; whole days lost in impotent conflict with the ignorance
+or the poltroonery of an obstinate populace, continual risk encountered
+without counting its cost to rescue some poor man's sick beast, or pull
+a cripple from beneath falling beams, or a lad from choking mud; hour
+on hour of steady laborious rowing, of passage to and fro the sullen
+river with a freight of moaning, screaming peasantry&mdash;this was not
+child's play, nor had it any of the animation and excitation which in
+war or in adventure make of danger a strong wine that goes merrily and
+voluptuously to the head. It was all dull, stupid, unlovely, and he
+had come to it for her sake. For her sake certainly, though he never
+approached her; though when Anton at last found and took her message
+to him he excused himself from obedience to it by a plea that he was
+at that moment wet and weary, and had come from a hut where typhoid
+raged. She understood the excuse; she knew that he knew well she was no
+more afraid than he of that contagion. She admired him the more for his
+isolation; in these grey, rainy, tedious, melancholy days his figure
+seemed to grow into a luminous heroic shape like one of the heroes of
+the olden time. If he had once seemed to seek a guerdon for it the
+spell would have been broken. But he never did. She began to believe
+that such a knight deserved any recompense which she could give.</p>
+
+<p>'Egon himself could have done no more,' she said in her own thoughts,
+and it was the highest praise that she could give to any man, for
+her Magyar cousin was the embodiment of all martial daring, of all
+chivalrous ardour, and had led his glittering hussars down on to the
+French bayonets, as on to the Prussian Krupp guns, with a fury that
+bore all before it, impetuous and irresistible as a stream of fired
+naphtha.</p>
+
+<p>On the twelfth morning the river had sunk so much lower that the yacht
+arriving with medicines and stores of food from Neusatz signalled that
+she could not enter the creek on which Idrac stood, and waited orders.
+It had ceased to rain, but the winds were still strong and the skies
+heavy. She descended to her boat at the water-gate, and told the men to
+take her out to the yacht. It was early, the sun behind the clouds had
+barely climbed above the distant Wallachian woods, and the scene had
+lost nothing of its melancholy. A man was standing on the water-stairs
+as she descended them, and turned rapidly away, but she had seen him
+and stretched out her long staff and touched him lightly.</p>
+
+<p>'Why do you avoid me?' she said, as he uncovered his head; 'my men
+sought you in all directions; I wished to thank you.'</p>
+
+<p>He bowed low over the hand she held out to him. 'I ventured to be near
+at hand to be of use,' he answered. 'I was afraid the exposure, and,
+the damp, and all this pestilence would make you ill: you are not ill?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I am quite well. I have heard of all your courage and endurance.
+Idrac owes you a great debt.'</p>
+
+<p>'I only pay my debt to Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>They were both silent; a certain constraint was upon them both.</p>
+
+<p>'How did you know of the inundation? It was unkind of you not to come
+to me,' she said, and her voice was unsteady as she spoke. 'I want so
+much to tell you, better than letters can do, all that we felt for you
+throughout that awful war.'</p>
+
+<p>He turned away slightly with a shudder. 'You are too good. Thousands of
+men much better than I suffered much more.'</p>
+
+<p>The tears rose to her eyes as she glanced at him. He was looking pale
+and worn. He had lost the graceful <i>insouciance</i> of his earlier manner.
+He looked grave, weary, melancholy, like a man who had passed through
+dire disaster, unspeakable pain, and had seen his career snapped in
+two like a broken wand. But there was about him instead something
+soldierlike, proven, war-worn, which became him in her eyes, daughter
+of a race of warriors as she was.</p>
+
+<p>'You have much to tell me, and I have much to hear,' she said, after
+a pause. 'You should have come to the monastery to be cured of your
+wounds. Why were you so mistrustful of our friendship?'</p>
+
+<p>He coloured and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed,' she said gravely, 'we can honour brave men in the Tauern and
+in Idrac too. You are very brave. I do not know how to thank you for my
+people or for myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Pray do not speak so,' he said, in a very low voice. 'To see you again
+would be recompense for much worthier things than any I have done.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you might have seen me long ago,' she said, with a certain
+nervousness new to her, 'had you only chosen to come to the Isle. I
+asked you twice.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with eyes of longing and pathetic appeal.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not tempt me,' he murmured. 'If I yielded, and if you despised
+me&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'How could I despise one who has so nobly saved the lives of my people?'</p>
+
+<p>'You would do so.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke very low: he was silent a little while, then he said very
+softly:</p>
+
+<p>'One evening, when we spoke together on the terrace at Hohenszalras,
+you leant your hand upon the ivy there. I plucked the leaf you touched;
+you did not see. I had the leaf with me all through the war. It was
+a talisman. It was like a holy thing. When your cousin's soldiers
+stripped me in their ambulance, they took it from me.'</p>
+
+<p>His voice faltered. She listened and was moved to a profound emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'I will give you something better,' she said very gravely. He did not
+ask her what she would give.</p>
+
+<p>She looked away from him awhile, and her face flushed a little. She was
+thinking of what she would give him; a gift so great that the world
+would deem her mad to bestow it, and perhaps would deem him dishonoured
+to take it.</p>
+
+<p>'How did you hear of these floods along the Danube?' she asked him,
+recovering her wonted composure.</p>
+
+<p>'I read about them in telegrams in Paris,' he made answer. 'I had
+mustered courage to revisit my poor Paris; all I possess is there.
+Nothing has been injured; a shell burst quite close by but did not
+harm my apartments. I went to make arrangements for the sale of my
+collections, and on the second day that I arrived there I saw the news
+of the inundations of Idrac and the lower Danubian plains. I remembered
+the name of the town; I remembered it was yours. I remembered your
+saying once that where you had feudal rights you had feudal duties, so
+I came on the chance of being of service.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have been most devoted to the people.'</p>
+
+<p>'The people! What should I care though the whole town perished? Do not
+attribute to me a humanity that is not in my nature.'</p>
+
+<p>'Be as cynical as you like in words so long as you are heroic in
+action. I am going out to the yacht; will you come with me?'</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated. 'I merely came to hear from the warder of your health. I
+am going to catch the express steamer at Neusatz; all danger is over.'</p>
+
+<p>'The yacht can take you to Neusatz. Come with me.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not offer more opposition; he accompanied her to the boat and
+entered it.</p>
+
+<p>The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing more, but she could not
+forget that scores of her own people here had owed their lives to his
+intrepidity and patience, and that he had never hesitated to throw his
+life into the balance when needed. And it had been done for her sake
+alone. The love of humanity might have been a nobler and purer motive,
+but it would not have touched her so nearly as the self-abandonment of
+a man by nature selfish and cold.</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments they were taken to the yawl. He ascended the deck with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The tidings the skipper brought, the examination of the stores, the
+discussion of ways and means, the arrangements for the general relief,
+were air dull, practical matters that claimed careful attention and
+thought. She sat in the little cabin that was brave with marqueterie
+work and blue satin and Dresden mirrors, and made memoranda and
+calculations, and consulted him, and asked his advice on this, on
+that. The government official, sent to make official estimates of the
+losses in the township, had come on board to salute and take counsel
+with her. The whole forenoon passed in these details. He wrote, and
+calculated, and drew up reports for her. No more tender or personal
+word was spoken between them; but there was a certain charm for them
+both in this intimate intercourse, even though it took no other shape
+than the study of how many boatloads of wheat were needed for so many
+hundred people, of how many florins a day might be passed to the head
+of each family, of how many of the flooded houses would still be
+serviceable with restoration, of how many had been entirely destroyed,
+of how the town would best be rebuilt, and of how the inland rivers
+could best be restrained in the future.</p>
+
+<p>To rebuild it she estimated that she would have to surrender for five
+years the revenues from her Galician and Hungarian mines, and she
+resolved to do it altogether at her own cost. She had no wish to see
+the town figure in public prints as the object of public subscription.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure all my woman friends,' she said, 'would kindly make it
+occasion for a fancy fair or a lottery (with new costumes) in Vienna,
+but I do not care for that sort of thing, and I can very well do what
+is needed alone.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent. He had always known that her riches were great, but
+he had never realised them as fully as he now did when she spoke of
+rebuilding an entire town as she might have spoken of building a
+carriage.</p>
+
+<p>'You would make a good prime minister,' she said, smiling; 'you have
+the knowledge of a specialist on so many subjects.'</p>
+
+<p>At noon they served her a little plain breakfast of Danubian
+<i>salbling</i>, with Carlowitzer wine and fruit sent by the steward of
+Mohacs. She bade him join her in it.</p>
+
+<p>'Had Egon himself been here he could not have done more for Idrac than
+you have done,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Is this Prince Egon's wine?' he said abruptly, and on hearing that it
+was so, he set the glass down untasted.</p>
+
+<p>She looked surprised, but she did not ask him his reason, for she
+divined it. There was an exaggeration in the unspoken hostility more
+like the days of Arthur and Lancelot than their own, but it did not
+displease her.</p>
+
+<p>They were both little disposed to converse during their meal; after the
+dreary and terrible scenes they had been witness of, the atmosphere
+of life seems grave and dark even to those whom the calamity had not
+touched. The most careless spirit is oppressed by a sense of the
+precariousness and the cruelty of existence.</p>
+
+<p>When they ascended to the deck the skies were lighter than they had
+been for many weeks; the fog had cleared, so that, in the distance, the
+towers of Neusatz and the fortress of Peterwardein were visible; vapour
+still hung over the vast Hungarian plain, but the Danube was clear and
+the affluents of it had sunk to their usual level.</p>
+
+<p>'You really go to-night?' she said, as they looked down the river.</p>
+
+<p>'There is no need for me to stay; the town is safe, and you are well,
+you say. If there be anything I can still do, command me.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled a little and let her eye meet his for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, if I command you to remain then, will you do so as my viceroy?
+I want to return home; Aunt Ottilie grows daily more anxious, more
+alarmed, but I cannot leave these poor souls all alone with their
+priests, and their rabbi, who are all as timid as sheep and as stupid.
+Will you stay in the castle and govern them, and help them till they
+recover from their fright? It is much to ask, I know, but you have
+already done so much for Idrac that I am bold to ask you to do more?'</p>
+
+<p>He coloured with a mingled emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'You could ask me nothing that I would not do,' he said in a low tone.
+'I could wish you asked me something harder.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it will be very hard,' she said, with an indifference she did not
+feel. 'It will be very dull, and you will have no one to speak to that
+knows anything save how to grow flax and cherries. You will have to
+talk the Magyar tongue all day, and you will have nothing to eat save
+<i>kartoffeln</i> and <i>salbling</i>; and I do not know that I am even right,'
+she added, more gravely, 'to ask you to incur the risks that come from
+all that soaked, ground, which will be damp so long.'</p>
+
+<p>'The risks that you have borne yourself! Pray do not wound me by any
+such scruple as that. I shall be glad, I shall be proud, to be for ever
+so short or so long a time as you command, your representative, your
+servant.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very good.'</p>
+
+<p>'No.'</p>
+
+<p>His eyes looked at hers with a quick flash, in which all the passion
+he dared not express was spoken. She averted her glance and continued
+calmly: 'You are very good indeed to Idrac. It will be a great
+assistance and comfort to me to know that you are here. The poor people
+already love you, and you will write to me and tell me all that may
+need to be done. I will leave you the yacht and Anton. I shall return
+by land with my woman; and when I reach home I will send you Herr
+Greswold. He is a good companion, and has a great admiration for you,
+though he wishes that you had not forsaken the science of botany.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is like all other dissection or vivisection; it spoils the artistic
+appreciation of the whole. I am yet unsophisticated enough to feel the
+charm of a bank of violets, of a cliff covered with alpen-roses. I may
+write to you?'</p>
+
+<p>'You must write to me! It is you who will know all the needs of Idrac.
+But are you sure that to remain here will not interfere with your own
+projects, your own wishes, your own duties?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have none. If I had any I would throw them away, with pleasure, to
+be of use to one of your dogs, to one of your birds.'</p>
+
+<p>She moved from his side a little.</p>
+
+<p>'Look how the sun has come out. I can see the sparkle of the brass on
+the cannon down yonder at Neusatz. We had better go now. I must see my
+sick people and then leave as soon as I can. The yacht must take me to
+Mohacs; from there I will send her back to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do as you will. I can have no greater happiness than to obey you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure that I thank you in the way that you like best, when I say
+that I believe you.'</p>
+
+<p>She said the words in a very low tone, but so calmly that the calmness
+of them checked any other words he might have uttered. It was a royal
+acceptance of a loyal service; nothing more. The boat took them back
+to the fortress. Whilst she was occupied in her farewell to the sick
+people, and her instructions to those who attended on them, he, left
+to himself in the apartment she had made her own, instinctively went
+to an old harpsichord that stood there and touched the keys. It had a
+beautiful case, rich with the varnish of the Martins. He played with
+it awhile for its external beauty, and then let his fingers stray over
+its limited keyboard. It had still sweetness in it, like the spinet
+of Hohenszalras. It suited certain pathetic quaint old German airs he
+knew, and which he half unconsciously reproduced upon it, singing them
+as he did so in a low tone. The melody, very soft and subdued, suited
+to the place where death had been so busy and nature so unsparing, and
+where a resigned exhaustion had now succeeded to the madness of terror,
+reached the ears of the sick women in the Rittersaal and of Wanda von
+Szalras seated beside their beds.</p>
+
+<p>'It is like the saints in Heaven sighing in pity for us here,' said one
+of the women who was very feeble and old, and she smiled as she heard.
+The notes, tremulous from age but penetrating in their sweetness, came
+in slow calm movements of harmony through the stillness of the chamber;
+his voice, very low also, but clear, ascended with them. Wanda sat
+quite still, and listened with a strange pleasure. 'He alone,' she
+thought, 'can make the dumb strings speak.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost dusk when she descended to the room which she had made
+her own. In the passages of the castle oil wicks were lighted in the
+iron lamps and wall sconces, but here it was without any light, and
+in the gloom she saw the dim outline of his form as he sat by the
+harpsichord. He had ceased playing; his head was bent down and rested
+on the instrument; he was lost in thought, and his whole attitude was
+dejected. He did not hear her approach, and she looked at him some
+moments, herself unseen. A great tenderness came over her: he was
+unhappy, and he had been very brave, very generous, very loyal: she
+felt almost ashamed. She went nearer, and he raised himself abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'I am going,' she said to him. 'Will you come with me to the yacht?'</p>
+
+<p>He rose, and though it was dusk, and in this chamber so dark that his
+face was indistinct to her, she was sure that tears had been in his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Your old harpsichord has the vernis Martin,' he said, with effort.
+'You should not leave it buried here. It has a melody in it too, faint
+and simple and full of the past, like the smell of dead rose-leaves.
+Yes, I will have the honour to come with you. I wish there were a full
+moon. It will be a dark night on the Danube.'</p>
+
+<p>'My men know the soundings of the river well. As for the harpsichord,
+you alone have found its voice. It shall go to your rooms in Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are too good, but I would not take it. Let it go to Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why would you not take it?</p>
+
+<p>'I would take nothing from you.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke abruptly, and with some sternness.</p>
+
+<p>'I think there is such a thing as being too proud? she said, with
+hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>'Your ancestors would not say so,' he answered, with an effort; she
+understood the meaning that underlay the words. He turned away and
+closed the lid of the harpsichord, where little painted cupids wantoned
+in a border of metal scroll-work.</p>
+
+<p>All the men and women well enough to stand crowded on the water-stairs
+to see her departure; little children were held up in their mother's
+arms and bidden remember her for evermore; all feeble creatures lifted
+up their voices to praise her; Jew and Christian blessed her; the
+water-gate was cumbered with sobbing people, trying to see her face,
+to kiss her skirt for the last time. She could not be wholly unmoved
+before that unaffected, irrepressible emotion. Their poor lives were
+not worth much, but such as they were she, under Heaven, had saved them.</p>
+
+<p>'I will return and see you again,' she said to them, as she made a slow
+way through the eager crowd. 'Thank Heaven, my people, not me. And I
+leave my friend with you, who did much more for you than I. Respect him
+and obey him.'</p>
+
+<p>They raised with their thin trembling voices a loud <i>Eljén</i>! of homage
+and promise, and she passed away from their sight into the evening
+shadows on the wide river.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran accompanied her to the vessel, which was to take her to the town
+of Mohacs, thence to make her journey home by railway.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not leave until you bid me, even though you should forget to
+call me all in my life!' he said, as the boat slipped through the dark
+water.</p>
+
+<p>'Such oblivion would be a poor reward.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have had reward enough. You have called me your friend.'</p>
+
+<p>She was silent. The boat ran through the dusk and the rippling rays of
+light streaming from the sides of the yacht, and they went on board. He
+stood a moment with uncovered head before her on the deck, and she gave
+him her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'You will come to the Holy Isle?' she said, as she did so.</p>
+
+<p>'If you bid me,' he said, as he bowed and kissed her hand. His lips
+trembled as he did so, and by the lamplight she saw that he was very
+pale.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall bid you,' she said, very softly, by-and-by. Farewell!'</p>
+
+<p>He bowed very low once more, then he dropped over the yacht's side into
+the boat waiting below; the splash of the oars told her he was gone
+back to Idrac. The yawl weighed anchor and began to go up the river,
+a troublesome and tedious passage at all seasons. She sat on deck
+watching the strong current of the Danube as it rolled on under the bow
+of the schooner. For more than a league she could see the beacon that
+burned by the water-gate of the fortress. When the curve of the stream
+hid it from her eyes she felt a pang of painful separation, of wistful
+attachment to the old dreary walls where she had seen so much suffering
+and so much courage, and where she had learned to read her own heart
+without any possibility of ignoring its secrets. A smile came on her
+mouth and a moisture in her eyes as she sat alone in the dark autumn
+night, while the schooner made her slow ascent through the swell that
+accompanies the influx of the Drave.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In two days' time Hohenszalras received its mistress home.</p>
+
+<p>She was not in any way harmed by the perils she had encountered, and
+the chills and fever to which she had been exposed. On the contrary,
+her eyes had a light and her face had a bloom which for many months had
+not been there.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess heard a brief sketch of what had passed in almost
+total silence. She had disapproved strongly, and she said that her
+disapproval could not change, though a merciful heavenly host had
+spared her the realisation of her worst fears.</p>
+
+<p>The name of Sabran was not spoken. Wanda was of a most truthful temper,
+but she could not bring herself to speak of his presence at Idrac; the
+facts would reveal themselves inevitably soon enough.</p>
+
+<p>She sent Greswold to the Danube laden with stores and medicines.
+She received a letter every morning from her delegate; but he wrote
+briefly, and with scrupulous care, the statements of facts connected
+with the town and reports of what had been done. Her engineer had
+arrived from the mines by Kremnitz, and the builders estimated that
+the waters would have subsided and settled enough, if no fresh rising
+took place, for them to begin the reconstruction of the town with the
+beginning of the new month. Ague and fever were still very common, and
+fresh cases were brought in every hour to the hospital in the fortress.
+He wrote on the arrival of Herr Greswold, that, with her permission, he
+himself would still stay on, for the people had grown used to him, and
+having some knowledge of hydraulics he would be interested to see the
+plans proposed by her engineers for preserving the town from similar
+calamities.</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks passed; all that time she spoke but little either of him or
+of any other subject. She took endless rides, and she sat many hours
+doing nothing in the white room, absorbed in thought. The Princess,
+who had learned what had passed, with admirable exercise of tact and
+self-restraint made neither suggestion nor innuendo, and accepted the
+presence of a French Marquis at a little obscure town in Sclavonia as
+if it were the most natural circumstance in the world.</p>
+
+<p>'All the Szalras have been imperious, arrogant, and of complicated
+character,' she thought; 'she has the same temper, though it is
+mitigated in her by great natural nobility of disposition and strong
+purity of motives. She will do as she chooses, let all the world do
+what it may to change her. If I say a word either way it may take
+effect in some wholly unforeseen manner that I should regret. It is
+better to abstain. In doubt do nothing, is the soundest of axioms.'</p>
+
+<p>And Princess Ottilie, who on occasion had the wisdom of the serpent
+with the sweetness of the dove, preserved a discreet silence, and
+devoured her really absorbing curiosity in her own heart.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the fourth week she heard that all was well at Idrac,
+so far as it could be so in a place almost wholly destroyed. There
+was no sign of renewed rising of the inland streams. The illness was
+diminished, almost conquered; the people had begun to take heart and
+hope, and, being aided, wished to aid themselves. The works for new
+embankments, water-gates, and streets were already planned, though
+they could not be begun until the spring. Meanwhile, strong wooden
+houses were being erected on dry places, which which could shelter
+<i>ad interim</i> many hundreds of families; the farmers were gradually
+venturing to return to their flooded lands. The town had suffered
+grievously and in much irreparably, but it began to resume its trade
+and its normal life.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated a whole day when she heard this. Though Sabran did not
+hint at any desire of his own to leave the place, she knew it, was
+impossible to bid him remain longer, and that a moment of irrevocable
+decision was come. She hesitated all the day, slept little all the
+night, then sent him a brief telegram: 'Come to the Island.'</p>
+
+<p>Obey the summons as rapidly as he might, he could not travel by Vienna
+and Salzburg more quickly than in some thirty hours or more. The time
+passed to her in a curious confusion and anxiety. Outwardly she was
+calm enough; she visited the schools, wrote some letters, and took her
+usual long ride in the now leafless woods, but at heart she was unquiet
+and ill at ease, troubled more than by anything else at the force of
+the desire she felt to meet him once more. It was but a month since
+they had parted on the deck, and it seemed ten years. She had known
+what he had meant when he had said that he would come if she bade him;
+she had known that she would only do the sheerest cruelty and treachery
+if she called him thither only to dismiss him. It had not been a visit
+of the moment, but all his life that she had consented to take when she
+had written 'Come to the Island.'</p>
+
+<p>She would never have written it unless she had been prepared to fulfil
+all to which it tacitly pledged her. She was incapable of wantonly
+playing with any passion that moved another, least of all with his. The
+very difference of their position would have made indecision or coyness
+in her seem cruelty, humiliation. The decision hurt her curiously with
+a sense of abdication, mortification, and almost shame. To a very proud
+woman in whom the senses have never asserted their empire, there is
+inevitably an emotion of almost shame, of self-surrender, of loss of
+self-respect, in the first impulses of love. It made her abashed and
+humiliated to feel the excitation that the mere touch of his hand, the
+mere gaze of his eyes, had power to cause her. 'If this be love,' she
+thought, 'no wonder the world is lost for it.'</p>
+
+<p>Do what she would, the time seemed very long; the two evenings that
+passed were very tedious and oppressive. The Princess seemed to
+observe nothing of what she was perfectly conscious of, and her
+flute-like voice murmured on in an unending stream of commonplaces to
+which her niece replied much at random.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon of the third day she stood on the terrace looking down
+the lake and towards the Holy Isle, with an impatience of which she was
+in turn impatient. She was dressed in white woollen stuff with silver
+threads in it; she had about her throat an old necklace of the Golden
+Fleece, of golden shells enamelled, which had been a gift from Charles
+the Fifth to one of her house; over her shoulders, for the approach
+of evening was cold, she had thrown a cloak of black Russian sables.
+She made a figure beautiful, stately, patrician, in keeping with the
+background of the great donjon tower, and the pinnacled roofs, and the
+bronze warriors in their Gothic niches.</p>
+
+<p>When she had stood there a few minutes looking down the lake towards
+the willows of the monastery island, a boat came out from the willow
+thickets, and came over the mile-and-half of green shadowy water. There
+was only one person in it. She recognised him whilst he was still far
+off, and a smile came on her mouth that it was a pity he could not see.</p>
+
+<p>He was a bold man, but his heart stood still with awe of her, and his
+soul trembled within him at this supreme moment of his fate. For he
+believed that she would not have bidden him there unless her hand were
+ready to hold out destiny to him&mdash;the destiny of his maddest, of his
+sweetest, dreams.</p>
+
+<p>She came forward a few paces to meet him; her face was grave and pale,
+but her eyes had a soft suppressed light.</p>
+
+<p>'I have much for which to thank you,' she said, as she held out her
+hand to him. Her voice was tremulous though calm.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand, then stood silent. It seemed to him that there was
+nothing to say. She knew what he would have said if he had been king,
+or hero, or meet mate for her. His pulses were beating feverishly, his
+self-possession was gone, his eyes did not dare to meet hers. He felt
+as if the green woods, the shining waters, the rain-burdened skies were
+wheeling round him. That dumbness, that weakness, in a man so facile
+of eloquence, so hardy and even cynical in courage, touched her to a
+wondering pitifulness.</p>
+
+<p>'After all,' she thought once more, 'if we love one another what is it
+to anyone else? We are both free.'</p>
+
+<p>If the gift she would give would be so great that the world would blame
+him for accepting it, what would that matter so long as she knew him
+blameless?</p>
+
+<p>They were both mute: he did not even look at her, and she might have
+heard the beating of his heart. She looked at him and the colour came
+back into her face, the smile back upon her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>'My friend,' she said very gently,'did never you think that I also&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She paused: it was very hard to her to say what she must say, and he
+could not help her, dared not help her, to utter it.</p>
+
+<p>They stood thus another moment mute, with the sunset glow upon the
+shining water, and upon the feudal majesty of the great castle.</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked at him with a straight, clear, noble glance, and with
+the rich blood mounting in her face, stretched out her hand to him with
+a royal gesture.</p>
+
+<p>'They robbed you of your ivy leaf, my cruel Prussian cousins. Will
+you&mdash;take&mdash;this&mdash;instead?'</p>
+
+<p>Then Heaven itself opened to his eyes. He did not take her hand. He
+fell at her feet and kissed them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Is it wisest after all to be very unwise, dear mother mine?' she said a
+little later, with a smile that was tender and happy.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess looked up quickly, and so looking understood.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my beloved, is it indeed so? Yes, you are wise to listen to your
+heart; God speaks in it!'</p>
+
+<p>With tears in her eyes she stretched out her pretty hands in solemn
+benediction.</p>
+
+<p>'Be His Spirit for ever with you,' she said with great emotion. 'I
+shall be so content to know that I leave you not alone when our Father
+calls me, for I think your very greatness and dominion, my dear, but
+make you the more lonely, as sovereigns are, and it is not well to be
+alone, Wanda; it is well to have human love close about us.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is to lean on a reed, perhaps,'murmured Wanda, in that persistent
+misgiving which possessed her. 'And when the reed breaks, then though
+it has been so weak before, it becomes of iron, barbed and poisoned.'</p>
+
+<p>'What gloomy thoughts! And you have made me so happy, and surely you
+are happy yourself?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes. My reed is in full flower, but&mdash;but&mdash;yes, I am happy; I hope that
+Bela knows.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess kissed her once again.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! he loves you so well.'</p>
+
+<p>'That I am sure of; yet I might never have known it but for you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I did for the best.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will send him to you. I want to be alone a little. Dear mother, he
+cares for you as tenderly as though he were your son.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have been his friend always,' said the Princess, with a smile,
+whilst the tears still stood in her eyes. 'You cannot say so much,
+Wanda; you were very harsh.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know it. I will atone to him.'</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the Princess followed her tenderly.'</p>
+
+<p>'And she will make her atonement generously, grandly,' she thought.
+'She is a woman of few protestations, but of fine impulses and of
+unerring magnanimity. She will be incapable of reminding him that
+their kingdom is hers. I have done this thing; may Heaven be with it!
+If she had loved no one, life would have grown so pale, so chill, so
+monotonous to her; she would have tired of herself, having nothing
+but herself for contemplation. Solitude has been only grand to her
+hitherto because she has been young, but as the years rolled on she
+would have died without ever having lived; now she will live. She may
+have to bear pains, griefs, infidelities, calamities that she would
+have escaped; but even so, how much better the summer day, even with
+the summer storm, than the dull, grey, quiet, windless weather! Of
+course, if she could have found sanctuary in the Church&mdash;&mdash;But her
+faith is not absolute and unwavering enough for that; she has read too
+many philosophies; she requires, too, open-air and vigorous life; the
+cloister would have been to her a prison. She is one of those whose
+religion lies in activity; she will worship God through her children.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran entered as she mused, and knelt down before her.</p>
+
+<p>'You have been my good angel, always,' he murmured. 'How can I thank
+you? I think she would never have let her eyes rest on me but for you.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'My friend, you are one of those on whom the eyes of women willingly
+rest, perhaps too willingly. But you&mdash;you will have no eyes for any
+other now? You must deserve my faith in you. Is it not so?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, madame,' he answered with deep emotion, 'all words seem so trite
+and empty; any fool can make phrases, but when I say that my life
+shall be consecrated to her, I mean it, in the uttermost royalty, the
+uttermost gratitude.'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe you,' said the Princess, as she laid her hand lightly
+on his bent head. 'Perhaps no man can understand entirely all that
+she surrenders in admitting that she loves you; for a proud woman
+to confess so much of weakness is very hard: but I think you will
+comprehend her better than any other would. I think you will not force
+her to pass the door of disillusion; and remember that though she will
+leave you free as air&mdash;for she is not made of that poor stuff which
+would enslave what it loves&mdash;she would not soon forgive too great abuse
+of freedom. I mean if you were ever&mdash;ever unfaithful&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'For what do you take me?' he cried, with indignant passion. 'Is there
+another woman in the world who could sit beside her, and not be
+dwarfed, paled, killed, as a candle by the sun?'</p>
+
+<p>'You are only her betrothed,' said the Princess, with a little sigh.
+'Men see their wives with different eyes; so I have been told, at
+least. Familiarity is no courtier, and time is always cruel.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, time shall be our dearest friend,' said Sabran, with a tenderness
+in his voice that spoke more constancy than a thousand oaths. 'She will
+be beautiful when she is old, as you are; age will neither alarm nor
+steal from her; her bodily beauty is like her spiritual, it is cast
+in lines too pure and clear not to defy the years. Oh, mother mine!
+(let me call you that) fear nothing; I will love her so well that, all
+unworthy now, I will grow worthy her, and cause her no moment's pain
+that human love can spare her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Her people shall be your people, and her God your God,' murmured the
+Princess, with her hand still lying lightly on his head, obediently
+bent.</p>
+
+<p>When late that night he went across the lake the monks were at their
+midnight orisons; their voices murmured as one man's the Latin words of
+praise and prayer, and made a sound like that of a great sea rolling
+slowly on a lonely shore.</p>
+
+<p>He believed naught that they believed. Deity was but a phrase to him;
+faith and a future life were empty syllables to him. Yet, in the
+fulness of his joy and the humiliation of his spirit, he felt his heart
+swell, his pride sink subdued. He knelt down in the hush and twilight
+of that humble place of prayer, and for the first moment in many years
+he also praised God.</p>
+
+<p>No one heeded him; he knelt behind them in the gloom unnoticed; he rose
+refreshed as men in barren lands in drought are soothed by hearing the
+glad fall of welcome rain. He had no place there, and in another hour
+would have smiled at his own weakness; but now he remembered nothing
+except that he, utterly beyond his deserts, was blessed. As the monks
+rose to their feet and their loud chanting began to vibrate in the air,
+he went out unheard, as he had entered, and stood on the narrow strip
+of land that parted the chapel from the lake. The green waters were
+rolling freshly in under a strong wind, the shadows of coming night
+were stealing on; in the south-west a pale yellow moonlight stretched
+broadly in a light serene as dawn, and against it there rose squarely
+and darkly with its many turrets the great keep of Hohenszalras.</p>
+
+<p>He looked, but it was not of that great pile and all which it
+represented and symbolised that he thought now.</p>
+
+<p>It was of the woman he loved as a woman, not as a great possessor of
+wealth and lands.</p>
+
+<p>'Almost I wish that she were poor as the saints she resembles!' he
+thought, with a tender passion that for the hour was true. It seemed
+to him that had he seen her standing in her shift in the snow, like
+our Lady of Hungary, discrowned and homeless, he would have been glad.
+He was honest with the honesty of passion. It was not the mistress of
+Hohenszalras that he loved, but his own wife.</p>
+
+<p>Such a marriage could not do otherwise than arouse by its announcement
+the most angry amazement, the most indignant protests from all the
+mighty houses with which for so many centuries the house of Szalras
+had allied itself. In a few tranquil sentences she made known her
+intentions to those of her relations whom she felt bound thus to
+honour; but she gave them clearly to understand that it was a formula
+of respect not an act of consultation. When they received her letters
+they knew that her marriage was already quite as irrevocable as though
+it had already taken place in the Hof-Kapelle of Vienna.</p>
+
+<p>All her relatives and all her order were opposed to her betrothal;
+a cold sufferance was the uttermost which any of them extended to
+Sabran. A foreigner and poor, and, with a troubled and uncertain
+past behind him, he was bitterly unwelcome to the haughty Prussian,
+Austrian, and Hungarian nobilities to which she belonged; neither his
+ancient name nor his recent political brilliancy and military service
+could place him on an equality with them in their eyes. Her trustees,
+the Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe and the Cardinal Vàsàrhely, with her
+cousin Kaulnitz, hurried in person as swiftly as special trains could
+bring them to the Iselthal, but they were too late to avert the blow.</p>
+
+<p>'It is not a marriage for her,' said Kaulnitz, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>'Why not? It is a very old family,' said the Princess, with no less
+irritation.</p>
+
+<p>'But quite decayed, long ruined,' he returned. 'This man was himself
+born in exile.'</p>
+
+<p>'As they exile everybody twice in every ten years in France!</p>
+
+<p>'And there have been stories&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Of whom are there not stories? Calumny is the parasite of character;
+the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never heard him accused of any strength, except of the wrist in
+<i>l'escrime!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know anything dishonourable of him? If you do you are bound to
+say it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dishonourable is a grave word. No, I cannot say that I do; the society
+he frequents is a guarantee against that; but his life has been
+indifferent, complicated, uncertain, not a life to be allied with that
+of such a woman as Wanda. My dear Princess, it has been a life <i>dans le
+milieu parisien</i>; what more would you have me say?'</p>
+
+<p>'Prince Archambaud's has been that. Yet three years since you earnestly
+pressed his suit on Wanda.'</p>
+
+<p>'Archambaud! He is one of the first alliances in Europe; he is of blood
+royal, and he has not been more vicious than other men.'</p>
+
+<p>'It would be better he should have been less so, since he lives so near
+'the fierce light that beats upon the throne;' an electric light which
+blackens while it illumines! My good Kaulnitz, you wander very far
+afield. If you know anything serious against M. de Sabran it is your
+duty to say it.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is a gambler.'</p>
+
+<p>'He has renounced gambling.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is a duellist.'</p>
+
+<p>'Society was of much better constitution when the duel was its habitual
+phlebotomy.'</p>
+
+<p>'He has been the lover of many women.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid that is nothing singular.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is hardly more than an adventurer.'</p>
+
+<p>'He counts his ancestry in unbroken succession from the clays of
+Dagobert.</p>
+
+<p>'He has nothing but a <i>pignon sur rue</i> in Paris, and a league or two of
+rocks and sand in Brittany; yet, though so poor, he made money enough
+by cards and speculation to be for three years the <i>amant en titre</i> of
+Cochonette.'</p>
+
+<p>Madame Ottilie rose with a little frown.</p>
+
+<p>'I think we will say no more, my dear Baron; the matter is, after all,
+not yours or mine to decide. Wanda will assuredly do as she likes.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you have so much influence with her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have none; no one has any: and I think you do not understand her in
+the least. It may cost her very much to avow to him that she loves him,
+but once having done that, it will cost her nothing at all to avow it
+to the world. She is much too proud a woman to care for the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is <i>gentilhomme de race</i>, I grant,' admitted with reluctance the
+Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe.</p>
+
+<p>'When has a noble of Brittany been otherwise?' asked the Princess
+Ottilie.</p>
+
+<p>'I know,' said the Prince; 'but you will admit that he occupies a
+difficult position&mdash;an invidious one.'</p>
+
+<p>'And he carries himself well through it. It is a difficult position
+which is the test of breeding,' said the Princess, triumphantly, 'and
+I deny entirely that it is what you call an invidious one. It is you
+who have the idea of the crowd when you lay so much stress on the mere
+absence of money.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is the idea of the crowd that dominates in this age.'</p>
+
+<p>'The more reason for us to resist it, if it be so.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you are in love with him yourself, my sister!'</p>
+
+<p>'I should be were I forty years younger.'</p>
+
+<p>The Countess Brancka alone wrote with any sort of sympathy and pleasure
+to congratulate them both.</p>
+
+<p>'I was sure that Parsifal would win soon or late,' she said. 'Only
+remember that he is a Parsifal <i>doublé</i> by a de Morny.'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than
+the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of
+the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied.
+De Morny!&mdash;a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The
+comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!</p>
+
+<p>She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or
+remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had
+so much of the '<i>éternel féminin</i>' in her that she was only the more
+resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and
+exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was
+natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All
+the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those
+who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances
+produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as
+Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again
+Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had
+no power of persuasion.</p>
+
+<p>The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more
+graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as
+might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were
+present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that
+he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The
+sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man,
+whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of
+many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had
+they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of
+this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of
+birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere
+difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or
+the inches of one's stature.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he
+is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always
+be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at
+large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'</p>
+
+<p>'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what
+matters the opinion of others?'</p>
+
+<p>'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt
+those motives?'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has
+been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him
+as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to
+him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the
+power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'</p>
+
+<p>As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was
+listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ
+within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of
+grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous
+years to come.</p>
+
+<p>When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:</p>
+
+<p>'I want you to promise me one thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'I promise you all things. What is this one?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those
+great fortunes which form the <i>acte d'accusation</i> of socialists against
+society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of
+Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It
+is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed
+by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious
+barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one
+of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!&mdash;Promise me that
+you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may
+enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'</p>
+
+<p>He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to
+speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still
+remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is
+too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against
+me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a
+few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too
+much!'</p>
+
+<p>He stooped and kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with
+passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that
+I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be
+right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away
+from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'</p>
+
+<p>A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her
+hands as he held them clasped in his.</p>
+
+<p>'We will drink that wafer together, and as long as we are together it
+will never be bitter, I think,' she said very softly.</p>
+
+<p>Her voice seemed to sink into his very soul, so much it said of faith,
+so much it aroused of remorse.</p>
+
+<p>Then the great joy which had entered his life, like a great dazzling
+flood of light suddenly let loose into a darkened chamber, so blinded
+consumed, and intoxicated him, that he forgot all else; all else save
+this one fact&mdash;she would be his, body and soul, night and day, in life
+and in death for ever; his children borne by her, his life spent with
+her, her whole existence surrendered to him.</p>
+
+<p>For some days after that she mused upon the possibility of rendering
+him entirely independent of herself, without insulting him by a direct
+offer of a share in her possessions. At last a solution occurred
+to her. The whole of the fiefs of Idrac constituted a considerable
+appanage apart; its title went with it. When it had come into the
+Szalras family by marriage, as far back as the fifteenth century, it
+had been a principality; it was still a seigneurie, and many curious
+feudal privileges and distinctions went with it.</p>
+
+<p>It was Idrac now that she determined to abandon to her lover.</p>
+
+<p>'He will be seigneur of Idrac,' she thought, 'and I shall be so glad
+for him to bear an Austrian name.'</p>
+
+<p>'She herself would always retain her own name, and would take no other.</p>
+
+<p>'We will go and revisit it together,' she thought, and though she
+was all alone' at that moment, a soft warmth came into her face, and
+a throb of emotion to her heart, as she remembered all that would lie
+in that one word 'together,' all the tender and intimate union of the
+years to come.</p>
+
+<p>Her trustees were furious, and sought the aid of the men of law to
+enable them to step in and arrest her in what they deemed a course
+of self-destruction, but the law could not give them so much power;
+she was her own mistress, and as sole inheritrix had received her
+possessions singularly untrammelled by restrictions. In vain Prince
+Lilienhöhe spent his severe and chilly anger, Kaulnitz his fine
+sarcasm and delicate insinuations, and the Cardinal his stately and
+authoritative wrath. She was not to be altered in her decision.</p>
+
+<p>Austrian law allowed her to give away an estate to her husband if she
+chose, and there was nothing in the private settlements of her property
+to prevent her availing herself of the law.</p>
+
+<p>Strenuous opposition was encountered by her to this project, by every
+one of her relatives, hardly excluding the Princess Ottilie; 'for,'
+said that sagacious recluse, 'your horses may show you, my dear, the
+dangers of a rein too loose.'</p>
+
+<p>'I want no rein at all,' said Wanda. 'You forget that, to my thinking,
+marriage should never be bondage; two people with independent wills,
+tastes, and habits should mutually concede a perfect independence of
+action to each other. When one must yield, it must be the woman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Those are very fine theories,' the Princess remarked with caution.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope we shall put them in practice,' said Wanda, with unruffled good
+humour. 'Dear mother, I am sure you can understand that I want him
+to feel he is wholly independent of me. To what I love best on earth
+shall I dole out a niggard largesse from my wealth? If I were capable
+of doing so he would grow in time to hate me, and his hatred would be
+justified.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never should have supposed you would become so romantic,' said the
+Princess.</p>
+
+<p>'It will make him independent of you,' objected Prince Lilienhöhe.</p>
+
+<p>'That is what, beyond all, I desire him to be,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>'It is an infatuation,' sighed Cardinal Vàsàrhely, out of her hearing,
+'when Egon would have brought to her a fortune as large as her own.'</p>
+
+<p>'You think water should always run to the sea,' said Princess Ottilie;
+'surely that is great waste sometimes?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you are as infatuated as she is,' murmured the Cardinal. 'You
+forget that had she not been inspired with this unhappy sentiment she
+would have most probably left Hohenszalras to the Church.'</p>
+
+<p>'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,'
+answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else,
+had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'</p>
+
+<p>That would have been better than to an adventurer.'</p>
+
+<p>'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest
+aristocracies of the world, if poor.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Ce que femme veut</i>,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the
+Church had been worsted by women.</p>
+
+<p>The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the
+marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any
+possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband,
+and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of
+action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the
+deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself,
+as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud
+to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your
+hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he
+will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always
+will. If not&mdash;if not&mdash;well, he must go!'</p>
+
+<p>One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment
+emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She
+spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He
+looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush
+that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow
+tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires.
+She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of
+the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before
+him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.</p>
+
+<p>'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you
+to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of
+Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their
+feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been
+lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the
+reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary
+passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'</p>
+
+<p>'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with
+those roses.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced
+flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment.
+It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'</p>
+
+<p>'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your
+coronet, to which I can add none!'</p>
+
+<p>But to please her he bent over the crabbed black letter and the antique
+blazonings of the great roll to which the great dead men had set their
+sign and seal. She watched him as he read it, then after a little time
+she put her hand with a caressing movement on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'My love, I can do just as I will with Idrac. The lawyers are agreed on
+that, and the Kaiser will confirm whatever I do. Now I want to give you
+Idrac, make you wholly lord of it; indeed, the thing is already done. I
+have signed all the documents needful, and, as I say, the Emperor will
+confirm any part of them that needs his assent. My Réné, you are a very
+proud man, but you will not be too proud to take Idrac and its title
+from your wife. But for that town who can say that our lives might not
+have been passed for ever apart? Why do you look so grave? The Kaiser
+and I both want you to be Austrian. When I transfer to you the fief of
+Idrac you are its Count for evermore.'</p>
+
+<p>He drew a quick deep breath as if he had been struck a blow, and stood
+gazing at her. He did not speak, his eyes darkened as with pain. For
+the moment she was afraid that she had wounded him. With exquisite
+softness of tone and touch she took his hand and said to him tenderly:</p>
+
+<p>'Why will you be so proud? After all, what are these things? Since
+we love one another, what is mine is yours; a formula more or less
+is no offence. It is my fancy that you should have the title and the
+fief. The people know you there, and your heroic courage will be for
+ever amongst their best traditions. Dear! once I read that it needs a
+greater soul to take generously than to give. Be great so, now, for my
+sake!'</p>
+
+<p>'Great!' he echoed the word hoarsely, and a smile of bitter irony
+passed for a moment over his features. But he controlled the passionate
+self-contempt that rose in him. He knew that whatever else he was,
+he was her lover, and her hero in her sight. If the magnitude and
+magnanimity of her gifts overwhelmed and oppressed him, he was recalled
+to self-control by the sense of her absolute faith in him. He pressed
+her hands against his heavily-beating heart.</p>
+
+<p>'All the greatness is with you, my beloved,' he said with effort.
+'Since you delight to honour me, I can but strive my utmost to deserve
+your honour. It is like your beautiful and lavish nature to be prodigal
+of gifts. But when you give yourself, what need is there for aught
+else?'</p>
+
+<p>'But Idrac is my caprice. You must gratify it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will take the title gladly at your hands then. The revenues&mdash;No.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must take it all, the town and the title, and all they bring,' she
+insisted. 'In truth, but for you there would possibly be no town at
+all. Nay, my dear, you must do me this little pleasure; it will become
+you so well that Countship of Idrac: it is as old a place as Vindobona
+itself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you not understand?' she added, with a flush on her face. 'I want
+you to feel that it is wholly yours; that if I die, or if you leave me,
+it remains yours still. Oh, I do not doubt you; not for one moment. But
+liberty is always good. And Idrac will make you an Austrian noble in
+your own right. If you persist in refusing it I will assign it to the
+Crown; you will pain me and mortify me.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is enough! Never wittingly in my life will I hurt you. But if you
+wish me to be lord of Idrac, invest me with the title, my Empress. I
+will take it and be proud of it; and as for the revenues&mdash;well, we will
+not quarrel for them. They shall go to make new dykes and new bastions
+for the town, or pile themselves one on another in waiting for your
+children.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled and her face grew warm as she turned aside and took up one
+of the great swords with jewelled hilts and damascened scabbards, which
+were ranged along the wall of the Rittersaal with other stands of arms.</p>
+
+<p>She drew the sword, and as he fell on his knee before her smote him
+lightly on the shoulder with its blade.</p>
+
+<p>'Rise, Graf von Idrac!' she said, stooping and touching his forehead
+with the bouquet that she wore at her breast. He loosened one of the
+roses and held it to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>'I swear my fealty now and for ever,' he said with emotion, and his
+face was paler and his tone was graver than the playfulness of the
+moment seemed to call for in him.</p>
+
+<p>'Would to Heaven I had had no other name than this one you give me,'
+he murmured as he rose. 'Oh, my love, my lady, my guardian angel!
+Forget that ever I lived before, forget all my life when I was unworthy
+you; let me live only from the day that will make me your vassal and
+your&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'That will make you my lord!' she said softly; then she stooped, and
+for the first time kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>What caused her the only pain that disturbed the tranquillity of these
+cloudless days was the refusal of her cousin Egon to be present at
+her marriage. He sent her, with some great jewels that had come from
+Persia, a few words of sad and wistful affection.</p>
+
+<p>'My presence,' he added in conclusion, 'is no more needed for your
+happiness than are these poor diamonds and pearls needed in your
+crowded jewel-cases. You will spare me a trial, which it could be of no
+benefit to you for me to suffer. I pray that the Marquis de Sabran may
+all his life be worthy of the immense trust and honour which you have
+seen fit to give to him. For myself, I have been very little always in
+your life. Henceforth I shall be nothing. But if ever you call on me
+for any service&mdash;which it is most unlikely you ever will do&mdash;I entreat
+you to remember that there is no one living who will more gladly or
+more humbly do your bidding at all cost than I, your cousin Egon.'</p>
+
+<p>The short letter brought tears to her eyes. She said nothing of it to
+Sabran. He had understood from Mdme. Ottilie that Prince Vàsàrhely had
+loved his cousin hopelessly for many years, and could not be expected
+to be present at her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>In a week from that time their nuptials were celebrated in the Court
+Chapel of the Hofburg at Vienna, with all the pomp and splendour that
+a brilliant and ceremonious Court could lend to the espousal of one of
+the greatest ladies of the old Duchy of Austria.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after the ceremony they left the capital for Hohenszalras.</p>
+
+<p>At the signing of the contract on the previous night, when he had taken
+up the pen he had grown very pale; he had hesitated a moment, and
+glanced around him on the magnificent crowd, headed by the Emperor and
+Empress, with a gleam of fear and of anxiety in his eyes, which Baron
+Kaulnitz, who was intently watching him, had alone perceived.</p>
+
+<p>'There is something. What is it?' had mused the astute German.</p>
+
+<p>It was too late to seek to know. Sabran had bent down over the
+parchment, and with a firm hand had signed his name and title.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>It was midsummer once more in the Iselthal, five years and a half after
+the celebration at the Imperial palace of those nuptials which had been
+so splendid that their magnificence had been noticeable even at that
+magnificent Court. The time had seemed to her like one long, happy,
+cloudless day, and if to him there had come any fatigue, any satiety,
+any unrest, such as almost always come to the man in the fruition of
+his passion, he suffered her to see none of them.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those rare marriages in which no gall of a chain is felt,
+but a quick and perfect sympathy insures that harmony which passion
+alone is insufficient to sustain. He devoted himself with ardour to the
+care of the immense properties that belonged to his wife; he brought
+to their administration a judgment and a precision that none had looked
+for in a man of pleasure; he entered cordially into all her schemes for
+the well-being of her people dependent on her, and carried them out
+with skill and firmness. The revenues of Idrac he never touched; he
+left them to accumulate for his younger son, or expended them on the
+township itself, where he was adored.</p>
+
+<p>If he were still the same man who had been the lover of Cochonette,
+the terror of Monte Carlo, the hero of night-long baccara and frontier
+duels, he had at least so banished the old Adam that it appeared wholly
+dead. Nor was the death of it feigned. He had flung away the slough
+of his old life with a firm hand, and the peace, the dignity of his
+present existence were very precious to him. He was glad to steep
+himself in them, as a tired and fevered wayfarer was glad to bathe his
+dusty and heated limbs in the cool, clear waters of the Szalrassee. And
+he loved his wife with a great love, in which reverence, and gratitude,
+and passion were all blent. Possession had not dulled, nor familiarity
+blunted it. She was still to him a sovereign, a saint, a half divine
+creature, who had stooped to become mortal for his sake, and his
+children's.</p>
+
+<p>The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls
+and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the
+Szalrassee.</p>
+
+<p>'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath
+the great yews beside the keep.</p>
+
+<p>'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but
+watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as
+ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty
+amphitheatre.</p>
+
+<p>She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of
+whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy
+with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The
+other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months
+of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were
+all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.</p>
+
+<p>'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the
+world called so proud.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near
+her wicker chair.</p>
+
+<p>'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it,
+at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you
+it will be he who will be dearest to me.'</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that
+we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all
+the world who have passed five years and more together without once
+disagreeing?'</p>
+
+<p>'In all the world there is not another Countess Wanda!'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! that is your only defect; you will always avoid argument by
+escaping through the side-door of compliment. It is true, to be sure,
+that your flattery is a very high and subtle art.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is like all high art then, based on what is eternally true.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will always have the last word, and it is always so graceful a
+one that it is impossible to quarrel with it. But, Réné, I want you
+to speak without compliment to me for once. Tell me, are you indeed
+never&mdash;never&mdash;a little weary of being here?'</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment and a slight flush came on his face.</p>
+
+<p>She observed both signs, slight as they were, and sighed; it was the
+first sigh she had ever breathed since her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course you are, of course you must be,' she said quickly. 'It has
+been selfish and blameable of me never to think of it before. It is
+paradise to me, but no doubt to you, used as you have been to the stir
+of the world, there, must be some tedium, some dulness in this mountain
+isolation. I ought to have remembered that before.'</p>
+
+<p>'You need do nothing of the kind, now,' he said. 'Who has been talking
+to you? Who has brought this little snake into our Eden?'</p>
+
+<p>'No one; and it is not a snake at all, but a natural reflection.
+Hohenszalras and you are the world to me, but I cannot expect that
+Hohenszalras and I can be quite as much to yourself. It is always the
+difference between the woman and the man. You have great talents; you
+are ambitious.'</p>
+
+<p>'Were I as ambitious as Alexander, surely I have gained wherewithal to
+be content!'</p>
+
+<p>'That is only compliment again, or if truth it is only a side of the
+truth. Nay, love, I do not think for a moment you are tired of me;
+I am too self-satisfied for that! But I think it is possible that
+this solitude may have grown, or may grow, wearisome to you; that you
+desire, perhaps without knowing it, to be more amidst the strife,
+the movement, and the pleasures of men. Aunt Ottilie calls this
+"confinement to a fortress;" now that is a mere pleasantry, but if ever
+you should feel tempted to feel what she feels, have confidence enough
+in my good sense and in my affection to say so to me, and then&mdash;&mdash;.'</p>
+
+<p>'And then? We will suppose I have this ingratitude and bad taste, what
+then?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why then, my own wishes should not stand for one instant in the way
+of yours, or rather I would make yours mine. And do not use the word
+ingratitude, my dearest; there can be no question of that betwixt you
+and me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' said Sabran, as he stooped towards her and touched her hair
+with his lips. 'When you gave me yourself, you made me your debtor
+for all time; would have made me so had you been as poor as you are
+rich. When I speak of gratitude it is of <i>that</i> gift, I think, not of
+Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>A warmth of pleasure flushed her cheek for a moment, and she smiled
+happily.</p>
+
+<p>'You shall not beg the question so,' she said, with gentle insistence
+after a moment's pause. 'I have not forgotten your eloquence in the
+French Chamber.' You are that rare thing a born orator. You are
+not perhaps fitted to be a statesman, for I doubt if you would have
+the application or bear the tedium necessary, but you have every
+qualification for a diplomatist, a foreign minister.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not the first qualification, I have no country!'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, in surprise&mdash;he spoke with bitterness and
+self-contempt; but in a moment he had added quickly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'France is nothing to me now, and though I am Austrian by all ties and
+affections, I am not an Austrian before the law.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is hardly true,' she answered, satisfied with the explanation.
+'Since France is little to you you could be naturalised here whenever
+you chose, even if Idrac have not made you a Croat noble, as I believe
+the lawyers would say it had; and the Emperor, who knows and admires
+you, would, I think, at once give you gladly any mission you preferred;
+you would make so graceful, so perfect, so envied an ambassador!
+Diplomacy has indeed little force now, yet tact still tells wherever
+it be found, and it is as rare as blue roses in the unweeded garden of
+the world. I do not speak for myself, dear; that you know. Hohenszalras
+is my beloved home, and it was enough for me before I knew you, and
+nowhere else could life ever seem to me so true, so high, so simple,
+and so near to God as here. But I do remember that men weary even of
+happiness when it is unwitnessed, and require the press and stir of
+emulation and excitation; and, if you feel that want, say so. Have
+confidence enough in me to believe that your welfare will be ever my
+highest law. Promise me this.'</p>
+
+<p>He changed colour slightly at her generous and trustful words, but he
+answered without a moment's pause:</p>
+
+<p>'Whenever I am so thankless to fate I will confess it. No; the world
+and I never valued one another much. I am far better here in the heart
+of your mountains. Here only have I known peace and rest.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with a certain effort and emotion, and he stooped over his
+little son and raised him on her knees.</p>
+
+<p>'These children shall grow up at Hohenszalras,' he continued, 'and you
+shall teach them your love of the open air, the mountain solitudes, the
+simple people, the forest creatures, the influences and the ways of
+nature. You care for all those things, and they make up true wisdom,
+true contentment. As for myself, if you always love me I shall ask no
+more of fate.'</p>
+
+<p>'If! Can you be afraid?'</p>
+
+<p>'Sometimes. One always fears to lose what one has never merited.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, my love, do not be so humble! If you saw yourself as I see you,
+you would be very proud.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled as she spoke, and stretched her hand out to him over the
+golden head of her child.</p>
+
+<p>He took it and held it against his heart, clasped in both his own.
+Bela, impatient, slipped off his mother's lap to pursue his capture of
+the daisies; the butterflies were forbidden joys, and he was obedient,
+though in his own little way he was proud and imperious. But there
+was a blue butterfly just in front of him, a Lycœna Adonis, like a
+little bit of the sky come down and dancing about; he could not resist,
+he darted at it. As he was about to seize it she caught his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>'I have told you, Bela, you are never to touch anything that flies or
+moves. You are cruel.'</p>
+
+<p>He tried to get away, and his face grew very warm and passionate.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will be cruel, if he like,' he said, knitting his pretty brows.</p>
+
+<p>Though he was not more than four years old he knew very well that he
+was the Count Bela, to whom all the people gave homage, crowding to
+kiss his tiny hand after Mass on holy-days. He was a very beautiful
+child, and all the prettier for his air of pride and resolution; he had
+been early put on a little mountain pony, and could ride fearlessly
+down the forest glades with Otto. All the imperiousness of the great
+race which had dealt out life and death so many centuries at their
+caprice through the Hohe Tauern seemed to have been inherited by him,
+coupled with a waywardness and a vanity that were not traits of the
+house of Szalras. It was impossible, even though those immediately
+about him were wise and prudent, to wholly prevent the effects of the
+adulation with which the whole household was eager to wait on every
+whim of the little heir.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his
+desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that
+to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it
+his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition,
+and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very
+affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.</p>
+
+<p>With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he
+said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'</p>
+
+<p>Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very
+frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been
+four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his
+father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his
+nurse, who came for him.</p>
+
+<p>'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him
+more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give
+you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'</p>
+
+<p>It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil
+qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son,
+and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was
+unworthy to beget <i>her</i> children,' he thought, with the self-reproach
+that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his
+satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what
+trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years
+to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his
+blood?</p>
+
+<p>'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to
+see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It
+hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own
+little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill;
+do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is
+your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud
+of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows
+older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to
+enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy
+that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry
+passions, of my degraded humanity?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think
+me.'</p>
+
+<p>'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'</p>
+
+<p>'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a <i>beau défaut</i>,
+and I would not have you lose it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and
+passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him surprised, and vaguely troubled at the self-reproach
+and the self-scorn of his passionate utterance. Seeing that surprise
+and trouble in her glance, he controlled the emotion that for the
+moment mastered him.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, love!' he said quickly and truly, 'if you could but guess how
+gross and base a man's life seems to him contrasted with the life of
+a pure and noble woman! Being born of you, those children, I think,
+should be as faultless and as soilless as those pearls that lie on your
+breast. But then they are mine also; so already on that boy's face one
+sees the sins of revolt, of self-will, of cruelty&mdash;being mine also,
+your living pearls are dulled and stained!'</p>
+
+<p>A greater remorse than she dreamed of made his heart ache as he said
+these words; but she heard in them only the utterance of that extreme
+and unwavering devotion to her which he had shown in all his acts and
+thoughts from the first hours of their union.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Princess Ottilie was scarcely less happy than they in the
+realisation of her dreams and prophecies. Those who had been most
+bitterly opposed to her alliance with him could find no fault in his
+actions and his affections.</p>
+
+<p>'I always said that Wanda ought to marry, since she had plainly no
+vocation for the cloister,' she said a hundred times a year. 'And I was
+certain that M. de Sabran was the person above all others to attract
+and to content her. She has much more imagination than she would be
+willing to allow and he is capable at once of fascinating her fancy
+and of satisfying her intellect. No one can be dull where he is; he is
+one of those who make <i>la pluie et le beau temps</i> by his absence or
+presence; and, besides that, no commonplace affection would have ever
+been enough for her. And he loves her like a poet, which he is at once
+whenever he leaves the world for Beethoven and Bach. I cannot imagine
+why you should have opposed the marriage, merely because he had not two
+millions in the Bank of France.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not for that,' answered the Grand Duke; 'rather because he broke the
+bank of Monte Carlo, and other similar reasons. A great player of
+baccara is scarcely the person to endow with the wealth of the Szalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'The wealth is tied up tightly enough at the least, and you will admit
+that he was yet more eager than you that it should be so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes! he behaved very well. I never denied it. But she has placed
+it in his power to make away with the whole of Idrac, if he should ever
+choose. That was very unwise, but we had no power to oppose.'</p>
+
+<p>'You may be quite sure that Idrac will go intact to the second son, as
+it has always done; and I believe but for his own exertions Idrac would
+now be beneath the Danube waters. Perhaps you never heard all that
+story of the flood?'</p>
+
+<p>'I only hope that if I have detractors you will defend me from them,'
+said Prince Lilienhöhe, giving up argument.</p>
+
+<p>Fair weather is always especially fair in the eyes of those who have
+foretold at sunset that the morrow would be fine; and so the married
+life of Wanda von Szalras was especially delightful as an object of
+contemplation, as a theme of exultation, to the Princess, who alone had
+been clear-sighted enough to foresee the future. She really also loved
+Sabran like a son, and took pride and pleasure in the filial tenderness
+he showed her, and in his children, with the beautiful blue eyes that
+had gleams of light in them like sapphires. The children themselves
+adored her; and even the bold and wilful Bela was as quiet as a
+startled fawn beside this lovely little lady, with her snow-white hair
+and her delicate smile, whose cascades of lace always concealed such
+wonderful bon-bon boxes, and gilded cosaques, and illuminated stories
+of the saints.</p>
+
+<p>Almost all their time was spent at Hohenszalras. A few winter months
+in Vienna was all they had ever passed away from it, except one visit
+to Idrac and the Hungarian estates. The children never left it for
+a day. He shared her affection for the place, and for the hardy and
+frank mountain people around them. He seemed to her to entirely forget
+Romaris, and beyond the transmission of moneys to its priest, he
+took no heed of it. She hesitated to recall it to him, since to do
+so might have seemed to remind him that it was she, not he, who was
+suzerain in the Hohe Tauern. Romaris was but a bleak rock, a strip of
+sea-swept sand; it was natural that it should have no great hold on his
+affections, only recalling as it did all that its lords had lost.</p>
+
+<p>'I hate its name,' he said impetuously once; and seeing the surprise
+upon her face, he added: 'I was very lonely and wretched there; I
+tried to take interest in it because you bade me, but I failed; all
+I saw, all I thought of, was yourself, and I believed you as far and
+for ever removed from me as though you had dwelt in some other planet.
+No! perhaps I am superstitious: I do not wish you to go to Romaris. I
+believe it would bring us misfortune. The sea is full of treachery, the
+sands are full of graves.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'Superstition is a sort of parody of faith; I am sure you are not
+superstitious. I do not care to go to Romaris; I like to cheat myself
+into the belief that you were born and bred in the Iselthal. Otto said
+to me the other day, "My lord must be a son of the soil, or how could
+he know our mountains so well as he does, and how could he anywhere
+have learned to shoot like that?"'</p>
+
+<p>'I am very glad that Otto does me so much honour. When he first met
+me, he would have shot me like a fox, if you had given the word. Ah, my
+love! how often I think of you that day, in your white serge, with your
+girdle of gold, and your long gold-headed staff, and your little ivory
+horn. You were truly a châtelaine of the old mystical German days.
+You had some <i>Schlüsselblumen</i> in your hand. They were indeed the key
+flower to my soul, though, alas! treasures, I fear, you found none on
+your entrance there.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not answer you, since to answer would be to flatter you, and
+Aunt Ottilie already, does that more than is good for you,' she said
+smiling, as she passed her fingers over the waves of his hair. 'By the
+way, whom shall we invite to meet the Lilienhöhe? Will you make out a
+list?'</p>
+
+<p>'The Grand Duke does not share Frau Ottilie's goodness for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'What would you? He has been made of buckram and parchment; besides
+which; nothing that is not German has, to his mind, any right to exist.
+By the way, Egon wrote to me this morning; he will be here at last.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked up quickly in unspoken alarm: 'Your cousin Egon? Here?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why are you so surprised? I was sure that sooner or later he would
+conquer that feeling of being unable to meet you. I begged him to come
+now; it is eight whole years since I have seen him. When once you have
+met you will be friends&mdash;for my sake.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent; a look of trouble and alarm was still upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>'Why should you suppose it any easier to him now than then?' he said at
+length. 'Men who love <i>you</i> do not change. There are women who compel
+constancy, <i>sans le vouloir</i>. The meeting can but be painful to Prince
+Vàsàrhely.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Réné,' she answered in some surprise, 'my nearest male relative
+and I cannot go on for ever without seeing each other. Even these years
+have done Egon a great deal of harm. He has been absent from the Court
+for fear of meeting us. He has lived with his hussars, or voluntarily
+confined to his estates, until he grows morose and solitary. I am
+deeply attached to him. I do not wish to have the remorse upon me of
+having caused the ruin of his gallant and brilliant life. When he
+has been once here he will like you: men who are brave have always
+a certain sympathy. When he has seen you here he will realise that
+destiny is unchangeable, and grow reconciled to the knowledge that I am
+your wife.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran gave an impatient gesture of denial, and began to write the list
+of invitations for the autumn circle of guests who were to meet the
+Prince and Princess of Lilienhöhe.</p>
+
+<p>Once every summer and every autumn Hohenszalras was filled with a
+brilliant house-party, for she sacrificed her own personal preferences
+to what she believed to be for the good of her husband. She knew that
+men cannot always live alone; that contact with the world is needful to
+their minds and bracing for it. She had a great dread lest the ghost
+<i>ennui</i> should show his pale face over her husband's shoulder, for
+she realised that from the life of the asphalte of the Champs-Élysées
+to the life amidst the pine forests of the Iselthal was an abrupt
+transition that might easily bring tedium in its train. And tedium is
+the most terrible and the most powerful foe love ever encounters.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran completed the list, and when he had corrected it into due
+accordance with all Lilienhöhe's personal and political sympathies and
+antipathies, despatched the invitations, 'for eight days,' written on
+cards that bore the joint arms of the Counts of Idrac and the Counts of
+Szalras. He had adopted the armorial bearings of the countship of Idrac
+as his own, and seemed disposed to abandon altogether those of the
+Sabrans of Romaris.</p>
+
+<p>When they were written he went out by himself and rode long and fast
+through the mists of a chilly afternoon, through dripping forest ways
+and over roads where little water-courses spread in shining shallows.
+The coming of Egon Vàsàrhely troubled him and alarmed him. He had
+always dreaded his first meeting with the Magyar noble; and as the
+years had dropped by one after another, and her cousin had failed
+to find courage to see her again, he had begun to believe that they
+and Vàsàrhely would remain always strangers. His wish had begotten
+his thought. He knew that she wrote at intervals to her cousin, and
+he to her; he knew that at the birth of each of their children some
+magnificent gift, with a formal letter of felicitation, had come from
+the Colonel of the White Hussars; but as time had gone on and Prince
+Egon had avoided all possibility of meeting them, he had grown to
+suppose that the wound given her rejected lover was too profound ever
+to close; nor did he wonder that it was so: it seemed to him that any
+man who loved her must do so for all eternity, if eternity there should
+be. To learn suddenly that within another month Vàsàrhely would be his
+guest, distressed and alarmed him in a manner she never dreamed. They
+had been so happy. On their cloud less heaven there seemed to him to
+rise a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but bearing with it disaster
+and a moonless night.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps he will have forgotten,' he thought, as he strove to shake off
+his forebodings. 'We were so young then. He was not even as old as I!'</p>
+
+<p>And he rode fast and furiously homewards as the day drew in, and the
+lighted windows of the great castle seemed to smile at him as lie saw
+it high up above the darkness of the woods and of the evening mists,
+his home, beloved, sacred, infinitely dear to him; dear as the soil of
+the mother country which the wrecked mariner reaches after facing death
+on the deep sea.</p>
+
+<p>'God save her from suffering by me!' he said, in an unconscious prayer,
+as he drew rein before the terrace of Hohenszalras. Almost he believed
+in God through her.</p>
+
+<p>When, after dressing, he went into, the Saxe room, the peace and
+beauty of the scene had never struck him so strongly as it did now,
+coming out of the shadows of the wet woods and the gloom of his own
+anxieties; anxieties the heavier and the more wearing because they
+could be shared by no one. The soft, full light of the wax candles fell
+on the Louis Seize embroideries and the white woodwork of the panelling
+and the china borders of the mirrors. The Princess Ottilie sat making
+silk-netting for the children's balls; his wife was reading, and Bela
+and Gela, who were there for their privileged half-hour before dinner,
+were fitting together on a white bearskin, playing with the coloured
+balls of the game of solitaire. The soft light from the chandeliers
+and sconces of the Saxe Royale china fell on the golden heads and the
+velvet frocks of the children, on the old laces and the tawny-coloured
+plush of their mothers skirts, on the great masses of flowers in the
+Saxe bowls, and on the sleeping forms of the big dogs Donau and Neva.
+It was an interior that would have charmed Chardin, that would have
+been worthy of Vandyck.</p>
+
+<p>As he looked at it he thought with a sort of ecstasy, 'All that is
+mine;' and then his heartstrings tightened as he thought again, 'If she
+knew&mdash;&mdash;?'</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at his entrance with a welcome on her face that needed no
+words.</p>
+
+<p>'Where have you been in the rain all this long afternoon?' You see we
+have a fire, even though it is midsummer. Bela, rise, and make your
+obeisance, and push that chair nearer the hearth.'</p>
+
+<p>The two little boys stood up and kissed his hand, one after another,
+with the pretty formality; of greeting on which she always insisted;
+then they went back to their coloured glass balls, and he sank into a
+low chair beside his wife with a sigh half of fatigue, half of content.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have been riding all the time,' he said to her. 'I am not sure
+that Siegfried approved it. But it does one good sometimes, and after
+the blackness and the wetness of that forest how charming it is to come
+home!'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with wistfulness.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish you were not vexed that Egon is coming! I am sure you have been
+thinking of it as you rode.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have; but I am ashamed of doing so. He is your cousin, that
+shall be enough for me. I will do my best to make him welcome. Only
+there is this difficulty; a welcome from me to him will seem in itself
+an insult.'</p>
+
+<p>'An insult! when you are my husband? One would think you were my
+<i>jägermeister.</i> Dear mother mine, help me to scold him.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am a stranger,' he said, under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled a little, but she said with a certain hauteur:</p>
+
+<p>'You are master of Hohenszalras, as your son will be when our places
+shall know us no more. Do not let the phantom of Egon come between us,
+I beseech you. His real presence never will do so, that is certain.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing shall come between us,' said Sabran, as his hand took and
+closed upon hers. 'Forgive me if I have brought some gloomy <i>nix</i> out
+of the dark woods with me; he will flee away in, the light of this
+beloved white-room. No evil spirits could dare stay by your hearth.'</p>
+
+<p>'There are <i>nixes</i> in the forests,' said Bela in a whisper to his
+brother.</p>
+
+<p>'Ja!' said Gela, not comprehending.</p>
+
+<p>'We will kill them all when we are big,' said Bela.</p>
+
+<p>'Ja! ja!' said Gela.</p>
+
+<p>Bela knew very well what a <i>nix</i> was. Otto had told him all about
+kobolds and sprites, as his pony trotted down the drives.</p>
+
+<p>'Or we will take them prisoners,' he added, remembering that his mother
+never allowed anything to be killed, not even butterflies.</p>
+
+<p>'Ja!' said Gela again, rolling the pretty blue and pink and amber balls
+about in the white fur of the bearskin.</p>
+
+<p>Gela's views of life were simplified by the disciple's law of
+imitation; they were restricted to doing whatever Bela did, when that
+was possible, when it was not possible he remained still adoring Bela,
+with his little serious face as calm as a god's.</p>
+
+<p>She used to think that when they should grow up Bela would be a great
+soldier like Wallenstein or Condé, and Gela would stay at home and
+take care of his people here in the green, lone, happy Iselthal.</p>
+
+<p>Time ran on and the later summer made the blooming hay grow brown on
+all the alpine meadows, and made the garden of Hohenszalras blossom
+with a million autumnal glories; it brought also the season of the
+first house-party. Egon Vàsàrhely was to arrive one day before the
+Lilienhöhe and the other guests.</p>
+
+<p>'I want Egon so much to see Bela!' she said, with the thoughtless
+cruelty of a happy mother forgetful of the pain of a rejected lover.</p>
+
+<p>'I fear Bela will find little favor in your cousin's eyes, since he is
+mine too,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Egon is content to be only our cousin by this&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'You think so? You do not know yourself if you imagine that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Egon is very loyal. He would not come here if he could not greet you
+honestly.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran's face flushed a little, and he turned away. He vaguely dreaded
+the advent of Egon Vàsàrhely, and there were so many innocent words
+uttered in the carelessness of intimate intercourse which stabbed him
+to the quick; she had so wounded him all unconscious of her act.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we have a game of billiards?' he asked her as they stood in the
+Rittersaal, whilst the rain fell fast without. She played billiards
+well, and could hold her own against him, though his game was one that
+had often been watched by a crowded <i>galerie</i> in Paris with eager
+speculation and heavy wager. An hour afterwards they were still playing
+when the clang of a great bell announced the approach of the carriage
+which had been sent to Windisch-Matrey.</p>
+
+<p>'Come!' she said joyously, as she put back her cue in its rest; but
+Sabran drew back.</p>
+
+<p>'Receive your cousin first alone,' he said. 'He must resent my presence
+here. I will not force it on him on the threshold of your house.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of our house! Why will you use wrong pronouns? Believe me, dear, Egon
+is too generous to bear you the animosity you think.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then he never loved you,' said Sabran, somewhat impatiently, as he
+sent one ball against another with a sharp collision. 'I will come if
+you wish it,' he added; 'but I think it is not in the best taste to so
+assert myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Egon is only my cousin and your guest. You are the master of
+Hohenszalras. Come! you were not so difficult when you received the
+Emperor.'</p>
+
+<p>'I had done the Emperor no wrong,' said Sabran, controlling the
+impatience and the reluctance he still felt.</p>
+
+<p>'You have done Egon none. I should not have been his wife had I never
+been yours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who knows?' murmured Sabran, as he followed her into the entrance
+hall. The stately figure of Egon Vàsàrhely enveloped in furs was just
+passing through the arched doorway.</p>
+
+<p>She went towards him with a glad welcome and both hands outstretched.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Egon bowed to the ground: then took both her hands in his and
+kissed her on the cheek.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran, who grew very pale, advanced and greeted him with ceremonious
+grace.</p>
+
+<p>'My wife has bade me welcome you, Prince, but it would be presumptuous
+in me, a stranger, to do that. All her kindred must be dear and sacred
+here.'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely, with an effort to which he had for years been vainly
+schooling himself, stretched out his hand to take her husband's; but
+as he did so, and his glance for the first time dwelt on Sabran, a
+look surprised and indefinitely perplexed came on his own features.
+Unconsciously he hesitated a moment; then, controlling himself, he
+replied with a few fitting words of courtesy and friendship. That
+there should be some embarrassment, some constraint, was almost
+inevitable, and did not surprise her: she saw both, but she also saw
+that both were hidden under the serenity of high breeding and worldly
+habit. The most difficult moment had passed: they went together into
+the Rittersaal, talked together a little on a few indifferent topics,
+and in a little space Prince Egon withdrew to his own apartments to
+change his travelling clothes. Sabran left him on the threshold of his
+chamber.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely locked the doors, locking out even his servant, threw off
+his furs and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. The meeting had
+cost him even more than he had feared that it would do. For five years
+he had dreaded this moment, and its pain was as sharp and as fresh to
+him as though it had been unforeseen. To sleep under the same roof
+with the husband of Wanda von Szalras! He had overrated his power of
+self-control, underrated his power of suffering, when to please her he
+had consented after five years to visit Hohenszalras. What were five
+years?&mdash;half a century would not have changed him.</p>
+
+<p>Under the plea of fatigue, he, who had sat in his saddle eighteen hours
+at a stretch, and was braced to every form of endurance in the forest
+chase and in the tented field, sent excuses to his host for remaining
+in his own rooms until the Ave Maria rung. When he at length went
+down to the blue-room where she was, he had recovered, outwardly at
+least, his tranquillity and his self-possession, though here, in this
+familiar, once beloved chamber, where every object had been dear to him
+from his boyhood, a keener trial than any he had passed through awaited
+him, as she led forward to meet him a little boy clad in white velvet,
+with a cloud of light golden hair above deep blue luminous eyes, and
+said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Egon, this is my Bela. You will love him a little, for my sake?'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely felt a chill run through him like the cold of death as he
+stooped towards the child; but he smiled and touched the boy's forehead
+with his lips.</p>
+
+<p>'May the spirit of our lost Bela be with him and dwell in his heart,'
+he murmured; 'better I cannot wish him.'</p>
+
+<p>With an effort he turned to Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'Your little son is a noble child; you may with reason be proud of him.
+He is very like you in feature. I see no trace of the Szalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'The other boy is more like Wanda,' replied Sabran, sensible of a
+certain tenacity of observation with which Vàsàrhely was gazing at
+him. 'As for my daughter, she is too young for anyone to say whom she
+will resemble. All I desire is that she should be like her mother,
+physically and spiritually.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course,' said the Prince, absently, still looking from Sabran to
+the child, as if in the endeavour to follow some remembrance that
+eluded-him. The little face of Bela was a miniature of his father's,
+they were as alike as it is possible for a child and a man to be so,
+and Egon Vàsàrhely perplexedly mused and wondered at vague memories
+which rose up to him as he gazed on each.</p>
+
+<p>'And what do you like best to do, my little one?' he asked of Bela, who
+was regarding him with curious and hostile eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'To ride,' answered Bela at once, in his pretty uncertain German.</p>
+
+<p>'There you are a true Szalras at least. And your brother Gela, can he
+ride yet? Where is Gela, by the way?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is asleep,' said Bela, with some contempt. 'He is a little thing.
+Yes; he rides, but it is in a chair-saddle. It is not real riding.'</p>
+
+<p>'I see. Well, when you come and see me you shall have some real riding,
+on wild horses if you like;' and he told the child stories of the great
+Magyar steppes, and the herds of young horses, and the infinite delight
+of the unending gallop over the wide hushed plain; and all the while
+his heart ached bitterly, and the sight of the child&mdash;who was her
+child, yet had that stranger's face&mdash;was to him like a jagged steel
+being turned and twisted inside a bleeding wound. Bela, however, was
+captivated by the new visions that rose before him.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will come to Hungary,' he said with condescension, and then with
+an added thought, continued: 'I think Bela has great lands there. Otto
+said so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela has nothing at all,' said Sabran, sternly. 'Bela talks great
+nonsense sometimes, and it would be better he should go to sleep with
+his brother.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela looked up shyly under his golden cloud of hair. 'Folko is Bela's,'
+he said under his breath. Folko was his pony.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' said Sabran; 'Folko belongs to your mother. She only allows you
+to have him so long as you are good to him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is always good to him,' he said decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is faultless in his own estimation,' said his mother, with a
+smile. 'He is too little to be wise enough to see himself as he is.'</p>
+
+<p>This view made Bela's blue eyes open very wide and fill very
+sorrowfully. It was humiliating. He longed to get back to Gela, who
+always listened to him dutifully, and never said anything in answer
+except an entirely acquiescent 'Ja! ja!' which was indeed about the
+limitation of Gela's lingual powers. In a few moments, indeed, his
+governess came for him and took him away, a little dainty figure in his
+ivory velvet and his blue silk stockings, with his long golden curls
+hanging to his waist.</p>
+
+<p>'It is so difficult to keep him from being spoilt,' she said, as the
+door closed on him. 'The people make a little prince, a little god, of
+him. He believes himself to be something wonderful. Gela, who is so
+gentle and quiet, is left quite in the shade.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose Gela takes your title?' said Vàsàrhely to his host. 'It
+is usual with the Austrian families for the second son to have some
+distant appellation?'</p>
+
+<p>'They are babies,' said Sabran, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'It will be time enough to settle those matters when they are old
+enough to be court-pages or cadets. They are Bela and Gela at present.
+The only real republic is childhood.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid Bela is the <i>tyrannus</i> to which all republics succumb,'
+said Wanda, with a smile. He is extremely autocratic in his notions,
+and in his family. In all his "make believe" games he is crowned.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is a beautiful child,' said her cousin, and she answered, still
+smiling:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes: he is so like Réné!'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely turned his face from her. The dinner was somewhat dull,
+and the evening seemed tedious, despite the efforts of Sabran to
+promote conversation, and the <i>écarté</i> which he and his guest played
+together. They, were all sensible that some chord was out of tune, and
+glad that on the morrow a large house-party would be there to spare
+them a continuation of this difficult intercourse.</p>
+
+<p>'Your cousin will never forgive me,' said Sabran to her when they were
+alone. 'I think, beside his feeling that I stand for ever between you
+and him there is an impatience of me as a stranger and one unworthy
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'You do yourself and him injustice,' she answered. 'I shall be unhappy
+if you and he be not friends.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then unhappy you will be, my beloved. We both adore you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not say that. He would not be here if it were so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! look at him when he looks at Bela!'</p>
+
+<p>She sighed; she had felt a strong emotion on the sight of her cousin,
+for Egon Vàsàrhely was much changed by these years of pain. His grand
+carriage and his martial beauty were unaltered, but all the fire and
+the light of earlier years were gone out of his face, and a certain
+gloom and austerity had come there. To all other women he would have
+been the more attractive for the melancholy which was in such apt
+contrast with the heroic adventures of his life, but to her the change
+in him was a mute reproach which filled her with remorse though she had
+done no wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Prince Egon, throwing open his window, leaned out into the
+cold rainy night, as though a hand were at his throat and suffocating
+him. And amidst all the tumult of his pain and revolt, one dim thought
+was incessantly intruding itself; he was always thinking, as he
+recalled the face of Sabran and of Sabran's little son, 'Where have I
+seen those blue eyes, those level brows, those delicate curved lips?'</p>
+
+<p>They were so familiar, yet so strange to him. When he would have given
+a name to them they receded into the shadows of some far away past of
+his own, so far away he could not follow them. He sat up half the night
+letting the wind beat and the rain fall on him. He could not sleep.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the morrow thirty or forty people arrived, amongst them Baron
+Kaulnitz <i>en congé</i> from his embassy.</p>
+
+<p>'What think you of Sabran?' he asked of Egon Vàsàrhely, who answered:</p>
+
+<p>'He is a perfect gentleman. He is a charming companion. He plays
+admirably at <i>écarté.</i></p>
+
+<p>'<i>Écarté</i>! I spoke of his moral worth: what is your impression of that?'</p>
+
+<p>'If he had not satisfied her as to that, Wanda would not be his wife,'
+answered the Prince gravely. 'He has given her beautiful children, and
+it seems to me that he renders her perfectly happy. We should all be
+grateful to him.'</p>
+
+<p>'The children are certainly very beautiful,' said Baron Kaulnitz, and
+said no more.</p>
+
+<p>'The people all around are unfeignedly attached to him,' Vàsàrhely
+continued with generous effort. 'I hear nothing but his praise. Nor do
+I think it the conventional compliment which loyalty leads them to pay
+the husband of their Countess; it is very genuine attachment. The men
+of the old Archduchy are not easily won; it is only qualities of daring
+and manliness which appeal to their sympathies. That he has gained
+their affections is as great testimony to his character in one way as
+that he has gained Wanda's is in another. At Idrac also the people
+adore him, and Croats are usually slow to see merit in strangers.'</p>
+
+<p>'In short, he is a paragon,' said the ambassador, with a little dubious
+smile. 'So much the better, since he is irrevocably connected with us.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran was at no time seen to greater advantage than when he was
+required to receive and entertain a large house-party. Always graceful,
+easily witty, endowed with that winning tact which is to society as
+cream is to the palate, the charm he possessed for women and the
+ascendency he could, at times, exercise over men&mdash;even men who were
+opposed to him&mdash;were never more admirably displayed than when he was
+the master of Hohenszalras, with crowned heads, and princes, and
+diplomatists, and beauties gathered beneath his roof. His mastery,
+moreover, of all field sports, and his skill at all games that demanded
+either intelligence or audacity, made him popular with a hardy and
+brilliant nobility; his daring in a boar hunt at noon was equalled by
+his science at whist in the evening. Strongly prejudiced against him at
+the onset, the great nobles who were his guests had long ceased to feel
+anything for him except respect and regard; whilst the women admired
+him none the less for that unwavering devotion to his wife which made
+even the conventionalities of ordinary flirtation wholly impossible to
+him. With all his easy gallantry and his elegant homage to them, they
+all knew that, at heart, he was as cold as the rocks to all women save
+one.</p>
+
+<p>'It is really the knight's love for his lady,' said the Countess
+Brancka once; and Sabran, overhearing, said: 'Yes, and, I think that if
+there were more like my lady on earth, knighthood might revive on other
+scenes than Wagner's.'</p>
+
+<p>Between him and the Countess Brancka there was a vague intangible
+enmity, veiled under the perfection of courtesy. They could ill have
+told why they disliked each other; but they did so. Beneath their
+polite or trivial or careless speech they often aimed at each other's
+feelings or foibles with accuracy and malice. She had stayed at
+Hohenszalras more or less time each year in the course of her flight
+between France and Vienna, and was there now. He admired his wife's
+equanimity and patience under the trial of Mdme. Olga's frivolities,
+but he did not himself forbear from as much sarcasm as was possible
+in a man of the world to one who was his guest, and by marriage his
+relative, and he was sensible of her enmity to himself, though she
+paid him many compliments, and sometimes too assiduously sought his
+companionship. '<i>Elle fait le ronron, mais gare à ses pattes!</i>' he said
+once to his wife concerning her.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran appraised her indeed with unflattering accuracy. He knew
+by heart all the wiles and wisdom of such a woman as she was. Her
+affectations did not blind him to her real danger, and her exterior
+frivolity did not conceal from him the keen and subtle self-interest
+and the strong passions which laboured beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>She felt that she had an enemy in him, and partly in self-protection,
+partly in malice, she set herself to convert a foe into a friend,
+perhaps, without altogether confessing it to herself, into a lover as
+well.</p>
+
+<p>The happiness that prevailed at Hohenszalrasburg annoyed her for
+no other reason than that it wearied her to witness it. She did
+not envy it, because she did not want happiness at all; she wanted
+perpetual change, distraction, temptation, passion, triumph&mdash;in a word,
+excitement, which becomes the drug most unobtainable to those who have
+early exhausted all the experiences and varieties of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Brancka had always an unacknowledged resentment against her
+sister-in-law, for being the owner of all the vast possessions of the
+Szalras. 'If Gela had lived!' she thought constantly. 'If I had only
+had a son by him before he died, this woman would have had her dower
+and nothing more.' That his sister should possess all, whilst she had
+by her later marriage lost her right even to a share in that vast
+wealth, was a perpetual bitterness to her.</p>
+
+<p>Stefan Brancka was indeed rich, but he was an insensate gambler. She
+was extravagant to the last degree, with all the costly caprices of
+a <i>cocodette</i> who reigned in the two most brilliant capitals of the
+world. They were often troubled by their own folly, and again and again
+the generosity of his elder brother had rescued them from humiliating
+embarrassments. At such moments she had almost hated Wanda von Szalras
+for these large possessions, of which, according to her own views,
+her sister-in-law made no use whatever. Meantime, she wished Egon
+Vàsàrhely to die childless, and to that end had not been unwilling
+for the woman he loved to marry anyone else. She had reasoned that the
+Szalras estates would go to the Crown or the Church if Wanda did not
+marry; whilst all the power and possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely must, if
+he had no sons, pass in due course to his brother. She had the subtle
+acuteness of her race, and she had the double power of being able at
+once to wait very patiently and to spring with swift rage on what she
+needed. To her sister-in-law she always appeared a mere flutterer on
+the breath of fashion. The grave and candid nature of the one could not
+follow or perceive the intricacies of the other.</p>
+
+<p>'She is a cruel woman and a perilous one,' Sabran said one day to his
+wife's surprise.</p>
+
+<p>She answered him that Olga Brancka had always seemed to her a mere
+frivolous <i>mondaine</i>, like so many others of their world.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' he persisted. 'You are wrong; she is not a butterfly. She has too
+much energy. She is a profoundly immoral woman also. Look at her eyes.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is Stefan's affair,' she answered, 'not ours. He is indifferent.'</p>
+
+<p>'Or unsuspicious? Did your brother care for her?'</p>
+
+<p>'He was madly in love with her. She was only sixteen when he married
+her. He fell at Solferino half a year later. When she married my
+cousin it shocked and disgusted me. Perhaps I was foolish to take it
+thus, but it seemed such a sin against Gela. To die <i>so</i>, and not to be
+even remembered!'</p>
+
+<p>'Did your cousin Egon approve this second marriage?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' he opposed it; he had our feeling about it. But Stefan, though
+very young, was beyond any control. He had the fortune as he had the
+title of his mother, the Countess Brancka, and Olga bewitched him as
+she had done my brother.'</p>
+
+<p>'She <i>is</i> a witch, a wicked witch,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>The great autumn party was brilliant and agreeable. All things went
+well, and the days were never monotonous. The people were well
+assorted, and the social talent of their host made their outdoor sports
+and their indoor pastimes constantly varied, whilst Hungarian musicians
+and Viennese comedians played waltzes that would have made a statue
+dance, and represented the little comedies for which he himself had
+been famous at the Mirlitons.</p>
+
+<p>He was not conscious of it, but he was passionately eager for Egon
+Vàsàrhely to be witness, not only of his entire happiness, but of his
+social powers. To Vàsàrhely he seemed to put forward the perfection
+of his life with almost insolence; with almost exaggeration to exhibit
+the joys and the gifts with which nature and chance had so liberally
+dowered him. The stately Magyar soldier, sitting silent and melancholy
+apart, watched him with a curious pang, that in a lesser nature would
+have been a consuming envy. Now and then, though Sabran and his wife
+spoke rarely to each other in the presence of others, a glance, a
+smile, a word passed between them that told of absolute unuttered
+tenderness, profound and inexhaustible as the deep seas; in the very
+sound of their laughter, in the mere accent of their voices, in a
+careless caress to one of their children, in a light touch of the hand
+to one another as they rode, or as they met in a room, there was the
+expression of a perfect joy, of a perfect faith between them, which
+pierced the heart of the watcher of it. Yet would he not have had it
+otherwise at her cost.</p>
+
+<p>'Since she has chosen him as the companion of her life, it is well
+that he should be what she can take pride in, and what all men can
+praise,' he thought, and yet the happiness of this man seemed to him an
+audacity, an insolence. What human lover could merit her?</p>
+
+<p>Between himself and Sabran there was the most perfect courtesy, but no
+intimacy. They both knew that if for fifty years they met continually
+they would never be friends. All her endeavours to produce sympathy
+between them failed. Sabran was conscious of a constant observation of
+him by her cousin, which seemed to him to have a hostile motive, and
+which irritated him extremely, though he did not allow his irritation
+any visible vent. Olga Brancka perceived, and with the objectless
+malice of women of her temperament, amused herself with fanning, the
+slumbering enmity, as children play at fire.</p>
+
+<p>'You cannot expect Egon to love you,' she said once to her host. 'You
+know he was the betrothed of Wanda from her childhood&mdash;at least in his
+own hopes, and in the future sketched for them by their families.'</p>
+
+<p>'I was quite aware of that before I married,' he answered her
+indifferently. 'But those family arrangements are tranquil disposals of
+destiny which, if they be disturbed, leave no great trace of trouble.
+The Prince is young still, and a famous soldier as well as a great
+noble. He has no lack of consolation if he need it, and I cannot
+believe that he does.'</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Olga laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'You know as well as I do that Egon adores the very stirrup your wife's
+foot touches!'</p>
+
+<p>'I know he is her much beloved cousin,' said Sabran, in a tone which
+admitted of no reply.</p>
+
+<p>To Vàsàrhely his sister-in-law said confidentially:</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Egon, why did you not stay on the <i>pusztas</i> or remain with your
+hussars? You make <i>le beau</i> Sabran jealous.'</p>
+
+<p>'Jealous!' asked Vàsàrhely, with a bitter smile. 'He has much cause,
+when she has neither eye nor ear, neither memory nor thought of any
+kind for any living thing except himself and those children who are
+all his very portraits! Why do you say these follies, Olga? You know
+that my cousin Wanda chose her lord out of all the world, and loves
+him as no one would have supposed she had it in her to love any mortal
+creature.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke imperiously, harshly, and she was silenced.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you think of him?' she said with hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>'Everyone asks me that question. I am not his keeper!'</p>
+
+<p>'But you must form some opinion. He is virtual lord of Hohenszalras,
+and I believe she has made over to him all the appanages of Idrac, and
+his children will have everything.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are they not her natural heirs? Who should inherit from her if not her
+sons?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, of course they will inherit, only they inherit nothing
+from him. It was certainly a great stroke of fortune for a landless
+gentleman to make. Why does the <i>gentilhomme pauvre</i> always so
+captivate women?'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean to insinuate, Olga?' he asked her, with a stern
+glance of his great black eyes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, nothing; only his history was peculiar. I remember his arrival
+in France, his first appearance in society; it is many years ago now.
+All the Faubourg received him, but some said at the time that it was
+too romantic to be true&mdash;those Mexican forests, that long exile of the
+Sabran, the sudden appearance of this beautiful young marquis; you
+will grant it was romantic. I suppose it was the romance that made
+even Wanda's clear head turn a little. It is a <i>vin capiteux</i> for many
+women. And then such a life in Paris after it&mdash;duels, baccara, bonnes
+fortunes, clever comedies, a touch like Liszt's, a sudden success in
+the Chamber&mdash;it was all so romantic; it was bound to bring him at
+last to his haven, the Prince Charmant of an enchanted castle! Only
+enchanted castles sometimes grow dull, and Princes Charmants are not
+always amusable by the same châtelaine!'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely, with his eyes sombre under their long black lashes,
+listened to the easy bantering phrases with the vague suspicion of an
+honest and slow-witted man that a woman is trying to drop poison into
+his ear which she wishes to pass as <i>eau sucrée.</i> He did not altogether
+follow her insinuation, but he understood something of her drift. They
+were alone in a corner of the ball-room, whilst the cotillon was at its
+height, conducted by Sabran, who had been famous for its leadership in
+Paris and Vienna. He stooped his head and looked her full in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Look here, Olga. I am not sure what you mean, but I believe you are
+tired of seeing my cousin's happiness, merely because it is something
+with which you cannot interfere. For myself I would protect her
+happiness as I would her honour if I thought either endangered. Whether
+you or I like the Marquis de Sabran is wholly beyond the question. She
+loves him, and she has made him one of us. His honour is now ours.
+For myself I would defend him in his absence as though he were my own
+brother. Not for his sake at all&mdash;for hers. I do not express myself
+very well, but you know what I mean. Here is Max returning to claim
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>Silenced and a little alarmed the Countess Brancka rose and went off to
+her place in the cotillon.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely, sitting where she had left him, watched the mazes of the
+cotillon, the rhythm of the tzigane musicians coming to his ear
+freighted with a thousand familiar memories of the czardas danced madly
+in the long Hungarian nights. Time had been when the throb of the
+tzigane strings had stirred all his pulses like magic, but now all his
+bold bright life seemed numb and frozen in him.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes rested on his cousin, where she stood conversing with a crown
+prince, who was her chief guest, and passed from her to follow the
+movements of Sabran, who with supreme ease and elegance was leading a
+new intricate measure down the ball-room.</p>
+
+<p>She was happy, that he could not doubt. Every action, every word, every
+glance said so with a meaning not to be doubted. He thought she had
+never looked so handsome as she did to-night since that far away day
+in her childhood when he had seen her with the red and white roses in
+her lap and the crown upon her curls. She had the look of her childhood
+in her eyes, that serene and glad light which had been dimmed by her
+brothers' death, but now shone there again tranquil, radiant, and pure
+as sunlight is. She wore white velvet and white brocade; her breast
+was hidden in white roses; she wore her famous pearls and the ribbons
+of the Starred Cross of Austria and of the Prussian Order of Merit;
+she held in her hand a large painted fan which had belonged to Maria
+Theresa. Every now and then, as she talked with her royal guest, her
+glance strayed down the room to where her husband was, and lingered
+there a moment with a little smile.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely watched her for awhile, then rose abruptly, and made his way
+out of the ball-room and the state apartments down the corridors of the
+old house he knew so well towards his own chamber. He thought he would
+write to her and leave upon the morrow. What need was there for him to
+stay on in this perpetual pain? He had done enough for the world, which
+had seen him under the roof of Hohenszalras.</p>
+
+<p>As he took his way through the long passages, tapestry-hung or
+oak-panelled, which led across the great building to his own set of
+rooms in the clock tower, he passed an open door out of which a light
+was streaming. As he glanced within he saw it was the children's
+sleeping apartment, of which the door was open because the night was
+warm, unusually warm for the heart of the Gross Glöckner mountains. An
+impulse he could not have explained made him pause and enter. The three
+little white beds of carved Indian work, with curtains of lace, looked
+very snowy and peaceful in the pale light from a hanging lamp. The
+children were all asleep; the one nearest the door was Bela.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely stood and looked at him. His head was thrown back on his
+pillow and his arms were above his head. His golden hair, which was
+cut straight and low over his forehead, had been pushed back in his
+slumber; he looked more like his father than in his waking hours,
+for as he dreamed there was a look of coldness and of scorn upon his
+childish face, which made him so resemble Sabran that the man who
+looked on him drew his breath hard with pain.</p>
+
+<p>The night-nurse rose from her seat, recognising Prince Egon, whom she
+had known from his childhood.</p>
+
+<p>'The little Count is so like the Marquis,' she said, approaching; 'so
+is Herr Gela. Ah, my Prince, you remember the noble gentlemen whose
+names they bear? God send they may be like them in their lives and not
+their deaths!'</p>
+
+<p>'An early death is good,' said Vàsàrhely, as he stood beside the
+child's bed. He thought how good it would have been if he had fallen
+at Sadowa or Königsgrätz, or earlier by the side of Gela and Victor,
+charging with his White Hussars.</p>
+
+<p>The old nurse rambled on, full of praise and stories of the children's
+beauty, and strength, and activity, and intelligence. Vàsàrhely did not
+hear her; he stood lost in thought looking down on the sleeping figure
+of Bela, who, as if conscious of strange eyes upon him, moved uneasily
+in his slumber, and ruffled his golden hair with his hands, and thrust
+off his coverings from his beautiful round white limbs.</p>
+
+<p>'Count Bela is not like our saint who died,' said the old nurse. 'He
+is always masterful, and loves his own way. My lady is strict with
+him, and wisely so, for he is a proud rebellious child. But he is very
+generous, and has noble ways. Count Gela is a little angel; he will be
+like the Heilige Graf.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely did not hear anything she said. His gaze was bent on the
+sleeping child, studying the lines of the delicate brows, of the
+curving lips, of the long black lashes. It was so familiar, so
+familiar! Suddenly as he gazed a light seemed to leap out of the
+darkness of long forgotten years, and the memory which had haunted him
+stood out clear before him.</p>
+
+<p>'He is like Vassia Kazán!' he cried, half aloud. The face of the child
+had recalled what in the face of the man had for ever eluded his
+remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>He thrust a gold coin in the nurse's hand, and hurried from the
+chamber. A sudden inconceivable, impossible suspicion had leaped up
+before him as he had gazed on the sleeping loveliness of Sabran's
+little son.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman saw his sudden pallor, his uncertain gesture, and
+thought, 'Poor gallant gentleman! He wishes these pretty boys were his
+own. Well, it might have been better if he had been master here, though
+there is nothing to say against the one who is so. Still, a stranger is
+always a stranger, and foreign blood is bad.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she drew the coverings over Bela's naked little limbs, and passed
+on to make sure that the little Ottilie, who had been born when the
+primroses where first out in the Iselthal woods, was sleeping soundly,
+and wanted nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely made his way to his own chamber, and there sat down heavily,
+mechanically, like a man waking out from a bad dream.</p>
+
+<p>His memory went back to twenty years before, when he, a little lad, had
+accompanied his father on a summer visit to the house of a Russian,
+Prince Paul Zabaroff. It was a house, gay, magnificent, full of idle
+men and women of facile charm; it was not a house for youth; but
+both the Prince Vàsàrhely and the Prince Zabaroff were men of easy
+morals&mdash;<i>viveurs</i>, gamesters, and philosophers, who at fifteen years
+old themselves had been lovers and men of the world. At that house
+had been present a youth, some years older than he was, who was known
+as Vassia Kazán: a youth whose beauty and wit made him the delight of
+the women there, and whose skill at games and daring in sports won him
+the admiration of the men. It was understood without even being said
+openly that Vassia Kazán was a natural son of the Prince Zabaroff. The
+little Hungarian prince, child as he was, had wit enough and enough
+knowledge of life to understand that this brilliant companion, of his
+was base-born. His kind heart moved him to pity, but his intense pride
+curbed his pity with contempt. Vassia Kazán had resented the latter too
+bitterly to even be conscious of the first. The gentlemen assembled had
+diverted themselves by the unspoken feud that had soon risen between
+the boys, and the natural intelligence of the little Magyar noble had
+been no match for the subtle and cultured brain of the Parisian Lycéen.</p>
+
+<p>One day one of the lovely ladies there, who plundered Zabaroff and
+caressed his son, amused herself with a war of words between the lads,
+and so heated, stung, spurred and tormented the Hungarian boy that,
+exasperated by the sallies and satires of his foe, and by the presence
+of this lovely goddess of discord, he so far forgot his chivalry that
+he turned on Vassia with a taunt. 'You would be a serf if you were in
+Russia!' he said, with his great black eyes flashing the scorn of the
+noble on the bastard. Without a word, Vassia, who had come in from
+riding and had his whip in his hand, sprang on him, held him in a grip
+of steel, and thrashed him. The fiery Magyar, writhing under the blows
+of one who to him was as a slave, as a hound, freed his right arm,
+snatched from a table near an oriental dagger lying there with other
+things of value, and plunged it into the shoulder of his foe. The
+cries of the lady, alarmed at her own work, brought the men in from
+the adjoining room; the boys were forced apart and carried to their
+chambers.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Vàsàrhely left the house that evening with his son, still
+furious and unappeased. Vassia Kazán remained, made a hero of and
+nursed by the lovely woman who had thrown the apple of strife. His
+wound was healed in three weeks' time; soon after his father's
+house-party was scattered, and he himself returned to his college. Not
+a syllable passed between him and Zabaroff as to his quarrel with the
+little Hungarian magnate. To the woman who had wrought the mischief
+Zabaroff said: 'Almost I wish he were my lawful son. He is a true wolf
+of the steppes. Paris has only combed his hide and given him a silken
+coat; he is still a wolf, like all true Russians.'</p>
+
+<p>Looking on the sleeping child of Sabran, all that half-forgotten scene
+had risen up before the eyes of Egon Vàsàrhely. He seemed to see the
+beautiful fair face of Vassia Kazán, with the anger on the knitted
+brows, and the ferocity on the delicate stern lips as he had raised his
+arm to strike. Twenty years had gone by; he himself, whenever he had
+remembered the scene, had long grown ashamed of the taunt he had cast,
+not of the blow he had given, for the sole reproof his father had ever
+made him was to say: 'A noble, only insults his equals. To insult an
+inferior is ungenerous, it is derogatory; whom you offend you raise for
+the hour to a level with yourself. Remember to choose your foes not
+less carefully than you choose your friends.'</p>
+
+<p>Why with the regard, the voice, the air of Sabran had some vague
+intangible remembrance always come before him?'</p>
+
+<p>Why, as he had gazed on the sleeping child had the vague uncertainty
+suddenly resolved itself into distinct revelation?</p>
+
+<p>'He is Vassia Kazán! He is Vassia Kazán!' he said to himself a score
+of times stupidly, persistently, as one speaks in a dream. Yet he knew
+he must be a prey to delusion, to phantasy, to accidental resemblance.
+He told himself so. He resisted his own folly, and all the while a
+subtler inner consciousness seemed to be speaking in him, and saying to
+him:</p>
+
+<p>'That man is Vassia Kazán. Surely he is Vassia Kazán.'</p>
+
+<p>And then the loyal soul of him strengthened itself and made him think:</p>
+
+<p>'Even if he be Vassia Kazán he is her husband. He is what she loves; he
+is the father of those children that are hers.'</p>
+
+<p>He never went to his bed that night. When the music ceased at an hour
+before dawn, and the great house grew silent, he still sat there by
+the open casement, glad of the cold air that blew in from over the
+Szalrassee, as with daybreak a fine film of rain began to come down the
+mountain sides.</p>
+
+<p>Once he heard the voice of Sabran, who passed the door on his way to
+his own apartment. Sabran was saying in German with a little laugh:</p>
+
+<p>'My lady!' I am jealous of your crown prince. When I left him now in
+his chamber I was disposed to immortalise myself by regicide. He adores
+you!'</p>
+
+<p>Then he heard Wanda laugh in answer, with some words that did not
+reach his ear as they passed on further down the corridor. Vàsàrhely
+shivered, and instinctively rose to his feet. He felt as if he must
+seek him out and cry out to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Am I mad or is it true? Let me see your shoulder&mdash;have you the mark of
+the wound that I gave? Your little child has the face of Vassia Kazán.
+Are you Vassia Kazán? Are you the bastard of Zabaroff? Are you the wolf
+of the steppes?'</p>
+
+<p>He had desired to go from Hohenszalras, where every hour was pain to
+him, but now he felt an irresistible fascination in the vicinity of
+Sabran. His mind was in that dual state which at once rejects a fact as
+incredible, and believes in it absolutely. His reason told him that his
+suspicion was a folly; his instinct told him that it was a truth.</p>
+
+<p>When in the forenoon the castle again became animated, and the guests
+met to the mid-day breakfast in the hall of the knights, he descended,
+moved by an eagerness that made him for the first time in his life
+nervous. When Sabran addressed him he felt himself grow pale; he
+followed the movements, he watched the features, he studied the tones
+of his successful rival, with an intense absorption in them. Through
+the hunting breakfast, at which only men were present, he was conscious
+of nothing that was addressed to him; he only seemed to hear a voice in
+his ear saying perpetually&mdash;&mdash;'Yonder is Vassia Kazán.'</p>
+
+<p>The day was spent in sport, sport rough and real, that gave fair play
+to the beasts and perilous exposure to the hunters. For the first time
+in his life, Egon Vàsàrhely let a brown bear go by him untouched,
+and missed more than one roebuck. His eyes were continually seeking
+his host; a mile off down a forest glade the figure of Sabran seemed
+to fill his vision, a figure full of grace and dignity, clad in a
+hunting-dress of russet velvet, with a hunting-horn slung at his side
+on a broad chain of gold, the gift of his wife in memory of the fateful
+day when he had aimed at the <i>kuttengeier</i> in her woods.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran of necessity devoted himself to the crown prince throughout
+the day's sport; only in the twilight as they returned he spoke to
+Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda is so full of regret that you wish to leave us,' he said, with
+graceful cordiality; 'if only I can persuade you to remain, I shall
+take her the most welcome of all tidings from the forest. Stay at the
+least another week, the weather has cleared.'</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he thought that Vàsàrhely looked at him strangely; but
+he knew that he could not be much loved by his wife's cousin, and
+continued with good humour to persist in his request. Abruptly, the
+other answered him at last.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda wishes me to stay? Well, I will stay then. It seems strange to
+hear a stranger invite <i>me</i> to Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran coloured; he said with hauteur:</p>
+
+<p>'That I am a stranger to Prince Vàsàrhely is not my fault. That I have
+the right to invite him to Hohenszalras is my happiness, due to his
+cousin's goodness, which has been far beyond my merit.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely's eyes dwelt on him gloomily; he was sensible of the dignity,
+the self-command, and the delicacy of reproof which were blent in the
+answer he had received; he felt humbled and convicted of ill-breeding.
+He said after a pause:</p>
+
+<p>'I should ask your pardon. My cousin would be the first to condemn my
+words; they sounded ill, but I meant them literally. Hohenszalras has
+been one of my homes from boyhood; it will be your son's when we are
+both dead. How like he is to you; he has nothing of his mother.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran, somewhat surprised, smiled as he answered:</p>
+
+<p>'He is very like me. I regret it; but you know the poets and the
+physiologists are for once agreed as to the cause of that. It is a
+truth proved a million times: <i>l'enfant de l'amour ressemble toujours
+au père.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely grew white under the olive hue of his sun-bronzed
+cheek. The <i>riposte</i> had been made with a thrust that went home. Otto
+at that moment approached his master for orders for the morrow. They
+were no more alone. They entered the house; the long and ceremonious
+dinner succeeded. Vàsàrhely was silent and stern. Sabran was the most
+brilliant of hosts, the happiest of men; all the women present were in
+love with him, his wife the most of all.</p>
+
+<p>'Réné tells me you will stay, Egon. I am so very glad,' his cousin said
+to him during the evening, and she added with a little hesitation, 'If
+you would take time to know him well, you would find him so worthy of
+your regard; he has all the qualities that most men esteem in each
+other. It would make me so happy if you were friends at heart, not only
+in mere courtesy.'</p>
+
+<p>'You know that can never be,' said Vàsàrhely, almost rudely. 'Even you
+cannot work miracles. He is your husband. It is a reason that I should
+respect him, but it is also a reason why I shall for ever hate him.'</p>
+
+<p>He said the last words in a tone scarcely audible, but low as it was,
+there was a force in it that affected her painfully.</p>
+
+<p>'What you say there is quite unworthy of you,' she said with gentleness
+but coldness. 'He has done you no wrong. Long ere I met him I told you
+that what you wished was not what I wished, never would be so. You are
+too great a gentleman, Egon, to nourish an injustice in your heart.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked down; every fibre in him thrilled and burned under the sound
+of her voice, the sense of her presence.</p>
+
+<p>'I saw your children asleep last night,' he said abruptly. 'They have
+nothing of you in them; they are his image.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is it so unusual for children to resemble their father?' she said with
+a smile, whilst vaguely disquieted by his tone.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I suppose not; but the Szalras have always been of one type. How
+came your husband by that face? I have seen it amongst the Circassians,
+the Persians, the Georgians; but you say he is a Breton.'</p>
+
+<p>'The Sabrans of Romaris are Bretons; you have only to consult history.
+Very beautiful faces like his have seldom much impress of nationality;
+they always seem as though they followed the old Greek laws, and were
+cast in the divine heroic mould of another time than ours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who was his mother?'</p>
+
+<p>'A Spanish Mexican.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely was silent.</p>
+
+<p>His cousin left him and went amongst her guests. A vague sense of
+uneasiness went with her at her consciousness of his hostility to
+Sabran. She wished she had not asked him to remain.</p>
+
+<p>'You have never offended Egon?' she asked Sabran anxiously that night.
+'You have always been forbearing and patient with him?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have obeyed you in that as all things, my angel,', he answered her
+lightly. 'What would you? He is in love with you still, and I have
+married you! It is even a crime in his eyes that my children resemble
+me! One can never argue with a passion that is unhappy. It is a kind of
+frenzy.'</p>
+
+<p>She heard with some impatience.</p>
+
+<p>'He has no right to cherish such a resentment. He keeps it alive by
+brooding on it. I had hoped that when he saw you here, saw how happy
+you render me, saw your children too, he would grow calmer, wiser, more
+reconciled to the inevitable.'</p>
+
+<p>'You did not know men, my love,' said Sabran, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>To him the unhappiness and the ill-will of Egon Vàsàrhely were matters
+of supreme indifference; in a manner they gratified him, they even
+supplied that stimulant of rivalry which a man's passion needs to keep
+at its height in the calm of safe possession. That Egon Vàsàrhely saw
+his perfect happiness lent it pungency and a keener sense of victory.
+When he kissed his wife's hand in the sight of her cousin, the sense
+of the pain it dealt to the spectator gave the trivial action to him
+all the sweetness and the ardour of the first caresses of his accepted
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>Of that she knew nothing. It would have seemed to her ignoble, as so
+much that makes up men's desire always does seem to a woman of her
+temperament, even whilst it dominates and solicits her, and forces her
+to share something of its own intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>'Egon is very unreasonable,' said Mdme. Ottilie. 'He believes that
+if you had not met Réné you would have in time loved himself. It is
+foolish. Love is a destiny. Had you married him you would not have
+loved him. He would soon have perceived that and been miserable, much
+more miserable than he is now, for he would have been unable to release
+you. I think he should not have come here at all if he could not have
+met M. de Sabran with at least equanimity.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think so, too,' said Wanda, and an impatience against her cousin
+began to grow into anger; without being conscious of it, she had placed
+Sabran so high in her own esteem that she could forgive none who did
+not adore her own idol. It was a weakness in her that was lovely and
+touching in a character that had had before hardly enough of the usual
+foibles of humanity. Every error of love is lovable.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely could not dismiss from his mind the impression which haunted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'I conclude you knew the Marquis de Sabran well in France?' he said one
+day to Baron Kaulnitz, who was still there.</p>
+
+<p>Kaulnitz demurred.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I cannot say that I did. I knew him by repute; that was not very
+pure. However, the Faubourg always received and sustained him; the
+Comte de Chambord did the same; they were the most interested. One
+cannot presume to think they could be deceived.'</p>
+
+<p>'Deceived!' echoed Prince Egon. 'What a singular word to use. Do you
+mean to imply the possibility of&mdash;of any falsity on his part&mdash;any
+intrigue to appear what he is not?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' said Kaulnitz, with hesitation. 'Honestly, I cannot say so much.
+An impression was given me at the moment of his signing his marriage
+contract that he concealed something; but it was a mere suspicion. As I
+told you, the whole Legitimist world, the most difficult to enter, the
+most incredulous of assumption, received him with open arms. All his
+papers were of unimpeachable regularity. There was never a doubt hinted
+by anyone, and yet I will confess to you, my dear Egon, since we are
+speaking in confidence, that I have had always my own doubts as to his
+marquisate of Sabran.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Grosser Gott!</i>' exclaimed Vàsàrhely, as he started from his seat.
+'Why did you not stop the marriage?'</p>
+
+<p>'One does not stop a marriage by a mere baseless suspicion,' replied
+Kaulnitz. 'I have not one shadow of reason for my probably quite
+unwarranted conjecture. It merely came into my mind also at the
+signing of the contracts. I had already done all I could to oppose
+the marriage, but Wanda was inflexible&mdash;you are witness of the charm
+he still possesses for her&mdash;and even the Princess was scarcely
+less infatuated. Besides, it must be granted that few men are more
+attractive in every way; and as he <i>is</i> one of us, whatever else he be,
+his honour is now our honour, as you said yourself the other day.'</p>
+
+<p>'One could always kill him,' muttered Vàsàrhely, 'and set her free so,
+if one were sure.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure of what?' said Kaulnitz, rather alarmed at the effect of his own
+words. 'You Magyar gentlemen always think that every knot can be cut
+with a sword. If he were a mere adventurer (which is hardly possible)
+it would not mend matters for you to run him through the heart; there
+are his children.'</p>
+
+<p>'Would the marriage be legal if his name were assumed?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no! She could have it annulled, of course, both by Church and Law.
+All those pretty children would have no rights and no name. But we are
+talking very wildly and in a theatrical fashion. He is as certainly
+Marquis de Sabran as I am Karl von Kaulnitz.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely said nothing; his mind was in tumult, his heart oppressed by
+a sense of secrecy and of a hope that was guilty and mean.</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak to his companion of Vassia Kazán, but his conjecture
+seemed to hover before his sight like a black cloud which grew bigger
+every hour.</p>
+
+<p>He remained at Hohenszalras throughout the autumnal festivities. He
+felt as if he could not go away with that doubt still unsolved, that
+suspicion either confirmed or uprooted. His cousin grew as uneasy at
+his presence there as she had before been uneasy at his absence. Her
+instinct told her that he was the foe of the one dearest to her on
+earth. She felt that the gallant and generous temper of him had changed
+and grown morose; he was taciturn, moody, solitary.</p>
+
+<p>He spent almost all his time out of doors, and devoted himself to the
+hardy sport of the mountains and forests with a sort of rage. Guests
+came and went at the castle; some were imperial, some royal people;
+there was always a brilliant circle of notable persons there, and
+Sabran played his part as their host, with admirable tact, talent, and
+good humour. His wit, his amiability, his many accomplishments, and
+his social charm were in striking contrast to the sombre indifference
+of Vàsàrhely, whom men had no power to amuse and women no power to
+interest. Prince Egon was like a magnificent picture by Rembrandt,
+as he sat in his superb uniform in a corner of a ball-room with the
+collars of his orders blazing with jewels, and his hands crossed on
+the diamond-studded hilt of his sword; but he was so mute, so gloomy,
+so austere, that the vainest, coquette there ceased to hope to please
+him, and his most cordial friends found his curt contemptuous replies
+destroy their desire for his companionship.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda, who was frankly and fondly attached to him, began to long for
+his departure. The gaze of his black eyes, fixed in their fire and
+gloom on the little gay figures of her children, filled her with a
+vague apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>'If he would only find some one and be happy,' she thought, with anger
+at this undesired and criminal love which clung to her so persistently.</p>
+
+<p>'Am I made of wax?' he said to her with scorn, when she ventured to
+hint at her wishes.</p>
+
+<p>'How I wish I had not asked him to remain here!' she said to herself
+many times. It was not possible for her to dismiss her cousin, who had
+been from his infancy accustomed to look on the Hohenszalrasburg as his
+second home. But as circle after circle of guests came, went, and were
+replaced by others, and Egon Vàsàrhely still retained the rooms in the
+west tower that had been his from boyhood, his continual presence grew
+irksome and irritating to her.</p>
+
+<p>'He forgets that it is now my husband's house!' she thought.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one living creature in all the place to whom Vàsàrhely
+unbent from his sullen and haughty reserve, and that one was the child
+Bela.</p>
+
+<p>Bela was as beautiful as the morning, with his shower of golden hair,
+and his eyes like sapphires, and his skin like a lily. With curious
+self-torture Vàsàrhely would attract the child to him by tales of
+daring and of sport, and would watch with intent eyes every line of
+the small face, trying therein to read the secret of the man by whom
+this child had been begotten. Bela, all unconscious, was proud of this
+interest displayed in him by this mighty soldier, of whose deeds in war
+Ulrich and Hubert and Otto told such Homeric tales.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will fight with you when he is big,' he would say, trying to
+inclose the jewelled hilt of Vàsàrhely's sword in his tiny fingers, or
+trotting after him through the silence of the tapestried corridors.
+When she saw them thus together she felt that she could understand the
+superstitious fear of oriental women when their children are looked at
+fixedly.</p>
+
+<p>'You are very good to my boy,' she said once to Vàsàrhely, when he had
+let the child chatter by his side for hours.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely turned away abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'There are times when I could kill your son, because he is his,' he
+muttered, 'and there are times when I could worship him, because he is
+yours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not talk so, Egon,'she said, gravely. 'If you will feel so, it is
+best&mdash;I must say it&mdash;it is best that you should see neither my child
+nor me.'</p>
+
+<p>He took no notice of her words.</p>
+
+<p>'The children would always be yours,' he muttered. 'You would never
+leave him, never disgrace him for their sake; even if one knew&mdash;it
+would be of no use.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Egon,' she said in real distress, 'what strange things are you
+saying? Are you mad? Whose disgrace do you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'Let us suppose an extreme case,' he said, with a hard laugh. 'Suppose
+their father were base, or vile, or faithless, would you hate the
+children? Surely you would.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not imagination enough to suppose any such thing,'she said very
+coldly. 'And you do not know what a mother's love is, my cousin.'</p>
+
+<p>He walked away, leaving her abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'How strange he grows!' she thought. 'Surely his mind must be touched;
+jealousy is a sort of madness.'</p>
+
+<p>She bade the children's attendants keep Count Bela more in the
+nurseries; she told them that the child teased her guests, and must
+not be allowed to run so often at his will and whim over the house.'
+She never seriously feared that Egon would harm the child: his noble
+and chivalrous nature could not have changed so cruelly as that; but
+it hurt her to see his eyes fixed on the son of Sabran with such
+persistent interrogation and so strange an intensity of observation. It
+made her think of old Italian tales of the evil eye.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know that Vàsàrhely had come thither with a sincere and
+devout intention to conquer his jealous hatred of her husband, and
+to habituate himself to the sight of her in the new relations of her
+life. She did not know that he would probably have honestly tried to
+do his duty, and honestly striven to feel at least esteem for one so
+near to her, if the suspicion which had become almost certainty in his
+own mind had not made him believe that he saw in Sabran a traitor,
+a bastard, and a criminal whose offences were the deepest of all
+possible offences, and whose degradation was the lowest of all possible
+degradation, in the sight of the haughty magnate of Hungary, steeped
+to the lips in all the traditions and the convictions of an unsullied
+nobility. If what he believed were, indeed, the truth, he would hold
+Sabran lower than any beggar crouching at the gate of his palace in
+Buda, than any gipsy wandering in the woods of his mountain fortress
+of Taróc. If what he believed were the truth, no leper would seem to
+him so loathsome as this brilliant and courtly gentleman to whom his
+cousin had given her hand, her honour, and her life.</p>
+
+<p>'Doubt, like a raging tooth,' gnawed at his heart, and a hope, which
+he knew was dishonourable to his chivalry, sprang up in him, vague,
+timid, and ashamed. If, indeed, it were as he believed, would not such
+crime, proven on the sinner, part him for ever from the pure, proud
+life of Wanda von Szalras? And then, as he thought thus, he groaned in
+spirit, remembering the children&mdash;the children with their father's face
+and their father's taint in them, for ever living witnesses of their
+mother's surrender to a lying hound.</p>
+
+<p>'Your cousin cannot be said to contribute to the gaiety of your
+house parties, my love,' Sabran observed with a smile one day, when
+they received the announcement of an intended visit from one of the
+archdukes. Egon Vàsàrhely was still there, and even his cousin, much
+as she longed for his departure, could not openly urge it upon him;
+relationship and hospitality alike forbade.</p>
+
+<p>'He is sadly changed,' she answered. 'He was always silent, but he is
+now morose. Perhaps he lives too much at Taróc, where all is very wild
+and solitary.'</p>
+
+<p>'He lives too much in your memory,' said Sabran, with no compassion.
+'Could he determine to forgive my marriage with you, there would be a
+chance for him to recover his peace of mind. Only, my Wanda, it is not
+possible for any man to be consoled for the loss of you.'</p>
+
+<p>'But that is nothing new,' she answered, with impatience. 'If he felt
+so strongly against you, why did he come here? It was not like his
+high, chivalrous honour.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps he came with the frank will to be reconciled to his fate,'
+said Sabran, not knowing how closely he struck the truth, 'and at the
+sight of you, of all that he lost and that I gained, he cannot keep his
+resolution.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then he should go away,' she said, with that indifference to all
+others save the one beloved which all love begets.</p>
+
+<p>'I think he should. But who can tell him so?'</p>
+
+<p>'I did myself the other day. I shall tell him so more plainly, if
+needful. Who cannot honour you shall be no friend of mine, no guest of
+ours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my love!' said Sabran, whose conscience was touched. 'Do not have
+feud with your relatives for my sake. They are worthier than I.'</p>
+
+<p>The Archduke, with his wife, arrived there on the following day, and
+Hohenszalras was gorgeous in the September sun, with all the pomp with
+which the lords of it had always welcomed their Imperial friends.
+Vàsàrhely looked on as a spectator at a play when he watched its
+present master receive the Imperial Prince with that supreme ease,
+grace, and dignity which were so admirably blent in him.</p>
+
+<p>'Can he be but a marvellous comedian?' wondered the man, to whom a
+bastard was less even than a peasant.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing of vanity, of effort, of assumption visible in the
+perfect manner of his host. He seemed to the backbone, in all the
+difficult subtleties of society, as in the simple, frank intercourse
+of man and man, that which even Kaulnitz had conceded that he was,
+<i>gentilhomme de race.</i> Could he have been born a serf&mdash;bred from the
+hour's caprice of a voluptuary for a serving-woman?</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely sat mute, sunk so deeply in his own thoughts that all the
+festivities round him went by like a pageantry on a stage, in which he
+had no part.</p>
+
+<p>'He looks like the statue of the Commendatore,' said Olga Brancka, who
+had returned for the archducal visit, as she glanced at the sombre,
+stately figure of her brother-in-law, Sabran, to whom she spoke,
+laughed with a little uneasiness. Would the hand of Egon Vàsàrhely ever
+seize him and drag him downward like the hand of the statue in <i>Don
+Giovanni?</i></p>
+
+<p>'What a pity that Wanda did not marry him, and that I did not marry
+you!' said Mdme. Brancka, saucily, but with a certain significance of
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p>'You do me infinite honour!' he answered. 'But, at the risk of seeming
+most ungallant, I must confess the truth. I am grateful that the gods
+arranged matters as they are. You are enchanting, Madame Olga, as a
+guest, but as a wife&mdash;alas! who can drink <i>kümmel</i> every day?'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled enchantingly, showing her pretty teeth, but she was bitterly
+angered. She had wished for a compliment at the least. 'What can these
+men see in Wanda?' she thought savagely. 'She is handsome, it is true;
+but she has no coquetry, no animation, no passion. She is dressed by
+Worth, and has a marvellous quantity of old jewels; but for that no one
+would say anything of her except that she was much too tall and had a
+German face!' And she persuaded herself that it was so; if the Venus
+de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her
+waist was large.</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Olga was still very lovely, and took care to be never seen except
+at her loveliest. She always treated Sabran with a great familiarity,
+which his wife was annoyed by, though she did not display her
+annoyance. Mdme Brancka always called him <i>mon cousin</i> or <i>beau cousin</i>
+in the language she usually used, and affected much more previous
+knowledge of him than their acquaintance warranted, since it had been
+merely such slight intimacy as results from moving in the same society.
+She was small and slight, but of great spirit; she shot, fished, rode,
+and played billiards with equal skill; she affected an adoration of
+the most dangerous sports, and even made a point of sharing the bear
+and the boar hunt. Wanda, who, though a person of much greater real
+courage, abhorred all the cruelties and ferocities that perforce
+accompany sport, saw her with some irritation go out with Sabran on
+these expeditions.</p>
+
+<p>'Women are utterly out of place in such sport as that, Olga,' she urged
+to her; 'and indeed are very apt to bring the men into peril, for of
+course no man can take care of himself whilst he has the safety of a
+woman to attend to; she must of necessity distract and trouble him.'</p>
+
+<p>But the Countess Stefan only laughed, and slipped with affectation her
+jewelled hunting-knife into its place in her girdle.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the Archduke's visit, and after the Prince's departure,
+Vàsàrhely continued to stay on, whilst a succession of other guests
+came and went, and the summer deepened into autumn. He felt that he
+could not leave his cousin's house with that doubt unsolved; yet he
+knew that he might stay on for ever with no more certainty to reward
+him and confirm his suspicions than he possessed now. His presence
+annoyed his host, but Sabran was too polished a gentleman to betray
+his irritation; sometimes Vàsàrhely shunned his presence and his
+conversation for days together, at other times he sought them and rode
+with him, shot with him, and played cards with him, in the vain hope of
+gathering from some chance admission or allusion some clue to Sabran's
+early days. But a perfectly happy man is not given at any time to
+retrospection, and Sabran less than most men loved his past. He would
+gladly have forgotten everything that he had ever done or said before
+his marriage at the Hofburg.</p>
+
+<p>The intellectual powers and accomplishments of Sabran dazzled Vàsàrhely
+with a saddened sense of inferiority. Like most great soldiers he
+had a genuine humility in his measurement of himself. He knew that he
+had no talents except as a leader of cavalry. 'It is natural that she
+never looked at me,' he thought, 'when she had once seen this man, with
+his wit, his grace, his facility.' He could not even regard the skill
+of Sabran in the arts, in the salon, in the theatre with the contempt
+which the 'Wild Boar of Taróc' might have felt for a mere maker of
+music, a squire of dames, a writer of sparkling little comedies, a
+painter of screens, because he knew that both at Idrac and in France
+Sabran had showed himself the possessor of those martial and virile
+qualities, by the presence or the absence of which the Hungarian noble
+measured all men. He himself could only love well and live well: he
+reflected sadly that honesty and honour are not alone enough to draw
+love in return.</p>
+
+<p>As the weeks passed on, his host grew so accustomed to his presence
+there that it ceased to give him offence or cause him anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>'He is not amusing, and he is not always polite,' he said to his
+wife, 'but if he likes to consume his soul in gazing at you, I am not
+jealous, my Wanda; and so taciturn a rival would hardly ever be a
+dangerous one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not jest about it,' she answered him, with some real pain. 'I
+should be very vexed at his remaining here, were it not that I feel
+sure he will in time learn to live down his regrets, and to esteem and
+appreciate you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who knows but his estimation of me may not be the right one?' said
+Sabran, with a pang of sad self-knowledge. And although he did not
+attach any significance to the prolonged sojourn of the lord of Taróc
+and Mohacs, he began to desire once more that his guest would return
+to the solitudes of the Carlowitz vineyards, or of the Karpathian
+mountains and gorges of snow.</p>
+
+<p>When over seven weeks had passed by, Vàsàrhely himself began to think
+that to stay in the Iselthal was useless and impossible, and he had
+heard from Taróc tidings which annoyed him&mdash;that his brother Stefan
+and his wife, availing themselves of his general permission to visit
+any one of his places when they chose had so strained the meaning of
+the permission that they had gone to his castle, with a score of their
+Parisian friends, and were there keeping high holiday and festival,
+to the scandal of his grave old stewards, and their own exceeding
+diversion. Hospitable to excess as he was, the liberty displeased him,
+especially as his, men wrote him word that his favourite horses; were
+being ruined by over-driving, and in the list of the guests which they
+sent him were the names of more than one too notorious lady, against
+whose acquaintance he had repeatedly counselled Olga Brancka. He would
+not have cared much what they had done at any other of his houses, but
+at Taróc, his mother, whom he had adored, had lived and died, and the
+place was sacred to him.</p>
+
+<p>He determined to tear himself away from Hohenszalras, and go and
+scatter these gay unbidden revellers in the dusky Karpathian ravines.
+'I cannot stay here for ever,' he thought, 'and I might be here for
+years without acquiring any more certainty than my own conviction.
+Either I am wrong, or he has nothing to conceal, or if I be right he is
+too wary to betray himself. If only I could see his shoulder where I
+struck the dagger&mdash;but I cannot go into his bath-room and say to him,
+"You are Vassia Kazán!"'</p>
+
+<p>He resolved to leave on the day after the morrow. For the next day
+there was organised on a large scale a hunting party, to which the
+nobility of the Tauern had been bidden. There were only some half-dozen
+men then staying in the Burg, most of them Austrian soldiers. The delay
+gave him the chance he longed for, which but for an accident he might
+never have had, though he had tarried there half a century.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning there was a great breakfast in the Rittersaal,
+at which Wanda did not appear. Sabran received the nobles and gentry
+of the province, and did the honours of his table with his habitual
+courtliness and grace. He was not hospitable in Vàsàrhely's sense of
+the word: he was too easily wearied by others, and too contemptuous of
+ordinary humanity; but he was alive to the pleasure of being lord of
+Hohenszalras, and sensible of the favour with which he was looked upon
+by a nobility commonly so exclusive and intolerant of foreign invasion.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast over, the whole party went out and up into the high woods.
+The sport at Hohenszalras always gave fair play to beast and bird. In
+deference to the wishes of his wife, Sabran would have none of those
+battues which make of the covert or the forest a slaughterhouse. He
+himself disdained that sort of sport, and liked danger and adventure
+to mingle with his out-of-door pastimes. Game fairly found by the
+spaniel or the pointer; the boar, the wolf, the bear, honestly started
+and given its fair chance of escape or revenge; the steinbock stalked
+in a long hard day with peril and effort&mdash;these were all delightful
+to him on occasion; but for the crowded drive, the horde of beaters,
+the terrified bewildered troop of forest denizens driven with sticks
+on to the very barrels of the gunners, for this he had the boundless
+contempt of a man who had chased the buffalo over the prairie, and
+lassoed the wild horse and the wild bull leaning down from the saddle
+of his mustang. The day passed off well, and his guests were all
+content: he alone was not, because a large brown bear which he had
+sighted and tired at twice had escaped him, and roused that blood-lust
+in him which is in the hearts of all men.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you come out alone with me to-morrow and try for that grand
+brute?' he said to Vàsàrhely, as the last of his guests took their
+departure.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since
+you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'</p>
+
+<p>He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught
+at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of
+Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had
+suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had
+intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving
+directions to the <i>jägermeister</i> for the next day.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is
+impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance
+resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a
+child.</p>
+
+<p>In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where
+the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a
+rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and
+mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in
+the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with
+no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their
+rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went
+through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a
+mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and
+capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big
+game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting
+and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and
+drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper
+woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian
+pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above
+some underground.</p>
+
+<p>'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper
+to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should
+be his host's.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my
+guest.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him
+to contrive to sting and wound him.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not
+observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed
+upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both
+in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron,
+good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about
+a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low
+hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and
+would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached.
+The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Well done,' cried Sabran, but scarcely were the words off his lips
+when another bear burst through the boughs ahead of him by fifty yards.
+He levelled his rifle and received its approach with two bullets in
+rapid succession. But neither had entered a vital part, and the animal,
+only rendered furious by pain, reared and came towards him with
+deadliest intent, its great fangs grinning. He fired again, and this
+shot struck home. The poor brute fell with a crash, the blood pouring
+from its mouth. It was not dead and its agony was great.</p>
+
+<p>'I will give it the <i>coup de grâce</i>,' said Sabran, who, for his wife's
+sake', was as humane as any hunter ever can be to the beasts he slew.</p>
+
+<p>'Take care,' said Vàsàrhely. 'It is dangerous to touch a wounded bear.
+I have known one that looked stone dead rise up and kill a man.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran did not heed. He went up to the poor, panting, groaning mass of
+fur and flesh, and drew his hunting-knife to give it the only mercy
+that it was now possible for it to receive. But as he stooped to
+plunge the knife into its heart the bear verified the warning he had
+been given. Gathering all its oozing strength in one dying effort to
+avenge its murder, it leaped on him, dashed him to the earth, and clung
+to him with claw and tooth fast in his flesh. He freed his right arm
+from its ponderous weight, its horrible grip, and stabbed it with his
+knife as it clung to and lacerated him where he lay upon the grass.
+In an instant, Vàsàrhely and the jäger who was with them were by his
+side, freed him from the animal, and raised him from the ground. He
+was deluged with its blood and his own. Vàsàrhely, for one moment of
+terrible joy, for which he loathed himself afterwards, thought, 'Is he
+dead?' Men had died of lesser things than this.</p>
+
+<p>He stood erect and smiled, and said that it was nothing, but even as he
+spoke a faintness came over him, and his lips turned grey.</p>
+
+<p>The jäger supported him tenderly, and would have had him sit down upon
+a boulder of rock, but he resisted.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me get to that water, he said feebly, looking to a spot a few
+yards off, where one of the many torrents of the Hohe Tauern tumbled
+from the wooded cliff above through birch and beechwood, and rushing
+underground left a clear round brown pool amongst the ferns. He took a
+draught from the flask of brandy; tendered him by the lad, and leaning
+on the youth, and struggling against the sinking swoon that was coming
+on him, walked to the edge of the pool, and dropped down there on one
+of the mossy stones which served as a rough chair.</p>
+
+<p>'Strip me, and wash the blood away, he said to the huntsman, whilst the
+green wood and the daylight, and the face of the man grew dim to him,
+and seemed to recede further and further in a misty darkness. The youth
+obeyed, and cut away the velvet coat, the cambric shirt, till he was
+naked to his waist; then, making sponges of handkerchiefs, the jäger
+began to wash the blood from him and staunch it as best he could.</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely stood by, without offering any aid; his eyes were
+fastened on the magnificent bust of Sabran, as the sunlight fell on the
+fair blue-veined flesh, the firm muscles, the symmetrical throat, the
+slender, yet sinewy arms, round one of which was clasped a bracelet of
+fair hair. He had the chance he needed.</p>
+
+<p>He approached and told the lad roughly to leave the Marquis to him,
+he was doing him more harm than good; he himself had seen many
+battle-fields, and many men bleeding to death upon their mother earth.
+By this time Sabran's eyes were closed; he was hardly conscious of
+anything, a great numbness and infinite exhaustion had fallen upon him;
+his lips moved feebly. 'Wanda!' he said once or twice,'Wanda!'</p>
+
+<p>The face of the man who leaned above him grew dark as night; he gnashed
+his teeth as he begun his errand of mercy.</p>
+
+<p>Leave me with your lord,' he said to the young jäger. 'Go you to the
+castle. Find Herr Greswold, bring him; do not alarm the Countess, and
+say nothing to the household.'</p>
+
+<p>The huntsman went, fleet as a roe. Vàsàrhely remained alone with
+Sabran, who only heard the sound of the rushing water magnified a
+million times on his dulled ear.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely tore the shirt in shreds, and laved and bathed the wounds,
+and then began to bind them with the skill of a soldier who had often
+aided his own wounded troopers. But first of all, when he had washed
+the blood away, he searched with keen and eager eyes for a scar on the
+white skin&mdash;and found it.</p>
+
+<p>On the right shoulder was a small triangular mark; the mark of what,
+to a soldier's eyes, told of an old wound. When he saw it he smiled a
+cruel smile, and went on with his work of healing.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran leaned against the rock behind him; his eyes were still closed,
+the pulsations of his heart were irregular. He had lost a great
+quantity of blood, and the pool at his feet was red. They were but
+flesh wounds, and there was no danger in them themselves, but great
+veins had been severed, and the stream of life had hurried forth in
+torrents. Vàsàrhely thrust the flask between his lips, but he could not
+swallow.</p>
+
+<p>All had been done that could be for the immediate moment. The stillness
+of the deep woods was around them; the body of the brown bear lay on
+the soaked grass; a vulture scenting death, was circling above against
+the blue sky. Over the mind of his foe swept at the sight of them one
+of those hideous temptations which assail the noblest natures in an
+hour of hatred. If he tore the bandages he had placed there off the
+rent veins of the unconscious man whom he watched, the blood would
+leap out again in floods, and so weaken the labouring heart that in
+ten minutes more its powers would fall so low that all aid would be
+useless. Never more would the lips of Sabran meet his wife! Never
+more would his dreams be dreamed upon her breast! For the moment the
+temptation seemed to curl about him like a flame; he shuddered, and
+crossed himself. Was he a soldier to slay in cold blood by treachery a
+powerless rival?</p>
+
+<p>He leaned over Sabran again, and again tried to force the mouthpiece
+of his wine-flask through his teeth. A few drops passed them, and
+he revived a little, and swallowed a few drops more. The blood was
+arrested in its escape, and the pulsations of the heart were returning
+to their normal measure; after a while he unclosed his eyes, and looked
+up at the green leaves, at the blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not alarm Wanda,' he said feebly. 'It is a scratch; it will be
+nothing. Take me home.'</p>
+
+<p>With his left hand he felt for the hair bracelet on his right arm,
+between the shoulder and the wrist. It was stiff with his own blood.</p>
+
+<p>Then Vàsàrhely leaned over him and met his upward gaze, and said in his
+ear, that seemed still filled with the rushing of many waters, 'You are
+Vassia Kazán!'</p>
+
+<p>When a little later the huntsman returned, bringing the physician, whom
+he had met a mile nearer the house in the woods, and some peasants
+bearing a litter made out of pine branches and wood moss, they found
+Sabran stretched insensible beside the water-pool; and Egon Vàsàrhely,
+who stood erect beside him, said in a strange tone:</p>
+
+<p>'I have stanched the blood, and he has swooned, you see. I commit him
+to your hands. I am not needed.'</p>
+
+<p>And, to their surprise, he turned and walked away with swift steps into
+the green gloom of the dense forest.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Sabran was still insensible when he was carried to the house.</p>
+
+<p>When he regained consciousness he was on his own bed, and his wife was
+bending over him. A convulsion of grief crossed his face as he lifted
+his eyelids and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda,' he murmured feebly, 'Wanda, you will forgive&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She kissed him passionately, while her tears fell like rain upon his
+forehead. She did not hear his words distinctly; she was only alive to
+the intense joy of his recovered consciousness, of the sound of his
+voice, of the sense of his safety. She kneeled by his bed, covering his
+hands with caresses, prodigal of a thousand names of love, given up to
+an abandonment of terror and of hope which broke down all the serenity
+and self-command of her habitual temper. She was not even aware of the
+presence of others. The over-mastering emotions of anguish and of joy
+filled her soul, and made her seem deaf, indifferent to all living
+things save one.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran lay motionless. He felt her lips, he heard her voice; he did not
+look up again, nor did he speak again. He shut his eyes, and slowly
+remembered all that had passed. Greswold approached him and held his
+fingers on his wrist, and held a little glass to his mouth. Sabran put
+it away. 'It is an opiate,' he said feebly; 'I will not have it.'</p>
+
+<p>He was resolute; he closed his teeth, he thrust the calming draught
+away.</p>
+
+<p>He was thinking to himself: 'Sometimes in unconsciousness one speaks.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are not in great pain?' asked the physician. He made a negative
+movement of his head. What were the fire and the smart of his lacerated
+flesh, of his torn muscles, to the torments of his fears, to the agony
+of his long stifled conscience?</p>
+
+<p>'Do not torment him, let him be still,' she said to the physician; she
+held his hand in both her own and pressed it to her heart. His languid
+eyes thanked her, then closed again.</p>
+
+<p>Herr Greswold withdrew to a little distance and waited. It seemed to
+him strange that a man of the high courage and strong constitution of
+Sabran should be thus utterly broken down by any wound that was not
+mortal; should be thus sunk into dejection and apathy, making no effort
+to raise himself, even to console and reassure his wife. It was not
+like his careless and gallant temper, his virile and healthful strength.</p>
+
+<p>It was true, the doctor reflected, that he had lost a great amount of
+blood. Such a loss he knew sometimes affects the heart and shatters the
+nervous system in many unlooked-for ways. Yet, he thought, there was
+something beyond this; the attitude and the regard of Egon Vàsàrhely
+had been unnatural at such an hour of peril. 'When he said just now
+"forgive," what did he mean?' reflected the old man, whose ear had
+caught the word which had escaped that of Wanda, who had been only
+alive to the voice she adored.</p>
+
+<p>The next four days were anxious and terrible. Sabran did not recover as
+the physician expected that he would, seeing the nature of his wounds
+and the naturally elastic and sanguine temperament he possessed. He
+slept little, had considerable fever, woke from the little rest he
+had, startled, alarmed, bathed in cold sweats; at other times he lay
+still in an apathy almost comatose, from which all the caresses and
+entreaties of his wife failed to rouse him. They began to fear that the
+discharge from the arteries had in some subtle and dangerous manner
+affected the action of the heart, the composition of the blood, and
+produced aneurism or pyæmia. 'The hero of Idrac to be prostrated by a
+mere flesh wound!' thought Herr Greswold in sore perplexity. He sent
+for a great man of science from Vienna, who, when he came, declared the
+treatment admirable, the wounds healthy, the heart in a normal state,
+but added it was evident the nervous system had received a severe
+shock, the effects of which still remained.</p>
+
+<p>'But it is that which I cannot understand,' said the old man in
+despair. 'If you only knew the Marquis de Sabran as I know him; the
+most courageous, the most gay, the most resolute of men! A man to laugh
+at death in its face! A man absolutely without fear!'</p>
+
+<p>The other assented.</p>
+
+<p>'Every one knows what he did in the floods at Idrac,' he answered; 'but
+he has a sensitive temperament for all that. If you did not tell me it
+is impossible, I should say that he had had some mental shock, some
+great grief. The prostration seems to me more of the mind than the
+body. But you have assured me it is impossible?'</p>
+
+<p>'Impossible! There does not live on earth a man so happy, so fortunate,
+so blessed in all the world as he.'</p>
+
+<p>'Men have a past that troubles them sometimes,' said the Vienna
+physician. 'Nay, I mean nothing, but I believe that M. de Sabran was a
+man of pleasure. The cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must
+drink long afterwards. I do not mean anything; I merely suggest. The
+prostration has to my view its most probable origin in mental trouble;
+but it would do him more harm than good to excite him by any effort to
+certify this. To the Countess von Szalras I have merely said, that his
+state is the result of the large loss of blood, and, indeed, after all
+it may be so.'</p>
+
+<p>On the fifth day, Sabran, still lying in that almost comatose silence
+which had been scarcely broken since his accident, said in a scarce
+audible voice to his wife:</p>
+
+<p>'Is your cousin here?'</p>
+
+<p>She stooped towards him and answered:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; he is here, love. All the others went immediately, but Egon
+remained. I suppose he thought it looked kinder to do so. I have
+scarcely seen him, of course.'</p>
+
+<p>The pallor of his face grew greyer; he turned his head away restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>'Why does he not go?' he muttered in his throat. 'Does he wait for my
+death?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Réné! hush, hush!' she said, with horror and amaze. 'My love, how
+can you say such things? You are in no danger; the doctor assures me
+so. In a week or two you will be well, you will be yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Send your cousin away.'</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated; troubled by his unreasoning, restless jealousy, which
+seemed to be the only consciousness of life remaining with him. 'I will
+obey you, love; you are lord here,' she said softly; 'but will it not
+look strange? No guest can well be told to go.'</p>
+
+<p>'A guest!&mdash;he is an enemy!'</p>
+
+<p>She sighed, knowing how hopelessly reason can struggle against the
+delusions of a sick bed. 'I will tell him to go to-morrow,' she said,
+to soothe him. 'To-night it is too late.'</p>
+
+<p>'Write to him&mdash;do not leave me.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a childlike appeal in his voice, that from a man so strong
+had a piteous pathos. Her eyes swam with tears as she heard.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my dearest, I will not leave you!' she said passionately, 'not for
+one moment whilst I live; and oh, my beloved! what could death ever
+change in <i>me</i>? Have you so little faith?'</p>
+
+<p>'You do not know,' he said, so low that his breath scarcely stirred the
+air.</p>
+
+<p>She thought that he was tormented by a doubt that she would not be
+faithful to him if he died. She stooped and kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>'My own, I would sooner be faithless to you in your life than after
+death. Surely you know me well enough to know that at the least?'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent. A great sigh struggled from his breast and escaped his
+pale lips like a parting breath.</p>
+
+<p>'Kiss me again,' he murmured; 'kiss me again, whilst&mdash;&mdash;That gives me
+life,' he said, as he drew her head down upon his bosom, where his
+heart throbbed labouredly. A little while later he fell asleep. He
+slept some hours. When he awoke he was consumed by a nameless fear.</p>
+
+<p>'Is your cousin gone?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She told him that it was one o'clock in the same night; she had not
+written yet.</p>
+
+<p>'Let him stay,' he said feverishly. 'He shall not think I fear him. Do
+you hear me? Let him stay.'</p>
+
+<p>The words seemed to her the causeless caprice of a jealousy magnified
+and distorted by the weakness of fever. She strove to answer him
+calmly. 'He shall go or stay as you please,' she assured him. 'What
+does it matter, dear, what Egon does? You always speak of Egon. You
+have never spoken of the children once.'</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to distract his thoughts. She was pained to think how deep,
+though unspoken, his antagonism to her cousin must have been, that now
+in his feebleness it&mdash;was the one paramount absorbing thought.</p>
+
+<p>A great sadness came upon his face as she spoke; his lips trembled a
+little.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! the children,' he repeated. 'Yes, bring them to me to-morrow. Bela
+is too like me. Poor Bela, it will be his curse.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is my joy of joys,' she murmured, afraid to see how his mind seemed
+astray.</p>
+
+<p>A shudder that was almost a spasm passed over him. He did not reply. He
+turned his face away from her, and seemed to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The day following he was somewhat calmer, somewhat stronger, though his
+fever was high.</p>
+
+<p>The species of paralysis that had seemed to; fall on all his faculties
+had in a great measure left him. 'You wish, me to recover,' he said to
+her. 'I will do so, though perhaps it were, better not?'</p>
+
+<p>'He says strange things,' she said to Greswold. 'I cannot think why he
+has such thoughts.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is not he, himself, that has them, it is his fever,' answered the
+doctor. 'Why, in fever, do people often hate what they most adore when
+they are in health?'</p>
+
+<p>She was reassured, but not contented.</p>
+
+<p>The children were brought to see him. Bela had with him an ivory
+air-gun, with which he was accustomed to blow down his metal soldiers;
+he looked at his father with awed, dilated eyes, and said that he would
+go out with the gun and kill the brothers of the bear that had done the
+harm.</p>
+
+<p>'The bear was quite right,' said Sabran. 'It was I who was wrong to
+take a life not my own.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is beyond Bela,' said his wife. 'But I will translate it to him
+into language he shall understand, though I fear very much, say what I
+will, he will be a hunter and a soldier one day.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela looked from one to the other, knitting, his fair brows as he sat
+on the edge of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will be like Egon,' he said, 'with all gold and fur to dress up
+in, and a big jewelled sword, and ten hundred men and horses, and Bela
+will be a great killer of things!'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran smiled languidly, but she saw that he flinched at her cousin's
+name.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not love you, Bela, if you are a killer of things that are
+God's dear creatures,' she said, as she sent the child away.</p>
+
+<p>His blue eyes grew dark with anger.</p>
+
+<p>'God only cares about Bela,' he said in innocent profanity, with
+a profound sense of his own vastness in the sight of heaven, 'and
+Gela,' he added, with the condescending tenderness wherewith he always
+associated his brother and himself.</p>
+
+<p>'Where could he get all that overwhelming pride?' she said, as he was
+led away. 'I have tried to rear him so simply. Do what I may he will
+grow arrogant and selfish.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear,' said Sabran, very bitterly, 'what avails that he was borne
+in your bosom? He is my son!'</p>
+
+<p>'Gela is your son, and he is so different,' she answered, not seeking
+to combat the self-censure to which she was accustomed in him, and
+which she attributed to faults or follies of a past life, magnified by
+a conscience too sensitive.</p>
+
+<p>'He is all yours then,' he said, with a wan smile. 'You have prevailed
+over evil.'</p>
+
+<p>In a few days later his recovery had progressed so far that he had
+regained his usual tone and look; his wounds were healing, and his
+strength was returning. He seemed to the keen eyes of Greswold to have
+made a supreme effort to conquer the moral depression into which he had
+sunk, and to have thrust away his malady almost by force of will. As he
+grew better he never spoke of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>On the fifteenth day from his accident he was restored enough to health
+for apprehension to cease. He passed some hours seated at an open
+window in his own room. He never asked if Vàsàrhely were still there or
+not.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda, who never left him, wondered at that silence, but she forbore to
+bring forward a name which had had such power to agitate him. She was
+troubled at the nervousness which still remained to him. The opening of
+a door, the sound of a step, the entrance of a servant made him start
+and turn pale. When she spoke of it with anxiety to Herr Joachim, he
+said vague sentences as to the nervousness which was consequent on
+great loss of blood, and brought forward instances of soldiers who had
+lost their nerve from the same cause. It did not satisfy her. She was
+the descendant of a long line of warriors; she could not easily believe
+that her husband's intrepid and careless courage could have been
+shattered by a flesh wound.</p>
+
+<p>'Did you really mean,' he said abruptly to her that afternoon, as he
+sat for the first time beside the open panes of the oriel; 'did you
+really mean that were I to die you would never forget me for any other?'</p>
+
+<p>She rose quickly as if she had been stung, and her face flushed.</p>
+
+<p>'Do I merit that doubt from you? she said. 'I think not.'</p>
+
+<p>She spoke rather in sadness than in anger. He had hurt her, he could
+not anger her. He felt the rebuke.</p>
+
+<p>'Even if I were dead, should I have all your life?' he murmured, in
+wonder at that priceless gift.</p>
+
+<p>'You and your children,' she said gravely. 'Ah! what can death do
+against great love? Make its bands stronger perhaps, its power purer.
+Nothing else.'</p>
+
+<p>'I thank you,' he said very low, with great humility, with intense
+emotion. For a moment he thought&mdash;&mdash;should he tell her, should he trust
+this deep tenderness which could brave death; and might brave even
+shame unblenching? He looked at her from under his drooped eyelids, and
+then&mdash;he dared not. He knew the pride which was in her better than she
+did&mdash;&mdash;her pride, which was inherited by her firstborn, and had been
+the sign manual of all her imperious race.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her where she stood with the light falling on her through
+the amber hues of painted glass; worn, wan, and tired by so many days
+and nights of anxious vigil, she yet looked a woman whom a nation
+might salute with the <i>pro rege nostro!</i> that Maria Theresa heard. All
+that a great race possesses and rejoices in of valour, of tradition,
+of dignity, of high honour, and of blameless truth were expressed in
+her; every movement, attitude, and gesture spoke of the aristocracy of
+blood. All that potent and subtle sense of patrician descent which had
+most allured and intoxicated him in other days now awed and daunted
+him. He dared not tell her of his treason. He dared not. He was as a
+false conspirator before a great queen he has betrayed.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you faint, my love?' she asked him, alarmed to see the change upon
+his face and the exhaustion with which he sunk, backward against the
+cushions of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>'Mere weakness; it will pass,' he said, smiling as best he might, to
+reassure her. He felt like a man who slides down a crevasse, and has
+time and consciousness enough to see the treacherous ice go by him,
+the black abyss yawning below him, the cold, dark death awaiting him
+beyond, whilst on the heights the sun is shining.</p>
+
+<p>That night he entreated her to leave him and rest. He assured her he
+felt well; he feigned a need of sleep. For fifteen nights she had not
+herself lain down. To please him she obeyed, and the deep slumber of
+tired nature soon fell upon her. When he thought she slept, he rose
+noiselessly and threw on a long velvet coat, sable-lined, that was by
+his bedside, and looked at his watch. It was midnight.</p>
+
+<p>He crossed the threshold of the open door into his wife's chamber and
+stood beside her bed for a moment, gazing at her as she slept. She
+seemed like the marble statue of some sleeping saint; she lay in the
+attitude of S. Cecilia on her bier at Home. The faint lamplight made
+her fair skin white as snow. Bound her arm was a bracelet of his hair
+like the one which he wore of hers. He stood and gazed on her, then
+slowly turned away. Great tears fell down his cheeks as he left her
+chamber. He opened the door of his own room, the outer one which led
+into the corridor, and walked down the long tapestry-hung gallery
+leading to the guest-chambers. It was the first time that he had walked
+without assistance; his limbs felt strange and broken, but he held on,
+leaning now and then to rest against the arras. The whole house was
+still.</p>
+
+<p>He took his way straight to the apartments set aside for guests. All
+was dark. The little lamp he carried shed a circle of light about his
+steps but none beyond him. When he reached the chamber which he knew
+was Egon Vàsàrhely's he did not pause. He struck on its panels with a
+firm hand.</p>
+
+<p>The voice of Vàsàrhely asked from within, 'Who is there? Is there
+anything wrong?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is I! Open,' answered Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment more the door unclosed. Vàsàrhely stood within it; he was
+not undressed. There were a dozen wax candles burning in silver sconces
+on the table within. The tapestried figures on the walls grew pale and
+colossal in their light. He did not speak, but waited.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran entered and closed the door behind him. His face was bloodless,
+but he carried himself erect despite the sense of faintness which
+assailed him.</p>
+
+<p>'You know who I am?' he said simply, without preface or supplication.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely gave a gesture of assent.</p>
+
+<p>'How did you know it?'</p>
+
+<p>'I remembered,' answered the other.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence. If Vàsàrhely could have withered to the
+earth by a gaze of scorn the man before him, Sabran would have fallen
+dead. As it was his eyes dropped beneath the look, but the courage and
+the dignity of his attitude did not alter. He had played his part of
+a great noble for so long that it had ceased to be assumption and had
+become his nature.</p>
+
+<p>'You will tell her?' he said, and his voice did not tremble, though his
+very soul seemed to swoon within him.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not tell her!'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely spoke with effort; his words were hoarse and stern.</p>
+
+<p>'You will not?'</p>
+
+<p>An immense joy, unlooked for, undreamed of, sprang up in him, checked
+as it rose by incredulity.</p>
+
+<p>'But you loved her!' he said, on an impulse which he regretted even
+as the exclamation escaped him. Vàsàrhely threw his head back with a
+gesture of fine anger.</p>
+
+<p>'If I loved' her what is that to you?' he said, with a restrained
+violence vibrating in his words. 'It is, perhaps, because I once loved
+her that your foul secret is safe with me now. I shall not tell her. I
+waited to say this to you. I could not write it lest it should meet her
+eyes. You came to ask me this? Be satisfied and go.'</p>
+
+<p>'I came to ask you this because, had you said otherwise, I would have
+shot myself ere she could have heard.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely said nothing; a great scorn was still set like the grimness
+of death upon his face. He looked far away at the dim figures on the
+tapestries; he shrunk from the sight of his boyhood's enemy as from
+some loathly unclean thing he must not kill.</p>
+
+<p>'Suicide!' he thought, 'the Slav's courage, the serf's refuge!</p>
+
+<p>Before the sight of Sabran the room went round, the lights grew dull,
+the figures on the walls became, fantastic and unreal. His heart beat
+with painful effort, yet his ears, his throat, his brain seemed full
+of blood. The nerves of his whole body seemed to shrink and thrill and
+quiver, but the force of habit kept him composed and erect before this
+man who was his foe, yet did for him what few friends would have done.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not thank you,' he said at last. 'I understand; you spare me for
+her sake, not mine.'</p>
+
+<p>'But for her, I would treat you so.'</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he broke in two a slender agate ruler which lay on the
+writing-table at his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>'Go,' he added, 'you have had my word; though we live fifty years you
+are safe from me, because&mdash;&mdash;because&mdash;&mdash;God forgive you! you are hers.'</p>
+
+<p>He made a gesture towards the door. Sabran shivered under the insult
+which his conscience could not resent, his hand dared not avenge.</p>
+
+<p>Hearing this there fell away from him the arrogance that had been his
+mask, the courage that had been his shield. He saw himself for the
+first time as this man saw him, as all the world would see him if once
+it knew his secret. For the first time his past offences rose up like
+ghosts naked from their graves. The calmness, the indifference, the
+cynicism, the pride which had been so long in his manner and in his
+nature deserted him. He felt base-born before a noble, a liar before a
+gentleman, a coward before a man of honour.</p>
+
+<p>Where he stood, leaning on a high caned chair to support himself
+against the sickly weakness which still came on him from his scarce
+healed wounds, he felt for the first time to cower and shrink before
+this man who was his judge, and might become his accuser did he choose.
+Something in the last words of Egon Vàsàrhely suddenly brought home
+to him the enormity of his own sin, the immensity of the other's
+forbearance. He suddenly realised all the offence to honour, all the
+outrage to pride, all the ineffaceable indignity which he had brought
+upon a great race: all that he had done, never to be undone by any
+expiation of his own, in making Wanda von Szalras the mother of his
+sons. Submissive, he turned without a word of gesture or of pleading,
+and felt his way out of the chamber through the dusky mists of the
+faintness stealing on him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against
+the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his
+clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.</p>
+
+<p>She was still asleep.</p>
+
+<p>When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever.
+He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a
+moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his
+desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.</p>
+
+<p>But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned
+to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had
+left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person,
+as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no
+importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said
+nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental
+impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian
+mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use
+to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife
+attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial
+always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength
+returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a
+gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened
+upon her with a strange appeal.</p>
+
+<p>One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was
+certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following
+words to his foe and his judge:</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,&mdash;&mdash;You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I
+send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical
+weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time
+or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof
+absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that
+the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue
+it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but
+shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of
+action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present
+permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have
+governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or
+chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern
+both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse
+at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia
+Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to
+nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the
+great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was
+taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never
+saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years
+old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I
+remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you,
+and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then
+returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him.
+One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the
+Prince Zabaroff was dead&mdash;my protector, as they termed him&mdash;and that
+I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make
+you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always
+been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family,
+could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts,
+the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then,
+thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father.
+I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my
+fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother
+Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year
+after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You
+see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things
+or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had
+a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices,
+like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the
+love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit
+which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of
+me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive
+tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in
+my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those
+three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me
+with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be
+rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did
+me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a
+word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis
+with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold
+some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque
+going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down
+with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone
+reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe,
+and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread,
+fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I
+neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me
+popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name
+of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went
+there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the
+moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I
+liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely
+more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his
+fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior.
+Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left
+for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his
+hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the
+Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the
+solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts
+the hiss of an Indian's arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he
+lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of
+him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows
+of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher
+in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been
+subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having
+wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died
+of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to
+think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life
+with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed
+me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the
+dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history
+of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was
+glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike
+as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on
+the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the
+steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men
+I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I
+loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican <i>ranch</i> near,
+within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us
+and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost
+inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps
+covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it
+all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be
+gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies
+which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight
+whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector
+and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose
+heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he
+died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything
+he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would
+collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France.
+For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss.
+I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and
+his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of
+cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave.
+I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the
+temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all
+those which had been brought with him from France by his Jesuit tutors,
+and the certificates of his own and his father's births and marriages,
+with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper
+containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and
+patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden
+in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had
+desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great
+sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine:
+he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human
+being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed
+to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots
+not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had
+the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was
+born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible
+reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years
+I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and
+purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris,
+yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in
+many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong
+which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that
+I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it
+seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had
+deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and
+had given me all he held most dear&mdash;&mdash;the fruits of his researches.
+To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation.
+I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as
+the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew
+that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke
+no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was
+recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned
+to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance
+with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to
+me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not
+having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I
+went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had
+been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The
+priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the
+name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing&mdash;&mdash;Bretons
+never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead
+men who had gone down when the <i>Estelle</i> had foundered off the Pinos.
+I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so
+much during my seven years' absence from Paris that I did not suppose
+anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran.
+And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known
+me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred
+of me as your cousin's husband; and had you even had suspicions you
+could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in
+the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down
+the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me
+take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune
+involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have
+done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and
+some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What
+was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over
+with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is
+my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious
+and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense
+perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it
+as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying
+ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to
+justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware
+that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true
+that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed
+me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to
+me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I
+had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely
+closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became
+almost by necessity a <i>fainéant</i>, and fate smiled upon me more than I
+merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all
+his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me.
+I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I
+can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so
+natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made
+me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to
+act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and
+irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call
+<i>flair.</i> I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on
+the Bourse. I was also, famous for <i>la main heureuse</i> in all forms of
+gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept
+always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed
+to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded
+the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should
+not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was
+a man of honour until&mdash;&mdash;I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to
+defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware
+of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied
+your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her.
+You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It
+is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions
+of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to
+me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia,
+but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am
+base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting
+elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and
+mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten
+by a great lord's momentary <i>ennui</i> and caprice! But if you will stoop
+so far&mdash;&mdash;if you will consider me ennobled by <i>her</i> enough to meet
+you as an equal would do&mdash;&mdash;we can find with facility some pretext
+of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me.
+You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are
+the only male champion&mdash;what her brothers would surely have taken had
+they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have
+passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your
+commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to
+their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet
+you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother's
+than their father's, and she will rear them in all noble ways.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return
+of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace
+with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his
+own cowardice and shame.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of
+Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief:&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for
+she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 60%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.'</p>
+
+<p>To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:</p>
+
+<p>'Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did
+not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has
+seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return.
+It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a
+prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go
+to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If
+ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope
+this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen
+you.' Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to
+be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name.
+Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your
+husband, and give me a remembrance in your prayers.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 70%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'EGON.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn
+shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and
+to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of
+her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to
+play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and
+eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this
+unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it
+plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian
+world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it
+was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman,
+which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon
+her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and
+what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at
+Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of
+it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation.
+If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again
+paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and
+her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda has ruined him!' she always thought angrily. 'He always expects
+every other woman to have a soul above <i>chiffons</i> and to bury herself
+in the country with children and horses.'</p>
+
+<p>Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which
+his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to
+her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the
+pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him.
+Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed
+measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to
+entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and
+was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law.
+She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only
+came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild
+forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely,
+and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope,
+which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for
+her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the
+post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and
+soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was
+called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish
+literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race
+of Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>What was in that letter?</p>
+
+<p>She attended to none of her own, so absorbed was she in the impression
+which gained upon her that the packet which had brought so much
+surprise and even emotion upon his face came from the hand of Wanda.
+'If even she should be no saint at all?' she thought, with a malicious
+amusement. She did not see Egon Vàsàrhely for many hours, but she
+did not lose her curiosity nor cease to cast about for a method of
+gratifying it. At the close of the day when she came back from hunting
+she went into the library, which was then empty. She did not seriously
+expect to see anything that would reward her enterprise, but she knew
+he read his letters there and wrote the few he was obliged to write:
+like most soldiers he disliked using pen and ink. It was dusk, and
+there were a few lights burning in the old silver sconces fixed upon
+the horns of forest animals against the walls. With a quick, calm
+touch, she moved all the litter of papers lying on the huge table
+where he was wont to do such business as he was compelled to transact.
+She found nothing that gratified her inquisitiveness. She was about
+to leave the room in baffled impatience&mdash;&mdash;impatience of she knew not
+what&mdash;&mdash;when her eyes fell upon a pile of charred paper lying on the
+stove.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those monumental polychrome stoves of fifteenth-century
+work in which the country-houses of Central Europe are so rich; a
+grand pile of fretted pottery, towering half way to the ceiling, with
+the crown and arms of the Vàsàrhely princes on its summit. There was
+no fire in it, for the weather was not cold, and Vàsàrhely, who alone
+used the room, was an ascetic in such matters; but upon its jutting
+step, which was guarded by lions of gilded bronze, there had been some
+paper burned: the ashes lay there in a little heap. Almost all of
+it was ash, but a few torn pieces were only blackened and coloured.
+With the eager curiosity of a woman who is longing to find another
+woman at fault, she kneeled down by the stove and patiently examined
+these pieces. Only one was so little burned that it had a word or two
+legible upon it; two of those words were Vassia Kazán. Nothing else was
+traceable; she recognised the handwriting of Sabran. She attached no
+importance to it, yet she slipped the little scrap, burnt and black as
+it was, within one of her gauntlets; then, as quickly as she had come
+there, she retreated and in another half hour, smiling and radiant,
+covered with jewels, and with no trace of fatigue or of weather, she
+descended the great banqueting-hall, clad as though the heart of the
+Greater Karpathians was the centre of the Boulevard S. Germain.</p>
+
+<p>Who was Vassia Kazán?</p>
+
+<p>The question floated above all her thoughts all that evening. Who was
+he, she, or it, and what could Sabran have to say of him, or her, or
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely? A less wise woman might have asked straightway
+what the unknown name might mean, but straight ways are not those
+which commend themselves to temperaments like hers. The pleasure and
+the purpose of her life was intrigue. In great things she deemed
+it necessity; in trifles it was an amusement; without it life was
+flavourless.</p>
+
+<p>The next day her brother-in-law abandoned Taróc, to join his hussars
+and prepare for the autumn manœuvres in the plains, and left her and
+Stefan in possession of the great place, half palace, half fortress,
+which had withstood more than one siege of Ottoman armies, where it
+stood across a deep gorge with the water foaming black below. But she
+kept the charred, torn, triangular scrap of paper; and she treasured
+in her memory the two words Vassia Kazán; and she said again and again
+and again to herself: 'Why should he write to Egon? Why should Egon
+burn what he writes?' Deep down in her mind there was always at work
+a bitter jealousy of Wanda von Szalras; jealousy of her regular and
+perfect beauty, of her vast possessions, of her influence at the Court,
+of her serene and unspotted repute, and now of her ascendency over the
+lives of Sabran and of Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>'Why should they both love that woman so much?' she thought very often.
+'She is always alike. She has no temptations. She goes over life as if
+it were frozen snow. She did one senseless thing, but then she was rich
+enough to do it with impunity. She is so habitually fortunate that she
+is utterly uninteresting; and yet they are both her slaves!'</p>
+
+<p>She went home and wrote to a cousin of her own who had been a member
+of the famous Third Section at Petersburg. She said in her letter: 'Is
+there anyone known in Russia as Vassia Kazán? I want you to learn for
+me to what or to whom this name belongs. It is certainly Russian, and
+appears to me to have been taken by some one who has been named <i>more
+hebrœo</i> from the city of Kazán. You, who know everything past,
+present, and to come, will be able to know this.'</p>
+
+<p>In a few days she received an answer from Petersburg. Her cousin wrote:
+'I cannot give you the information you desire. It must be a thing of
+the past. But I will keep it in mind, and sooner or later you shall
+have the knowledge you wish. You will do us the justice to admit that
+we are not easily baffled.'</p>
+
+<p>She was not satisfied, but knew how to be patient.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Strangely enough the consciousness that one person lived who knew
+his secret unnerved him. He had said truly that so much were all his
+instincts and temper those of an aristocrat that he had long ceased to
+remember that he was not the true Marquis de Sabran. The admiration men
+frankly gave him, and the ascendency he exercised over women, had alike
+concurred in fostering his self-delusion. Since his recognition by the
+foe of his boyhood a vivid sense of his own shamefulness, however, had
+come upon him; a morbid consciousness that he was not what he seemed,
+and what all the world believed him, had returned to him. Egon would
+never speak, but he himself could never forget. He said to himself in
+his solitude, 'I am Vassia Kazán! and what he had done appeared to him
+intolerable, infamous, beyond all expiation.</p>
+
+<p>It was like an impalpable but impassable wall built up between himself
+and her. Nothing was changed except that one man knew his secret, but
+this one fact seemed to change the face of the world. For the first
+time all the deference, all the homage with which the people of the
+Tauern treated him seemed to him a derision. Naturally of proud temper,
+and of an intellect which gave him ascendency over others, he had from
+the first moment he had assumed the marquisate of Sabran received
+all the acknowledgments of his rank with an honest unconsciousness
+of imposture. After all he had in his veins blood as patrician as
+that of the Sabrans; but now that Egon Vàsàrhely knew the truth he
+was perpetually conscious of not being what he seemed. The mere sense
+that about the world there was another living being who knew what he
+knew, shook down all the self-possession and philosophy which had so
+long made him assure himself that the assumption of a name was an
+immaterial circumstance, which, harming no one, could concern no one.
+Egon Vàsàrhely seemed to have seized his sophisms in a rude grasp, and
+shaken them down as blossoms fall in wind. He thought with bitter
+self-contempt how true the cynic was who said that no sin exists so
+long as it is not found out; that discovery is the sole form which
+remorse takes.</p>
+
+<p>At times his remorse made him almost afraid of Wanda, almost shrink
+from her, almost tremble at her regard; at other times it intensified
+his passion and infused into his embraces a kind of ferocity of
+triumph. He would show an almost brutal ardour in his caresses, and
+would think with an almost cruel exultation, 'I was born a serf, and I
+am her lover, her lord! Strangely enough, she began to lose something
+of her high influence upon him, of her spiritual superiority in his
+sight. She was so entirely, so perpetually his, that she became in a
+manner tainted with his own degradation. She could no longer check him
+with a word, calm him with a gesture of restraint. She was conscious of
+a change in him which she could not explain to herself. His sweetness
+of temper was broken by occasional irritability that she had never seen
+before. He was at times melancholy and absorbed; he at times displayed
+a jealousy which appeared unworthy of herself and him; at other moments
+he adored her, submitted to her with too great a humility. They were
+still happy, but their happiness was more uncertain, more disturbed by
+passing shadows. She told herself that it was always so in marriage,
+that in the old trite phrase nothing mortal was ever perfect long. But
+this philosophy failed to reconcile her. She found herself continually
+pondering on the alteration that she perceived in him, without being
+able to explain it to herself in any satisfactory manner.</p>
+
+<p>One day he announced to her without preface that he had decided to
+renounce the name of Sabran; that he preferred to any other the title
+which she had given him in the Countship of Idrac. She was astonished,
+but on reflection only saw, in his choice, devotion and deference to
+herself. Perhaps, too, she reflected with a pang, he desired some
+foreign mission such as she had once proposed to him; perhaps the life
+at Hohenszalras was monotonous and too quiet for a man so long used
+to the movement and excitation of Paris. She suggested the invitation
+of a circle of guests more often, but he rejected the idea with some
+impatience. He, who had previously amused himself so well with the
+part of host to a brilliant society, now professed that he saw nothing
+but trouble and <i>ennui</i> in a house full of people, who changed every
+week, and of royal personages who exacted ceremonious observances
+that were tedious and burdensome. So they remained alone, for even
+the Princess Ottilie had gone away to Lilienslust. For her own part
+she asked nothing better. Her people, her lands, her occupations, her
+responsibilities, were always interest enough. She loved the stately,
+serene tread of Time in these mountain solitudes. Life always seemed
+to her a purer, graver, more august thing when no echo of the world
+without jarred on the solemnity of the woods and hills. She wanted her
+children to grow up to love Hohenszalras, as she had always done, far
+above all pomps and pleasures of courts and cities.</p>
+
+<p>The winter went by, and he spent most of the days out of doors in
+violent exercise, sledging, skating, wolf hunting. In the evenings he
+made music for her in the white room: beautiful, dreamy music, that
+carried her soul from earth. He played for hours and hours far into the
+night; he seemed more willing to do anything than to converse. When he
+talked to her she was sensible of an effort of constraint; it was no
+longer the careless, happy, spontaneous conversation of a man certain
+of receiving sympathy in all his opinions, indulgence in all his
+errors, comprehension in even his vaguest or most eccentric ideas: a
+certain charm was gone out of their intercourse. She thought sometimes
+humbly enough, was it because a man always wearies of a woman? Yet
+she could scarcely think that, for his reverential deference to her
+alternated with a passion that had lost nothing of its voluptuous
+intensity.</p>
+
+<p>So the winter passed away. Madame Ottilie was in the South for her
+health, with her relatives of Lilienhöhe; they invited no one, and so
+no one could approach them. The children grew and throve. Bela and his
+brother had a little sledge of their own, drawn by two Spanish donkeys,
+white as the snows that wrapped the Iselthal in their serenity and
+silence. In their little sable coats and their sable-lined hoods the
+two little boys looked like rosebuds wrapped in brown moss. They were a
+pretty spectacle upon the ice, with their stately Heiduck, wrapped in
+his scarlet and black cloak, walking by the gilded shell-shaped sledge.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela loves the ice best. Bela wishes the summer never was!' said the
+little heir of the Counts of Szalras one day, as he leaped out from
+under the bearskin of his snow-carriage. His father heard him, and
+smiled a little bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>'You have the snow in your blood,' he thought. 'I, too, know how I
+loved the winter with all its privations, how I skimmed like a swallow
+down the frozen Volga, how I breasted the wind of the North Sea, sad
+with the dying cries of the swans! But I had an empty stomach and
+naked limbs under my rough goatskin, and you ride there in your sables
+and velvets, a proud little prince, and yet you are my son!'</p>
+
+<p>Was he almost angered against his own child for the great heirship to
+which he was born, as kings are often of their dauphins? Bela looked up
+at him a little timidly, always being in a certain awe of his father.</p>
+
+<p>'May Bela go with you some day with the big black horses, one day when
+you go very far?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ask your mother,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'She will like it,' said the child. 'Yesterday she said you never do
+think of Bela. She did not say it <i>to</i> Bela, but he heard.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will think of him,' said Sabran, with some emotion: he had a certain
+antagonism to the child, of which he was vaguely ashamed; he was sorry
+that she should have noticed it. He disliked him because Bela so
+visibly resembled himself that he was a perpetual reproach; a living
+sign of how the blood of a Russian lord and of a Persian peasant had
+been infused into the blood of the Austrian nobles.</p>
+
+<p>The next day he took the child with him on a drive of many leagues,
+through the frozen highways winding through the frosted forests under
+the huge snow-covered range of the Glöckner mountains. Bela was in
+raptures; the grand black Russian horses, whose speed was as the wind,
+were much more to his taste than the sedate and solemn Spanish asses.
+When they returned, and Sabran lifted him out of the sledge in the
+twilight, the child kissed his hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela loves you,' he said timidly.</p>
+
+<p>'Why do you?' said his father, surprised and touched. 'Because you are
+your mother's child?'</p>
+
+<p>Bela did not understand. He said, after a moment of reflection:</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is afraid, when you are angry; very afraid. But Bela does love
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran laid his hand on the child's shoulder. 'I shall never be angry
+if Bela obey his mother, and never pain her. Remember that.'</p>
+
+<p>'He will remember,' said Bela. 'And may he go with the big black horses
+very soon again?'</p>
+
+<p>'Your mother's horses are just as big, and just as black. Is it not the
+same thing to go with her?'</p>
+
+<p>'No. Because she takes Bela often; you never.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are ungrateful,' said Sabran, in the tone which always alarmed and
+awed the bold, bright spirit of his child. 'Your mother's love beside
+mine is like the great mountain beside the speck of dust. Can you
+understand? You will when you are a man. Obey her and adore her. So you
+will best please me.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela looked at him with troubled suffused eyes; he went within doors a
+little sadly, led away by Hubert, and when he reached his nursery and
+had his furs taken from off him he was still serious, and for once he
+did not tell his thoughts to Gela, for they were too many for him to
+be able to master them in words. His father was a beautiful, august,
+terrible, magnificent figure in his eyes; with the confused fancies
+of a child's scarce-opened mind he blended together in his admiration
+Sabran and the great marble form of S. Johann of Prague which stretched
+its arm towards the lake from the doors of the great entrance, and, as
+Bela always understood, controlled the waters and the storms at will.
+Bela feared no one else in all the world, but he feared his father,
+and for that reason loved him as he loved nothing else in his somewhat
+selfish and imperious little life.</p>
+
+<p>'It is so good of you to have given Bela that pleasure,' his wife said
+to him when he entered the white room. 'I know you cannot care to hear
+a child chatter as I do. It can only be tiresome to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will drive him every day if it please <i>you</i>,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no; that would be too much to exact from you. Besides, he would
+soon despise his donkeys, and desert poor Gela. I take him but seldom
+myself for that reason. He has an idea that he is immeasurably older
+than Gela. It is true a year at their ages is more difference than are
+ten years at ours.'</p>
+
+<p>'The child said something to me, as if he had heard you say I do not
+care for him?'</p>
+
+<p>'You do not, very much. Surely you are inclined to be harsh to him?'</p>
+
+<p>'If I be so, it is only because I see so much of myself in him.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her, assailed once more by the longing which at times came
+over him to tell her the truth of himself, to risk everything rather
+than deceive her longer, to throw himself upon her mercy, and cut short
+this life which had so much of duplicity, so much of concealment, that
+every year added to it was a stone added to the mountain of his sins.
+But when he looked at her he dared not. The very grace and serenity
+of her daunted him; all the signs of nobility in her, from the repose
+of her manner to the very beauty of her hands, with their great rings
+gleaming on the long and slender fingers, seemed to awe him into
+silence. She was so proud a woman, so great a lady, so patrician in
+all her prejudices, her habits, her hereditary qualities, he dared not
+tell her that he had betrayed her thus. An infidelity, a folly, even
+any other crime he thought he could have summoned courage to confess
+to her; but to say to her, the daughter of a line of princes: 'I, who
+have made you the mother of my children, I was born a bastard and a
+serf!' How could he dare say that? Anything else she might forgive,
+he thought, since love is great, but never that. Nay, a cold sickness
+stole over him as he thought again that she came of great lords who had
+meted justice out over whole provinces for a thousand years; and he
+had wronged her so deeply that the human tongue scarcely held any word
+of infamy enough to name his crime. The law would set her free, if she
+chose, from a man who had so betrayed her, and his children would be
+bastards like himself.</p>
+
+<p>He had stretched himself on a great couch, covered with white
+bear-skins. He was in shadow; she was in the light that came from the
+fire on the wide hearth, and from the oriel window near, a red warm
+dusky light, that fell on the jewels on her hands, the furs on her
+skirts, the very pearls about her throat.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at him anxiously, seeing how motionless he lay there, with
+his head turned backward on the cushions.</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid you are weak still from that wound,' she said, as she rose
+and approached him. 'Greswold assures me it has left no trace, but I am
+always afraid. And you look often so pale. Perhaps you exert yourself
+too much? Let the wolves be. Perhaps it is too cold for you? Would you
+like to go to the south? Do not think of me; my only happiness is to do
+whatever you wish.'</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand with deep unfeigned emotion. 'I believe in angels
+since I knew you,' he murmured. 'No; I will not take you away from the
+winter and the people that you love. I am well enough. Greswold is
+right. I could not master those horses if I were not strong; be sure of
+that.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I always fear that it is dull here for you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dull! with you? "Custom cannot stale her infinite variety." That was
+written in prophecy of your charm for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will always flatter me! And I am not "various" at all; I am too
+grave to be entertaining. I am just the German house-mother who cares
+for the children and for you.'</p>
+
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'Is that your portrait of yourself? I think Carolus Duran's is truer,
+my grand châtelaine. When you are at Court the whole circle seems to
+fade to nothing before your presence. Though there are so many women
+high-born and beautiful there, you eclipse them all.'</p>
+
+<p>'Only in your eyes! And you know I care nothing for courts. What I like
+is the life here, where one quiet day is the pattern of all the other
+days. If I were sure that you were content in it&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Why should you think of that?'</p>
+
+<p>'My love, tell me honestly, do you never miss the world?'</p>
+
+<p>He rose and walked to the hearth. He, whose life was a long lie, never
+lied to her if he could avoid it; and he knew very well that he did
+miss the world with all its folly, stimulant, and sin. Sometimes the
+moral air here seemed to him too pure, too clear.</p>
+
+<p>'Did I do so I should be thankless indeed&mdash;thankless as madmen are who
+do not know the good done to them. I am like a ship that has anchored
+in a fair haven after press of weather. I infinitely prefer to see
+none but yourself: when others are here we are of necessity so much
+apart. If the weather,' he added more lightly, 'did not so very often
+wear Milton's grey sandals, there would be nothing one could ever
+wish changed in the life here. For such great riders as we are, that
+is a matter of regret. Wet saddles are too often our fate, but in
+compensation our forests are so green.'</p>
+
+<p>She did not press the question.</p>
+
+<p>But the next day she wrote a letter to a relative who was a great
+minister and had preponderating influence in the council chamber of the
+Austrian Empire. She did not speak to Sabran of the letter that she
+sent.</p>
+
+<p>She had not known any of that disillusion which befalls most women in
+their love. Her husband had remained her lover, passionately, ardently,
+jealously; and the sincerity of his devotion to her had spared her
+all that terrible consciousness of the man's satiety which usually
+confronts a woman in the earliest years of union. She shrank now with
+horror from the fear which came to her that this passion might, like so
+many others, alter and fade under the dulness of habit. She had high
+courage and clear vision; she met half-way the evil that she dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring a Foreign Office despatch from Vienna came to him and
+surprised and moved him strongly. With it in his hand he sought her at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>'You did this!' he said quickly. 'They offer me the Russian mission.'</p>
+
+<p>She grew a little pale, but had courage to smile. She had seen by a
+glance at his face the pleasure the offer gave him.</p>
+
+<p>'I only told my cousin Kunst that I thought you might be persuaded to
+try public life, if he proposed it to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'When did you say that?'</p>
+
+<p>'One day in the winter, when I asked you if you did not miss the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never thought I betrayed that I did so.'</p>
+
+<p>'You were only over eager to deny it. And I know your generosity, my
+love. You miss the world; we will go back to it for a little. It will
+only make our life here dearer&mdash;I hope.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent; emotion mastered him. 'You have the most unselfish
+nature that was!' he said brokenly. 'It will be a cruel sacrifice to
+you, and yet you urge it for my sake.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear, will you not understand? What is for your sake is what is most
+for mine. I see you long, despite yourself, to be amidst men once more,
+and use your rare talents as you cannot use them here. It is only right
+that you should have the power to do so. If our life here has taken
+the hold on your heart then, I think you will come back to it all the
+more gladly. And then I too have my vanity; I shall be proud for the
+world to see how you can fill a great station, conduct a difficult
+negotiation, distinguish yourself in every way. When they praise you,
+I shall be repaid a thousand times for any sacrifice of my own tastes
+that there may be.'</p>
+
+<p>He heard her with many conflicting emotions, of which a passionate
+gratitude was the first and highest.</p>
+
+<p>'You make me ashamed,' he said in a low voice. 'No man can be worthy of
+such goodness as yours; and I&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Once more the avowal of the truth rose to his lips, but stayed
+unuttered. His want of courage took refuge in procrastination.</p>
+
+<p>'We need not decide for a day or two,' he added; 'they give me time; we
+will think well. When do you think I must reply?'</p>
+
+<p>'Surely soon; your delay would seem disrespect. You know we Austrians
+are very ceremonious.'</p>
+
+<p>'And if I accept, it will not make you unhappy?'</p>
+
+<p>'My love, no, a thousand times, no; your choice is always mine.'</p>
+
+<p>He stooped and kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'You are ever the same,' he murmured. 'The noblest, the most
+generous&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled bravely. 'I am quite sure you have decided already. Go to my
+table yonder, and write a graceful acceptance to my cousin Kunst. You
+will be happier when it is posted.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I will think a little. It is not a thing to be done in haste. It
+will be irrevocable.'</p>
+
+<p>'Irrevocable? A diplomatic mission? You can throw it up when you
+please. You are not bound to serve longer than you choose.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent: what he had thought himself had been of the irrevocable
+insult he would be held to have offered to the emperor, the nation, and
+the world, if ever they knew.</p>
+
+<p>'It will not be liked if I accept for a mere caprice. One must never
+treat a State as Bela treats his playthings,' he said as he rang, and
+when the servant answered the summons ordered them to saddle his horse.</p>
+
+<p>'No; there is no haste. Glearemberg is not definitely recalled, I
+think.'</p>
+
+<p>But as she spoke she knew very well that, unknown to himself, he had
+already decided; that the joy and triumph the offer had brought to him
+were both too great for him eventually to resist them. He sat down and
+re-read the letter.</p>
+
+<p>She had said the truth to him, but she had not said all the truth. She
+had a certain desire that he should justify her marriage in the eyes of
+the world by some political career brilliantly followed; but this was
+not her chief motive in wishing him to return to the life of cities.
+She had seen that he was in a manner disquieted, discontented, and
+attributed it to discontent at the even routine of their lives. The
+change in his moods and tempers, the arbitrary violence of his love
+for her, vaguely alarmed and troubled her; she seemed to see the germ
+of much that might render their lives far less happy. She realised
+that she had given herself to one who had the capacity of becoming a
+tyrannical possessor, and retained, even after six years of marriage,
+the irritable ardour of a lover. She knew that it was better for them
+both that the distraction and the restraint of the life of the world
+should occupy some of his thoughts, and check the over-indulgence of
+a passion which in solitude grew feverish and morbid. She had not the
+secret of the change in him, of which the result alone was apparent to
+her, and she could only act according to her light. If he grew morose,
+tyrannical, violent, all the joy of their life would be gone. She knew
+that men alter curiously under the sense of possession. She felt that
+her influence, though strong, was not paramount as it had been, and she
+perceived that he no longer took much interest in the administration
+of the estates, in which he had shown great ability in the first years
+of their marriage. She had been forced to resume her old governance
+of all those matters, and she knew that it was not good for him to
+live without occupation. She feared that the sameness of the days, to
+her so delightful, to him grew tiresome. To ride constantly, to hunt
+sometimes, to make music in the evenings&mdash;&mdash;this was scarcely enough to
+fill up the life of a man who had been a <i>viveur</i> on the bitumen of the
+boulevards for so long.</p>
+
+<p>A woman of a lesser nature would have been too vain to doubt the
+all-sufficiency of her own presence to enthral and to content him; but
+she was without vanity, and had more wisdom than most women. It did
+not even once occur to her, as it would have done incessantly to most,
+that the magnificence of all her gifts to him were title-deeds to his
+content for life.</p>
+
+<p>Public life would be her enemy, would take her from the solitudes she
+loved, would change her plans for her children's education, would bring
+the world continually betwixt herself and her husband; but since he
+wished it that was all she thought of, all her law.</p>
+
+<p>'Surely he will accept?' said Mdme. Ottilie, who had returned from the
+south of France.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, he will accept,' said his wife. 'He does not know it, but he
+will.'</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot imagine why he should affect to hesitate. It is the career
+he is made for, with his talents, his social graces.'</p>
+
+<p>'He does not affect; he hesitates for my sake. He knows I am never
+happy away from Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why did you write then to Kunst?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because it will be better for him; he is neither a poet nor a
+philosopher, to be able to live away from the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Which are you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the
+people she&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Reigns over,' added the Princess. 'Admit, my beloved, that a part of
+your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be
+quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda von Szalras smiled. 'Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed
+with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.'</p>
+
+<p>'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural
+life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.'</p>
+
+<p>At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great
+avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before
+coming into his wife's presence. He would no more have gone to her with
+the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in
+such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.</p>
+
+<p>When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with
+vivacity:</p>
+
+<p>'Well! you accept, of course?</p>
+
+<p>'I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the
+carpet.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda is a hermit,' she said; 'she should have dwelt in a cave, and
+lived on berries with S. Scholastica. What is the use of leaving it to
+her? She will say No. She loves her mountains.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then she shall stay amidst her mountains.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you will throw all your future away?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear mother, I have no future&mdash;&mdash;should have had none but for her.'</p>
+
+<p>'All that is very pretty, but after nearly six years of marriage it is
+not necessary to <i>faire des madrigaux.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess sat a little more erect, angrily, and continued to tap her
+foot upon the floor. His wife was silent for a little while; then she
+went over to her writing-table, and wrote with a firm hand a few lines
+in German. She rose and gave the sheet to Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'Copy that,' she said, 'or give it as many graces of style as you like.'</p>
+
+<p>His heart beat, his sight seemed dim as he read what she had written.</p>
+
+<p>It was an acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>'See, my dear Réné!' said the Princess, when she understood;
+'never combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon&mdash;
+unselfishness! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort.'</p>
+
+<p>The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of
+<i>faisant des madrigaux!</i>'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna,
+and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called
+her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who
+showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and
+welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the
+most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the
+prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified
+and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware
+that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands
+for <i>finesse</i> and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make
+upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his
+wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and
+splendour it required.</p>
+
+<p>He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when
+the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his
+nerve, his self-command, his <i>insouciance</i>; he was once more capable of
+honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman
+he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of
+his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates
+a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must
+always exist, <i>sub rosa</i>, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance
+with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for
+every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul
+Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen
+politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The
+prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of
+a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff
+as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle
+projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social
+honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the
+minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in
+all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the
+purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of
+Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked <i>moujik</i> in the
+<i>isba</i> of a Persian peasant.</p>
+
+<p>Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like
+all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify
+his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort
+that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and
+perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men
+was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public
+career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to
+be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor
+had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.</p>
+
+<p>'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition
+that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which
+had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from
+circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of
+his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the
+social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better
+moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess
+von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;'
+and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless
+and ill at ease.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold
+by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more
+prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if
+ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate,
+dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him
+with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed
+to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he
+been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his
+own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have
+always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion
+of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his
+own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any
+such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly,
+that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a
+suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always
+reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.</p>
+
+<p>This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life;
+not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a
+jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his
+ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it
+touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the
+felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the
+contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and
+witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and
+too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on
+his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed
+of constancy.</p>
+
+<p>'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of
+dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly
+degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is
+always hers and my love.'</p>
+
+<p>Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of
+her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty
+life led there under the show summits of her hills.</p>
+
+<p>He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's
+caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not
+infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most
+use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the
+daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.</p>
+
+<p>As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the
+Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and
+a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour
+and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he
+had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world
+beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had
+beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He
+went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now
+and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some
+portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some
+quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.</p>
+
+<p>On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:</p>
+
+<p>'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 70%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'WANDA.'</p>
+
+<p>No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches
+could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.</p>
+
+<p>The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the
+season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the
+sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and
+the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and
+magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present
+at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation,
+as the ambassador-designate to Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Court dress became him, and his great height and elegance of manner
+made him noticeable even in that brilliant crowd of notables. All the
+greatest ladies distinguished him with their smiles, but he gave them
+no more than courtesy. He saw only before the 'eye of memory' his wife
+as he had seen her at the last court ball, with the famous pearls about
+her throat, and her train of silver tissue sown with pearls and looped
+up with white lilac.</p>
+
+<p>'It is the flower I like best,' she had said to him. 'It brought me
+your first love-message in Paris, do you remember? It said little; it
+was very discreet, but it said enough!'</p>
+
+<p>'You are always thinking of Wanda!' said the Countess Brancka to him
+now, with a tinge of impatience in her tone.</p>
+
+<p>He coloured a little, and said with that hauteur with which he always
+repressed any passing jest at his love for his wife:</p>
+
+<p>'When both one's duty and joy point the same way it is easy to follow
+them in thought.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you follow them in action too,' said Mdme. Brancka.</p>
+
+<p>'If I do not, I am at least only responsible to Wanda.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who would be a lenient judge you mean? said the Countess, with a
+certain smile that displeased him. 'Do not be too sure; she is a von
+Szalras. They are not agreeable persons when they are angered.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not been so unhappy as to see her so,' said Sabran coldly,
+with a vague sense of uneasiness. As much as it is possible for a man
+to dislike a woman who is very lovely, and young enough to be still
+charming in the eyes of the world, he disliked Olga Brancka. He had
+known her for many years in Paris, not intimately, but by force of
+being in the same society, and, like many men who do not lead very
+decent lives themselves, he frankly detested <i>cocodettes.</i></p>
+
+<p>'If we want these manners we have our <i>lionnes</i>,' he was wont to say,
+at a time when Cochonette was seen every day behind his horses by the
+Cascade, and it had been the height of the Countess Olga's ambition at
+that time to be called like Cochonette. A certain resemblance there
+was between the great lady and the wicked one; they had the same small
+delicate sarcastic features, the same red gold curls, the same perfect
+colourless complexion; but where Cochonette had eyes of the slightest
+blue, the wife of Count Stefan had the luminous piercing black eyes of
+the Muscovite physiognomy. Still the likeness was there, and it made
+the sight of Mdme. Brancka distasteful to him, since his memories of
+the other were far from welcome. It was for Cochonette that he had
+broken the bank at Monte Carlo, and into her lap that he had thrown
+all the gold rouleaux at a time when in his soul he had already adored
+Wanda von Szalras, and had despised himself for returning to the slough
+of his old pleasures. It was Cochonette who had sold his secrets to
+the Prussians, and brought them down upon him in the farmhouse amongst
+the orchards of the Orléannais, whilst she passed safely through, the
+German lines and across the frontier, laden with her jewels and her
+<i>valeurs</i> of all kinds, saying in her teeth as she went: 'He will
+never see that Austrian woman again!' That had been the end of all he
+had known of Cochonette, and a presentiment of perfidy, of danger, of
+animosity always came over him whenever he saw the <i>joli petit minois</i>
+which in profile was so like Cochonette's, looking up from under the
+loose auburn curls that Mdme. Olga had copied from her.</p>
+
+<p>Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more
+admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds;
+and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette
+would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels
+flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams.
+There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her
+breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an <i>étourdissement</i>
+that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.</p>
+
+<p>'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda,
+<i>mon beau</i> cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are
+really going to Russia?'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe so.'</p>
+
+<p>'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in
+paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'</p>
+
+<p>'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy
+enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money
+that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played
+since my marriage.'</p>
+
+<p>'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A
+saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature,
+though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by
+marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean
+nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he
+was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.</p>
+
+<p>'Call me at least <i>cousinette</i>,' said Mdme. Olga; 'we are cousins, you
+know, thanks to Wanda. Oh! she will be very unhappy in St. Petersburg;
+she will not amuse herself, she never does. She is incapable of a
+flirtation; she never touches a card. When she dances it is only
+because she must, and then it is only a quadrille or a contre-dance.
+She always reminds me of Marie Thérèse's "In our position nothing is a
+trifle." You remember the Empress's letters to Versailles?'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran was very much angered, but he was afraid to express his anger
+lest it should seem to make him absurd.</p>
+
+<p>'Madame,' he said, with ill-repressed irritation, 'I know you speak
+only in jest, but I must take the liberty to tell you&mdash;&mdash;however
+bourgeois it appear&mdash;&mdash;that I do not allow a jest even from you upon my
+wife. Anything she does is perfect in my sight, and if she be imbued
+with the old traditions of gentle blood, too many ladies desert them in
+these days for me not to be grateful to her for her loyalty.'</p>
+
+<p>She listened, with her bright black eyes fixed on him; then she leaned
+a little more closely on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know that you said that very well? Most men are ridiculous
+when they are in love with their wives, but it becomes you, Wanda is
+perfect, we all know that; you are not alone in thinking so. Ask Egon!'</p>
+
+<p>The face of Sabran changed as he heard that name. As she saw the
+change she thought: 'Can it be possible that he is jealous?'</p>
+
+<p>Aloud she said with a little laugh: 'I almost wonder Egon did not
+run you through the heart before you married. Now, of course, he
+is reconciled to the inevitable; or, if not reconciled, he has to
+submit to it as we all have to do. He grows very <i>farouche</i>; he lives
+between his troopers and his castle of Taróc, like a barbaric lord
+of the Middle Ages. Were you ever at Taróc? It is worth seeing&mdash;&mdash;a
+huge fortress, old as the days of Ottokar, in the very heart of the
+Karpathians. He leads a wild, fierce life enough there. If he keep the
+memory of Wanda with him it is as some men keep an idolatry for what is
+dead.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran listened with a sombre irritation. 'Suppose we leave my wife's
+name in peace,' he said coldly. 'The <i>grosser cotillon</i> is about to
+begin; may I aspire to the honour?'</p>
+
+<p>As he led her out, and the light fell on her red gold curls, on her
+dazzling butterflies, her armour of diamonds, her snow-white skin, a
+thousand memories of Cochonette came over him, though the scene around
+him was the ball-room of the Hofburg, and the woman whose great bouquet
+of <i>rêve d'or</i> roses touched his hand was a great lady who had been the
+wife of Gela von Szalras, and the daughter of the Prince Serriatine.
+He distrusted her, he despised her, he disliked her so strongly that
+he was almost ashamed of his own antagonism; and yet her contact, her
+grace of movement, the mere scent of the bouquet of roses had a sort of
+painful and unwilling intoxication for the moment for him.</p>
+
+<p>He was glad when the long and gorgeous figures of the cotillon had
+tired out even her steel-like nerves, and he was free to leave the
+palace and go home to sleep. He looked at a miniature of his wife as
+he undressed; the face of it, with its tenderness and its nobility,
+seemed to him, after the face of this other woman, like the pure high
+air of the Iselthal after the heated and unhealthy atmosphere of a
+gambling-room.</p>
+
+<p>The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence
+was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which
+had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was
+brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural
+gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the
+sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some
+with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the
+empire.</p>
+
+<p>As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way
+slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through
+the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and
+odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After
+all, I may do her some honour before I die.'</p>
+
+<p>When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached
+him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said
+that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought
+it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the
+staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants
+away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.</p>
+
+<p>There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:</p>
+
+<p>'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to
+him, under secrecy, what I know.'</p>
+
+<p>They were fully signed&mdash;&mdash;'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a
+courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph.
+They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the
+Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>As the carriage of the Countess Olga rolled home through the Graben
+after the military spectacle, she stopped it suddenly, and signed to an
+old man in the crowd who was waiting to cross the road until a regiment
+of cuirassiers had rolled by. He was eyeing them critically, as only an
+old soldier does look at troops.</p>
+
+<p>'Is it you, Georg?' said Madame Olga. 'What brings you here?'</p>
+
+<p>'I came from Taróc with a letter from the Prince, my master,' answered
+the man, an old hussar who had carried Vàsàrhely in his arms off the
+field of Königsgrätz, after dragging him from under a heap of dead men
+and horses.</p>
+
+<p>'A letter! To whom?' asked Olga, who always was curious and persistent
+in investigation of all her brother-in-law's movements and actions.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely had not laid any injunction as to secrecy, only as to speed,
+upon his faithful servant; so that Georg replied, unwitting of harm,
+'To the Markgraf von Sabran, my Countess.'</p>
+
+<p>'A letter that could not go by post&mdash;how strange! And from Egon to
+Wanda's husband!' she thought, with her inquisitive eagerness awakened.
+Aloud she bade the old trooper call at her palace for a packet for
+Taróc, to make excuse for having stopped and questioned him, and drove
+onward lost in thought.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps it is a challenge late in the day!' she thought, with a laugh;
+but she was astonished and perplexed that any communication should take
+place between these men; she perplexed her mind in vain in the effort
+to imagine what tie could connect them, what mystery mutually affecting
+them could lie beneath the secret of Vassia Kazán.</p>
+
+<p>When, on the morrow, she heard at Court that the Emperor was deeply
+incensed at the caprice and disrespect of the Count von Idrac, as
+he was called at Court, who, at the eleventh hour, had declined a
+mission already accepted by him, and of which the offer had been in
+itself an unprecedented mark of honour and confidence, her swift
+sagacity instantly associated the action, apparently so excuseless and
+inexcusable, with the letter sent up from Taróc. It was still as great
+a mystery to her as it had been before what the contents of the letter
+could have been, but she had no doubt that in some way or another it
+had brought about the resignation of the appointment. It awakened a
+still more intense curiosity in her, but she was too wise to whisper
+her suspicion to anyone. To her friends at the Court she said, with
+laughter: 'A night or two ago I chanced to tell Sabran that his wife
+would be wretched at St. Petersburg. That is sure to have been enough
+for him. He is such a devoted husband.'</p>
+
+<p>No one of course believed her, but they received the impression that
+she knew the real cause of his resignation, though she could not be
+induced to say it.</p>
+
+<p>What did it matter to her? Nothing, indeed. But the sense of a secret
+withheld from her was to Mdme. Olga like the slot of the fox to a young
+hound. She might have a thousand secrets of her own if it pleased her,
+but she could not endure anyone else to guard one. Besides, in a vague,
+feverish, angry way, she was almost in love with the man who was so
+faithful to his wife that he had looked away from her as from some
+unclean thing when she had wished to dazzle him. She had no perception
+that the secret could concern him himself very nearly, but she thought
+it was probably one which he and Egon Vàsàrhely, for reasons of their
+own, chose to share and keep hidden. And if it were a secret that
+prevented Sabran from going to the Court of Russia? Then, surely, it
+was one worth knowing? And if she gained a knowledge of it, and his
+wife had none?&mdash;&mdash;what a superiority would be hers, what a weapon
+always to hand!</p>
+
+<p>She did not intend any especial cruelty or compass any especial end:
+she was actuated by a vague desire to interrupt a current of happiness
+that flowed on smoothly without her, to interfere where she had no
+earthly title or reason to do so, merely because she was disregarded
+by persons content with each other. It is not always definite motives
+which have the most influence; the subtlest poisons are those which
+enter the system we know not how, and penetrate it ere we are aware.
+The only thing which had ever held her back from any extremes of evil
+had been the mere habit of good-breeding and an absolute egotism which
+had saved her from all strong passions. Now something that was like
+passion had touched her under the sting of Sabran's indifference, and
+with it she became tenacious, malignant, and unsparing: adroit she had
+always been. Instinct is seldom at fault when we are conscious of an
+enemy, and Sabran's had not erred when it had warned him against the
+wife of Stefan Brancka as the serpent who would bring woe and disaster
+to his paradise.</p>
+
+<p>In some three months' time she received a more explicit answer from her
+cousin in St. Petersburg. Giving the precise dates, he told her that
+Vassia Kazán was the name given to the son of Count Paul Ivanovitch
+Zabaroff by a wayside amour with one of his own serfs at a village
+near the border line of Astrachan. He narrated the early history of
+the youth, and said that he had been amongst the passengers on board a
+Havre ship, which had foundered with all hands. So far the brief record
+of Vassia Kazán was clear and complete. But it told her nothing. She
+was unreasonably enraged, and looked at the little piece of burnt paper
+as though she would wrench the secret out of it.</p>
+
+<p>'There must be so much more to know,' she thought. 'What would a mere
+drowned boy be to either of those men&mdash;&mdash;a boy dead too all these years
+before?'</p>
+
+<p>She wrote insolently to her cousin, that the Third Section, with
+its eyes of Argus and its limbs of Vishnoo, had always been but an
+overgrown imbecile, and set her woman's wits to accomplish what the
+Third Section had failed to do for her. So much she thought of it that
+the name seemed forced into her very brain; she seemed to hear every
+one saying&mdash;&mdash;'Vassia Kazán.' It was a word to conjure with, at least:
+she could at the least try the effect of its utterance any day upon
+either of those who had made it the key of their correspondence. Russia
+had written down Vassia Kazán as dead, and the mystery which enveloped
+the name would not open to her. She knew her country too well not to
+know that this bold statement might cover some political secret, some
+story wholly unlike that which was given her. Vassia Kazán might have
+lived and have incurred the suspicions of the police, and be dwelling
+far away in the death in life of Siberian mines, or deep sunk in some
+fortress, like a stone at the bottom of a well. The reply not only
+did not beget her belief in it, but gave her range for the widest and
+wildest conjectures of imagination. 'It is some fault, some folly, some
+crime, who can tell? And Vassia Kazán is the victim or the associate,
+or the confidant of it. But what is it? And how does Egon know of it?'</p>
+
+<p>She passed the summer in pleasures of all kinds, but the subject did
+not lose its power over her, nor did she forget the face of Sabran as
+he had turned it away from her in the ball-room of the Hofburg.</p>
+
+<p>He himself had left the capital, after affirming to the minister that
+private reasons, which he could not enter into, had induced him to
+entreat the Imperial pardon for so sudden a change of resolve, and to
+solicit permission to decline the high honour that had been vouchsafed
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>'What shall I say to Wanda?' he asked himself incessantly, as the
+express train swung through the grand green country towards Salzburg.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting on the lake terrace with the Princess, when a telegram
+from her cousin Kunst was brought to her. Bela and Gela were playing
+near with squadrons of painted cuirassiers, and the great dogs were
+lying on the marble pavement at her feet. It was a golden close to a
+sunless but fine day; the snow peaks were growing rosy as the sun shone
+for an instant behind the Venediger range, and the lake was calm and
+still and green, one little boat going noiselessly across it from the
+Holy Isle to the further side.</p>
+
+<p>'What a pity to leave it all!' she thought as she took the telegram.</p>
+
+<p>The Minister's message was curt and angered:</p>
+
+<p>'Your husband has resigned; he makes himself and me ridiculous. Unable
+to guess his motive, I am troubled and embarrassed beyond expression.'</p>
+
+<p>The other, from Sabran, said simply: 'I am coming home. I give up
+Russia.'</p>
+
+<p>'Any bad news?' the Princess asked, seeing the seriousness of her face.
+Her niece rose and gave her the papers.</p>
+
+<p>'Is Réné mad!' she exclaimed as she read. His wife, who was startled
+and dismayed at the affront to her cousin and to her sovereign, yet had
+been unable to repress a movement of personal gladness, hastened to say
+in his defence:</p>
+
+<p>'Be sure he has some grave, good reason, dear mother. He knows the
+world too well to commit a folly. Unexplained, it looks strange,
+certainly; but he will be home to-night or in the early morning; then
+we shall know; and be sure we shall find him right.'</p>
+
+<p>'Right!' echoed the Princess, lifting the little girl who was her
+namesake off her knee, a child white as a snowdrop, with golden curls,
+who looked as if she had come out of a band of Correggio's baby angels.</p>
+
+<p>'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who
+had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard
+suspended in the air.</p>
+
+<p>'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme
+displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when
+through him you are probably <i>brouillée</i> with your Sovereign for life.'</p>
+
+<p>She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a
+caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon.
+I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible
+excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such
+vast importance.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would
+condemn Réné unheard?'</p>
+
+<p>'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps none. I know it is a very grave offence that he has committed,
+and yet I cannot help being happy,' said his wife with a smile, as she
+lifted up the little Ottilie, and murmured over the child's fair curls,
+'Ah, my dear little dove! We are not going to Russia after all. You
+little birds will not leave your nest!'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is not going to the snow palace?' said he, whose ears were very
+quick, and to whom his attendants had told marvellous narratives of an
+utterly imaginary Russia.</p>
+
+<p>'No; are not you glad, my dear?'</p>
+
+<p>He thought very gravely for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is not sure. Marc says Bela would have slaves in Russia, and
+might beat them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela would be beaten himself if he did, and by my own hand, said his
+mother very gravely. 'Oh, child! where did you get your cruelty?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is not cruel,' said the Princess. 'He is only masterful.'</p>
+
+<p>'Alas! it is the same thing.'</p>
+
+<p>She sent the children indoors, and remained after the sun-glow had all
+faded, and Mdme. Ottilie had gone away to her own rooms, and paced
+to and fro the length of the terrace, troubled by an anxiety which
+she would have owned to no one. What could have happened to make
+him so offend alike the State and the Court? She tormented herself
+with wondering again and again whether she had used any incautious
+expression in her letters which could have betrayed to him the poignant
+regret the coming exile gave her. No! she was sure she had not done
+so. She had only written twice, preferring telegrams as quicker, and,
+to a man, less troublesome than letters. She knew courts and cabinets
+too well not to know that the step her husband had taken was one which
+would wholly ruin the favour he enjoyed with the former, and wholly
+take away all chance of his being ever called again to serve the
+latter. Personally she was indifferent to that kind of ambition; but
+her attachment to the Imperial house was too strong, and her loyalty
+to it too hereditary, for her not to be alarmed at the idea of losing
+its good-will. Disquieted and afraid of all kinds of formless unknown
+ills, she went with a heavy heart into the Rittersaal to a dinner for
+which she could find no appetite. The Princess also, so talkative and
+vivacious at other times, was silent and pre-occupied. The evening
+passed tediously. He did not come.</p>
+
+<p>It was past midnight, and she had given up all hope of his arrival,
+when she heard the returning trot of the horses, who had been sent over
+to Matrey in the evening on the chance of his being there. She was in
+her own chamber, having dismissed her women, and was trying in vain to
+keep her thoughts to nightly prayer. At the sound of the horses' feet
+without, she threw on a <i>négligé</i> of white satin and lace, and went,
+out on to the staircase to meet him. As he came up the broad stairs,
+with Donau and Neva gladly leaping on him, he looked up and saw her
+against the background of oak and tapestry and old armour, with the
+light of a great Persian lamp in metal that swung above shed full upon
+her. She had never looked more lovely to him than as she stood so, her
+eyes eagerly searching the dim shadow for him, and the loose white
+folds embroidered in silk with pale roses flowing downward from her
+throat to her feet. He drew her within her chamber, and took her in his
+arms with a passionate gesture.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us forget everything,' he murmured, 'except that we have been
+parted nearly a month!'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the morning, after breakfast in the little Saxe room, she said to
+him with gentle firmness: 'Réné, you must tell me now&mdash;why have you
+refused Russia?'</p>
+
+<p>He had known that the question must come, and all the way on his
+homeward journey he had been revolving in his mind the answer he would
+give to it. He was very pale, but otherwise he betrayed no agitation as
+he turned and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>'That is what I cannot tell you,' he replied.</p>
+
+<p>She could not believe she heard aright.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'I have had a message from Kunst;
+he is deeply angered. I understand that, after all was arranged, you
+abruptly resigned the Russian mission. I ask your reasons. It is a very
+grave step to have taken. I suppose your motives must be very strong
+ones?'</p>
+
+<p>'They are so,' said Sabran; and he continued in the forced and measured
+tone of one who recites what he has taught himself to say: 'It is quite
+natural that your cousin Kunst should be offended; the Emperor also.
+You perhaps will be the same when I say to you that I cannot tell you,
+as I cannot tell them, the grounds of my withdrawal. Perhaps you, like
+them, will not forgive it.'</p>
+
+<p>Her nostrils dilated and her breast heaved: she was startled,
+mortified, amazed. 'You do not choose to tell <i>me</i>!' she said in
+stupefaction.</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot tell you.'</p>
+
+<p>'She gazed at him with the first bitterness of wrath that he had ever
+seen upon her face. She had been used to perfect submission of others
+all her life. She had the blood in her of stern princes, who had meted
+out rule and justice against which there had been no appeal. She was
+accustomed even in him to deference, homage, consideration, to be
+consulted always, deferred to often. His answer for the moment seemed
+to her an unwarrantable insult.</p>
+
+<p>Her influence, her relatives, her sovereign, had given him one of the
+highest honours conceivable, and he did not choose to even say why he
+was thankless for it! Passionate and withering words rose to her lips,
+but she restrained their utterance. Not even in that moment could she
+bring herself to speak what might seem to rebuke him with the weight
+of all his debt to her. She remained silent, but he understood all the
+intense indignation that held her speechless there. He approached her
+more nearly, and spoke with emotion, but with a certain sternness in
+his voice&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'I know very well that I must offend and even outrage you. But I
+cannot tell you my motives. It is the first time that I have ever
+acted independently of you or failed to consult your wishes. I only
+venture to remind you that marriage does give to the man the right to
+do so, though I have never availed myself of it. Nay, even now, I owe
+you too much to be ingrate enough to take refuge in my authority as
+your husband. I prefer to owe more, as I have owed so much, to your
+tenderness. I prefer to ask of you, by your love for me, not to press
+me for an answer that I am not in a position to make; to be content
+with what I say&mdash;that I have relinquished the Russian mission because I
+have no choice but to do so.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke firmly, because he spoke only the truth, although not all the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>A great anger rose up in her, the first that she had ever been moved to
+by him. All the pride of her temper and all her dignity were outraged
+by this refusal to have confidence in her. It seemed incredible
+to her. She still thought herself the prey of some dream, of some
+hallucination. Her lips parted to speak, but again she withheld the
+words she was about to utter. Her strong justice compelled her to admit
+that he was but within his rights, and her sense of duty was stronger
+than her sense of self-love.</p>
+
+<p>She did not look at him, nor could she trust her voice. She turned
+from him without a syllable, and left the room. She was afraid of the
+violence of the anger that she felt.</p>
+
+<p>'If it had been only to myself I would pardon it,' she thought; 'but an
+insult to my people, to my country, to my sovereign!&mdash;an insult without
+excuse, or explanation, or apology&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She shut herself alone within her oratory and passed the most bitter
+hour of her life. The imperious and violent temper of the Szalras
+was dormant in her character, though she had chastened and tamed it,
+and the natural sweetness and serenity of her disposition had been a
+counterpoise to it so strong that the latter had become the only thing
+visible in her. But all the wrath of her race was now aroused and in
+arms against what she loved best on earth.</p>
+
+<p>'If it had been anything else,' she thought; 'but a public act like
+this&mdash;an ingratitude to the Crown itself! A caprice for all the world
+to chatter of and blame!'</p>
+
+<p>It would have been hard enough to bear, difficult enough to explain
+away to others, if he had told her his reasons, however captious,
+unwise, or selfish they might be; but to have the door of his soul
+thus shut upon her, his thoughts thus closed to her, hurt her with
+intolerable pain, and filled her with a deep and burning indignation.</p>
+
+<p>She passed all the early morning hours alone in her little temple of
+prayer, striving in vain against the bitterness of her heart; above
+her the great ivory Crucifixion, the work of Angermayer, beneath which
+so many generations of the women of the House of Szalras had knelt in
+their hours of tribulation or bereavement.</p>
+
+<p>When she left the oratory she had conquered herself. Though she could
+not extinguish the human passions that smarted and throbbed within her,
+she knew her duty well enough to know that it must lie in submission
+and in silence.</p>
+
+<p>She sought for him at once. She found him in the library: he was
+playing to himself a long dreamy concerto of Schubert's, to soothe the
+irritation of his own nerves and pass away a time of keen suspense. He
+rose as she came into the room, and awaited her approach with a timid
+anxiety in his eyes, which she was too absorbed by her own emotions to
+observe. He had assumed a boldness that he had not, and had used his
+power to dominate her rather in desperation than in any sense of actual
+mastery. In his heart it was he who feared her.</p>
+
+<p>'You were quite right,' she said simply to him. 'Of course, you are
+master of your own actions, and owe no account of them to me. We will
+say no more about it. For myself, you know I am content enough to
+escape exile to any embassy.'</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand with an unfeigned reverence and humility.</p>
+
+<p>'You are as merciful as you are great,' he murmured. 'If I be silent it
+is my misfortune.' He paused abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden thought came over her as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'It is some State secret that he knows and cannot speak of, and that
+has made him unwilling to go. Why did I never think of that before?'</p>
+
+<p>An explanation that had its root in honour, a reticence that sprang
+from conscience, were so welcome to her, and to her appeared so
+natural, that they now consoled her at once, and healed the wounds to
+her own pride.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, if it be so, he is right not to speak even to me,' she
+mused, and her only desire was now to save him from the insistence and
+the indignation of the Princess, and the examination which these were
+sure to entail upon him when he should meet her at the noon breakfast
+now at hand.</p>
+
+<p>To that end she sought out her aunt in her own apartments, taking
+with her the tiny Ottilie, who always disarmed all irritation in her
+godmother by the mere presence of her little flower-like face.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear mother,' she said softly, when the child had made her morning
+obeisance, 'I am come to ask of you a great favour and kindness to me.
+Réné returned last night. He has done what he thought right. I do not
+even ask his reasons. He has acted from <i>force majeure</i> by dictate of
+his own honour. Will you do as I mean to do? Will you spare him any
+interrogation? I shall be so grateful to you, and so will he.'</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Ottilie, opening her bonbonnière for her namesake, drew up her
+fragile figure with a severity unusual to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Do I hear you aright? You do not even know the reasons of the insult
+M. de Sabran has passed upon the Crown and Cabinet, and you do not even
+mean to ask them?'</p>
+
+<p>'I do mean that; and what I do not ask I feel sure you will admit no
+one else has any right to ask of him.'</p>
+
+<p>'No one certainly except His Majesty.'</p>
+
+<p>'I presume His Majesty has had all information due to him as our
+Imperial master. All I entreat of you, dearest mother, is to do as
+I have done; assume, as we are bound to assume, that Réné has acted
+wisely and rightly, and not weary him with questions to which it will
+be painful to him not to respond.'</p>
+
+<p>'Questions! I never yet indulged in anything so vulgar as curiosity,
+that you should imagine I shall be capable of subjecting your husband
+to a cross-examination. If you be satisfied, I can have no right to
+be more exacting than yourself. The occurrence is to me lamentable,
+inexcusable, unintelligible; but if explanation be not offered me you
+may rest assured I shall not intrude my request for it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of that I am sure; but I am not contented only with that. I want you
+to feel no dissatisfaction, no doubt, no anger against him. You may be
+sure that he has acted from conviction, because he was most desirous to
+go to Russia, as you saw when you urged him to accept the mission.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have said the utmost that I can say,' replied the Princess, with a
+chill light in her blue eyes. 'This little child is no more likely to
+ask questions than I am, after what you have stated. But you must not
+regard my silence as any condonation of what must always appear to me a
+step disrespectful to the Crown, contrary to all usages of etiquette,
+and injurious to his own future and that of his children. His scruples
+of conscience came too late.'</p>
+
+<p>'I did not say they were exactly that. I believe he learned something
+which made him consider that his honour required him to withdraw.'</p>
+
+<p>'That may be,' said the Princess, frigidly. 'As I observed, it came
+lamentably late. You will excuse me if I breakfast in my own rooms this
+morning.'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda left her, gave the child to a nurse who waited without, and
+returned to the library. She had offended and pained Mdme. Ottilie,
+but she had saved her husband from annoyance. She knew that though
+the Princess was by no means as free from curiosity as she declared
+herself, she was too high-bred and too proud to solicit a confidence
+withheld from her.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran was seated at the piano where she had left him, but his forehead
+rested on the woodwork of it, and his whole attitude was suggestive
+of sad and absorbed thought and abandonment to regrets that were
+unavailing.</p>
+
+<p>'It has cost him so much,' she reflected as she looked at him. 'Perhaps
+it has been a self-sacrifice, a heroism even; and I, from mere wounded
+feeling, have been angered against him and almost cruel!'</p>
+
+<p>With the exaggeration in self-censure of all generous natures, she was
+full of remorse at having added any pain to the disappointment which
+had been his portion; a disappointment none the less poignant, as she
+saw, because it had been voluntarily, as she imagined, accepted.</p>
+
+<p>As he heard her approach he started and rose, and the expression of his
+face startled her for a moment; it was so full of pain, of melancholy,
+almost (could she have believed it) of despair. What could this matter
+be to affect him thus, since being of the State it could be at its
+worst only some painful and compromising secret of political life which
+could have no personal meaning for him? It was surely impossible that
+mere disappointment&mdash;&mdash;a disappointment self-inflicted&mdash;&mdash;could bring
+upon him such suffering? But she threw these thoughts away. In her
+great loyalty she had told herself that she must not even think of this
+thing, lest she should let it come between them once again and tempt
+her from her duty and obedience. Her trust in him was perfect.</p>
+
+<p>The abandonment of a coveted distinction was in itself a bitter
+disappointment, but it seemed to him as nothing beside the sense of
+submission and obedience compelled from him to Vàsàrhely. He felt as
+though an iron hand, invisible, weighed on his life, and forced it into
+subjection. When he had almost grown secure that his enemy's knowledge
+was a buried harmless thing, it had risen and barred his way, speaking
+with an authority which it was not possible to disobey. With all his
+errors he was a man of high courage, who had always held his own with
+all men. How the old forgotten humiliation of his earliest years
+revived, and enforced from him the servile timidity of the Slav blood
+which he had abjured. He had never for an instant conceived it possible
+to disregard the mandate he received; that an apparently voluntary
+resignation was permitted to him was, his conscience acknowledged, more
+mercy than he could have expected. That Vàsàrhely would act thus had
+not occurred to him; but before the act he could not do otherwise than
+admit its justice and obey.</p>
+
+<p>But the consciousness of that superior will compelling him, left in him
+a chill tremor of constant fear, of perpetual self-abasement. What was
+natural to him was the reckless daring which many Russians, such as
+Skobeleff, have shown in a thousand ways of peril. He was here forced
+only to crouch and to submit; it was more galling, more cruel to him
+than utter exposure would have been. The sense of coercion was always
+upon him like a dragging chain. It produced on him a despondency, which
+not even the presence of his wife or the elasticity of his own nature
+could dispel.</p>
+
+<p>He had to play a part to her, and to do this was unfamiliar and hateful
+to him. In all the years before he had concealed a fact from her, but
+he had never been otherwise false. Though to his knowledge there had
+been always between them the shadow of a secret untold, there had
+never been any sense upon him of obligation to measure his words, to
+feign sentiments he had not, to hide behind a carefully constructed
+screen of untruth. Now, though he had indeed not lied with his lips,
+he had to sustain a concealment which was a thousand times more trying
+to him than that concealment of his birth and station to which he had
+been so long accustomed that he hardly realised it as any error. The
+very nobility with which she had accepted his silence, and given it,
+unasked, a worthy construction, smote him with a deeper sense of shame
+than even that which galled him when he remembered the yoke laid on him
+by the will of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>He roused himself to meet her with composure.</p>
+
+<p>She rested her hand caressingly on his.</p>
+
+<p>'We will never speak of Russia any more. I should be sorry were the
+Kaiser to think you capricious or disloyal, but you have too much
+ability to have incurred this risk. Let it all be as though there had
+never arisen any question of public life for you. I have explained
+to Aunt Ottilie; she will not weary you with interrogation; she
+understands that you have acted as your honour bade you. That is enough
+for those who love you as do she and I.'</p>
+
+<p>Every word she spoke entered his very soul with the cruellest irony,
+the sharpest reproach. But of these he let her see nothing. Yet he
+was none the less abjectly ashamed, less passionately self-condemned,
+because he had to consume his pain in silence, and had the self-control
+to answer, still with a smile, as he touched a chord or two of music:</p>
+
+<p>'When the Israelites were free they hankered after the flesh-pots of
+Egypt. They deserved eternal exile, eternal bondage. So do I, for
+having ever been ingrate enough to dream of leaving Hohenszalras for
+the world of men!'</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned wholly towards the Erard keyboard, and with splendour
+and might there rolled forth under his touch the military march of
+Rákóczi: he was glad of the majesty and passion of the music which
+supplanted and silenced speech.</p>
+
+<p>'That is very grand,' she said, when the last notes had died away.
+'One seems to hear the <i>Eljén!</i> of the whole nation in it. But play me
+something more tender, more pathetic&mdash;&mdash;some <i>lieder</i> half sorrow and
+half gladness, you know so many of all countries.'</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment; then his hands wandered lightly across the notes,
+and called up the mournful folk-songs that he had heard so long, so
+long, before; songs of the Russian peasants, of the maidens borne off
+by the Tartar in war, of the blue-eyed children carried away to be
+slaves, of the homeless villagers beholding their straw-roofed huts
+licked up by the hungry hurrying flame lit by the Kossack or the Kurd;
+songs of a people without joy, that he had heard in his childish days,
+when the great rafts had drifted slowly down the Volga water, and
+across the plains the lines of chained prisoners had crept as slowly
+through the dust; or songs that he had sung to himself, not knowing
+why, where the winter was white on all the land, and the bay of the
+famished wolves afar off had blent with the shrill sad cry of the wild
+swans dying of cold and of hunger and of thirst on the frozen rivers,
+and the reeds were grown hard as spears of iron, and the waves were
+changed to stone.</p>
+
+<p>The intense melancholy penetrated her very heart. She listened with
+the tears in her eyes, and her whole being stirred and thrilled by a
+pain not her own. A kind of consciousness came to her, borne on that
+melancholy melody, of some unspoken sorrow which lived in this heart
+which beat so near her own, and whose every throb she had thought she
+knew. A sudden terror seized her lest all this while she who believed
+his whole life hers was in truth a stranger to his deepest grief, his
+dearest memories.</p>
+
+<p>When the last sigh of those plaintive songs without words had died
+away, she signed to him to approach her.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me,' she said very gently, 'tell me the truth. Réné, did you ever
+care for any woman, dead or lost, more than, or as much as, you care
+for me? I do not ask you if you loved others. I know all men have many
+caprices, but was any one of them so dear to you that you regret her
+still? Tell me the truth; I will be strong to bear it.'</p>
+
+<p>He, relieved beyond expression that she but asked him that on which his
+conscience was clear and his answer could be wholly sincere, sat down
+at her feet and leaned his head against her knee.</p>
+
+<p>'Never, so hear me God!' he said simply. 'I have loved no woman as I
+love you.'</p>
+
+<p>'And there is not one that you regret?'</p>
+
+<p>'There is not one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then what is it that you do regret? Something more weighs on you than
+the mere loss of diplomatic life, which; after all, to you is no more
+than the loss of a toy to Bela.'</p>
+
+<p>'If I do regret,' he said, with a smile, 'it is foolish and thankless.
+The happiness you give me here is worth all the fret and fever of
+the world's ambitions. You are so great and good to be so little
+angered with me for my reticence. All my life, such as it is, shall be
+dedicated to my gratitude.'</p>
+
+<p>Once more an impulse to tell her all passed over him&mdash;&mdash;a sense that
+he might trust her absolutely for all tenderness and all pity came
+upon him; but with the weakness which so constantly holds back human
+souls from their own deliverance, his courage once again failed him.
+He once more looking at her thought: 'Nay! I dare not. She would never
+understand, she would never pardon, she would never listen. At the
+first word she would abhor me.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not dare; he bent his face down on her knees as any child might
+have done.</p>
+
+<p>'What I ever must regret is not to be worthy of you!' he murmured; and
+the subterfuge was also a truth.</p>
+
+<p>She looked down at him wistfully with doubt and confusion mingled. She
+sighed, for she understood that buried in his heart there was some pain
+he would not share, perchance some half involuntary unfaithfulness he
+did not dare confess. She thrust this latter thought away quickly; it
+hurt her as the touch of a hot iron hurts tender flesh; she would not
+harbour it. It might well be, she knew.</p>
+
+<p>She was silent some little time, then she said calmly:</p>
+
+<p>'I think you worthy. Is not that enough? Never say to me what you do
+not wish to say. But&mdash;&mdash;but&mdash;&mdash;if there be anything you believe that I
+should blame, be sure of this, love: I am no fair weather friend. Try
+me in deep water, in dark storm!'</p>
+
+<p>And still he did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>His evil angel held him back and said to him, 'Nay! she would never
+forgive.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>One day in this winter time she sat alone in her octagon-room whilst he
+was out driving in the teeth of a strong wind blowing from the north
+and frequent bursts of snowstorm. Rapid exercise, eager movements, were
+necessary to him at once as tonic and as anodyne, and the northern
+blood that was in him made the bitter cold, the keen and angry air, the
+conflict with the frantic horses tearing at their curbs welcome and
+wholesome to him. Paul Zabaroff had many a day driven so over the hard
+snows of Russian plains.</p>
+
+<p>She sat at home as the twilight drew on, her feet buried in the furs
+before her chair, the fragrance shed about her from a basket of forced
+narcissus and bowls full of orange flowers and of violets, the light
+of the burning wood shining on the variegated and mellow hues of the
+tiles of the hearth. The last poems of Coppée were on her lap, but
+her thoughts had wandered away from those to Sabran, to her children,
+to a thousand happy trifles connected with one or the other. She was
+dreaming idly in that vague reverie which suits the last hour of the
+reclining day in the grey still winter of a mountain-land. She was
+almost sorry when Hubert entered and brought her the mail-bag, which
+had just come through the gloomy defiles and the frosted woods which
+stretched between them and Matrey.</p>
+
+<p>'It grows late,' she said to him. 'I fear it will be a stormy night.
+Have you heard the Marquis return?</p>
+
+<p>He told her that Sabran had not yet driven in, and ventured to add
+his hope that his master would not be out long; then he asked if she
+desired the lamps lit, and on being told she did not, withdrew, leaving
+the leather bag on a table close to one of the Saxe bowls of violets.
+There was plenty of light from the fire, and even from the windows, to
+read her letters by; she went first to one of the casements and looked
+at the night, which was growing very wild and dark. Though day still
+lingered, she could hear the wind go screaming down the lake, and
+the rush of the swollen water swirling against the terrace buttresses
+below. All beyond, woods, hills, mountains, were invisible under the
+grey mist.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope he will not be late,' she thought, but she was too keen a
+mountaineer to be apprehensive. Sabran now knew every road and path
+through all the Tauern as well as she did. She returned to her seat and
+unlocked the leather bag; there were several newspapers, two letters
+for the Princess, three or four for Sabran, and one only for herself.
+She laid his aside for him, sent those of the Princess to her room,
+and opened her own. The writing of it she did not recognise; it was
+anonymous, and was very brief.</p>
+
+
+<p>'If you wish to know why the Marquis de Sabran did not go to Russia,
+ask Egon Vàsàrhely.'</p>
+
+
+<p>That was all: so asps are little.</p>
+
+<p>She sat quite still, and felt as if a bolt had fallen on her from the
+leaden skies without. Vàsàrhely knew, the writer of the letter knew,
+and she&mdash;&mdash;<i>she&mdash;&mdash;</i> did not know! That was her first distinct thought.</p>
+
+<p>If Sabran had entered the room at that instant she would have held to
+him this letter, and would have said, 'I ask you, not him.' He was
+absent, and she sat motionless, keeping the unsigned note in her hand,
+and staring down on it. Then she turned and looked at the post-mark.
+It was 'Vienna,' A city of a million souls! What clue to the writer
+was there? She read it again and again, as even the wisest will read
+such poisonous things, as though by repeated study that mystery would
+be compelled to stand out clearly revealed. It did not say enough to
+have been the mere invention of the sender; it was not worded as an
+insinuation, but as a fact. For that reason it took a hold upon her
+mind which would at once have rejected a fouler or a darker suggestion.
+Although free from any baseness of suspicion there was yet that in the
+name of her cousin, in juxtaposition with her husband's, which could
+not do otherwise than startle and carry with it a corroboration of the
+statement made. A wave of the deep anger which had moved her on her
+husband's first refusal swept over her again. Her hand clenched, her
+eyes hashed, where she sat alone in the gathering shadows.</p>
+
+<p>There came a sound at the door of the room and a small golden head came
+from behind the tapestry.</p>
+
+<p>'May we come in?' said Bela; it was the children's hour.</p>
+
+<p>She rose, and put him backward.</p>
+
+<p>'Not now, my darling; I am occupied. Go away for a little while.'</p>
+
+<p>The women who were with them took the children back to their
+apartments. She sat down with the note still in her hand. What could
+it mean? No good thing was ever said thus. She pondered long, and was
+unable to imagine any sense or meaning it could have, though all the
+while memories thronged upon, her of words, and looks, and many trifles
+which had told her of the enmity that was existent between her cousin
+and Sabran. That she saw; but there her knowledge ceased, her vision
+failed. She could go no further, conjecture nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>'Ask Egon!' Did they think she would ask him or any living being that
+which Sabran had refused to confide in her? Whoever wrote this knew her
+little, she thought. Perhaps there were women who would have done so.
+She was not one of them.</p>
+
+<p>With a sudden impulse of scorn she cast the sheet of paper into the
+fire before her. Then she went to her writing-table and enclosed the
+envelope in another, which she addressed to her lawyers in Salzburg.
+She wrote with it: 'This is the cover to an anonymous letter which I
+have received. Try your uttermost to discover the sender.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she sat down again and thought long, and wearily, and vainly. She
+could make nothing of it. She could see no more than a wayfarer whom a
+blank wall faces as he goes. The violets and orange blossoms were close
+at her elbow; she never in after time smelt their perfume without a
+sick memory of the stunned, stupefied bewilderment of that hour.</p>
+
+<p>The door unclosed again, a voice again spoke behind as a hand drew back
+the folds of the tapestry.</p>
+
+<p>'What, are you in darkness here? I am very cold. Have you no tea for
+me?' said Sabran, as he entered, his eyes brilliant; his cheeks warm,
+from the long gallop against the wind. He had changed his clothes, and
+wore a loose suit of velvet; the servants, entering behind him, lit the
+candelabra, and brought in the lamps; warmth, and gladness, and light
+seemed to come with him; she looked up and thought, 'Ah! what does any
+thing matter? He is home in safety!'</p>
+
+<p>The impulse to ask of him what she had been bidden to ask of Egon
+Vàsàrhely had passed with the intense surprise of the first moment. She
+could not ask of him what she had promised never to seek to know; she
+could not reopen a long-closed wound. But neither could she forget the
+letter lying burnt there amongst the flames of the wood. He noticed
+that her usual perfect calm was broken as she welcomed him, gave him
+his letters, and bade the servants bring tea; but he thought it mere
+anxiety, and his belated drive; and being tired with a pleasant fatigue
+which made rest sweet, he stretched his limbs out on a low couch beside
+the hearth, and gave himself up to that delicious dreamy sense of
+<i>bien-être</i> which a beautiful woman, a beautiful room, tempered warmth
+and light, and welcome repose, bring to any man after some hours effort
+and exposure in wild weather and intense cold and increasing darkness.</p>
+
+<p>'I almost began to think I should not see you to-night,' he said
+happily, as he took from her hand the little cup of Frankenthal china
+which sparkled like a jewel in the light. 'I had fairly lost my way,
+and Josef knew it no better than I; the snow fell with incredible
+rapidity, and it seemed to grow night in an instant. I let the horses
+take their road, and they brought us home; but if there be any poor
+pedlars or carriers on the hills to-night I fear they will go to their
+last sleep.'</p>
+
+<p>She shuddered and looked at him with dim, fond eyes, 'He is here; he is
+mine,' she thought; 'what else matters?'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran stretched out his fingers and took some of the violets from the
+Saxe bowl and fastened them in his coat as he went on speaking of the
+weather, of the perils of the roads whose tracks were obliterated, and
+of the prowess and intelligence of his horses, who had found the way
+home when he and his groom, a man born and bred in the Tauern, had both
+been utterly at a loss. The octagon-room had never looked lovelier and
+gayer to him, and his wife had never looked more beautiful than both
+did now as he came to them out of the darkness and the snowstorm and
+the anxiety of the last hour.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not run those risks,' she murmured. 'You know all that your life is
+to me.'</p>
+
+<p>The letter which lay burnt in the fire, and the dusky night of ice
+and wind without, had made him dearer to her than ever. And yet the
+startled, shocked sense of some mystery, of some evil, was heavy upon
+her, and did not leave her that evening nor for many a day after.</p>
+
+<p>'You are not well?' he said to her anxiously later, as they left the
+dinner-table. She answered evasively.</p>
+
+<p>'You know I am not always quite well now. It is nothing. It will pass.'</p>
+
+<p>'I was wrong to alarm you by being out so late in such weather,' he
+said with self-reproach. 'I will go out earlier in future.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not wear those violets,' she said, with a trivial caprice wholly
+unlike her, as she took them from his coat. 'They are Bonapartist
+emblems&mdash;<i>fleurs de malheur</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, but he was surprised, for he had never seen in her any one
+of those fanciful whims and vagaries that are common to women.</p>
+
+<p>'Give me any others instead,' he said; 'I wear but your symbol, O my
+lady!'</p>
+
+<p>She took some myrtle and lilies of the valley from one of the large
+porcelain jars in the Rittersaal.</p>
+
+<p>'These are our flowers,' she said as she gave them to him. 'They mean
+love and peace.'</p>
+
+<p>He turned from her slightly as he fastened them where the others had
+been.</p>
+
+<p>All the evening she was pre-occupied and nervous. She could not forget
+the intimation she had received. It was intolerable to her to have
+anything of which she could not speak to her husband. Though they had
+their own affairs apart one from the other, there had been nothing
+of moment in hers that she had ever concealed from him. But here it
+was impossible for her to speak to him, since she had pledged herself
+never to seek to know the reason of an action which, however plausibly
+she explained it to herself, remained practically inexplicable and
+unintelligible. It was terrible to her, too, to feel that the lines
+of a coward who dared not sign them had sunk so deeply into her mind
+that she did not question their veracity. They had at once carried
+conviction to her that Egon Vàsàrhely did know what they said he did.
+She could not have told why this was, but it was so. It was what hurt
+her most&mdash;&mdash;others knew; she did not.</p>
+
+<p>She felt that if she could have spoken to Sabran of it, the matter
+would have become wholly indifferent to her; but the obligation of
+reticence, the sense of separation which it involved, oppressed her
+greatly. She was also haunted by the memory of the enmity which existed
+between these men, whose names were so strangely coupled in the
+anonymous counsel given her.</p>
+
+<p>She stayed long in her oratory that night, seeking vainly for calmness
+and patience under this temptation; seeking beyond all things for
+strength to put the poison of it wholly from her mind. She dreaded lest
+it should render her irritable and suspicious. She reproached herself
+for having been guilty of even so much insinuation of rebuke to him
+as her words with the flower had carried in them. She had ideas of
+the duties of a woman to her husband widely different to those which
+prevail in the world. She allowed herself neither irritation nor irony
+against him. 'When the thoughts rebel, the acts soon revolt,' she was
+wont to say to herself, and even in her thoughts she would never blame
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Prayer, even if it have no other issue or effect, rarely fails to
+tranquillise and fortify the heart which is lifted up ever so vaguely
+in search of a superhuman aid. She left her oratory strengthened and
+calmed, resolved in no way to allow such partial success to their
+unknown foe as would be given if the treacherous warning brought any
+suspicion or bitterness to her mind. She passed through the open
+archway in the wall which divided his rooms from hers, and looked at
+him where he lay already asleep upon his bed, early fatigued by the
+long cold drive from which he had returned at nightfall. He was never
+more handsome than sleeping calmly thus, with the mellow light of a
+distant lamp reaching the fairness of his face. She looked at him with
+all her heart in her eyes; then stooped and kissed him without awaking
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! my love,' she thought, 'what should ever come between us? Hardly
+even death, I think, for if I lost you I should not live long without
+you.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Salzburg lawyers employed all the resources of the Viennese police
+to discover the sender of the envelope, but vainly; nothing was
+learned by all the efforts made. But the letter constantly haunted her
+thoughts. It produced in her an uneasiness and an apprehensiveness
+wholly foreign to her temper. The impossibility also of saying anything
+about it increased the weight of it on her memory. Yet she never once
+thought of asking Vàsàrhely. She wrote to him now and then, as she had
+always done, to give him tidings of her health or of her movements,
+but she never once alluded in the most distant terms to the anonymous
+information she had received. If he had been there beside her she would
+not have spoken of it. Of the two, she would sooner have reopened the
+subject to her husband. But she never did so. She had promised him
+to be silent, and to her creed a promise was inviolate, never to be
+retracted, be the pressure or the desire to do so what it would.</p>
+
+<p>It was these grand lines on which her character and her habits were
+cast that awed him, and made him afraid to tell her his true history.
+Had he revered her less he would probably have deceived her less. Had
+she been of a less noble temperament she would also probably have been
+much less easy to deceive.</p>
+
+<p>Her health was at this time languid, and more uncertain than usual,
+and the two lines of the letter were often present to her thoughts,
+tormenting her with idle conjecture, painful doubt, none the less
+painful because it could take no definite shape. Sometimes when she
+was not well enough to accompany him out of doors or drive her own
+sleigh through the keen clear winter air, she sat doing nothing, and
+thinking only of this thing, in the same room, with the same smell of
+violets about her, musing on what it might by any possibility mean. Any
+secret was safe with Egon, but then since the anonymous writer was in
+possession of it the secret was not only his. She wondered sometimes in
+terror whether it could be anything that might in after years affect
+her children's future, and then as rapidly discarded the bare thought
+as so much dishonour to their father. 'It is only because I am now
+nervous and impressionable,' she said to herself,'that this folly takes
+such a hold upon me. When I am well again I shall not think of it. Who
+is it says of anonymous letters that they are like "<i>les immondices des
+rues: il faut boucher le nez, tourner la tête et passer outre?</i>"'</p>
+
+<p>But '<i>les immondices</i>' spoiled the odours of the new year violets to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>In the early spring of the year she gave birth to another son. She
+suffered more than she had ever done before, and recovered less
+quickly. The child was like all the others, fair, vigorous, and full
+of health. She wished to give him her husband's name, but Sabran so
+strenuously opposed the idea that she yielded, and named him after her
+brother Victor, who had fallen at Magenta.</p>
+
+<p>There were the usual rejoicings throughout the estates, rejoicings
+that were the outcome of genuine affection and fealty to the race of
+Szalras, whose hold on the people of the Tauern had resisted all the
+revolutionary movements of the earlier part of the century, and had
+fast root in the hearts of the staunch and conservative mountaineers.
+But for the first time as she heard the hearty '<i>Hoch!</i>' of the
+assembled peasantry echoing beneath her windows, and the salvos fired
+from the old culverins on the keep, a certain fear mingled with her
+maternal pride, and she thought: 'Will the people love them as well
+twenty years hence, fifty years hence, when I shall be no more? Will my
+memory be any shield to them? Will the traditions of our race outlast
+the devouring changes of the world?'</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the Princess, happy and smiling, showed the little new-born
+noble to the stalwart chamois hunters, the comely farmers and
+fishermen, the clear-eyed stout-limbed shepherds and labourers gathered
+bareheaded round the Schloss.</p>
+
+<p>Bela stood by contemplating the crowd he knew so well; he did not see
+why they should cheer any other child beside himself. He stood with his
+little velvet cap in his hand, because he was always told to do so, but
+he felt very inclined to put it on; if his father had not been present
+there he would have done so.</p>
+
+<p>'If I have ever so many brothers,' he said at last thoughtfully to
+Greswold, who was by his side, 'it will not make any difference, will
+it? I shall always be <i>the</i> one?'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean?' asked the physician.</p>
+
+<p>'They will none of them be like me? They will none of them be as great
+as I am? Not if I have twenty?'</p>
+
+<p>'You will be always the eldest son, of course,' said the old man,
+repressing a smile. 'Yes; you will be their head, their chief, their
+leading spirit; but for that reason you will have much more expected of
+you than will be expected of them; you will have to learn much more,
+and try to be always good. Do you follow me, Count Bela?'</p>
+
+<p>Bela's little rosy mouth shut itself up contemptuously. 'I shall be
+always the eldest, and I shall do whatever I like. I do not see why
+they want any others than me.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will not do always what you like, Count Bela.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who shall prevent me?'</p>
+
+<p>'The law, which you will have to obey like everyone else.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall make the laws when I am a little older,' said Bela. 'And they
+will be for my brothers and all the people, but not for me. I shall do
+what I like.'</p>
+
+<p>'That will be very ungenerous,' said Greswold, quietly. 'Your mother,
+the Countess, is very different. She is stern to herself, and indulgent
+to all others. That is why she is beloved. If you will think of
+yourself so much when you are grown up, you will be hated.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela flushed a little guiltily and angrily.</p>
+
+<p>'That will not matter,' he said sturdily. 'I shall please myself
+always.'</p>
+
+<p>'And be unkind to your brothers?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not if they do what I tell them; I will be very kind if they are good.
+Gela always does what I tell him,' he added after a little pause; 'I do
+not want any but Gela.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is natural you should be fondest of Gela, as he is nearest your
+age, but you must love all the brothers you may have, or you will
+distress your mother very greatly.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why does she want any but me?' said Bela, clinging to his sense of
+personal wrong. And he was not to be turned from that.</p>
+
+<p>'She wants others beside you,' said the physician, adroitly, 'because
+to be happy she needs children who are tender-hearted, unselfish, and
+obedient. You are none of those things, my Count Bela, so Heavens ends
+her consolation.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela opened his blue eyes very wide, and he coloured with mortification.</p>
+
+<p>'She always loves me best!' he said haughtily. 'She always will!'</p>
+
+<p>'That will depend on yourself, my little lord,' said Greswold, with a
+significance which was not lost on the quick intelligence of the child;
+and he never forgot this day when his brother Victor was shown to the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>'There will be no lack of heirs to Hohenszalras,' said the Princess
+meanwhile to his father.</p>
+
+<p>He thought as he heard:</p>
+
+<p>'And if ever she know she can break her marriage like a rotten thread!
+Those boys can all be made as nameless as I was! Would she do it?
+Perhaps not, for the children's sake. God knows&mdash;&mdash;she might change
+even to them; she might hate them as she loves them now, because they
+are mine.'</p>
+
+<p>Even as he sat beside her couch with her hand in his these thoughts
+pursued and haunted him. Remorse and fear consumed him. When she looked
+at the blue eyes of her new-born son, and said to him with a happy
+smile: 'He will be just as much like you as the others are,' he could
+only think with a burning sense of shame, 'Like me! like a traitor!
+like a liar! like a thief!'&mdash;&mdash;and the faces of these children seemed
+to him like those of avenging angels.</p>
+
+<p>He thought with irrepressible agony of the fact that her country's
+laws would divorce her from him if she chose, did ever the truth come
+to her ear. He had always known this indeed, as he had known all the
+other risks he ran in doing what he did. Put it had been far away,
+indistinct, unasserted; whenever the memory of it had passed over him
+he had thrust it away. Now when another knew his secret, he could
+not do so. He had a strange sensation of having fallen from some
+great height; of having all his life slide away like melting ice out
+of his hands. He never once doubted for an instant the good faith of
+Egon Vàsàrhely. He knew that his lips would no more unclose to tell
+his secret than the glaciers yonder would find human voice. But the
+consciousness that one man lived, moved, breathed, rose with each day,
+and went amongst other men, bearing with him that fatal knowledge,
+made it now impossible for himself ever to forget it. A dull remorse,
+a sharp apprehension, were for ever his companions, and never left him
+for long even in his sweetest hours. He did justice to the magnificent
+generosity of the one who spared him. Egon Vàsàrhely knew, as he knew,
+that she, hearing the truth, could annul the marriage if she chose.
+His children would have no rights, no name, if their mother chose to
+separate herself from him. The law would make her once more as free
+as though she had never wedded him. He knew that, and the other man
+who loved her knew it too. He could measure the force of Vàsàrhely's
+temptation as that simple and heroic soldier could not stoop to measure
+his.</p>
+
+<p>He was deeply unhappy, but he concealed it from her. Even when his
+heart beat against hers it seemed to him always that there was an
+invisible wall between himself and her. He longed to tell the whole
+truth to her, but he was afraid; if the whole pain and shame had been
+his own that the confession would have caused, he would have dared it;
+but he had not the heart to inflict on her such suffering, not the
+courage to destroy their happiness with his own hand. Egon Vàsàrhely
+alone knew, and he for her sake would never speak. As for the reproach
+of his own conscience, as for the remorse that the words of his
+children might at any moment call up in him, these lie must bear. He
+was a man of cool judgment and of ready resource, and though he had
+never foreseen the sharp repentance which his better nature now felt,
+he knew that he would be able to live it down as he had crushed out so
+many other scruples. He vowed to himself that as far as in him lay he
+would atone for his act. The moral influence of his wife had not been
+without effect on him. Not altogether, but partially, he had grown to
+believe in what she believed in, of the duty of human life to other
+lives; he had not her sympathy for others, but he had admired it, and
+in his own way followed it, though without her faith.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Life went on in its old pathways at Hohenszalras. Nothing more, was
+said by him, or to him, as to his rejection of the Russian mission. She
+was niggard in nothing, and when she offered her faith or pledged her
+silence, gave both entirely and ungrudgingly. Sabran to her showed an
+increase of devotion, an absolute adoration which would in themselves
+have sufficed to console any woman; and if the most observant member
+of their household, Greswold, perceived in him a preoccupation, a
+languor, a gloom, which boded ill for their future peace, the old man
+was too loyal in his attachment not to endeavour to shake off his own
+suspicions and discredit his own penetration.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess had been favoured by a note from Olga Brancka, in which
+that lady wrote: 'Have you discovered the nature of his refusal of
+Russia? Myself, I believe that I was to blame. I hinted to him that
+he would be tempted to his old sins in St. Petersburg, and that Wanda
+would be very miserable there. It seems that this was enough for the
+tender heart of this devoted lover, and too much for his wisdom and
+his judgment; he rejected the mission after accepting it. I believe
+the Court is furious. I am not <i>de service</i> now, so that I have no
+opportunity of endeavouring to restore him to favour; but I imagine the
+Emperor will not quarrel for ever with the Hohenszalrasburg.</p>
+
+<p>The letter restored him at least to the favour of Mdme. Ottilie.
+Exaggerated as such a scruple appeared it did not seem to her
+impossible in a man whose devotion to his wife she daily witnessed,
+shown in a hundred traits. She blamed him still severely in her own
+thoughts for what she held an inexcusable disrespect to the Crown, but
+she kept her word scrupulously and never spoke to him on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>'Where else in the wide world would any man have found such
+forbearance?' he thought with gratitude, and he knew that nowhere
+would such delicate sentiment have existed outside the pale of that
+fine patrician dignity which is as incapable of the vulgarity of
+inquisitiveness and interrogation as was the Spartan of lament.</p>
+
+<p>The months went by. They did not leave home; he seemed to have lost
+all wish for any absence, and even repulsed the idea of inviting the
+usual house parties of the year. She supposed that he was averse to
+meeting people who might recur to his rejection of the post he had
+once accepted. The summer passed and the autumn came; he spent his
+time in occasional sport, the keen and perilous sport of the Austrian
+mountains, and more often and more faithfully beguiled himself with
+those arts of which he was a brilliant master, though he would call
+himself no more than a mere amateur. From the administration of the
+estates he had altogether withdrawn himself.</p>
+
+<p>'You are so much wiser than I,' he always said to her; and when she
+would have referred to him, replied: 'You have your lawyers; they are
+all honest men. Consult them rather than me.'</p>
+
+<p>With the affairs of Idrac only he continued to concern himself a
+little, and was persistent in setting aside all its revenues to
+accumulate for his second son.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish you cared more about all these things,' she said to him one
+day, when she had in her hand the reports from the mines of Galicia.
+He answered angrily, 'I have no right to them. They are not mine. If
+you chose to give them all away to the Crown I should say nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not even for the children's sake?'</p>
+
+<p>'No: you would be entirely justified if you liked to give the children
+nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'I really do not understand you,' she said in great surprise.</p>
+
+<p>'Everything is yours,' he said abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'And the children too, surely!' she said, with a smile: but the
+strangeness of the remark disquieted her. 'It is over-sensitiveness,'
+she thought; 'he can never altogether forget that he was poor. It is
+for that reason public life would have been so good for him; dignities
+which he enjoyed of his own, honours that he arrived at through his own
+attainments.'</p>
+
+<p>Chagrined to have lost, the opportunity of winning personal honours
+in a field congenial to him, the sense that everything was hers could
+hardly fail to gall him sometimes constantly, though she strove to
+efface any remembrance or reminder that it was so.</p>
+
+<p>In the midsummer of that year, whilst they were quite alone, they were
+surprised by another letter from Mdme. Brancka, in which she proposed
+to take Hohenszalras on her way from France to Tsarköe Selo, where she
+was about to pay a visit which could not be declined by her.</p>
+
+<p>When in the spring he had written with formality to her to announce the
+birth of his son Victor, she had answered with a witty coquettish reply
+such as might well have been provocative of further correspondence.
+But he had not taken up the invitation. Mortified and irritated, she
+had compared his writing with the piece of burnt paper, and been more
+satisfied than ever that he had penned the name of Vassia Kazán. But
+even were it so, what, she wondered, had it to do with Russia? He
+and Egon Vàsàrhely were not friends so intimate that they had any
+common interests one with the other. The mystery had interested her
+intensely when her rapid intuition had connected the resignation of
+Sabran's appointment with the messenger sent to him from Taróc. Her
+impatience to be again in his presence grew intense. She imagined a
+thousand stories, to cast each aside in derision as impossible. All her
+suppositions were built upon no better basis than a fragment of charred
+paper; but her shrewd intuition bore her into the region of truth,
+though the actual truth of course never suggested itself to her even in
+her most fantastic and dramatic visions. Finally she thus proposed to
+visit Hohenszalras in the midsummer months.</p>
+
+<p>'Last year you had such a crowd about you,' she wrote, 'that I
+positively saw nothing of you, <i>liebe</i> Wanda. You are alone now, and
+I venture to propose myself for a fortnight. You cannot exactly be
+said to be in the way to anywhere, but I shall make you so. When one
+is going to Russia, a matter of another five hundred miles or so is a
+bagatelle.'</p>
+
+<p>'We must let her come,' said Wanda, as she gave the letter to Sabran,
+who, having read it, said with much sincerity&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'For heaven's sake, do not. A fortnight of Madame Olga! as well
+have&mdash;&mdash;a century of "Madame Angot!"'</p>
+
+<p>'Can I prevent her?'</p>
+
+<p>'You can make some excuse. I do not like Mdme. Brancka.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why?'</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated; he could not tell her what he had felt at the ball of
+the Hofburg. 'She reminds me of a woman who drew me into a thousand
+follies, and to cap her good deeds betrayed me to the Prussians. If you
+must let her come I will go away. I will go and see your haras on the
+Pusztas.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are you serious?'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite serious. Were I not ashamed of such a weakness, I should use a
+feminine expression. I should say "<i>elle me donne des nerfs.</i>"'</p>
+
+<p>'I think she has a great admiration for you, and she does not conceal
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Merely because she is sensible that I do not like her. Such women as
+she are discontented if only one person fail to admit their charm. She
+is accustomed to admiration, and she is not scrupulous as to how she
+obtains it.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear! pray remember that she is our guest, and doubly our relative.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will try and remember it; but, believe me, all honour is wholly
+wasted upon Mdme. Olga. You offer her a coin of which the person and
+the superscription are alike unknown to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very severe,' said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, and perceived that he was not jesting, that he
+was on the contrary disturbed and annoyed, and she remembered the
+persistence with which Olga Brancka had sought his companionship and
+accompanied him on his sport in the summer of her visit there.</p>
+
+<p>'If she had not married first my brother and then my cousin, she would
+never have been an intimate friend of mine,' she continued. 'She is of
+a world wholly opposed to all my tastes. For you to be absent, if she
+came, would be too marked, I think; but we can both leave, if you like.
+I am well enough for any movement now, and I can leave the child with
+his nurse. Shall we make a tour in Hungary? The haras will interest
+you. There are the mines, too, that one ought to visit.'</p>
+
+<p>He received her assent with gratitude and delight. He felt that he
+would have gone to the uttermost ends of the earth rather than run the
+risk of spending long lonely summer days in the excitation of Mdme.
+Brancka's presence. He detested her, he would always detest her; and
+yet when he shut his eyes he saw her so clearly, with the malicious
+light in her dusky glance, and the jewelled butterfly trembling about
+her breasts.</p>
+
+<p>'She shall never come under Wanda's roof if I can prevent it,' he
+thought, remembering her as she had been that night.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later the Countess Brancka, much to her rage, had a note
+from the Hohenszalrasburg, which said that they were on the point of
+leaving for Hungary and Galicia, but that if she would come there in
+their absence, the Princess Ottilie, who remained, would be charmed to
+receive her. Of course she excused herself, and did not go. A visit to
+the solitudes of the Iselthal, where she would, see no one but a lady
+of eighty years old and four little children, had few attractions for
+the adventurous and vivacious wife of Stefan Brancka.</p>
+
+<p>'It is only Wanda's jealousy,' she thought, and was furious; but she
+looked at herself in the mirror, and was almost consoled as she thought
+also, 'He avoids me. Therefore he is afraid of me!'</p>
+
+<p>She went to her god, <i>le monde</i>, and worshipped at all its shrines and
+in all its fashions; but in the midst of the turmoil and the triumphs,
+the worries and the intoxications of her life, she did not lose her
+hold on her purpose, nor forget that he had slighted her. His beautiful
+face, serene and scornful, was always before her. He might have been at
+her feet, and he chose to dwell beside his wife under those solitary
+forests, amongst those solitary mountains of the High Tauern!</p>
+
+<p>'With a woman he has lived with all these eight years!' she thought,
+with furious impatience. 'With a woman who has grafted the Lady of La
+Garaye on Libussa, who never gives him a moment's jealousy, who is
+as flawless as an ivory statue or a marble throne, who suckles her
+children and could spin their clothes if she wanted, who never cares
+to go outside the hills of her own home&mdash;&mdash;the Teuton <i>Hausfrau</i> to
+her finger-tips.' And she was all the more bitter and the more angered
+because, always as she tried to think thus, the image of Wanda rose up
+before her, as she had seen her so often at Vienna or Hohenszalras,
+with the great pearls on her hair and on her breast.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 20%;">
+A planet at whose passing, lo!<br />
+All lesser stars recede, and night<br />
+Grows clear as day thus lighted up<br />
+By all her loveliness, which burns<br />
+With pure white flame of chastity;<br />
+And fires of fair thought....<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h4>END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.</h4>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p style="margin-left: 20%; font-size: 0.8em;">
+CONTENTS<br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52136 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Ouida

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most

-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of

-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have

-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

-

-Title: Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3)

-

-Author: Ouida

-

-Release Date: May 23, 2016 [EBook #52136]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: UTF-8

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDA, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by Wanda Lee, Laura Natal Rodriguez and Marc

-D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org (Images

-generouslly made available by the Internet Archive.)

-

-

-

-

-

-WANDA

-

-BY

-

-OUIDA

-

-

-

-    _'Doch!--alles was dazu mich trieb;_

-    _Gott!--war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'_

-                                         Goethe

-

-

-IN THREE VOLUMES

-

-VOL. II.

-

-

-London

-

-CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY

-

-1883

-

-

-

-

-WANDA.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XI.

-

-

-On her return she spoke of her royal friends, of her cousins, of

-society, of her fears for the peace of Europe, and her doubts as to

-the strength of the empire; but she did not speak of the one person of

-whom, beyond all others, Mdme. Ottilie was desirous to hear. When some

-hours had passed, and still she had never alluded to the existence of,

-the Princess could bear silence no longer, and casting prudence to the

-winds, said boldly and with impatience:

-

-'And your late guest? Have you nothing to tell me? Surely you have seen

-him?'

-

-'He called once,' she answered, 'and I heard him speak at the Chamber.'

-

-'And was that all?' cried the Princess, disappointed.

-

-'He speaks very well in public,' added Wanda, 'and he said many tender

-and grateful things of you, and sent you many messages--such grateful

-ones that my memory is too clumsy a tray to hold such eggshell china.'

-

-She was angered with herself as she spoke, but the fragrance of the

-white lilac and the remembrance of its donor pursued her--angered

-with herself, too, because Hohenszalras seemed for the moment sombre,

-solitary, still, almost melancholy, wrapped in that winter whiteness

-and stillness which she had always loved so well.

-

-The next morning she saw all her people, visited her schools and her

-stables, and tried to persuade herself that she was as contented as

-ever.

-

-The aurist came from Paris shortly after her, and consoled the Princess

-by assuring her that the slight deafness she suffered from occasionally

-was due to cold.

-

-'Of course!' she said, with some triumph. 'These mountains, all this

-water, rain whenever there is not snow, snow whenever there is not

-rain; it is a miracle, and the mercy of Heaven, if one saves any of

-one's five senses uninjured in a residence here.'

-

-She had her satin hood trebly wadded, and pronounced the aurist a

-charming person. Herr Greswold in an incautious moment had said to her

-that deafness was one of the penalties of age and did not depend upon

-climate. A Paris doctor would not have earned his fee of two hundred

-napoleons if he had only produced so ungallant a truism. She heard a

-little worse after his visit, perhaps, but if so, she said that was

-caused by the additional wadding in her hood. He had told her to use a

-rose-water syringe, and Herr Greswold was forbidden her presence for a

-week because he averred that you might as well try to melt the glacier

-with a lighted pastille.

-

-The aurist gone, life at Hohenszalras resumed its even tenor; and

-except for, the post, the tea-cups, and the kind of dishes served at

-dinner, hardly differed from what life had been there in the sixteenth

-century, save that there were no saucy pages playing in the court, and

-no destriers stamping in the stalls, and no culverins loaded on the

-bastions.

-

-'It is like living between the illuminated leaves of one of the Hours,'

-thought the Princess, and though her conscience told her that to dwell

-so in a holy book like a pressed flower was the most desirable life

-that could be granted by Heaven to erring mortality, still she felt it

-was dull. A little gossip, a little movement, a little rolling of other

-carriage-wheels than her own, had always seemed desirable to her.

-

-Life here was laid down on broad lines. It was stately, austere,

-tranquil; one day was a mirror of all the rest. The Princess fretted

-for some little _frou-frou_ of the world to break its solemn silence.

-

-When Wanda returned from her ride one forenoon she said a little

-abruptly to her aunt:

-

-'I suppose you will be glad to hear you have convinced me. I have

-telegraphed to Ludwig to open and air the house in Vienna; we will go

-there for three months. It is, perhaps, time I should be seen at Court.'

-

-'It is a very sudden decision!' said Madame Ottilie, doubting that she

-could hear aright.

-

-'It is the fruit of your persuasions, dear mother mine! The only

-advantage in having houses in half a dozen different places is to be

-able to go to them without consideration. You think me obstinate,

-whimsical, barbaric; the Kaiserin thinks so too. I will endeavour to

-conquer my stubbornness. We will go to Vienna next week. You will see

-all your old friends, and I all my old jewels.'

-

-The determination once made, she adhered to it. She had felt a vague

-annoyance at the constancy and the persistency with which regret for

-the lost society of Sabran recurred to her. She had attributed it to

-the solitude in which she lived: that solitude which is the begetter

-and the nurse of thought may also be the hotbed of unwise fancies.

-It was indeed a solitude filled with grave duties, careful labours,

-high desires and endeavours; but perhaps, she thought, the world for a

-while, even in its folly, might be healthier, might preserve her from

-the undue share which the memory of a stranger had in her musings.

-

-Her people, her lands, her animals, would none of them suffer by

-a brief absence; and perhaps there were duties due as well to her

-position as to her order. She was the only representative of the great

-Counts of Szalras. With the whimsical ingratitude to fate common

-to human nature, she thought she would sooner have been obscure,

-unnoticed, free. Her rank began to drag on her with something like the

-sense of a chain. She felt that she was growing irritable, fanciful,

-thankless; so she ordered the huge old palace in the Herrengasse to be

-got ready, and sought the world as others sought the cloister.

-

-In a week's time she was installed in Vienna, with a score of horses,

-two score of servants, and all the stir and pomp that attend a great

-establishment in the most aristocratic city of Europe, and she made her

-first appearance at a ball at the Residenz covered with jewels from

-head to foot; the wonderful old jewels that for many seasons had lain

-unseen in their iron coffers--opals given by Rurik, sapphires taken

-from Kara Mustafa, pearls worn by her people at the wedding of Mary of

-Burgundy, diamonds that had been old when Maria Theresa had been young.

-

-She had three months of continual homage, of continual flattery, of

-what others called pleasure, and what none could have denied was

-splendour. Great nobles laid their heart and homage before her feet,

-and all the city looked after her for her beauty as she drove her

-horses round the Ringstrasse. It left her all very cold and unamused

-and indifferent.

-

-She was impatient to be back at Hohenszalras, amidst the stillness of

-the woods, the sound of the waters.

-

-'You cannot say now that I do not care for the world, because I have

-forgotten what it was like,' she observed to her aunt.

-

-'I wish you cared more,' said the Princess. 'Position has its duties.'

-

-'I never dispute that; only I do not see that being wearied by society

-constitutes one of them. I cannot understand why people are so afraid

-of solitude; the routine of the world is quite as monotonous.'

-

-'If you only appreciated the homage that you receive----'

-

-'Surely one's mind is something like one's conscience: if one can be

-not too utterly discontented with what it says one does not need the

-verdict of others.'

-

-'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with

-your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your

-overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the

-one I possess.'

-

-'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be

-pride--the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely

-better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'

-

-'They are not all simpletons.'

-

-'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very

-stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well

-as of the Wurstel-Prater.'

-

-The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the

-Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw

-the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she

-was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something

-wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up,

-nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.

-

-The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain,

-and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging

-primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of

-the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging

-with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass

-was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale

-sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras,

-and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she

-returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.

-

-'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold,

-as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the

-Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias

-and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between

-the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of

-their stalls.

-

-'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert,

-as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with

-tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with

-'_Willkommen_' written on it.

-

-She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single

-word.

-

-How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that

-day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been

-sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.

-

-'That is the Stanhopea tigrina,' said Herr Greswold, touching one with

-reverent fingers; 'they are all very rare. It is a welcome worthy of

-you, my lady.'

-

-'A very extravagant one,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a certain

-displeasure that mingled with a softened emotion. 'Who brought it?'

-

-'The Marquis de Sabran, by _extra-poste_, himself this morning,'

-answered Hubert--an answer she did not expect. 'But he would not wait;

-he would not even take a glass of tokayer, or let his horses stay for a

-feed of corn.'

-

-'What knight-errantry!' said the Princess well pleased.

-

-'What folly!' said Wanda, but she had the basket of orchids taken to

-her own octagon room.

-

-It seemed as if he had divined how much of late she had thought of him.

-She was touched, and yet she was angered a little.

-

-'Surely she will write to him,' thought the Princess wistfully very

-often: but she did not write. To a very proud woman the dawning

-consciousness of love is always an irritation, an offence, a failure, a

-weakness: the mistress of Hohenszalras could not quickly pardon herself

-for taking with pleasure the message of the orchids.

-

-A little while later she received a letter from Olga Brancka. In it she

-wrote from Paris:

-

-'Parsifal is doing wonders in the Chamber, that is, he is making Paris

-talk; his party will forbid him doing anything else. You certainly

-worked a miracle. I hear he never plays, never looks at an actress,

-never does anything wrong, and when a grand heiress was offered to

-him by her people refused her hand blandly but firmly. What is one to

-think? That he washed his soul white in the Szalrassee?'

-

-It was the subtlest flattery of all, the only flattery to which she

-would have been accessible, this entire alteration in the current

-of a man's whole life; this change in habit, inclination, temper,

-and circumstance. If he had approached her its charm would have been

-weakened, its motive suspected; but aloof and silent as he remained,

-his abandonment of all old ways, his adoption of a sterner and worthier

-career, moved her with its marked, mute homage of herself.

-

-When she read his discourses in the French papers she felt a glow

-of triumph, as if she had achieved some personal success; she felt

-a warmth at her heart as of something near and dear to her, which

-was doing well and wisely in the sight of men. His cause did not,

-indeed, as Olga Brancka had said, render tangible, practical, victory

-impossible for him, but he had the victories of eloquence, of

-patriotism, of high culture, of pure and noble language, and these

-blameless laurels seemed to her half of her own gathering.

-

-'Will you never reward him?' the Princess ventured to say at last,

-overcome by her own impatience to rashness. 'Never? Not even by a word?'

-

-'Hear mother,' said Wanda, with a smile which perplexed and baffled the

-Princess, 'if your hero wanted reward he would not be the leader of a

-lost cause. Pray do not suggest to me a doubt of his disinterestedness.

-You will do him very ill service.'

-

-The Princess was mute, vaguely conscious that she had said something

-ill-timed or ill-advised.

-

-Time passed on and brought beautiful weather in the month of June,

-which here in the High Tauern means what April does in the south.

-Millions of song-birds were shouting in the woods, and thousands of

-nests were suspended on the high branches of the forest trees, or

-hidden in the greenery of the undergrowth; water-birds perched and

-swung in the tall reeds where the brimming streams tumbled; the purple,

-the white, and the grey herons were all there, and the storks lately

-flown home from Asia or Africa were settling in bands by the more

-marshy grounds beside the northern shores of the Szalrassee.

-

-One afternoon she had been riding far and fast, and on her return a

-telegram from Vienna had been brought to her, sent on from Lienz.

-Having opened it, she approached her aunt and said with an unsteady

-voice:

-

-'War is declared between France and Prussia!'

-

-'We expected it; we are ready for it,' said the Princess, with all

-her Teutonic pride in her eyes. 'We shall show her that we cannot be

-insulted with impunity.'

-

-'It is a terrible calamity for the world,' said Wanda, and her face was

-very pale.

-

-The thought which was present to her was that Sabran would be foremost

-amidst volunteers. She did not hear a word of all the political

-exultation with which Princess Ottilie continued to make her militant

-prophecies. She shivered as with cold in the warmth of the midsummer

-sunset.

-

-'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her

-house.

-

-The Princess demurred.

-

-'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all

-the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial.

-You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the

-especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge

-Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'

-

-'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.

-

-She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from

-her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.

-

-In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War

-is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss

-of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I

-shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw

-bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every

-sword she has.'

-

-Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:

-

-'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her

-soil is bound to arm.'

-

-More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her

-grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.

-

-But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,'

-written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were

-filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that

-was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a

-child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian

-campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made

-her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal

-conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she

-became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had

-at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from

-the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the

-shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the

-command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their

-own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was

-congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of

-his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally,

-in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name

-mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That

-was all.

-

-The autumn began to deepen into winter, and complete silence covered

-all his life. She thought with a great remorse--if he were dead?

-Perhaps he was dead? Why had she been always so cold to him? She

-suffered intensely; all the more intensely because it was not a sorrow

-which she could not confess even to herself. When she ceased altogether

-to hear anything of or from him, she realised the hold which he had

-taken on her life.

-

-These months of suspense did more to attach her to him than years

-of assiduous and ardent homage could have done. She, a daughter of

-soldiers, had always felt any man almost unmanly who had not received

-the baptism of fire.

-

-Mdme. Ottilie talked of him constantly, wondered frequently if he were

-wounded, slain, or in prison; she never spoke his name, and dreaded to

-hear it.

-

-Greswold, who perceived an anxiety in her that, he did not dare to

-allude to, ransacked every journal that was published in German to find

-some trace of Sabran's name. At the first he saw often some mention of

-the Cuirassiers d'Orléans, and of their intrepid Colonel Commandant:

-some raid, skirmish, or charge in which they had been conspicuous for

-reckless gallantry. But after the month of November he could find

-nothing. The whole regiment seemed to have been obliterated from

-existence.

-

-Winter settled down on Central Austria with cold silence, with roads

-blocked and mountains impassable. The dumbness, the solitude around

-her, which she had always loved so well, now grew to her intolerable.

-It seemed like death.

-

-Paris capitulated. The news reached her at the hour of a violent

-snowstorm; the postillion of her post-sledge bringing it had his feet

-frozen.

-

-Though her cousins of Lilienhöhe were amongst those who entered the

-city as conquerors, the fate of Paris smote her with a heavy blow. She

-felt as if the cold of the outer world had chilled her very bones, her

-very soul. The Princess, looking at her, was afraid to rejoice.

-

-On the following day she wrote to her cousin Hugo of Lilienhöhe, who

-was in Paris with the Imperial Guard. She asked him to inquire for and

-tell her the fate of a friend, the Marquis de Sabran.

-

-In due time Prince Hugo answered:

-

-'The gentleman you asked for was one of the most dangerous of our

-enemies. He commanded a volunteer cavalry regiment, which was almost

-cut to pieces by the Bavarian horse in an engagement before Orleans.

-Two or three alone escaped; their Colonel was severely wounded in

-the thigh, and had his charger shot dead under him. He was taken

-prisoner by the Bavarians after a desperate resistance. Whilst he

-lay on the ground he shot three of our men with his revolver. He was

-sent to a fortress, I think Ehrenbreitstein, but I will inquire more

-particularly. I am sorry to think that you have any French friends.

-

-By-and-by she heard that he had been confined not at Ehrenbreitstein

-but at a more obscure and distant fortress on the Elbe; that his wounds

-had been cured, and that he would shortly be set free like other

-prisoners of war. In the month of March in effect she received a brief

-letter from his own hand, gloomy and profoundly dejected.

-

-'Our plans were betrayed,' he wrote. 'We were surprised and surrounded

-just as we had hobbled our horses and lain down to rest, after being

-the whole day in the saddle. Bavarian cavalry, outnumbering us four to

-one, attacked us almost ere we could mount our worn-out beasts. My

-poor troopers were cut to pieces. They hunted me down when my charger

-dropped, and I was made a prisoner. When they could they despatched

-me to one of their places on the Elbe. I have been here December and

-January. I am well. I suppose I must be very strong; nothing kills

-me. They are now about to send me back to the frontier. My beautiful

-Paris! What a fate! But I forget, I cannot hope for your sympathy; your

-kinsmen are our conquerors. I know not whether the house I lived in

-there exists, but if you will write me a word at Romaris, you will be

-merciful, and show me that you do not utterly despise a lost cause and

-a vanquished soldier.'

-

-She wrote to him at Romaris, and the paper she wrote on felt her tears.

-In conclusion she said:

-

-'Whenever you will, come and make sure for yourself that both the

-Princess Ottilie and I honour courage and heroism none the less because

-it is companioned by misfortune.'

-

-But he did not come.

-

-She understood why he did not. An infinite pity for him overflowed her

-heart. His public career interrupted, his country ruined, his future

-empty, what remained to him? Sometimes she thought, with a blush on her

-face, though she was all alone: 'I do.' But then, if he never came to

-hear that?

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XII.

-

-

-The little hamlet of Romaris, on the coast of Finisterre, was very dull

-and dark and silent. A few grave peasant women knitted as they walked

-down the beach or sat at their doors; a few children did the same. Out

-on the _landes_ some cows were driven through the heather and broom;

-out on the sea some fishing-boats with rough, red sails were rocking to

-and fro. All was melancholy, silent, poor; life was hard at Romaris for

-all. The weatherbeaten church looked grey and naked on a black rock;

-the ruins of the old _manoir_ faced it amidst sands and surfs; the only

-thing of beauty was the bay, and that for the folk of Romaris had no

-beauty; they had seen it kill so many.

-

-There was never any change at Romaris, unless it were a change in the

-weather, a marriage, a birth, or a death. Therefore the women and

-children who were knitting had lifted up their heads as a stranger,

-accompanied by their priest, had come down over the black rocks, on

-which the church stood, towards the narrow lane that parted the houses

-where they clustered together face to face on the edge of the shore.

-

-Their priest, an old man much loved by them, came slowly towards them,

-conversing in low tones with the stranger, who had been young and

-handsome, and a welcome sight, since a traveller to Romaris always

-needed a sailing-boat or a rowing-boat, a guide over the moors, or a

-drive in an ox-waggon through the deep-cut lanes of the country.

-

-But they had ceased to think of such things as these when the curate,

-with his hands extended as when he blessed them, had said in _bas_

-Breton as he stood beside them:

-

-'My children, this is the last of the Sabrans of Romaris, come back to

-us from the far west that lies in the setting of the sun. Salute him,

-and show him that in Brittany we do not forget--nay, not in a hundred

-years.'

-

-Many years had gone by since then, and of the last of the old race,

-Romaris had scarcely seen more than when he had been hidden from

-their sight on the other side of the heaving ocean. Sabran rarely came

-thither. There was nothing to attract a man who loved the world and

-who was sought by it, in the stormy sea coast, the strip of sea-lashed

-oak forest, that one tall tower with its gaunt walls of stone which

-was all that was left of what had once been the fortress of his race.

-Now and then they saw him, chiefly when he had heard that there was

-wild weather on the western coast, and at such times he would go out

-in their boats to distressed vessels, or steer through churning waters

-to reach a fishing-smack in trouble, with a wild courage and an almost

-fierce energy which made him for the moment one of themselves. But

-such times had been few, and all that Romaris really knew of the last

-marquis was that he was a gay gentleman away there in distant Paris.

-

-He had been a mere name to them. Now and then he had sent fifty

-napoleons, or a hundred, to the old priest for such as were poor or

-sick amongst them. That was all. Now after the war he came hither.

-Paris had become hateful to him; his political career was ended, at

-all events for the time; the whole country groaned in anguish; the

-vices and follies that had accompanied his past life disgusted him

-in remembrance. He had been wounded and a prisoner; he had suffered

-betrayal at unworthy hands; Cochonette had sold him to the Prussians,

-in revenge of his desertion of her.

-

-He was further removed from the Countess von Szalras than ever. In the

-crash with which the Second Empire had fallen and sunk out of sight for

-evermore, his own hopes had gone down like a ship that sinks suddenly

-in a dark night. All his old associations were broken, half his old

-friends were dead or ruined; gay châteaux that he had ever been welcome

-at were smoking ruins or melancholy hospitals; the past had been

-felled to the ground like the poor avenues of the Bois. It affected

-him profoundly. As far as he was capable of an impersonal sentiment

-he loved France, which had been for so many years his home, and which

-had always seemed to smile at him with indulgent kindness. Her vices,

-her disgrace, her feebleness, her fall, hurt him with an intense pain

-that was not altogether selfish, but had in it a nobler indignation, a

-nobler regret.

-

-When he was released by the Prussians and sent across the frontier, he

-went at once to this sad sea village of Romaris, to collect as best

-he might the shattered fragments of his life, which seemed to him as

-though it had been thrown down by an earthquake. He had resigned his

-place as deputy when he had offered his sword to France; he had now no

-career, no outlet for ambition, no occupation. Many of his old friends

-were dead or ruined; although such moderate means as he possessed were

-safe, they were too slender to give him any position adequate to his

-rank. His old life in Paris, even if Paris arose from her tribulations,

-gay and glorious once more, seemed to him altogether impossible. He had

-lost taste for those pleasures and distractions which had before the

-war--or before his sojourn on the Holy Isle--seemed to him the Alpha

-and Omega of a man's existence. '_Que faire?_' he asked himself wearily

-again and again. He did not even know whether his rooms in Paris had

-been destroyed or spared; a few thousands of francs which he had

-made by a successful speculation years before, and placed in foreign

-funds, were all he had to live on. His keen sense told him that the

-opportunity which might have replaced the Bourbon throne had been lost

-through fatal hesitation. His own future appeared to him like a blank

-dead wall that rose up in front of him barring all progress; he was no

-longer young enough to select a career and commence it. With passionate

-self-reproach he lamented all the lost irrevocable years that he had

-wasted.

-

-Romaris was not a place to cheer a disappointed and dejected soldier

-who had borne the burning pain of bodily wounds and the intolerable

-shame of captivity in a hostile land. Its loneliness, its darkness,

-its storms, its poverty, had nothing in them with which to restore his

-spirit to hope or his sinews to ambition. In these cold, bleak, windy

-days of a dreary and joyless spring-time, the dusky moors and the

-gruesome sea were desolate, without compensating grandeur. The people

-around him were all taciturn, dull, stupid; they had not suffered by

-the war, but they understood that, poor as they were, they would have

-to bear their share in the burden of the nation's ransom. They barred

-their doors and counted their hoarded gains in the dark with throbbing

-hearts, and stole out in the raw, wet, gusty dawns to kneel at the

-bleeding feet of their Christ. He envied them their faith; he could not

-comfort them, they could not comfort him; they were too far asunder.

-

-The only solace he had was the knowledge that he had done his duty by

-France, and to the memory of those whose name he bore; that he had

-rendered what service he could; that he had not fled from pain and

-peril; that he had at least worn his sword well and blamelessly; that

-he had not abandoned his discrowned city of pleasure in the day of

-humiliation and martyrdom. The only solace he had was that he felt

-Wanda von Szalras herself could have commanded him to do no more than

-he had done in this the Année Terrible.

-

-But, though his character had been purified and strengthened by the

-baptism of fire, and though his egotism had been destroyed by the

-endless scenes of suffering and of heroism which he had witnessed, he

-could not in a year change so greatly that he could be content with the

-mere barren sense of duty done and honour redeemed. He was deeply and

-restlessly miserable. He knew not where to turn, either for occupation

-or for consolation. Time hung on his hands like a wearisome wallet of

-stones.

-

-When all the habits of life are suddenly rent asunder, they are like a

-rope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or they may be

-thrown altogether aside and a new strand woven, but they will never be

-the same thing again.

-

-Romaris, with its few wind-tortured trees and its leaden-hued dangerous

-seas, seemed to him, indeed, a _champ des trépassés_, as it was called,

-a field of death. The naked, ugly, half-ruined towers, which no ivy

-shrouded and no broken marble ennobled, as one or the other would have

-done had it been in England or in Italy, was a dreary residence for

-a man who was used to all the elegant and luxurious habits of a man

-of the world, who was also a lover of art and a collector of choice

-trifles. His rooms had been the envy of his friends, with all their

-eighteenth century furniture, and their innumerable and unclassified

-treasures; when he had opened his eyes of a morning a pastel of La

-Tour had smiled at him, rose-coloured windows had made even a grey

-sky smile. Without, there had been the sound of wheels going down

-the gay Boulevard Haussmann. All Paris had passed by, tripping and

-talking, careless and mirthful, beneath his gilded balconies bright

-with canariensis and volubilis; and on a little table, heaped in

-their hundreds, had been cards that bade him to all the best and most

-agreeable houses, whilst, betwixt them, slipped coyly in many an

-amorous note, many an unlooked-for declaration, many an eagerly-desired

-appointment.

-

-'_Quel beau temps!_' he thought, as he awoke in the chill, bare,

-unlively chamber of the old tower by the sea; and it seemed to him

-that he must be dreaming: that all the months of the war had been

-a nightmare; that if he fully awakened he would find himself once

-more with the April sunshine shining through the rose glass, and

-the carriages rolling beneath over the asphalt road. But it was no

-nightmare, it was a terrible, ghastly reality to him, as to so many

-thousands. There were the scars on his breast and his loins where

-the Prussian steel had hacked and the Prussian shot had pierced him;

-there was his sword in a corner all dinted, notched, stained; there

-was a crowd of hideous ineffaceable tumultuous memories; it was all

-true enough, only too true, and he was alone at Romaris, with all his

-dreams and ambitions faded into thin air, vanished like the blown burst

-bubbles of a child's sport.

-

-In time to come he might recover power and nerve to recommence his

-struggle for distinction, but at present it seemed to him that all was

-over. His imprisonment had shaken and depressed him as nothing else

-in the trials of war could have done. He had been shut up for months

-alone, with his own desperation. To a man of high courage and impatient

-appetite for action there is no injury so great and in its effect so

-lasting as captivity. Joined to this he had the fever of a strong, and

-now perfectly hopeless, passion.

-

-Pacing to and fro the brick floor of the tower looking down on the

-sands and rocks of the coast, his thoughts were incessantly with Wanda

-von Szalras in her stately ancient house, built so high up amidst the

-mountains and walled in by the great forests and the ice slopes of the

-glaciers. In the heat and stench of carnage he had longed for a breath

-of that mountain breeze, for a glance from those serene eyes; he longed

-for them still.

-

-As he passed to and fro in the wild wintry weather, his heart was sick

-with hope deferred, with unavailing regret and repentance, with useless

-longings.

-

-It was near noonday; there was no sun; a heavy wrack of cloud was

-sweeping up from the west; on the air the odour of rotting fish and

-of fish-oil, and of sewage trickling uncovered to the beach, were too

-strong to be driven away by the pungency of the sea.

-

-The sea was high and moaning loud; the dusk was full of rain; the

-wind-tormented trees groaned and seemed to sigh; their boughs were

-still scarce in bud though May had come. He felt cold, weary, hopeless.

-His walk brought no warmth to his veins, and his thoughts none to

-his heart. The moisture of the air seemed to chill him to the bone,

-and he went within and mounted the broken granite stairs to his

-solitary chamber, bare of all save the simplest necessaries, gloomy

-and cheerless with the winds and the bats beating together at the high

-iron-barred casement. He wearily lighted a little oil lamp, and threw

-a log or two of drift-wood on the hearth and set fire to them with a

-faggot of dried ling.

-

-He dreaded his long lonely evening.

-

-He had set the lamp on a table while he had set fire to the wood; its

-light fell palely on a small white square thing. It was a letter. He

-took it up eagerly; he, who in Paris had often tossed aside, with a

-passing glance, the social invitations of the highest personages and

-the flattering words of the loveliest women.

-

-Here, any letter seemed a friend, and as he took up this his pulse

-quickened; he saw that it was sealed with armorial bearings which he

-knew--a shield bearing three vultures with two knights as supporters,

-and with the motto '_Gott und mein Schwert_;' the same arms, the same

-motto as were borne upon the great red and gold banner floating from

-the keep on the north winds at the Hohenszalrasburg. He opened it with

-a hand which shook a little and a quick throb of pleasure at his heart.

-He had scarcely hoped that she would write again to him. The sight of

-her writing filled him with a boundless joy, the purest he had ever

-known called forth by the hand of woman.

-

-The letter was brief, grave, kind. As he read he seemed to hear the

-calm harmonious voice of the lady of Hohenszalras speaking to him in

-her mellowed and softened German tongue.

-

-She sent him words of consolation, of sympathy, of congratulation, on

-the course of action he had taken in a time of tribulation, which had

-been the touchstone of character to so many.

-

-'Tell me something of Romaris,' she said in conclusion. 'I am sure

-you will grow to care for the place and the people, now that you seek

-both in the hour of the martyrdom of France. Have you any friends near

-you? Have you books? How do your days pass? How do you fill up time,

-which must seem so dull and blank to you after the fierce excitations

-and the rapid changes of war? Tell me all about your present life, and

-remember that we at Hohenszalras know how to honour courage and heroic

-misfortune.'

-

-He laid the letter down after twice reading it. Life seemed no longer

-all over for him. He had earned her praise and her sympathy. It was

-doubtful if years of the most brilliant political successes would have

-done as much as his adversity, his misadventure, and his daring had

-done for him in her esteem. She had the blood of twenty generations of

-warriors in her, and nothing appealed so forcibly to her sympathies and

-her instincts as the heroism of the sword. Those few lines too were

-a permission to write to her. He replied at once, with a gratitude

-somewhat guardedly expressed, and with details almost wholly impersonal.

-

-She was disappointed that he said so little of himself, but she did

-justice to the delicacy of the carefully guarded words from a man

-whose passion appealed to her by its silence, where it would only have

-alienated her by any eloquence. Of Romaris he said nothing, save that,

-had Dante ever been upon their coast, he would have added another canto

-to the 'Purgatorio,' more desolate and more unrelieved in gloom than

-any other.

-

-'Does he regret Cochonette?' she thought, with a jealous

-contemptuousness of which she was ashamed as soon as she felt it.

-

-Having once written to her, however, he thought himself privileged

-to write again, and did so several times. He wrote with ease, grace,

-and elegance: he wrote as he spoke, which gives this charm to

-correspondence, seem close at hand to the reader in intimate communion.

-The high culture of his mind displayed itself without effort, and he

-had that ability of polished expression which is in our day too often

-a neglected one. His letters became welcome to her: she answered them

-briefly, but she let him see that they were agreeable to her. There

-was in them the note of a profound depression, of an unuttered, but

-suggested hopelessness which touched her. If he had expressed it in

-plain words, it would not have appealed to her one half so forcibly.

-

-They remained only the letters of a man of culture to a woman capable

-of comprehending the intellectual movement of the time, but it

-was because of this limitation that she allowed them. Any show of

-tenderness would have both alarmed and alienated her. There was no

-reason after all, she thought, why a frank friendship should not exist

-between them.

-

-Sometimes she was surprised at herself for having conceded so much,

-and angry that she had done so. Happily he had the good taste to take

-no advantage of it. Interesting as his letters were they might have

-been read from the housetops. With that inconsistency of her sex from

-which hitherto she had always flattered herself she had been free, she

-occasionally felt a passing disappointment that they were not more

-personal as regarded himself. Reticence is a fine quality; it is the

-marble of human nature. But sometimes it provokes the impatience that

-the marble awoke in Pygmalion.

-

-Once only he spoke of his own aims. Then he wrote:

-

-'You bade me do good at Romaris. Candidly, I see no way to do it

-except in saving a crew off a wreck, which is not an occasion that

-presents itself every week. I cannot benefit these people materially,

-since I am poor; I cannot benefit them morally, because I have not

-their faith in the things unseen, and I have not their morality in the

-things tangible. They are God-fearing, infinitely patient, faithful

-in their daily lives, and they reproach no one for their hard lot,

-cast on an iron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at risk

-of their lives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What

-should I say to them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience,

-one petulant mutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only

-take them what the world always takes into solitude--discontent. It

-would be a cruel gift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any

-other. It is a homely saying that no blood comes out of a stone; so,

-out of a life saturated with the ironies, the contempt, the disbelief,

-the frivolous philosophies, the hopeless negations of what we call

-society, there can be drawn no water of hope and charity, for the

-well-head--belief--is dried up at its source. Some pretend, indeed,

-to find in humanity what they deny to exist as deity, but I should

-be incapable of the illogical exchange. It is to deny that the seed

-sprang from a root; it is to replace a grand and illimitable theism by

-a finite and vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased

-mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the

-poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a _vibrion_,

-a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere

-bundle of phosphorus and carbon? how can it contain the elements of

-worship; what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the

-weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty.

-It becomes ridiculous. The _carpe diem_ of the classic sensualists, the

-morality of the "Satyricon" or the "Decamerone," are its only natural

-concomitants and outcome; but as yet it is not honest enough to say

-this. It affects the soothsayer's long robe, the sacerdotal frown, and

-is a hypocrite.'

-

-In answer she wrote back to him:

-

-'I do not urge you to have my faith: what is the use? Goethe was

-right. It is a question between a man and his own heart. No one should

-venture to intrude there. But taking life even as you do, it is surely

-a casket of mysteries. May we not trust that at the bottom of it, as

-at the bottom of Pandora's, there may be hope? I wish again to think

-with Goethe that immortality is not an inheritance, but a greatness

-to be achieved like any other greatness, by courage, self-denial, and

-purity of purpose--a reward allotted to the just. This is fanciful, may

-be, but it is not illogical. And without being either a Christian or a

-Materialist, without beholding either majesty or divinity in humanity,

-surely the best emotion that our natures know--pity--must be large

-enough to draw us to console where we can, and sustain where we can, in

-view of the endless suffering, the continual injustice, the appalling

-contrasts, with which the world is full. Whether man be the _vibrion_

-or the heir to immortality, the bundle of carbon or the care of angels,

-one fact is indisputable: he suffers agonies, mental and physical,

-that are wholly out of proportion to the brevity of his life, while he

-is too often weighted from infancy with hereditary maladies, both of

-body and of character. This is reason enough, I think, for us all to

-help each other, even though we feel, as you feel, that we are as lost

-children wandering in a great darkness, with no thread or clue to guide

-us to the end.'

-

-When Sabran read this answer, he mused to himself:

-

-'Pity! how far would her pity reach? How great offences would it cover?

-She has compassion for the evil-doers, but it is easy, since the evil

-does not touch her. She sits on the high white throne of her honour and

-purity, and surveys the world with beautiful but serene compassion.

-If the mud of its miry labyrinths reached and soiled her, would her

-theories prevail? They are noble, but they are the theories of one who

-sits in safety behind a gate of ivory and jasper, whilst outside, far

-below, the bitter tide of the human sea surges and moans too far off,

-too low down, for its sound to reach within. _Tout comprendre, c'est

-tout pardonner._ But since she would never understand, how could she

-ever pardon? There are things that the nature must understand rather

-than the mind; and her nature is as high, as calm, as pure as the snows

-of her high hills.'

-

-And then the impulse came over him for a passing moment to tell her

-what he had never told any living creature; to make confession to

-her and abide her judgment, even though he should never see her face

-again. But the impulse shrank and died away before the remembrance

-of her clear, proud eyes. He could not humiliate himself before her.

-He would have risked her anger; he could not brave her disdain.

-Moreover, straight and open ways were hot natural to him, though he was

-physically brave to folly. There was a subtlety and a reticence in him

-which were the enemies of candour.

-

-To her he was more frank than to any other because her influence

-was great on him, and a strong reverence was awakened in him that

-was touched by a timid fear quite alien to a character naturally

-contemptuously cynical and essentially proud. But even to her he could

-not bring himself to be entirely truthful in revelation of his past.

-Truthfulness is in much a habit, and he had never acquired its habit.

-When he was most sincere there was always some reserve lying behind

-it. This was perhaps one of the causes of the attraction he exercised

-on all women. All women are allured by the shadows and the suggestions

-of what is but imperfectly revealed. Even on the clear, strong nature

-of Wanda von Szalras it had its unconscious and intangible charm. She

-herself was like daylight, but the subtle vague charm of the shadows

-had their seduction for her; Night holds dreams and passions that fade

-and flee before the lucid noon, and who, at noonday wishes not for

-night?

-

-For himself, the letters he received from her seemed the only things

-that bound him to life at all.

-

-The betrayal of him by a base and mercenary woman had hurt him more

-than it was worthy to do; it had stung his pride and saddened him in

-this period of adversity with a sense of degradation. He had been sold

-by a courtezan; it seemed to him to make him ridiculous as Samson was

-ridiculous, and he had no gates of Gaza to pull down upon himself and

-her. He could only be idle, and stare at an unoccupied and valueless

-future. The summer went on, and he remained at Romaris. An old servant

-had sent him word that all his possessions were safe in Paris, and his

-apartments unharmed; but he felt no inclination to go there: he felt no

-sympathy with Communists or Versaillists, with Gambetta or Gallifet. He

-stayed on at the old storm-beaten sea-washed tower, counting his days

-chiefly by the coming to him of any line from the castle by the lake.

-

-She seemed to understand that and pity it, for each week brought him

-some tidings.

-

-At midsummer she wrote him word that she was about to be honoured again

-by a two days' visit of her Imperial friends.

-

-'We shall have, perforce, a large house party,' she said. 'Will you

-be inclined this time to join it? It is natural that you should

-sorrow without hope for your country, but the fault of her disasters

-lies not with you. It is, perhaps, time that you should enter the

-world again; will you commence with what for two days only will be

-worldly--Hohenszalras? Your old friends the monks will welcome you

-willingly and lovingly on the Holy Isle?'

-

-He replied with gratitude, but he refused. He did not make any plea or

-excuse; he thought it best to let the simple denial stand by itself.

-She would understand it.

-

-'Do not think, however,' he wrote, 'that I am the less profoundly

-touched by your admirable goodness to a worsted and disarmed combatant

-in a lost cause.'

-

-'It is the causes that are lost which are generally the noble ones,'

-she said in answer. 'I do not see why you should deem your life at an

-end because a sham empire, which you always despised, has fallen to

-pieces. If it had not perished by a blow from without, it would have

-crumbled to pieces from its own internal putrefaction.'

-

-'The visit has passed off very well,' she continued. 'Every one was

-content, which shows their kindness, for these things are all of

-necessity so much alike that it is difficult to make them entertaining.

-The weather was fortunately fine, and the old house looked bright.

-You did rightly not to be present, if you felt festivity out of tone

-with your thoughts. If, however, you are ever inclined for another

-self-imprisonment upon the island, you know that your friends, both at

-the monastery and at the burg, will be glad to see you, and the monks

-bid me salute you with affection.'

-

-A message from Mdme. Ottilie, a little news of the horses, a few

-phrases on the politics of the hour, and the letter was done. But,

-simple as it was, it seemed to him to be like a ray of sunshine amidst

-the gloom of his empty chamber.

-

-From her the permission to return to the monastery when he would

-seemed to say so much. He wrote her back calm and grateful words of

-congratulation and cordiality; he commenced with the German formality,

-'Most High Lady,' and ended them with the equally formal 'devoted and

-obedient servant;' but it seemed to him as if under that cover of

-ceremony she must see his heart beating, his blood throbbing; she must

-know very well, and if knowing, she suffered him to return to the Holy

-Isle, why then--he was all alone, but he felt the colour rise to his

-face.

-

-'And I must not go! I must not go!' he thought, and looked at his

-pistols.

-

-He ought sooner to blow his brains out, and leave a written confession

-for her.

-

-The hoarse sound of the sea surging amongst the rocks at the base of

-the tower was all that stirred the stillness; evening was spreading

-over all the monotonous inland country; a west wind was blowing and

-rustling amidst the gorse; a woman led a cow between the dolmen,

-stopping for it to crop grass here and there; the fishing-boats were

-far out to sea, hidden under the vapours and the shadows. It was all

-melancholy, sad-coloured, chill, lonesome. As he leaned against the

-embrasure of the window and looked down, other familiar scenes, long

-lost, rose up to his memory. He saw a wide green rolling river, long

-lines of willows and of larches bending under a steel-hued sky, a vast

-dim plain stretching away to touch blue mountains, a great solitude,

-a silence filled at intervals with the pathetic song of the swans,

-chanting sorrowfully because the nights grew cold, the ice began to

-gather, the food became scanty, and they were many in number.

-

-'I must not go!' he said to himself; 'I must never see Hohenszalras.'

-

-And he lit his study lamp, and held her letter to it and burnt it.

-It was his best way to do it honour, to keep it holy. He had the

-letters of so many worthless women locked in his drawers and caskets

-in his rooms in Paris. He held himself unworthy to retain hers. He

-had burned each written by her as it had come to him, in that sort

-of exaggeration of respect with which it seemed to him she was most

-fittingly treated by him. There are less worthy offerings than the

-first scruple of an unscrupulous life. It is like the first pure drops

-that fall from a long turbid and dust-choked fountain.

-

-As he walked the next day upon the windblown, rock-strewn strip of sand

-that parted the old oak wood from the sea, he thought restlessly of her

-in those days of stately ceremony which suited her so well. What did he

-do here, what chance had he to be remembered by her? He chafed at his

-absence, yet it seemed to him impossible that he could ever go to her.

-What had been at first keen calculation with him had now become a finer

-instinct, was now due to a more delicate sentiment, a truer and loftier

-emotion. What could he ever look to her if he sought her but a mere

-base fortune-seeker, a mere liar, with no pride and no manhood in him?

-And what else was he? he thought, with bitterness, as he paced to and

-fro the rough strip of beach, with the dusky heaving waves trembling

-under a cloudy sky, where a red glow told the place of the setting sun.

-

-There were few bolder men living than He, and he was cynical and

-reckless before many things that most men reverence; but at the thought

-of her possible scorn he felt himself tremble like a child. He thought

-he would rather never see her face again than risk her disdain; there

-was in him a vague romantic wishfulness rather to die, so that she

-might think well of his memory, than live in her love through any

-baseness that would be unworthy of her.

-

-Sin had always seemed a mere superstitious name to him, and if he had

-abstained from its coarser forms it had been rather from the revolt

-of the fine taste of a man of culture than from any principle or

-persuasion of duty. Men he believed were but ephemera, sporting their

-small hours, weaving their frail webs, and swept away by the great

-broom of destiny as spiders by the housewife. In the spineless doctrine

-of altruism he had had too robust a temperament, too clear a reason,

-to seek a guide for conduct. He had lived for himself, and had seen

-no cause to do otherwise. That he had not been more criminal had been

-due partly to indolence, partly to pride. In his love for Wanda von

-Szalras, a love with which considerable acrimony had mingled at the

-first, he yet, through all the envy and the impatience which alloyed

-it, reached a moral height which he had never touched before. Between

-her and him a great gulf yawned. He abstained from any effort to pass

-it. It was the sole act of self-denial of a selfish life, the sole

-obedience to conscience in a character which obeyed no moral laws, but

-was ruled by a divided tyranny of natural instinct and conventional

-honour.

-

-The long silent hours of thought in the willow-shaded cloisters of

-the Holy Isle had not been wholly without fruit. He desired, with

-passion and sincerity, that she should think well of him, but he did

-not dare to wish for more; love offered from him to her seemed to him

-as if it would be a kind of blasphemy. He remembered in his far-off

-childhood, which at times still seemed so near to him, nearer than all

-that was around him, the vague, awed, wistful reverence with which

-he had kneeled in solitary hours before the old dim picture of the

-Madonna with the lamp burning above it, a little golden flame in the

-midst of the gloom; he remembered so well how his fierce young soul and

-his ignorant yearning child's heart had gone out in a half-conscious

-supplication, how it had seemed to him that if he only knelt long

-enough, prayed well enough, she would come down to him and lay her

-hands on him. It was all so long ago, yet, when he thought of Wanda

-von Szalras, something of that same emotion rose up in him, something

-of the old instinctive worship awoke in him. In thought he prostrated

-himself once more whenever the memory of her came to him. He had no

-religion; she became one to him.

-

-Meanwhile, he was constantly thinking restlessly to himself, 'Did I do

-ill not to go?'

-

-His bodily life was at Romaris, but his mental life was at

-Hohenszalras. He was always thinking of her as she would look in those

-days of the Imperial visit; he could see the stately ceremonies of

-welcome, the long magnificence of the banquets, the great Rittersaal

-with cressets of light blazing on its pointed emblazoned roofs; he

-could see her as she would move down the first quadrille which she

-would dance with her Kaiser: she would wear her favourite ivory-white

-velvet most probably, and her wonderful old jewels, and all her orders.

-She would look as if she had stepped down off a canvas of Velasquez

-or Vandyck, and she would be a little tired, a little contemptuous, a

-little indifferent, despite her loyalty; she would be glad, he knew,

-when the brilliant gathering was broken up, and the old house, and the

-yew terrace, and the green lake were all once more quiet beneath the

-rays of the watery moon. She was so unlike other women. She would not

-care about a greatness, a compliment, a success more or less. Such

-triumphs were for the people risen yesterday, not for a Countess von

-Szalras.

-

-He knew the simplicity of her life and the pride of her temper,

-and they moved him to the stronger admiration because he knew also

-that those mere externals which she held in contempt had for him an

-exaggerated value. He was scarcely conscious himself of how great a

-share the splendour of her position, united to her great indifference

-to it, had in the hold she had taken on his imagination and his

-passions. He did know that there were so much greater nobilities in

-her that he was vaguely ashamed of the ascendency which her mere rank

-took in his thoughts of her. Yet he could not divest her of it, and

-it seemed to enhance both her bodily and spiritual beauty, as the

-golden calyx of the lily makes its whiteness seem the whiter by its

-neighbourhood.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIII.

-

-

-In the Iselthal the summer was more brilliant and warm than usual. The

-rains were less frequent, and the roses on the great sloping lawns

-beneath the buttresses and terraces of Hohenszalras were blooming

-freely.

-

-Their mistress did not for once give them much heed. She rode long and

-fast through the still summer woods, and came back after nightfall. Her

-men of business, during their interviews with her, found her attention

-less perfect, her interest less keen. In stormy days she sat in the

-library, and read Heine and Schiller often, and all the philosophers

-and men of science rarely. A great teacher has said that the Humanities

-must outweigh the Sciences at all times, and he is unquestionably

-true, if it were only for the reason that in the sweet wise lore of

-ages every human heart in pain and perplexity finds a refuge; whilst in

-love or in sorrow the sciences seem the poorest and chilliest of mortal

-vanities that ever strove to measure the universe with a foot-rule.

-

-The Princess watched her with wistful, inquisitive eyes, but dared

-not name the person of whom they both thought most. Wanda was herself

-intolerant of the sense of impatience with which she awaited the coming

-of the sturdy pony that brought the post-bag from Windisch-Matrey.

-He in his loneliness and emptiness of life on the barren sea-shore

-of Romaris did not more anxiously await her letters than did the

-châtelaine of Hohenszalras, amidst all her state, her wealth, and her

-innumerable occupations, await his. She pitied him intensely; there was

-something pathetic to her in the earnestness with which he had striven

-to amend his ways of life, only to have his whole career shattered by

-an insensate and unlooked-for national war. She understood that his

-poverty stood in the path of his ambition, and she divined that his

-unhappiness had broken that spring of manhood in him which would have

-enabled him to construct a new career for himself out of the ruins of

-the old. She understood why he was listless and exhausted.

-

-There were moments when she was inclined to send him some invitation

-more cordial, some bidding more clear; but she hesitated to take a step

-which would bind her in her own honour to so much more. She knew that

-she ought not to suggest a hope to him to which she was not prepared

-to give full fruition. And again, how could he respond? It would be

-impossible for him to accept. She was one of the great alliances of

-Europe, and he was without fortune, without career, without a future.

-Even friendship was only possible whilst they were far asunder.

-

-Two years had gone by since he had come across from the monastery in

-the green and gold of a summer afternoon. The monks had not forgotten

-him; throughout the French war they had prayed for him. When their

-Prior saw her, he said anxiously sometimes: 'And the Markgraf von

-Sabran, will he never come to us again? Were we too dull for him?

-Will your Excellency remember us to him, if ever you can?' And she

-had answered with a strange emotion at her heart: 'His country is

-in trouble, holy father; a good son cannot leave his land in her

-adversity. No: I do not think he was dull with you; he was quite happy,

-I believe. Perhaps he may come again some day, who knows? He shall be

-told what you say.'

-

-Then a vision would rise up to her of herself and him, as they would

-be perhaps when they should be quite old. Perhaps he would retire into

-this holy retreat of the Augustines, and she would be a grave sombre

-woman, not gay and pretty and witty, as the Princess was. The picture

-was gloomy; she chased it away, and galloped her horse long and far

-through the forests.

-

-The summer had been so brilliant that the autumn which followed was

-cold and severe, earlier than usual, and heavy storms swept over the

-Tauern, almost ere the wheat harvest could be reaped. Many days were

-cheerless and filled only with the sound of incessant rains. In the

-Pinzgau and the Salzkammergut floods were frequent. The Ache and the

-Szalzach, with all their tributary streams and wide and lonely lakes,

-were carrying desolation and terror into many parts of the land which

-in summer they made beautiful. Almost every day brought her some

-tidings of some misfortunes in the villages on the farms belonging to

-her in the more distant parts of Austria; a mill washed away, a bridge

-down, a dam burst, a road destroyed, a harvest swept into the water,

-some damage or other done by the swollen river and torrents, she heard

-of by nearly every communication that her stewards and her lawyers made

-to her at this season.

-

-'Our foes the rivers are more insidious than your mighty enemy the

-salt water,' she wrote to Romaris. 'The sea deals open blows, and men

-know what they must expect if they go out on the vasty deep. But here

-a little brook that laughed and chirped at noon-day as innocently as

-a child may become at nightfall or dawn a roaring giant, devouring

-all that surrounds him. We pay heavily for the glory of our mountain

-waters.'

-

-These autumn weeks seemed very dreary to her. She visited her horses

-chafing at inaction in their roomy stalls, and attended to her affairs,

-and sat in the library or the octagon room hearing the rain beat

-against the emblazoned leaded panes, and felt the days, and above all

-the evenings, intolerably dull and melancholy. She had never heeded

-rain before, or minded the change of season.

-

-One Sunday a messenger rode through the drenching storm, and brought

-her a telegram from her lawyer in Salzburg. It said: 'Idrac flooded:

-many lives lost: great distress: fear town wholly destroyed. Please

-send instructions.'

-

-The call for action roused her as a trumpet sounding rouses a cavalry

-charger.

-

-'Instructions!' she echoed as she read. 'They write as if I could bid

-the Danube subside, or the Drave shrink in its bed!'

-

-She penned a hasty answer.

-

-'I will go to Idrac myself.'

-

-Then she sent a message also to S. Johann im Wald for a special train

-to be got in readiness for her, and told one of her women and a trusty

-servant to be ready to go with her to Vienna in an hour. It was still

-early in the forenoon.

-

-'Are you mad?' cried Madame Ottilie, when she was informed of the

-intended journey.

-

-Wanda kissed her hand.

-

-'There is no madness in what I shall do, dear mother, and Bela surely

-would have gone.'

-

-'Can you stay the torrents of heaven? Can you arrest a river in its

-wrath?'

-

-'No; but lives are often lost because poor people lose their senses in

-fright. I shall be calmer than anyone there. Besides, the place belongs

-to us; we are bound to share its danger. If only Egon were not away

-from Hungary!'

-

-'But he is away. You have driven him away.'

-

-'Do not dissuade me, dearest mother. It would be cowardice not to go.'

-

-'What can women do in such extremities?'

-

-'But we of Hohenszalras must not be mere women when we are wanted in

-any danger. Remember Luitgarde von Szalras, the _kuttengeier._'

-

-The Princess sighed, prayed, even wept, but Wanda was gently

-inflexible. The Princess could not see why a precious life should be

-endangered for the sake of a little half barbaric, half Jewish town,

-which was remarkable for nothing except for shipping timber and selling

-_salbling._ The population was scarcely Christian, so many Hebrews were

-there, and so benighted were the Sclavonian poor, who between them made

-up the two thousand odd souls that peopled Idrac. To send a special

-messenger there, and to give any quantity of money that the distress

-of the moment might demand, would be all right and proper; indeed,

-an obligation on the owner of the little feudal river-side town. But

-to go! A Countess von Szalras to go in person where not one out of a

-hundred of the citizens had been properly baptized or confirmed! The

-Princess could not view this Quixotism in any other light than that of

-an absolute insanity.

-

-'Bela lost his life in just such a foolish manner!' she pleaded.

-

-'So did the saints, dear mother,' said his sister, gently.

-

-The Princess coloured and coughed.

-

-'Of course, I am aware that many holy lives have been--have been--what

-appears to our finite senses wasted,' she said, with a little asperity.

-'But I am also aware, Wanda, that the duties most neglected are those

-which lie nearest home and have the least display; consideration for

-_me_ might be better, though less magnificent, than so much heroism for

-Idrac.'

-

-'It pains me that you should put it in that light, dearest mother,'

-said Wanda, with inexhaustible patience. 'Were you in any danger I

-would stay by you first, of course; but you are in none. These poor,

-forlorn, ignorant, cowardly creatures are in the very greatest. I

-draw large revenues from the place; I am in honour bound to share

-its troubles. Pray do not seek to dissuade me. It is a matter not of

-caprice but of conscience. I shall be in no possible peril myself. I

-shall go down the river in my own vessel, and I will telegraph to you

-from every town at which I touch.'

-

-The Princess ceased not to lament, to oppose, to bemoan her own

-powerlessness to check intolerable follies. Sitting in her easy chair

-in her warm blue-room, sipping her chocolate, the woes of a distant

-little place on the Danube, whose population was chiefly Semitic, were

-very bearable and altogether failed to appeal to her.

-

-Wanda kissed her, asked her blessing humbly, and took her way in the

-worst of a blinding storm along the unsafe and precipitous road which

-went over the hills to Windisch-Matrey.

-

-'What false sentiment it all is!' thought the Princess, left alone.

-'She has not seen this town since she was ten years old. She knows that

-they are nearly all Jews, or quite heathenish Sclavonians. She can do

-nothing at all--what should a woman do?--and yet she is so full of her

-conscience that she goes almost to the Iron Gates in quest of a duty in

-the wettest of weather, while she leaves a man like Egon and a man like

-Sabran wretched for want of a word! I must say,' thought the Princess,

-'false sentiment is almost worse than none at all!'

-

-The rains were pouring down from leaden skies, hiding all the sides of

-the mountains and filling the valleys with masses of vapour. The road

-was barely passable; the hill torrents dashed across it; the little

-brooks were swollen to water-courses; the protecting wall on more than

-one giddy height had been swept away; the gallop of the horses shook

-the frail swaying galleries and hurled the loosened stones over the

-precipice with loud resounding noise. The drive to Matrey and thence

-with post-horses to S. Johann im Wald, the nearest railway station, was

-in itself no little peril, but it was accomplished before the day had

-closed in, and the special train she had ordered being in readiness

-left at once for Vienna, running through the low portions of the

-Pinzgau, which were for the most part under water.

-

-All the way was dim and watery, and full of the sound of running

-or of falling water. The Ache and the Szalsach, both always deep

-and turbulent rivers, were swollen and boisterous, and swirled and

-thundered in their rocky beds; in the grand Pass of Lueg the gloom,

-always great, was dense as at midnight, and when they reached Salzburg

-the setting sun was bursting through ink-black clouds, and shed a

-momentary glow as of fire upon the dark sides of the Untersberg, and

-flamed behind the towers of the great castle on its rocky throne. All

-travellers know the grandeur of that scene; familiar as it was to her

-she looked upward at it with awe and pleasure commingled. Salzburg in

-the evening light needs Salvator Rosa and Rembrandt together to portray

-it.

-

-The train only paused to take in water; the station was crowded as

-usual, set as it is between the frontiers of empire and kingdom, but in

-the brief interval she saw one whom she recognised amongst the throng,

-and she felt the colour come into her own face as she did so.

-

-She saw Sabran; he did not see her. Her train moved out of the station

-rapidly, to make room for the express from Munich; the sun dropped down

-into the ink-black clouds; the golden and crimson pomp of Untersberg

-changed to black and grey; the ivory and amber and crystal of the

-castle became stone and brick and iron, that frowned sombrely over a

-city sunk in river-mists and in rain-vapours. She felt angrily that

-there was an affinity between the landscape and herself; that so, at

-sight of him, a light had come into her life which had no reality in

-fact, prismatic colours baseless as a dream.

-

-She had longed to speak to him; to stretch out her hand to him; to

-say at least how her thoughts and her sympathies had been with him

-throughout the war. But her carriage was already in full onward

-movement, and in another moment had passed at high speed out of the

-station into that grand valley of the Szalzach where Hohensalzburg

-seems to tower as though Friederich Barbarossa did indeed sleep there.

-With a sigh she sank backward amongst her furs and cushions, and saw

-the soaring fortress pass, into the clouds.

-

-The night had now closed in; the rain fell heavily. As the little

-train, oscillating greatly from its lightness, swung over the iron

-rails, there was a continual sound of splashing water audible above

-the noise of the wheels and the throb of the engine. She had often

-travelled at night and had always slept soundly; this evening she could

-not sleep. She remained wide awake watching the swaying of the lamp,

-listening to the shrill shriek of the wheels as they rushed through

-water where some hillside brook had broken bounds and spread out in a

-shallow lagoon. The skies were overcast in every direction; the rain

-was everywhere unceasing; the night seemed to her very long.

-

-She pondered perpetually on his presence at Salzburg, and wondered if

-he were going to the Holy Isle. Three months had gone by since she had

-sent him the semi-invitation to her country.

-

-The train sped on; the day dawned; she began to get glimpses of the

-grand blue river, now grey and ochre-coloured and thick with mud, its

-turbid waves heaving sullenly under the stormy October skies. She had

-always loved the great Donau; she knew its cradle well in the north

-land of the Teutons. She had often watched the baby-stream rippling

-over the stones, and felt the charm, as of some magical transformation,

-as she thought of the same stream stretching broadly under the monastic

-walls of Klosterneuberg, rolling in tempest by the Iron Gates, and

-gathering its mighty volume higher and deeper to burst at last into

-the sunlight of the eastern sea. Amidst the levelled monotony of

-modern Europe the Danube keeps something of savage grandeur, something

-of legendary power, something of oriental charm; it is still often

-tameless, a half-barbaric thing, still a Tamerlane amidst rivers: and

-yet yonder at its birthplace it is such a slender thread of rippling

-water! She and Bela had crossed it with bare feet to get forget-me-nots

-in Taunus, talking together of Chriemhilde and her pilgrimage to the

-land of the Huns.

-

-The little train swung on steadily through the water above and below,

-and after a night of no little danger came safely to Vienna as the dawn

-broke. She went straight to her yacht, which was in readiness off the

-Lobau and weighed anchor as the pale and watery morning broadened into

-day above the shores that had seen Aspern and Wagram. The yacht was

-a yawl, strongly built and drawing little water, made on purpose for

-the ascent and descent of the Danube, from Passau up in the north to

-as far south as the Bosphorus if needed. The voyage had been of the

-greatest joys of hers and of Bela's childhood; they had read on deck

-alternately the 'Nibelungen-Lied' and the 'Arabian Nights,' clinging

-together in delighted awe as they passed through the darkness of the

-defile of Kasan.

-

-Idrac was situated between Pesth and Peterwardein, lying low on marshy

-ground that was covered with willows and intersected by small streams

-flowing from the interior to the Danube.

-

-The little town gave its name and its seigneurie to the owner of its

-burg; an ancient place built on a steep rock that rose sheer out of

-the fast-running waves, and dominated the passage of the stream. The

-Counts of Idrac had been exceeding powerful in the old times, when

-they had stopped at their will the right of way of the river; and

-their appanages with their title had come by marriage into the House

-of Szalras some four centuries before, and although the dominion over

-the river was gone, the fortress and the little town and all that

-appertained thereto still formed a considerable possession; it had

-usually been given with its Countship to the second son of the Szalras.

-

-Making the passage to Pesth in fourteen hours, the yacht dropped

-anchor before the Franz Josef Quai as the first stars came out above

-the Blocksburg, for by this time the skies had lightened and the rains

-had ceased. Here she stayed the night perforce, as an accident had

-occurred to the machinery of the vessel. She did not leave the yacht,

-but sent into the inner city for stores of provisions and of the local

-cordial, the _slibowitza_, to distribute to the half-drowned people

-amongst whom she was about to go. It was noonday before the yawl got

-under weigh and left the twin-towns behind her. A little way further

-down the stream they passed a great castle, standing amidst beech woods

-on a rock that rose up from fields covered with the Carlowitz vine. She

-looked at it with a sigh: it was the fortress of Kohacs, one of the

-many possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely.

-

-The weather had now cleared, but the skies were overcast, and the

-plains, which began to spread away monotonously from either shore,

-were covered with white fog. Soon the fog spread also over the river,

-and the yacht was compelled to advance cautiously and slowly, so that

-the voyage was several hours longer than usual. When the light of the

-next day broke they had come in sight of the flooded districts on their

-right: the immense flat fields that bore the flax and grain which make

-the commerce of Baja, of Neusatz, and of other riverain towns, were

-all changed to shallow estuaries. The Theiss, the Drave, and many

-minor streams, swollen by the long autumnal rains, had burst their

-boundaries and laid all the country under water for hundreds of square

-leagues. The granaries, freshly filled with the late abundant harvest,

-had at many places been flooded or destroyed: thousands of stacks of

-grain were floating like shapeless, dismasted vessels. Timber and the

-thatched roofs of the one-storied houses were in many places drifting

-too, like the flotsam and the hulls of wrecked ships.

-

-There are few scenes more dreary, more sad, more monotonous than those

-of a flat country swamped by flood: the sky above them was leaden

-and heavy, the Danube beneath them was turgid and discoloured; the

-shrill winds whistled through the brakes of willow, the water-birds,

-frightened, flew from their osier-beds on the islands, the bells of

-churches and watch-towers tolled dismally.

-

-It was late in the afternoon when she came within sight of her little

-town on the Sclavonian shore, which Ernst von Szalras had fired on

-August 29, 1526, to save it from the shame of violation by the Turks.

-Though he had perished, and most of the soldiers and townsfolk with

-him, the fortress, the _têtes du pont_, and the old water-gates and

-walls had been too strong for the flames to devour, and the town had

-been built up again by the Turks and subsequently by the Hungarians.

-

-The slender minarets of the Ottomans' two mosques still raised

-themselves amidst the old Gothic architecture of the mediæval

-buildings, and the straw-covered roofs and the white-plastered walls

-of the modern houses. As they steamed near it the minarets and the

-castle towers rose above what looked a world of waters, all else seemed

-swallowed in the flood; the orchards, which had surrounded all save the

-river-side of the town; were immersed almost to the summits of their

-trees. The larger vessels could never approach Idrac in ordinary times,

-the creek being too shallow on which it stood; but now the water was

-so high that though it would be too imprudent to anchor there, the

-yacht easily passed in, and hove-to underneath the water-walls, a pilot

-taking careful soundings as they steered. It was about three in the

-afternoon. The short, grey day was near its end; a shout of welcome

-rose from some people on the walls as they recognised the build and the

-ensign of the yawl. Some crowded boats were pulling away from the town,

-laden with fugitives and their goods.

-

-'How soon people run away! They are like rats,' she thought. 'I would

-sooner be like the stork, and not quit my nest if it were in flames.'

-

-She landed at the water-stairs of the castle. Men, women, and children

-came scrambling along the walls, where they were huddled together out

-of temporary reach of the flood, and threw themselves down at her

-feet and kissed her skirts with abject servility. They were half mad

-with terror, and amongst the population there were many hundreds of

-Jews, the most cowardly people in all the world. The boats were quite

-inadequate in number to the work they had to do; the great steamers

-passing up and down did not pause to help them; the flood was so

-general below Pesth that on the right shore of the river each separate

-village and township was busy with its own case and had no help for

-neighbours: the only aid came from those on the opposite shore, but

-that was scanty and unwisely ministered. The chief citizens of Idrac

-had lost their wits, as she had foreseen they would do. To ring the

-bells madly night and day, and fire off the old culverins from the

-water-gate, was all they seemed to know how to do. They told her that

-many lives had been lost, as the inland waters had risen in the night,

-and most of the houses were of only one storey. In the outlying

-flax-farms it was supposed that whole households had perished. In the

-town itself there were six feet of water everywhere, and many of the

-inhabitants were huddled together in the two mosques, which were now

-granaries, in the towers, and in the fortress itself; but several

-families had been enabled to escape, and had climbed upon the roofs,

-clinging to the chimneys for bare life.

-

-Her mere presence brought reviving hope and energy to the primitive

-population. Their Lady had a romantic legendary reputation amongst

-them, and they were ready to cling round the pennon of the yacht as

-their ancestors had rallied round the standard of Ernst von Szalras.

-

-She ascended to the Rittersaal of the fortress, and assembled a few of

-the men about her, who had the most influence and energy in the little

-place. She soon introduced some kind of system and method into the

-efforts made, promised largesse to those who should be the most active,

-and had the provisions she had brought distributed amongst those who

-most needed them. The boats of the yawl took many away to a temporary

-refuge on the opposite shore. Many others were brought in to the

-state-room of the castle for shelter. Houses were constantly falling,

-undermined by the water, and there were dead and wounded to be attended

-to, as well as the hungry and terrified living creatures. Once before,

-Idrac had been thus devastated by flood, but it had been far away in

-the previous century, and the example was too distant to have been a

-warning to the present generation.

-

-She passed a fatiguing and anxious night. It was impossible to

-think of sleep with so much misery around. The yacht was obliged to

-descend, the river for safe anchorage, but the boats remained. She

-went herself, now in one, now in another, to endeavour to inspire the

-paralysed people with some courage and animation. A little wine, a

-little bread, were all she took; food was very scarce. The victuals of

-the yacht's provisioning did not last long amongst so many famishing

-souls. She ordered her skipper at dawn to go down as far as Neusatz

-and purchase largely. There were five thousand people, counting those

-of the neighbourhood, or more, homeless and bereft of all shelter. The

-telegraph was broken, the poles had been snapped by the force of the

-water in many places.

-

-With dawn a furious storm gathered and broke, and renewed rains added

-their quota to the inundation and their discomfort to the exposed

-sufferers. The cold was great, and the chill that made them shudder

-from head to foot was past all cure by cordials. She regretted not

-to have brought Greswold with her. She was indifferent to danger,

-indefatigable in exertion, and strong as Libussa, brave as Chriemhilde.

-Because the place belonged to her in almost a feudal manner, she held

-herself bound to give her life for it if need be. Bela would have done

-what she was doing.

-

-Twice or thrice during the two following days she heard the people

-speak of a stranger who had arrived fifteen hours before her, and had

-wrought miracles of deliverance. Unless the stories told her were

-greatly exaggerated, this foreigner had shown a courage and devotion

-quite unequalled. He had thrown himself into the work at once on his

-arrival there in a boat from Neusatz, and had toiled night and day,

-enduring extreme fatigue and running almost every hour some dire peril

-of his life. He had saved whole families of the poorest and most

-wretched quarter; he had sprung on to roofs that were splitting and

-sinking, on to walls that were trembling and tottering, and had borne

-away in safety men, women, and children, the old, and the sick, and the

-very animals; he had infused some of his own daring and devotedness

-into the selfish and paralysed Hebrew population; priests and rabbis

-were alike unanimous in his praise, and she, as she heard, felt that

-he who had fought for France had been here for her sake. They told

-her that he was now out amongst the more distant orchards and fields,

-amidst the flooded farms where the danger was even greater than in the

-town itself. Some Czechs said that he was S. John of Nepomuc himself.

-She bade them bring him to her, that she might thank him, whenever he

-should enter the town again, and then thought of him no more.

-

-Her whole mind and feeling were engrossed by the spectacle of a misery

-that even all her wealth could not do very much to alleviate. The

-waters as yet showed no sign of abatement. The crash of falling houses

-sounded heavily ever and again through the gloom. The melancholy sight

-of humble household things, of drowned cattle, of dead dogs, borne down

-the discoloured flood out to the Danube renewed itself every hour.

-The lamentations of the ruined people went up in an almost continuous

-wail like the moaning of a winter wind. There was nothing grand,

-nothing picturesque, nothing exciting to redeem the dreariness and the

-desolation. It was all ugly, miserable, dull. It was more trying than

-war, which even in its hideous senselessness lends a kind of brutal

-intoxication to all whom it surrounds.

-

-She was incessantly occupied and greatly fatigued, so that the time

-passed without her counting it. She sent a message each day to the

-Princess at home, and promised to return as soon as the waters had

-subsided and the peril passed. For the first time in her life she

-experienced real discomfort, real privation; she had surrendered nearly

-all the rooms in the burg to the sick people, and food ran short and

-there was none of good quality, though she knew that supplies would

-soon come from the steward at Kohacs and by the yacht.

-

-On the fourth day the waters had sunk an inch. As she heard the good

-tidings she was looking out inland over the waste of grey and yellow

-flood; a Jewish rabbi was beside her speaking of the exertions of the

-stranger, in whom the superstitious of the townsfolk saw a saint from

-heaven.

-

-'And does no one even know who he is?' she asked.

-

-'No one has asked,' answered the Jew. 'He has been always out where the

-peril was greatest.'

-

-'How came he here?'

-

-'He came by one of the big steamers that go to Turkey. He pulled

-himself here in a little boat that he had bought; the boat in which he

-has done such good service.'

-

-'What is he like in appearance?'

-

-'He is very tall, very fair, and handsome; I should think he is

-northern.'

-

-Her pulse beat quicker for a moment; then she rejected the idea as

-absurd, though indeed, she reflected, she had seen him at Salzburg.

-

-'He must at least be a brave man,' she said quietly. 'If you see him

-bring him to me that I may thank him. Is he in the town now?'

-

-'No; he is yonder, where the Rathwand farms are, or were; where your

-Excellency sees those dark, long islands which are not islands at all,

-but only the summits of cherry orchards. He has carried the people

-away, carried them down to Peterwardein; and he is now about to try and

-rescue some cattle which were driven up on to the roof of a tower, poor

-beasts--that tower to the east there, very far away: it is five miles

-as the crow flies.'

-

-'I suppose he will come into the town again?'

-

-'He was here last night; he had heard of your Excellency, and asked for

-her health.'

-

-'Ah! I will see and thank him if he come again.'

-

-But no one that day saw the stranger in Idrac.

-

-The rains fell again and the waters again rose. The maladies which

-come of damp and of bad exhalations spread amongst the people; they

-could not all be taken to other villages or towns, for there was no

-room for them. She had quinine, wines, good food ordered by the great

-steamers, but they were not yet arrived. What could be got at Neusatz

-or Peterwardein the yacht brought, but it was not enough for so many

-sick and starving people. The air began to grow fœtid from the many

-carcases of animals, though as they floated the vultures from the hills

-fed on them. She had a vessel turned into a floating hospital, and

-the most delicate of the sick folk carried to it, and had it anchored

-off the nearest port. Her patience, her calmness, and her courage did

-more to revive the sinking hearts of the homeless creatures than the

-cordials and the food. She was all day long out in her boat, being

-steered from one spot to another. At night she rested little and passed

-from one sick bed to another. She had never been so near to hopeless

-human misery before. At Hohenszalras no one was destitute.

-

-One twilight hour on the ninth day, as she was rowed back to the castle

-stairs, she passed another boat in which were two lads and a man. The

-man was rowing, a dusky shadow in the gloom of the wet evening and the

-uncouthness of his waterproof pilot's dress; but she had a lantern

-beside her, and she flashed its light full on the boat as it passed

-her. When she reached the burg, she said to her servant Anton: 'Herr

-von Sabran is in Idrac; go and say that I desire to see him.'

-

-Anton, who remembered him well, returned in an hour, and said he could

-neither find him nor hear of him.

-

-All the night long, a cheerless tedious night, with the rain falling

-without and the storm that was raging in the Bosphorus sending its

-shrill echoes up the Danube, she sat by the beds of the sick women

-or paced up and down the dimly-lit Rittersaal in an impatience which

-it humiliated her to feel. It touched her that he should be here,

-so silently, so sedulously avoiding her, and doing so much for the

-people of Idrac, because they were her people. The old misgiving that

-she had been ungenerous in her treatment of him returned to her. He

-seemed always to have the finer part--the _beau rôle._ To her, royal

-in giving, imperious in conduct, it brought a sense of failure, of

-inferiority. As she read the psalms in Hungarian to the sick Magyar

-women, her mind perpetually wandered away to him.

-

-She did not see Sabran again, but she heard often of him. The fair

-stranger, as the people called him, was always conspicuous wherever

-the greatest danger was to be encountered. There was always peril in

-almost every movement where the undermined houses, the tottering walls,

-the stagnant water, the fever-reeking marshes presented at every turn a

-perpetual menace to life. 'He is not vainly _un fils des preux_,' she

-thought, with a thrill of personal pride, as if someone near and dear

-to her were praised, as she listened to the stories of his intrepidity

-and his endurance. Whole nights spent in soaked clothes, in half

-swamped boats; whole days lost in impotent conflict with the ignorance

-or the poltroonery of an obstinate populace, continual risk encountered

-without counting its cost to rescue some poor man's sick beast, or pull

-a cripple from beneath falling beams, or a lad from choking mud; hour

-on hour of steady laborious rowing, of passage to and fro the sullen

-river with a freight of moaning, screaming peasantry--this was not

-child's play, nor had it any of the animation and excitation which in

-war or in adventure make of danger a strong wine that goes merrily and

-voluptuously to the head. It was all dull, stupid, unlovely, and he

-had come to it for her sake. For her sake certainly, though he never

-approached her; though when Anton at last found and took her message

-to him he excused himself from obedience to it by a plea that he was

-at that moment wet and weary, and had come from a hut where typhoid

-raged. She understood the excuse; she knew that he knew well she was no

-more afraid than he of that contagion. She admired him the more for his

-isolation; in these grey, rainy, tedious, melancholy days his figure

-seemed to grow into a luminous heroic shape like one of the heroes of

-the olden time. If he had once seemed to seek a guerdon for it the

-spell would have been broken. But he never did. She began to believe

-that such a knight deserved any recompense which she could give.

-

-'Egon himself could have done no more,' she said in her own thoughts,

-and it was the highest praise that she could give to any man, for

-her Magyar cousin was the embodiment of all martial daring, of all

-chivalrous ardour, and had led his glittering hussars down on to the

-French bayonets, as on to the Prussian Krupp guns, with a fury that

-bore all before it, impetuous and irresistible as a stream of fired

-naphtha.

-

-On the twelfth morning the river had sunk so much lower that the yacht

-arriving with medicines and stores of food from Neusatz signalled that

-she could not enter the creek on which Idrac stood, and waited orders.

-It had ceased to rain, but the winds were still strong and the skies

-heavy. She descended to her boat at the water-gate, and told the men to

-take her out to the yacht. It was early, the sun behind the clouds had

-barely climbed above the distant Wallachian woods, and the scene had

-lost nothing of its melancholy. A man was standing on the water-stairs

-as she descended them, and turned rapidly away, but she had seen him

-and stretched out her long staff and touched him lightly.

-

-'Why do you avoid me?' she said, as he uncovered his head; 'my men

-sought you in all directions; I wished to thank you.'

-

-He bowed low over the hand she held out to him. 'I ventured to be near

-at hand to be of use,' he answered. 'I was afraid the exposure, and,

-the damp, and all this pestilence would make you ill: you are not ill?'

-

-'No; I am quite well. I have heard of all your courage and endurance.

-Idrac owes you a great debt.'

-

-'I only pay my debt to Hohenszalras.'

-

-They were both silent; a certain constraint was upon them both.

-

-'How did you know of the inundation? It was unkind of you not to come

-to me,' she said, and her voice was unsteady as she spoke. 'I want so

-much to tell you, better than letters can do, all that we felt for you

-throughout that awful war.'

-

-He turned away slightly with a shudder. 'You are too good. Thousands of

-men much better than I suffered much more.'

-

-The tears rose to her eyes as she glanced at him. He was looking pale

-and worn. He had lost the graceful _insouciance_ of his earlier manner.

-He looked grave, weary, melancholy, like a man who had passed through

-dire disaster, unspeakable pain, and had seen his career snapped in

-two like a broken wand. But there was about him instead something

-soldierlike, proven, war-worn, which became him in her eyes, daughter

-of a race of warriors as she was.

-

-'You have much to tell me, and I have much to hear,' she said, after

-a pause. 'You should have come to the monastery to be cured of your

-wounds. Why were you so mistrustful of our friendship?'

-

-He coloured and was silent.

-

-'Indeed,' she said gravely, 'we can honour brave men in the Tauern and

-in Idrac too. You are very brave. I do not know how to thank you for my

-people or for myself.'

-

-'Pray do not speak so,' he said, in a very low voice. 'To see you again

-would be recompense for much worthier things than any I have done.'

-

-'But you might have seen me long ago,' she said, with a certain

-nervousness new to her, 'had you only chosen to come to the Isle. I

-asked you twice.'

-

-He looked at her with eyes of longing and pathetic appeal.

-

-'Do not tempt me,' he murmured. 'If I yielded, and if you despised

-me----'

-

-'How could I despise one who has so nobly saved the lives of my people?'

-

-'You would do so.'

-

-He spoke very low: he was silent a little while, then he said very

-softly:

-

-'One evening, when we spoke together on the terrace at Hohenszalras,

-you leant your hand upon the ivy there. I plucked the leaf you touched;

-you did not see. I had the leaf with me all through the war. It was

-a talisman. It was like a holy thing. When your cousin's soldiers

-stripped me in their ambulance, they took it from me.'

-

-His voice faltered. She listened and was moved to a profound emotion.

-

-'I will give you something better,' she said very gravely. He did not

-ask her what she would give.

-

-She looked away from him awhile, and her face flushed a little. She was

-thinking of what she would give him; a gift so great that the world

-would deem her mad to bestow it, and perhaps would deem him dishonoured

-to take it.

-

-'How did you hear of these floods along the Danube?' she asked him,

-recovering her wonted composure.

-

-'I read about them in telegrams in Paris,' he made answer. 'I had

-mustered courage to revisit my poor Paris; all I possess is there.

-Nothing has been injured; a shell burst quite close by but did not

-harm my apartments. I went to make arrangements for the sale of my

-collections, and on the second day that I arrived there I saw the news

-of the inundations of Idrac and the lower Danubian plains. I remembered

-the name of the town; I remembered it was yours. I remembered your

-saying once that where you had feudal rights you had feudal duties, so

-I came on the chance of being of service.'

-

-'You have been most devoted to the people.'

-

-'The people! What should I care though the whole town perished? Do not

-attribute to me a humanity that is not in my nature.'

-

-'Be as cynical as you like in words so long as you are heroic in

-action. I am going out to the yacht; will you come with me?'

-

-He hesitated. 'I merely came to hear from the warder of your health. I

-am going to catch the express steamer at Neusatz; all danger is over.'

-

-'The yacht can take you to Neusatz. Come with me.'

-

-He did not offer more opposition; he accompanied her to the boat and

-entered it.

-

-The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing more, but she could not

-forget that scores of her own people here had owed their lives to his

-intrepidity and patience, and that he had never hesitated to throw his

-life into the balance when needed. And it had been done for her sake

-alone. The love of humanity might have been a nobler and purer motive,

-but it would not have touched her so nearly as the self-abandonment of

-a man by nature selfish and cold.

-

-In a few moments they were taken to the yawl. He ascended the deck with

-her.

-

-The tidings the skipper brought, the examination of the stores, the

-discussion of ways and means, the arrangements for the general relief,

-were air dull, practical matters that claimed careful attention and

-thought. She sat in the little cabin that was brave with marqueterie

-work and blue satin and Dresden mirrors, and made memoranda and

-calculations, and consulted him, and asked his advice on this, on

-that. The government official, sent to make official estimates of the

-losses in the township, had come on board to salute and take counsel

-with her. The whole forenoon passed in these details. He wrote, and

-calculated, and drew up reports for her. No more tender or personal

-word was spoken between them; but there was a certain charm for them

-both in this intimate intercourse, even though it took no other shape

-than the study of how many boatloads of wheat were needed for so many

-hundred people, of how many florins a day might be passed to the head

-of each family, of how many of the flooded houses would still be

-serviceable with restoration, of how many had been entirely destroyed,

-of how the town would best be rebuilt, and of how the inland rivers

-could best be restrained in the future.

-

-To rebuild it she estimated that she would have to surrender for five

-years the revenues from her Galician and Hungarian mines, and she

-resolved to do it altogether at her own cost. She had no wish to see

-the town figure in public prints as the object of public subscription.

-

-'I am sure all my woman friends,' she said, 'would kindly make it

-occasion for a fancy fair or a lottery (with new costumes) in Vienna,

-but I do not care for that sort of thing, and I can very well do what

-is needed alone.'

-

-He was silent. He had always known that her riches were great, but

-he had never realised them as fully as he now did when she spoke of

-rebuilding an entire town as she might have spoken of building a

-carriage.

-

-'You would make a good prime minister,' she said, smiling; 'you have

-the knowledge of a specialist on so many subjects.'

-

-At noon they served her a little plain breakfast of Danubian

-_salbling_, with Carlowitzer wine and fruit sent by the steward of

-Mohacs. She bade him join her in it.

-

-'Had Egon himself been here he could not have done more for Idrac than

-you have done,' she said.

-

-'Is this Prince Egon's wine?' he said abruptly, and on hearing that it

-was so, he set the glass down untasted.

-

-She looked surprised, but she did not ask him his reason, for she

-divined it. There was an exaggeration in the unspoken hostility more

-like the days of Arthur and Lancelot than their own, but it did not

-displease her.

-

-They were both little disposed to converse during their meal; after the

-dreary and terrible scenes they had been witness of, the atmosphere

-of life seems grave and dark even to those whom the calamity had not

-touched. The most careless spirit is oppressed by a sense of the

-precariousness and the cruelty of existence.

-

-When they ascended to the deck the skies were lighter than they had

-been for many weeks; the fog had cleared, so that, in the distance, the

-towers of Neusatz and the fortress of Peterwardein were visible; vapour

-still hung over the vast Hungarian plain, but the Danube was clear and

-the affluents of it had sunk to their usual level.

-

-'You really go to-night?' she said, as they looked down the river.

-

-'There is no need for me to stay; the town is safe, and you are well,

-you say. If there be anything I can still do, command me.'

-

-She smiled a little and let her eye meet his for a moment.

-

-'Well, if I command you to remain then, will you do so as my viceroy?

-I want to return home; Aunt Ottilie grows daily more anxious, more

-alarmed, but I cannot leave these poor souls all alone with their

-priests, and their rabbi, who are all as timid as sheep and as stupid.

-Will you stay in the castle and govern them, and help them till they

-recover from their fright? It is much to ask, I know, but you have

-already done so much for Idrac that I am bold to ask you to do more?'

-

-He coloured with a mingled emotion.

-

-'You could ask me nothing that I would not do,' he said in a low tone.

-'I could wish you asked me something harder.'

-

-'Oh, it will be very hard,' she said, with an indifference she did not

-feel. 'It will be very dull, and you will have no one to speak to that

-knows anything save how to grow flax and cherries. You will have to

-talk the Magyar tongue all day, and you will have nothing to eat save

-_kartoffeln_ and _salbling_; and I do not know that I am even right,'

-she added, more gravely, 'to ask you to incur the risks that come from

-all that soaked, ground, which will be damp so long.'

-

-'The risks that you have borne yourself! Pray do not wound me by any

-such scruple as that. I shall be glad, I shall be proud, to be for ever

-so short or so long a time as you command, your representative, your

-servant.'

-

-'You are very good.'

-

-'No.'

-

-His eyes looked at hers with a quick flash, in which all the passion

-he dared not express was spoken. She averted her glance and continued

-calmly: 'You are very good indeed to Idrac. It will be a great

-assistance and comfort to me to know that you are here. The poor people

-already love you, and you will write to me and tell me all that may

-need to be done. I will leave you the yacht and Anton. I shall return

-by land with my woman; and when I reach home I will send you Herr

-Greswold. He is a good companion, and has a great admiration for you,

-though he wishes that you had not forsaken the science of botany.'

-

-'It is like all other dissection or vivisection; it spoils the artistic

-appreciation of the whole. I am yet unsophisticated enough to feel the

-charm of a bank of violets, of a cliff covered with alpen-roses. I may

-write to you?'

-

-'You must write to me! It is you who will know all the needs of Idrac.

-But are you sure that to remain here will not interfere with your own

-projects, your own wishes, your own duties?'

-

-'I have none. If I had any I would throw them away, with pleasure, to

-be of use to one of your dogs, to one of your birds.'

-

-She moved from his side a little.

-

-'Look how the sun has come out. I can see the sparkle of the brass on

-the cannon down yonder at Neusatz. We had better go now. I must see my

-sick people and then leave as soon as I can. The yacht must take me to

-Mohacs; from there I will send her back to you.'

-

-'Do as you will. I can have no greater happiness than to obey you.'

-

-'I am sure that I thank you in the way that you like best, when I say

-that I believe you.'

-

-She said the words in a very low tone, but so calmly that the calmness

-of them checked any other words he might have uttered. It was a royal

-acceptance of a loyal service; nothing more. The boat took them back

-to the fortress. Whilst she was occupied in her farewell to the sick

-people, and her instructions to those who attended on them, he, left

-to himself in the apartment she had made her own, instinctively went

-to an old harpsichord that stood there and touched the keys. It had a

-beautiful case, rich with the varnish of the Martins. He played with

-it awhile for its external beauty, and then let his fingers stray over

-its limited keyboard. It had still sweetness in it, like the spinet

-of Hohenszalras. It suited certain pathetic quaint old German airs he

-knew, and which he half unconsciously reproduced upon it, singing them

-as he did so in a low tone. The melody, very soft and subdued, suited

-to the place where death had been so busy and nature so unsparing, and

-where a resigned exhaustion had now succeeded to the madness of terror,

-reached the ears of the sick women in the Rittersaal and of Wanda von

-Szalras seated beside their beds.

-

-'It is like the saints in Heaven sighing in pity for us here,' said one

-of the women who was very feeble and old, and she smiled as she heard.

-The notes, tremulous from age but penetrating in their sweetness, came

-in slow calm movements of harmony through the stillness of the chamber;

-his voice, very low also, but clear, ascended with them. Wanda sat

-quite still, and listened with a strange pleasure. 'He alone,' she

-thought, 'can make the dumb strings speak.

-

-It was almost dusk when she descended to the room which she had made

-her own. In the passages of the castle oil wicks were lighted in the

-iron lamps and wall sconces, but here it was without any light, and

-in the gloom she saw the dim outline of his form as he sat by the

-harpsichord. He had ceased playing; his head was bent down and rested

-on the instrument; he was lost in thought, and his whole attitude was

-dejected. He did not hear her approach, and she looked at him some

-moments, herself unseen. A great tenderness came over her: he was

-unhappy, and he had been very brave, very generous, very loyal: she

-felt almost ashamed. She went nearer, and he raised himself abruptly.

-

-'I am going,' she said to him. 'Will you come with me to the yacht?'

-

-He rose, and though it was dusk, and in this chamber so dark that his

-face was indistinct to her, she was sure that tears had been in his

-eyes.

-

-'Your old harpsichord has the vernis Martin,' he said, with effort.

-'You should not leave it buried here. It has a melody in it too, faint

-and simple and full of the past, like the smell of dead rose-leaves.

-Yes, I will have the honour to come with you. I wish there were a full

-moon. It will be a dark night on the Danube.'

-

-'My men know the soundings of the river well. As for the harpsichord,

-you alone have found its voice. It shall go to your rooms in Paris.'

-

-'You are too good, but I would not take it. Let it go to Hohenszalras.'

-

-'Why would you not take it?

-

-'I would take nothing from you.'

-

-He spoke abruptly, and with some sternness.

-

-'I think there is such a thing as being too proud? she said, with

-hesitation.

-

-'Your ancestors would not say so,' he answered, with an effort; she

-understood the meaning that underlay the words. He turned away and

-closed the lid of the harpsichord, where little painted cupids wantoned

-in a border of metal scroll-work.

-

-All the men and women well enough to stand crowded on the water-stairs

-to see her departure; little children were held up in their mother's

-arms and bidden remember her for evermore; all feeble creatures lifted

-up their voices to praise her; Jew and Christian blessed her; the

-water-gate was cumbered with sobbing people, trying to see her face,

-to kiss her skirt for the last time. She could not be wholly unmoved

-before that unaffected, irrepressible emotion. Their poor lives were

-not worth much, but such as they were she, under Heaven, had saved them.

-

-'I will return and see you again,' she said to them, as she made a slow

-way through the eager crowd. 'Thank Heaven, my people, not me. And I

-leave my friend with you, who did much more for you than I. Respect him

-and obey him.'

-

-They raised with their thin trembling voices a loud _Eljén_! of homage

-and promise, and she passed away from their sight into the evening

-shadows on the wide river.

-

-Sabran accompanied her to the vessel, which was to take her to the town

-of Mohacs, thence to make her journey home by railway.

-

-'I shall not leave until you bid me, even though you should forget to

-call me all in my life!' he said, as the boat slipped through the dark

-water.

-

-'Such oblivion would be a poor reward.'

-

-'I have had reward enough. You have called me your friend.'

-

-She was silent. The boat ran through the dusk and the rippling rays of

-light streaming from the sides of the yacht, and they went on board. He

-stood a moment with uncovered head before her on the deck, and she gave

-him her hand.

-

-'You will come to the Holy Isle?' she said, as she did so.

-

-'If you bid me,' he said, as he bowed and kissed her hand. His lips

-trembled as he did so, and by the lamplight she saw that he was very

-pale.

-

-'I shall bid you,' she said, very softly, by-and-by. Farewell!'

-

-He bowed very low once more, then he dropped over the yacht's side into

-the boat waiting below; the splash of the oars told her he was gone

-back to Idrac. The yawl weighed anchor and began to go up the river,

-a troublesome and tedious passage at all seasons. She sat on deck

-watching the strong current of the Danube as it rolled on under the bow

-of the schooner. For more than a league she could see the beacon that

-burned by the water-gate of the fortress. When the curve of the stream

-hid it from her eyes she felt a pang of painful separation, of wistful

-attachment to the old dreary walls where she had seen so much suffering

-and so much courage, and where she had learned to read her own heart

-without any possibility of ignoring its secrets. A smile came on her

-mouth and a moisture in her eyes as she sat alone in the dark autumn

-night, while the schooner made her slow ascent through the swell that

-accompanies the influx of the Drave.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIV.

-

-

-In two days' time Hohenszalras received its mistress home.

-

-She was not in any way harmed by the perils she had encountered, and

-the chills and fever to which she had been exposed. On the contrary,

-her eyes had a light and her face had a bloom which for many months had

-not been there.

-

-The Princess heard a brief sketch of what had passed in almost

-total silence. She had disapproved strongly, and she said that her

-disapproval could not change, though a merciful heavenly host had

-spared her the realisation of her worst fears.

-

-The name of Sabran was not spoken. Wanda was of a most truthful temper,

-but she could not bring herself to speak of his presence at Idrac; the

-facts would reveal themselves inevitably soon enough.

-

-She sent Greswold to the Danube laden with stores and medicines.

-She received a letter every morning from her delegate; but he wrote

-briefly, and with scrupulous care, the statements of facts connected

-with the town and reports of what had been done. Her engineer had

-arrived from the mines by Kremnitz, and the builders estimated that

-the waters would have subsided and settled enough, if no fresh rising

-took place, for them to begin the reconstruction of the town with the

-beginning of the new month. Ague and fever were still very common, and

-fresh cases were brought in every hour to the hospital in the fortress.

-He wrote on the arrival of Herr Greswold, that, with her permission, he

-himself would still stay on, for the people had grown used to him, and

-having some knowledge of hydraulics he would be interested to see the

-plans proposed by her engineers for preserving the town from similar

-calamities.

-

-Three weeks passed; all that time she spoke but little either of him or

-of any other subject. She took endless rides, and she sat many hours

-doing nothing in the white room, absorbed in thought. The Princess,

-who had learned what had passed, with admirable exercise of tact and

-self-restraint made neither suggestion nor innuendo, and accepted the

-presence of a French Marquis at a little obscure town in Sclavonia as

-if it were the most natural circumstance in the world.

-

-'All the Szalras have been imperious, arrogant, and of complicated

-character,' she thought; 'she has the same temper, though it is

-mitigated in her by great natural nobility of disposition and strong

-purity of motives. She will do as she chooses, let all the world do

-what it may to change her. If I say a word either way it may take

-effect in some wholly unforeseen manner that I should regret. It is

-better to abstain. In doubt do nothing, is the soundest of axioms.'

-

-And Princess Ottilie, who on occasion had the wisdom of the serpent

-with the sweetness of the dove, preserved a discreet silence, and

-devoured her really absorbing curiosity in her own heart.

-

-At the end of the fourth week she heard that all was well at Idrac,

-so far as it could be so in a place almost wholly destroyed. There

-was no sign of renewed rising of the inland streams. The illness was

-diminished, almost conquered; the people had begun to take heart and

-hope, and, being aided, wished to aid themselves. The works for new

-embankments, water-gates, and streets were already planned, though

-they could not be begun until the spring. Meanwhile, strong wooden

-houses were being erected on dry places, which which could shelter

-_ad interim_ many hundreds of families; the farmers were gradually

-venturing to return to their flooded lands. The town had suffered

-grievously and in much irreparably, but it began to resume its trade

-and its normal life.

-

-She hesitated a whole day when she heard this. Though Sabran did not

-hint at any desire of his own to leave the place, she knew it, was

-impossible to bid him remain longer, and that a moment of irrevocable

-decision was come. She hesitated all the day, slept little all the

-night, then sent him a brief telegram: 'Come to the Island.'

-

-Obey the summons as rapidly as he might, he could not travel by Vienna

-and Salzburg more quickly than in some thirty hours or more. The time

-passed to her in a curious confusion and anxiety. Outwardly she was

-calm enough; she visited the schools, wrote some letters, and took her

-usual long ride in the now leafless woods, but at heart she was unquiet

-and ill at ease, troubled more than by anything else at the force of

-the desire she felt to meet him once more. It was but a month since

-they had parted on the deck, and it seemed ten years. She had known

-what he had meant when he had said that he would come if she bade him;

-she had known that she would only do the sheerest cruelty and treachery

-if she called him thither only to dismiss him. It had not been a visit

-of the moment, but all his life that she had consented to take when she

-had written 'Come to the Island.'

-

-She would never have written it unless she had been prepared to fulfil

-all to which it tacitly pledged her. She was incapable of wantonly

-playing with any passion that moved another, least of all with his. The

-very difference of their position would have made indecision or coyness

-in her seem cruelty, humiliation. The decision hurt her curiously with

-a sense of abdication, mortification, and almost shame. To a very proud

-woman in whom the senses have never asserted their empire, there is

-inevitably an emotion of almost shame, of self-surrender, of loss of

-self-respect, in the first impulses of love. It made her abashed and

-humiliated to feel the excitation that the mere touch of his hand, the

-mere gaze of his eyes, had power to cause her. 'If this be love,' she

-thought, 'no wonder the world is lost for it.'

-

-Do what she would, the time seemed very long; the two evenings that

-passed were very tedious and oppressive. The Princess seemed to

-observe nothing of what she was perfectly conscious of, and her

-flute-like voice murmured on in an unending stream of commonplaces to

-which her niece replied much at random.

-

-In the afternoon of the third day she stood on the terrace looking down

-the lake and towards the Holy Isle, with an impatience of which she was

-in turn impatient. She was dressed in white woollen stuff with silver

-threads in it; she had about her throat an old necklace of the Golden

-Fleece, of golden shells enamelled, which had been a gift from Charles

-the Fifth to one of her house; over her shoulders, for the approach

-of evening was cold, she had thrown a cloak of black Russian sables.

-She made a figure beautiful, stately, patrician, in keeping with the

-background of the great donjon tower, and the pinnacled roofs, and the

-bronze warriors in their Gothic niches.

-

-When she had stood there a few minutes looking down the lake towards

-the willows of the monastery island, a boat came out from the willow

-thickets, and came over the mile-and-half of green shadowy water. There

-was only one person in it. She recognised him whilst he was still far

-off, and a smile came on her mouth that it was a pity he could not see.

-

-He was a bold man, but his heart stood still with awe of her, and his

-soul trembled within him at this supreme moment of his fate. For he

-believed that she would not have bidden him there unless her hand were

-ready to hold out destiny to him--the destiny of his maddest, of his

-sweetest, dreams.

-

-She came forward a few paces to meet him; her face was grave and pale,

-but her eyes had a soft suppressed light.

-

-'I have much for which to thank you,' she said, as she held out her

-hand to him. Her voice was tremulous though calm.

-

-He kissed her hand, then stood silent. It seemed to him that there was

-nothing to say. She knew what he would have said if he had been king,

-or hero, or meet mate for her. His pulses were beating feverishly, his

-self-possession was gone, his eyes did not dare to meet hers. He felt

-as if the green woods, the shining waters, the rain-burdened skies were

-wheeling round him. That dumbness, that weakness, in a man so facile

-of eloquence, so hardy and even cynical in courage, touched her to a

-wondering pitifulness.

-

-'After all,' she thought once more, 'if we love one another what is it

-to anyone else? We are both free.'

-

-If the gift she would give would be so great that the world would blame

-him for accepting it, what would that matter so long as she knew him

-blameless?

-

-They were both mute: he did not even look at her, and she might have

-heard the beating of his heart. She looked at him and the colour came

-back into her face, the smile back upon her mouth.

-

-'My friend,' she said very gently,'did never you think that I also----'

-

-She paused: it was very hard to her to say what she must say, and he

-could not help her, dared not help her, to utter it.

-

-They stood thus another moment mute, with the sunset glow upon the

-shining water, and upon the feudal majesty of the great castle.

-

-Then she looked at him with a straight, clear, noble glance, and with

-the rich blood mounting in her face, stretched out her hand to him with

-a royal gesture.

-

-'They robbed you of your ivy leaf, my cruel Prussian cousins. Will

-you--take--this--instead?'

-

-Then Heaven itself opened to his eyes. He did not take her hand. He

-fell at her feet and kissed them.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XV.

-

-

-Is it wisest after all to be very unwise, dear mother mine?' she said a

-little later, with a smile that was tender and happy.

-

-The Princess looked up quickly, and so looking understood.

-

-'Oh, my beloved, is it indeed so? Yes, you are wise to listen to your

-heart; God speaks in it!'

-

-With tears in her eyes she stretched out her pretty hands in solemn

-benediction.

-

-'Be His Spirit for ever with you,' she said with great emotion. 'I

-shall be so content to know that I leave you not alone when our Father

-calls me, for I think your very greatness and dominion, my dear, but

-make you the more lonely, as sovereigns are, and it is not well to be

-alone, Wanda; it is well to have human love close about us.'

-

-'It is to lean on a reed, perhaps,'murmured Wanda, in that persistent

-misgiving which possessed her. 'And when the reed breaks, then though

-it has been so weak before, it becomes of iron, barbed and poisoned.'

-

-'What gloomy thoughts! And you have made me so happy, and surely you

-are happy yourself?'

-

-'Yes. My reed is in full flower, but--but--yes, I am happy; I hope that

-Bela knows.'

-

-The Princess kissed her once again.

-

-'Ah! he loves you so well.'

-

-'That I am sure of; yet I might never have known it but for you.'

-

-'I did for the best.'

-

-'I will send him to you. I want to be alone a little. Dear mother, he

-cares for you as tenderly as though he were your son.'

-

-'I have been his friend always,' said the Princess, with a smile,

-whilst the tears still stood in her eyes. 'You cannot say so much,

-Wanda; you were very harsh.'

-

-'I know it. I will atone to him.'

-

-The eyes of the Princess followed her tenderly.'

-

-'And she will make her atonement generously, grandly,' she thought.

-'She is a woman of few protestations, but of fine impulses and of

-unerring magnanimity. She will be incapable of reminding him that

-their kingdom is hers. I have done this thing; may Heaven be with it!

-If she had loved no one, life would have grown so pale, so chill, so

-monotonous to her; she would have tired of herself, having nothing

-but herself for contemplation. Solitude has been only grand to her

-hitherto because she has been young, but as the years rolled on she

-would have died without ever having lived; now she will live. She may

-have to bear pains, griefs, infidelities, calamities that she would

-have escaped; but even so, how much better the summer day, even with

-the summer storm, than the dull, grey, quiet, windless weather! Of

-course, if she could have found sanctuary in the Church----But her

-faith is not absolute and unwavering enough for that; she has read too

-many philosophies; she requires, too, open-air and vigorous life; the

-cloister would have been to her a prison. She is one of those whose

-religion lies in activity; she will worship God through her children.'

-

-Sabran entered as she mused, and knelt down before her.

-

-'You have been my good angel, always,' he murmured. 'How can I thank

-you? I think she would never have let her eyes rest on me but for you.'

-

-The Princess smiled.

-

-'My friend, you are one of those on whom the eyes of women willingly

-rest, perhaps too willingly. But you--you will have no eyes for any

-other now? You must deserve my faith in you. Is it not so?'

-

-'Ah, madame,' he answered with deep emotion, 'all words seem so trite

-and empty; any fool can make phrases, but when I say that my life

-shall be consecrated to her, I mean it, in the uttermost royalty, the

-uttermost gratitude.'

-

-'I believe you,' said the Princess, as she laid her hand lightly

-on his bent head. 'Perhaps no man can understand entirely all that

-she surrenders in admitting that she loves you; for a proud woman

-to confess so much of weakness is very hard: but I think you will

-comprehend her better than any other would. I think you will not force

-her to pass the door of disillusion; and remember that though she will

-leave you free as air--for she is not made of that poor stuff which

-would enslave what it loves--she would not soon forgive too great abuse

-of freedom. I mean if you were ever--ever unfaithful----

-

-'For what do you take me?' he cried, with indignant passion. 'Is there

-another woman in the world who could sit beside her, and not be

-dwarfed, paled, killed, as a candle by the sun?'

-

-'You are only her betrothed,' said the Princess, with a little sigh.

-'Men see their wives with different eyes; so I have been told, at

-least. Familiarity is no courtier, and time is always cruel.'

-

-'Nay, time shall be our dearest friend,' said Sabran, with a tenderness

-in his voice that spoke more constancy than a thousand oaths. 'She will

-be beautiful when she is old, as you are; age will neither alarm nor

-steal from her; her bodily beauty is like her spiritual, it is cast

-in lines too pure and clear not to defy the years. Oh, mother mine!

-(let me call you that) fear nothing; I will love her so well that, all

-unworthy now, I will grow worthy her, and cause her no moment's pain

-that human love can spare her.'

-

-'Her people shall be your people, and her God your God,' murmured the

-Princess, with her hand still lying lightly on his head, obediently

-bent.

-

-When late that night he went across the lake the monks were at their

-midnight orisons; their voices murmured as one man's the Latin words of

-praise and prayer, and made a sound like that of a great sea rolling

-slowly on a lonely shore.

-

-He believed naught that they believed. Deity was but a phrase to him;

-faith and a future life were empty syllables to him. Yet, in the

-fulness of his joy and the humiliation of his spirit, he felt his heart

-swell, his pride sink subdued. He knelt down in the hush and twilight

-of that humble place of prayer, and for the first moment in many years

-he also praised God.

-

-No one heeded him; he knelt behind them in the gloom unnoticed; he rose

-refreshed as men in barren lands in drought are soothed by hearing the

-glad fall of welcome rain. He had no place there, and in another hour

-would have smiled at his own weakness; but now he remembered nothing

-except that he, utterly beyond his deserts, was blessed. As the monks

-rose to their feet and their loud chanting began to vibrate in the air,

-he went out unheard, as he had entered, and stood on the narrow strip

-of land that parted the chapel from the lake. The green waters were

-rolling freshly in under a strong wind, the shadows of coming night

-were stealing on; in the south-west a pale yellow moonlight stretched

-broadly in a light serene as dawn, and against it there rose squarely

-and darkly with its many turrets the great keep of Hohenszalras.

-

-He looked, but it was not of that great pile and all which it

-represented and symbolised that he thought now.

-

-It was of the woman he loved as a woman, not as a great possessor of

-wealth and lands.

-

-'Almost I wish that she were poor as the saints she resembles!' he

-thought, with a tender passion that for the hour was true. It seemed

-to him that had he seen her standing in her shift in the snow, like

-our Lady of Hungary, discrowned and homeless, he would have been glad.

-He was honest with the honesty of passion. It was not the mistress of

-Hohenszalras that he loved, but his own wife.

-

-Such a marriage could not do otherwise than arouse by its announcement

-the most angry amazement, the most indignant protests from all the

-mighty houses with which for so many centuries the house of Szalras

-had allied itself. In a few tranquil sentences she made known her

-intentions to those of her relations whom she felt bound thus to

-honour; but she gave them clearly to understand that it was a formula

-of respect not an act of consultation. When they received her letters

-they knew that her marriage was already quite as irrevocable as though

-it had already taken place in the Hof-Kapelle of Vienna.

-

-All her relatives and all her order were opposed to her betrothal;

-a cold sufferance was the uttermost which any of them extended to

-Sabran. A foreigner and poor, and, with a troubled and uncertain

-past behind him, he was bitterly unwelcome to the haughty Prussian,

-Austrian, and Hungarian nobilities to which she belonged; neither his

-ancient name nor his recent political brilliancy and military service

-could place him on an equality with them in their eyes. Her trustees,

-the Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe and the Cardinal Vàsàrhely, with her

-cousin Kaulnitz, hurried in person as swiftly as special trains could

-bring them to the Iselthal, but they were too late to avert the blow.

-

-'It is not a marriage for her,' said Kaulnitz, angrily.

-

-'Why not? It is a very old family,' said the Princess, with no less

-irritation.

-

-'But quite decayed, long ruined,' he returned. 'This man was himself

-born in exile.'

-

-'As they exile everybody twice in every ten years in France!

-

-'And there have been stories----'

-

-'Of whom are there not stories? Calumny is the parasite of character;

-the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler.'

-

-'I never heard him accused of any strength, except of the wrist in

-_l'escrime!_'

-

-'Do you know anything dishonourable of him? If you do you are bound to

-say it.'

-

-'Dishonourable is a grave word. No, I cannot say that I do; the society

-he frequents is a guarantee against that; but his life has been

-indifferent, complicated, uncertain, not a life to be allied with that

-of such a woman as Wanda. My dear Princess, it has been a life _dans le

-milieu parisien_; what more would you have me say?'

-

-'Prince Archambaud's has been that. Yet three years since you earnestly

-pressed his suit on Wanda.'

-

-'Archambaud! He is one of the first alliances in Europe; he is of blood

-royal, and he has not been more vicious than other men.'

-

-'It would be better he should have been less so, since he lives so near

-'the fierce light that beats upon the throne;' an electric light which

-blackens while it illumines! My good Kaulnitz, you wander very far

-afield. If you know anything serious against M. de Sabran it is your

-duty to say it.'

-

-'He is a gambler.'

-

-'He has renounced gambling.'

-

-'He is a duellist.'

-

-'Society was of much better constitution when the duel was its habitual

-phlebotomy.'

-

-'He has been the lover of many women.'

-

-'I am afraid that is nothing singular.'

-

-'He is hardly more than an adventurer.'

-

-'He counts his ancestry in unbroken succession from the clays of

-Dagobert.

-

-'He has nothing but a _pignon sur rue_ in Paris, and a league or two of

-rocks and sand in Brittany; yet, though so poor, he made money enough

-by cards and speculation to be for three years the _amant en titre_ of

-Cochonette.'

-

-Madame Ottilie rose with a little frown.

-

-'I think we will say no more, my dear Baron; the matter is, after all,

-not yours or mine to decide. Wanda will assuredly do as she likes.'

-

-'But you have so much influence with her.'

-

-'I have none; no one has any: and I think you do not understand her in

-the least. It may cost her very much to avow to him that she loves him,

-but once having done that, it will cost her nothing at all to avow it

-to the world. She is much too proud a woman to care for the world.'

-

-'He is _gentilhomme de race_, I grant,' admitted with reluctance the

-Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe.

-

-'When has a noble of Brittany been otherwise?' asked the Princess

-Ottilie.

-

-'I know,' said the Prince; 'but you will admit that he occupies a

-difficult position--an invidious one.'

-

-'And he carries himself well through it. It is a difficult position

-which is the test of breeding,' said the Princess, triumphantly, 'and

-I deny entirely that it is what you call an invidious one. It is you

-who have the idea of the crowd when you lay so much stress on the mere

-absence of money.'

-

-'It is the idea of the crowd that dominates in this age.'

-

-'The more reason for us to resist it, if it be so.'

-

-'I think you are in love with him yourself, my sister!'

-

-'I should be were I forty years younger.'

-

-The Countess Brancka alone wrote with any sort of sympathy and pleasure

-to congratulate them both.

-

-'I was sure that Parsifal would win soon or late,' she said. 'Only

-remember that he is a Parsifal _doublé_ by a de Morny.'

-

-Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than

-the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of

-the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied.

-De Morny!--a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The

-comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!

-

-She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or

-remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had

-so much of the '_éternel féminin_' in her that she was only the more

-resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and

-exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was

-natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All

-the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those

-who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances

-produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as

-Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again

-Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had

-no power of persuasion.

-

-The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more

-graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as

-might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were

-present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that

-he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The

-sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man,

-whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of

-many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had

-they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her

-hand.

-

-'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of

-this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of

-birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere

-difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or

-the inches of one's stature.'

-

-The Princess shook her head.

-

-'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he

-is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always

-be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at

-large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'

-

-'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what

-matters the opinion of others?'

-

-'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt

-those motives?'

-

-Wanda did not reply.

-

-'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has

-been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him

-as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to

-him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the

-power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'

-

-As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was

-listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ

-within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of

-grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous

-years to come.

-

-When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:

-

-'I want you to promise me one thing.'

-

-'I promise you all things. What is this one?'

-

-'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those

-great fortunes which form the _acte d'accusation_ of socialists against

-society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of

-Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It

-is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed

-by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious

-barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one

-of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!--Promise me that

-you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may

-enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'

-

-He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to

-speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still

-remained silent.

-

-'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is

-too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against

-me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a

-few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too

-much!'

-

-He stooped and kissed her hand.

-

-'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with

-passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that

-I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be

-right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away

-from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'

-

-A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her

-hands as he held them clasped in his.

-

-'We will drink that wafer together, and as long as we are together it

-will never be bitter, I think,' she said very softly.

-

-Her voice seemed to sink into his very soul, so much it said of faith,

-so much it aroused of remorse.

-

-Then the great joy which had entered his life, like a great dazzling

-flood of light suddenly let loose into a darkened chamber, so blinded

-consumed, and intoxicated him, that he forgot all else; all else save

-this one fact--she would be his, body and soul, night and day, in life

-and in death for ever; his children borne by her, his life spent with

-her, her whole existence surrendered to him.

-

-For some days after that she mused upon the possibility of rendering

-him entirely independent of herself, without insulting him by a direct

-offer of a share in her possessions. At last a solution occurred

-to her. The whole of the fiefs of Idrac constituted a considerable

-appanage apart; its title went with it. When it had come into the

-Szalras family by marriage, as far back as the fifteenth century, it

-had been a principality; it was still a seigneurie, and many curious

-feudal privileges and distinctions went with it.

-

-It was Idrac now that she determined to abandon to her lover.

-

-'He will be seigneur of Idrac,' she thought, 'and I shall be so glad

-for him to bear an Austrian name.'

-

-'She herself would always retain her own name, and would take no other.

-

-'We will go and revisit it together,' she thought, and though she

-was all alone' at that moment, a soft warmth came into her face, and

-a throb of emotion to her heart, as she remembered all that would lie

-in that one word 'together,' all the tender and intimate union of the

-years to come.

-

-Her trustees were furious, and sought the aid of the men of law to

-enable them to step in and arrest her in what they deemed a course

-of self-destruction, but the law could not give them so much power;

-she was her own mistress, and as sole inheritrix had received her

-possessions singularly untrammelled by restrictions. In vain Prince

-Lilienhöhe spent his severe and chilly anger, Kaulnitz his fine

-sarcasm and delicate insinuations, and the Cardinal his stately and

-authoritative wrath. She was not to be altered in her decision.

-

-Austrian law allowed her to give away an estate to her husband if she

-chose, and there was nothing in the private settlements of her property

-to prevent her availing herself of the law.

-

-Strenuous opposition was encountered by her to this project, by every

-one of her relatives, hardly excluding the Princess Ottilie; 'for,'

-said that sagacious recluse, 'your horses may show you, my dear, the

-dangers of a rein too loose.'

-

-'I want no rein at all,' said Wanda. 'You forget that, to my thinking,

-marriage should never be bondage; two people with independent wills,

-tastes, and habits should mutually concede a perfect independence of

-action to each other. When one must yield, it must be the woman.'

-

-'Those are very fine theories,' the Princess remarked with caution.

-

-'I hope we shall put them in practice,' said Wanda, with unruffled good

-humour. 'Dear mother, I am sure you can understand that I want him

-to feel he is wholly independent of me. To what I love best on earth

-shall I dole out a niggard largesse from my wealth? If I were capable

-of doing so he would grow in time to hate me, and his hatred would be

-justified.'

-

-'I never should have supposed you would become so romantic,' said the

-Princess.

-

-'It will make him independent of you,' objected Prince Lilienhöhe.

-

-'That is what, beyond all, I desire him to be,' she answered.

-

-'It is an infatuation,' sighed Cardinal Vàsàrhely, out of her hearing,

-'when Egon would have brought to her a fortune as large as her own.'

-

-'You think water should always run to the sea,' said Princess Ottilie;

-'surely that is great waste sometimes?'

-

-'I think you are as infatuated as she is,' murmured the Cardinal. 'You

-forget that had she not been inspired with this unhappy sentiment she

-would have most probably left Hohenszalras to the Church.'

-

-'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,'

-answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else,

-had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'

-

-That would have been better than to an adventurer.'

-

-'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest

-aristocracies of the world, if poor.'

-

-'_Ce que femme veut_,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the

-Church had been worsted by women.

-

-The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the

-marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any

-possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband,

-and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of

-action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the

-deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself,

-as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud

-to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your

-hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he

-will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always

-will. If not--if not--well, he must go!'

-

-One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment

-emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She

-spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He

-looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush

-that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow

-tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires.

-She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of

-the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before

-him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.

-

-'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you

-to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of

-Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their

-feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been

-lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the

-reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary

-passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'

-

-'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with

-those roses.'

-

-'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced

-flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment.

-It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'

-

-'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your

-coronet, to which I can add none!'

-

-But to please her he bent over the crabbed black letter and the antique

-blazonings of the great roll to which the great dead men had set their

-sign and seal. She watched him as he read it, then after a little time

-she put her hand with a caressing movement on his shoulder.

-

-'My love, I can do just as I will with Idrac. The lawyers are agreed on

-that, and the Kaiser will confirm whatever I do. Now I want to give you

-Idrac, make you wholly lord of it; indeed, the thing is already done. I

-have signed all the documents needful, and, as I say, the Emperor will

-confirm any part of them that needs his assent. My Réné, you are a very

-proud man, but you will not be too proud to take Idrac and its title

-from your wife. But for that town who can say that our lives might not

-have been passed for ever apart? Why do you look so grave? The Kaiser

-and I both want you to be Austrian. When I transfer to you the fief of

-Idrac you are its Count for evermore.'

-

-He drew a quick deep breath as if he had been struck a blow, and stood

-gazing at her. He did not speak, his eyes darkened as with pain. For

-the moment she was afraid that she had wounded him. With exquisite

-softness of tone and touch she took his hand and said to him tenderly:

-

-'Why will you be so proud? After all, what are these things? Since

-we love one another, what is mine is yours; a formula more or less

-is no offence. It is my fancy that you should have the title and the

-fief. The people know you there, and your heroic courage will be for

-ever amongst their best traditions. Dear! once I read that it needs a

-greater soul to take generously than to give. Be great so, now, for my

-sake!'

-

-'Great!' he echoed the word hoarsely, and a smile of bitter irony

-passed for a moment over his features. But he controlled the passionate

-self-contempt that rose in him. He knew that whatever else he was,

-he was her lover, and her hero in her sight. If the magnitude and

-magnanimity of her gifts overwhelmed and oppressed him, he was recalled

-to self-control by the sense of her absolute faith in him. He pressed

-her hands against his heavily-beating heart.

-

-'All the greatness is with you, my beloved,' he said with effort.

-'Since you delight to honour me, I can but strive my utmost to deserve

-your honour. It is like your beautiful and lavish nature to be prodigal

-of gifts. But when you give yourself, what need is there for aught

-else?'

-

-'But Idrac is my caprice. You must gratify it.'

-

-'I will take the title gladly at your hands then. The revenues--No.'

-

-'You must take it all, the town and the title, and all they bring,' she

-insisted. 'In truth, but for you there would possibly be no town at

-all. Nay, my dear, you must do me this little pleasure; it will become

-you so well that Countship of Idrac: it is as old a place as Vindobona

-itself.'

-

-'Do you not understand?' she added, with a flush on her face. 'I want

-you to feel that it is wholly yours; that if I die, or if you leave me,

-it remains yours still. Oh, I do not doubt you; not for one moment. But

-liberty is always good. And Idrac will make you an Austrian noble in

-your own right. If you persist in refusing it I will assign it to the

-Crown; you will pain me and mortify me.'

-

-'That is enough! Never wittingly in my life will I hurt you. But if you

-wish me to be lord of Idrac, invest me with the title, my Empress. I

-will take it and be proud of it; and as for the revenues--well, we will

-not quarrel for them. They shall go to make new dykes and new bastions

-for the town, or pile themselves one on another in waiting for your

-children.'

-

-She smiled and her face grew warm as she turned aside and took up one

-of the great swords with jewelled hilts and damascened scabbards, which

-were ranged along the wall of the Rittersaal with other stands of arms.

-

-She drew the sword, and as he fell on his knee before her smote him

-lightly on the shoulder with its blade.

-

-'Rise, Graf von Idrac!' she said, stooping and touching his forehead

-with the bouquet that she wore at her breast. He loosened one of the

-roses and held it to his lips.

-

-'I swear my fealty now and for ever,' he said with emotion, and his

-face was paler and his tone was graver than the playfulness of the

-moment seemed to call for in him.

-

-'Would to Heaven I had had no other name than this one you give me,'

-he murmured as he rose. 'Oh, my love, my lady, my guardian angel!

-Forget that ever I lived before, forget all my life when I was unworthy

-you; let me live only from the day that will make me your vassal and

-your----'

-

-'That will make you my lord!' she said softly; then she stooped, and

-for the first time kissed him.

-

-What caused her the only pain that disturbed the tranquillity of these

-cloudless days was the refusal of her cousin Egon to be present at

-her marriage. He sent her, with some great jewels that had come from

-Persia, a few words of sad and wistful affection.

-

-'My presence,' he added in conclusion, 'is no more needed for your

-happiness than are these poor diamonds and pearls needed in your

-crowded jewel-cases. You will spare me a trial, which it could be of no

-benefit to you for me to suffer. I pray that the Marquis de Sabran may

-all his life be worthy of the immense trust and honour which you have

-seen fit to give to him. For myself, I have been very little always in

-your life. Henceforth I shall be nothing. But if ever you call on me

-for any service--which it is most unlikely you ever will do--I entreat

-you to remember that there is no one living who will more gladly or

-more humbly do your bidding at all cost than I, your cousin Egon.'

-

-The short letter brought tears to her eyes. She said nothing of it to

-Sabran. He had understood from Mdme. Ottilie that Prince Vàsàrhely had

-loved his cousin hopelessly for many years, and could not be expected

-to be present at her marriage.

-

-In a week from that time their nuptials were celebrated in the Court

-Chapel of the Hofburg at Vienna, with all the pomp and splendour that

-a brilliant and ceremonious Court could lend to the espousal of one of

-the greatest ladies of the old Duchy of Austria.

-

-Immediately after the ceremony they left the capital for Hohenszalras.

-

-At the signing of the contract on the previous night, when he had taken

-up the pen he had grown very pale; he had hesitated a moment, and

-glanced around him on the magnificent crowd, headed by the Emperor and

-Empress, with a gleam of fear and of anxiety in his eyes, which Baron

-Kaulnitz, who was intently watching him, had alone perceived.

-

-'There is something. What is it?' had mused the astute German.

-

-It was too late to seek to know. Sabran had bent down over the

-parchment, and with a firm hand had signed his name and title.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVI.

-

-

-It was midsummer once more in the Iselthal, five years and a half after

-the celebration at the Imperial palace of those nuptials which had been

-so splendid that their magnificence had been noticeable even at that

-magnificent Court. The time had seemed to her like one long, happy,

-cloudless day, and if to him there had come any fatigue, any satiety,

-any unrest, such as almost always come to the man in the fruition of

-his passion, he suffered her to see none of them.

-

-It was one of those rare marriages in which no gall of a chain is felt,

-but a quick and perfect sympathy insures that harmony which passion

-alone is insufficient to sustain. He devoted himself with ardour to the

-care of the immense properties that belonged to his wife; he brought

-to their administration a judgment and a precision that none had looked

-for in a man of pleasure; he entered cordially into all her schemes for

-the well-being of her people dependent on her, and carried them out

-with skill and firmness. The revenues of Idrac he never touched; he

-left them to accumulate for his younger son, or expended them on the

-township itself, where he was adored.

-

-If he were still the same man who had been the lover of Cochonette,

-the terror of Monte Carlo, the hero of night-long baccara and frontier

-duels, he had at least so banished the old Adam that it appeared wholly

-dead. Nor was the death of it feigned. He had flung away the slough

-of his old life with a firm hand, and the peace, the dignity of his

-present existence were very precious to him. He was glad to steep

-himself in them, as a tired and fevered wayfarer was glad to bathe his

-dusty and heated limbs in the cool, clear waters of the Szalrassee. And

-he loved his wife with a great love, in which reverence, and gratitude,

-and passion were all blent. Possession had not dulled, nor familiarity

-blunted it. She was still to him a sovereign, a saint, a half divine

-creature, who had stooped to become mortal for his sake, and his

-children's.

-

-The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls

-and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the

-Szalrassee.

-

-'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath

-the great yews beside the keep.

-

-'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but

-watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as

-ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty

-amphitheatre.

-

-She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of

-whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy

-with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The

-other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months

-of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were

-all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.

-

-'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the

-world called so proud.

-

-'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near

-her wicker chair.

-

-'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it,

-at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you

-it will be he who will be dearest to me.'

-

-As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.

-

-She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.

-

-'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that

-we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all

-the world who have passed five years and more together without once

-disagreeing?'

-

-'In all the world there is not another Countess Wanda!'

-

-'Ah! that is your only defect; you will always avoid argument by

-escaping through the side-door of compliment. It is true, to be sure,

-that your flattery is a very high and subtle art.'

-

-'It is like all high art then, based on what is eternally true.'

-

-'You will always have the last word, and it is always so graceful a

-one that it is impossible to quarrel with it. But, Réné, I want you

-to speak without compliment to me for once. Tell me, are you indeed

-never--never--a little weary of being here?'

-

-He hesitated a moment and a slight flush came on his face.

-

-She observed both signs, slight as they were, and sighed; it was the

-first sigh she had ever breathed since her marriage.

-

-'Of course you are, of course you must be,' she said quickly. 'It has

-been selfish and blameable of me never to think of it before. It is

-paradise to me, but no doubt to you, used as you have been to the stir

-of the world, there, must be some tedium, some dulness in this mountain

-isolation. I ought to have remembered that before.'

-

-'You need do nothing of the kind, now,' he said. 'Who has been talking

-to you? Who has brought this little snake into our Eden?'

-

-'No one; and it is not a snake at all, but a natural reflection.

-Hohenszalras and you are the world to me, but I cannot expect that

-Hohenszalras and I can be quite as much to yourself. It is always the

-difference between the woman and the man. You have great talents; you

-are ambitious.'

-

-'Were I as ambitious as Alexander, surely I have gained wherewithal to

-be content!'

-

-'That is only compliment again, or if truth it is only a side of the

-truth. Nay, love, I do not think for a moment you are tired of me;

-I am too self-satisfied for that! But I think it is possible that

-this solitude may have grown, or may grow, wearisome to you; that you

-desire, perhaps without knowing it, to be more amidst the strife,

-the movement, and the pleasures of men. Aunt Ottilie calls this

-"confinement to a fortress;" now that is a mere pleasantry, but if ever

-you should feel tempted to feel what she feels, have confidence enough

-in my good sense and in my affection to say so to me, and then----.'

-

-'And then? We will suppose I have this ingratitude and bad taste, what

-then?'

-

-'Why then, my own wishes should not stand for one instant in the way

-of yours, or rather I would make yours mine. And do not use the word

-ingratitude, my dearest; there can be no question of that betwixt you

-and me.'

-

-'Yes,' said Sabran, as he stooped towards her and touched her hair

-with his lips. 'When you gave me yourself, you made me your debtor

-for all time; would have made me so had you been as poor as you are

-rich. When I speak of gratitude it is of _that_ gift, I think, not of

-Hohenszalras.'

-

-A warmth of pleasure flushed her cheek for a moment, and she smiled

-happily.

-

-'You shall not beg the question so,' she said, with gentle insistence

-after a moment's pause. 'I have not forgotten your eloquence in the

-French Chamber.' You are that rare thing a born orator. You are

-not perhaps fitted to be a statesman, for I doubt if you would have

-the application or bear the tedium necessary, but you have every

-qualification for a diplomatist, a foreign minister.'

-

-'I have not the first qualification, I have no country!'

-

-She looked at him, in surprise--he spoke with bitterness and

-self-contempt; but in a moment he had added quickly:--

-

-'France is nothing to me now, and though I am Austrian by all ties and

-affections, I am not an Austrian before the law.'

-

-'That is hardly true,' she answered, satisfied with the explanation.

-'Since France is little to you you could be naturalised here whenever

-you chose, even if Idrac have not made you a Croat noble, as I believe

-the lawyers would say it had; and the Emperor, who knows and admires

-you, would, I think, at once give you gladly any mission you preferred;

-you would make so graceful, so perfect, so envied an ambassador!

-Diplomacy has indeed little force now, yet tact still tells wherever

-it be found, and it is as rare as blue roses in the unweeded garden of

-the world. I do not speak for myself, dear; that you know. Hohenszalras

-is my beloved home, and it was enough for me before I knew you, and

-nowhere else could life ever seem to me so true, so high, so simple,

-and so near to God as here. But I do remember that men weary even of

-happiness when it is unwitnessed, and require the press and stir of

-emulation and excitation; and, if you feel that want, say so. Have

-confidence enough in me to believe that your welfare will be ever my

-highest law. Promise me this.'

-

-He changed colour slightly at her generous and trustful words, but he

-answered without a moment's pause:

-

-'Whenever I am so thankless to fate I will confess it. No; the world

-and I never valued one another much. I am far better here in the heart

-of your mountains. Here only have I known peace and rest.'

-

-He spoke with a certain effort and emotion, and he stooped over his

-little son and raised him on her knees.

-

-'These children shall grow up at Hohenszalras,' he continued, 'and you

-shall teach them your love of the open air, the mountain solitudes, the

-simple people, the forest creatures, the influences and the ways of

-nature. You care for all those things, and they make up true wisdom,

-true contentment. As for myself, if you always love me I shall ask no

-more of fate.'

-

-'If! Can you be afraid?'

-

-'Sometimes. One always fears to lose what one has never merited.'

-

-'Ah, my love, do not be so humble! If you saw yourself as I see you,

-you would be very proud.'

-

-She smiled as she spoke, and stretched her hand out to him over the

-golden head of her child.

-

-He took it and held it against his heart, clasped in both his own.

-Bela, impatient, slipped off his mother's lap to pursue his capture of

-the daisies; the butterflies were forbidden joys, and he was obedient,

-though in his own little way he was proud and imperious. But there

-was a blue butterfly just in front of him, a Lycœna Adonis, like a

-little bit of the sky come down and dancing about; he could not resist,

-he darted at it. As he was about to seize it she caught his fingers.

-

-'I have told you, Bela, you are never to touch anything that flies or

-moves. You are cruel.'

-

-He tried to get away, and his face grew very warm and passionate.

-

-'Bela will be cruel, if he like,' he said, knitting his pretty brows.

-

-Though he was not more than four years old he knew very well that he

-was the Count Bela, to whom all the people gave homage, crowding to

-kiss his tiny hand after Mass on holy-days. He was a very beautiful

-child, and all the prettier for his air of pride and resolution; he had

-been early put on a little mountain pony, and could ride fearlessly

-down the forest glades with Otto. All the imperiousness of the great

-race which had dealt out life and death so many centuries at their

-caprice through the Hohe Tauern seemed to have been inherited by him,

-coupled with a waywardness and a vanity that were not traits of the

-house of Szalras. It was impossible, even though those immediately

-about him were wise and prudent, to wholly prevent the effects of the

-adulation with which the whole household was eager to wait on every

-whim of the little heir.

-

-'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his

-desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that

-to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it

-his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition,

-and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very

-affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.

-

-With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he

-said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'

-

-Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very

-frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been

-four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.

-

-Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.

-

-'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'

-

-Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.

-

-'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'

-

-Then he burst into tears.

-

-'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his

-father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his

-nurse, who came for him.

-

-'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him

-more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give

-you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'

-

-It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil

-qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son,

-and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was

-unworthy to beget _her_ children,' he thought, with the self-reproach

-that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his

-satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what

-trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years

-to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his

-blood?

-

-'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to

-see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It

-hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own

-little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill;

-do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is

-your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud

-of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'

-

-'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows

-older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to

-enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy

-that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry

-passions, of my degraded humanity?'

-

-'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think

-me.'

-

-'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'

-

-'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a _beau défaut_,

-and I would not have you lose it.'

-

-'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and

-passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'

-

-She looked at him surprised, and vaguely troubled at the self-reproach

-and the self-scorn of his passionate utterance. Seeing that surprise

-and trouble in her glance, he controlled the emotion that for the

-moment mastered him.

-

-'Ah, love!' he said quickly and truly, 'if you could but guess how

-gross and base a man's life seems to him contrasted with the life of

-a pure and noble woman! Being born of you, those children, I think,

-should be as faultless and as soilless as those pearls that lie on your

-breast. But then they are mine also; so already on that boy's face one

-sees the sins of revolt, of self-will, of cruelty--being mine also,

-your living pearls are dulled and stained!'

-

-A greater remorse than she dreamed of made his heart ache as he said

-these words; but she heard in them only the utterance of that extreme

-and unwavering devotion to her which he had shown in all his acts and

-thoughts from the first hours of their union.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVII.

-

-

-The Princess Ottilie was scarcely less happy than they in the

-realisation of her dreams and prophecies. Those who had been most

-bitterly opposed to her alliance with him could find no fault in his

-actions and his affections.

-

-'I always said that Wanda ought to marry, since she had plainly no

-vocation for the cloister,' she said a hundred times a year. 'And I was

-certain that M. de Sabran was the person above all others to attract

-and to content her. She has much more imagination than she would be

-willing to allow and he is capable at once of fascinating her fancy

-and of satisfying her intellect. No one can be dull where he is; he is

-one of those who make _la pluie et le beau temps_ by his absence or

-presence; and, besides that, no commonplace affection would have ever

-been enough for her. And he loves her like a poet, which he is at once

-whenever he leaves the world for Beethoven and Bach. I cannot imagine

-why you should have opposed the marriage, merely because he had not two

-millions in the Bank of France.'

-

-'Not for that,' answered the Grand Duke; 'rather because he broke the

-bank of Monte Carlo, and other similar reasons. A great player of

-baccara is scarcely the person to endow with the wealth of the Szalras.'

-

-'The wealth is tied up tightly enough at the least, and you will admit

-that he was yet more eager than you that it should be so.'

-

-'Oh, yes! he behaved very well. I never denied it. But she has placed

-it in his power to make away with the whole of Idrac, if he should ever

-choose. That was very unwise, but we had no power to oppose.'

-

-'You may be quite sure that Idrac will go intact to the second son, as

-it has always done; and I believe but for his own exertions Idrac would

-now be beneath the Danube waters. Perhaps you never heard all that

-story of the flood?'

-

-'I only hope that if I have detractors you will defend me from them,'

-said Prince Lilienhöhe, giving up argument.

-

-Fair weather is always especially fair in the eyes of those who have

-foretold at sunset that the morrow would be fine; and so the married

-life of Wanda von Szalras was especially delightful as an object of

-contemplation, as a theme of exultation, to the Princess, who alone had

-been clear-sighted enough to foresee the future. She really also loved

-Sabran like a son, and took pride and pleasure in the filial tenderness

-he showed her, and in his children, with the beautiful blue eyes that

-had gleams of light in them like sapphires. The children themselves

-adored her; and even the bold and wilful Bela was as quiet as a

-startled fawn beside this lovely little lady, with her snow-white hair

-and her delicate smile, whose cascades of lace always concealed such

-wonderful bon-bon boxes, and gilded cosaques, and illuminated stories

-of the saints.

-

-Almost all their time was spent at Hohenszalras. A few winter months

-in Vienna was all they had ever passed away from it, except one visit

-to Idrac and the Hungarian estates. The children never left it for

-a day. He shared her affection for the place, and for the hardy and

-frank mountain people around them. He seemed to her to entirely forget

-Romaris, and beyond the transmission of moneys to its priest, he

-took no heed of it. She hesitated to recall it to him, since to do

-so might have seemed to remind him that it was she, not he, who was

-suzerain in the Hohe Tauern. Romaris was but a bleak rock, a strip of

-sea-swept sand; it was natural that it should have no great hold on his

-affections, only recalling as it did all that its lords had lost.

-

-'I hate its name,' he said impetuously once; and seeing the surprise

-upon her face, he added: 'I was very lonely and wretched there; I

-tried to take interest in it because you bade me, but I failed; all

-I saw, all I thought of, was yourself, and I believed you as far and

-for ever removed from me as though you had dwelt in some other planet.

-No! perhaps I am superstitious: I do not wish you to go to Romaris. I

-believe it would bring us misfortune. The sea is full of treachery, the

-sands are full of graves.'

-

-She smiled.

-

-'Superstition is a sort of parody of faith; I am sure you are not

-superstitious. I do not care to go to Romaris; I like to cheat myself

-into the belief that you were born and bred in the Iselthal. Otto said

-to me the other day, "My lord must be a son of the soil, or how could

-he know our mountains so well as he does, and how could he anywhere

-have learned to shoot like that?"'

-

-'I am very glad that Otto does me so much honour. When he first met

-me, he would have shot me like a fox, if you had given the word. Ah, my

-love! how often I think of you that day, in your white serge, with your

-girdle of gold, and your long gold-headed staff, and your little ivory

-horn. You were truly a châtelaine of the old mystical German days.

-You had some _Schlüsselblumen_ in your hand. They were indeed the key

-flower to my soul, though, alas! treasures, I fear, you found none on

-your entrance there.'

-

-'I shall not answer you, since to answer would be to flatter you, and

-Aunt Ottilie already, does that more than is good for you,' she said

-smiling, as she passed her fingers over the waves of his hair. 'By the

-way, whom shall we invite to meet the Lilienhöhe? Will you make out a

-list?'

-

-'The Grand Duke does not share Frau Ottilie's goodness for me.'

-

-'What would you? He has been made of buckram and parchment; besides

-which; nothing that is not German has, to his mind, any right to exist.

-By the way, Egon wrote to me this morning; he will be here at last.'

-

-He looked up quickly in unspoken alarm: 'Your cousin Egon? Here?'

-

-'Why are you so surprised? I was sure that sooner or later he would

-conquer that feeling of being unable to meet you. I begged him to come

-now; it is eight whole years since I have seen him. When once you have

-met you will be friends--for my sake.'

-

-He was silent; a look of trouble and alarm was still upon his face.

-

-'Why should you suppose it any easier to him now than then?' he said at

-length. 'Men who love _you_ do not change. There are women who compel

-constancy, _sans le vouloir_. The meeting can but be painful to Prince

-Vàsàrhely.'

-

-'Dear Réné,' she answered in some surprise, 'my nearest male relative

-and I cannot go on for ever without seeing each other. Even these years

-have done Egon a great deal of harm. He has been absent from the Court

-for fear of meeting us. He has lived with his hussars, or voluntarily

-confined to his estates, until he grows morose and solitary. I am

-deeply attached to him. I do not wish to have the remorse upon me of

-having caused the ruin of his gallant and brilliant life. When he

-has been once here he will like you: men who are brave have always

-a certain sympathy. When he has seen you here he will realise that

-destiny is unchangeable, and grow reconciled to the knowledge that I am

-your wife.'

-

-Sabran gave an impatient gesture of denial, and began to write the list

-of invitations for the autumn circle of guests who were to meet the

-Prince and Princess of Lilienhöhe.

-

-Once every summer and every autumn Hohenszalras was filled with a

-brilliant house-party, for she sacrificed her own personal preferences

-to what she believed to be for the good of her husband. She knew that

-men cannot always live alone; that contact with the world is needful to

-their minds and bracing for it. She had a great dread lest the ghost

-_ennui_ should show his pale face over her husband's shoulder, for

-she realised that from the life of the asphalte of the Champs-Élysées

-to the life amidst the pine forests of the Iselthal was an abrupt

-transition that might easily bring tedium in its train. And tedium is

-the most terrible and the most powerful foe love ever encounters.

-

-Sabran completed the list, and when he had corrected it into due

-accordance with all Lilienhöhe's personal and political sympathies and

-antipathies, despatched the invitations, 'for eight days,' written on

-cards that bore the joint arms of the Counts of Idrac and the Counts of

-Szalras. He had adopted the armorial bearings of the countship of Idrac

-as his own, and seemed disposed to abandon altogether those of the

-Sabrans of Romaris.

-

-When they were written he went out by himself and rode long and fast

-through the mists of a chilly afternoon, through dripping forest ways

-and over roads where little water-courses spread in shining shallows.

-The coming of Egon Vàsàrhely troubled him and alarmed him. He had

-always dreaded his first meeting with the Magyar noble; and as the

-years had dropped by one after another, and her cousin had failed

-to find courage to see her again, he had begun to believe that they

-and Vàsàrhely would remain always strangers. His wish had begotten

-his thought. He knew that she wrote at intervals to her cousin, and

-he to her; he knew that at the birth of each of their children some

-magnificent gift, with a formal letter of felicitation, had come from

-the Colonel of the White Hussars; but as time had gone on and Prince

-Egon had avoided all possibility of meeting them, he had grown to

-suppose that the wound given her rejected lover was too profound ever

-to close; nor did he wonder that it was so: it seemed to him that any

-man who loved her must do so for all eternity, if eternity there should

-be. To learn suddenly that within another month Vàsàrhely would be his

-guest, distressed and alarmed him in a manner she never dreamed. They

-had been so happy. On their cloud less heaven there seemed to him to

-rise a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but bearing with it disaster

-and a moonless night.

-

-'Perhaps he will have forgotten,' he thought, as he strove to shake off

-his forebodings. 'We were so young then. He was not even as old as I!'

-

-And he rode fast and furiously homewards as the day drew in, and the

-lighted windows of the great castle seemed to smile at him as lie saw

-it high up above the darkness of the woods and of the evening mists,

-his home, beloved, sacred, infinitely dear to him; dear as the soil of

-the mother country which the wrecked mariner reaches after facing death

-on the deep sea.

-

-'God save her from suffering by me!' he said, in an unconscious prayer,

-as he drew rein before the terrace of Hohenszalras. Almost he believed

-in God through her.

-

-When, after dressing, he went into, the Saxe room, the peace and

-beauty of the scene had never struck him so strongly as it did now,

-coming out of the shadows of the wet woods and the gloom of his own

-anxieties; anxieties the heavier and the more wearing because they

-could be shared by no one. The soft, full light of the wax candles fell

-on the Louis Seize embroideries and the white woodwork of the panelling

-and the china borders of the mirrors. The Princess Ottilie sat making

-silk-netting for the children's balls; his wife was reading, and Bela

-and Gela, who were there for their privileged half-hour before dinner,

-were fitting together on a white bearskin, playing with the coloured

-balls of the game of solitaire. The soft light from the chandeliers

-and sconces of the Saxe Royale china fell on the golden heads and the

-velvet frocks of the children, on the old laces and the tawny-coloured

-plush of their mothers skirts, on the great masses of flowers in the

-Saxe bowls, and on the sleeping forms of the big dogs Donau and Neva.

-It was an interior that would have charmed Chardin, that would have

-been worthy of Vandyck.

-

-As he looked at it he thought with a sort of ecstasy, 'All that is

-mine;' and then his heartstrings tightened as he thought again, 'If she

-knew----?'

-

-She looked up at his entrance with a welcome on her face that needed no

-words.

-

-'Where have you been in the rain all this long afternoon?' You see we

-have a fire, even though it is midsummer. Bela, rise, and make your

-obeisance, and push that chair nearer the hearth.'

-

-The two little boys stood up and kissed his hand, one after another,

-with the pretty formality; of greeting on which she always insisted;

-then they went back to their coloured glass balls, and he sank into a

-low chair beside his wife with a sigh half of fatigue, half of content.

-

-'Yes, I have been riding all the time,' he said to her. 'I am not sure

-that Siegfried approved it. But it does one good sometimes, and after

-the blackness and the wetness of that forest how charming it is to come

-home!'

-

-She looked at him with wistfulness.

-

-'I wish you were not vexed that Egon is coming! I am sure you have been

-thinking of it as you rode.'

-

-'Yes, I have; but I am ashamed of doing so. He is your cousin, that

-shall be enough for me. I will do my best to make him welcome. Only

-there is this difficulty; a welcome from me to him will seem in itself

-an insult.'

-

-'An insult! when you are my husband? One would think you were my

-_jägermeister._ Dear mother mine, help me to scold him.'

-

-'I am a stranger,' he said, under his breath.

-

-She smiled a little, but she said with a certain hauteur:

-

-'You are master of Hohenszalras, as your son will be when our places

-shall know us no more. Do not let the phantom of Egon come between us,

-I beseech you. His real presence never will do so, that is certain.'

-

-'Nothing shall come between us,' said Sabran, as his hand took and

-closed upon hers. 'Forgive me if I have brought some gloomy _nix_ out

-of the dark woods with me; he will flee away in, the light of this

-beloved white-room. No evil spirits could dare stay by your hearth.'

-

-'There are _nixes_ in the forests,' said Bela in a whisper to his

-brother.

-

-'Ja!' said Gela, not comprehending.

-

-'We will kill them all when we are big,' said Bela.

-

-'Ja! ja!' said Gela.

-

-Bela knew very well what a _nix_ was. Otto had told him all about

-kobolds and sprites, as his pony trotted down the drives.

-

-'Or we will take them prisoners,' he added, remembering that his mother

-never allowed anything to be killed, not even butterflies.

-

-'Ja!' said Gela again, rolling the pretty blue and pink and amber balls

-about in the white fur of the bearskin.

-

-Gela's views of life were simplified by the disciple's law of

-imitation; they were restricted to doing whatever Bela did, when that

-was possible, when it was not possible he remained still adoring Bela,

-with his little serious face as calm as a god's.

-

-She used to think that when they should grow up Bela would be a great

-soldier like Wallenstein or Condé, and Gela would stay at home and

-take care of his people here in the green, lone, happy Iselthal.

-

-Time ran on and the later summer made the blooming hay grow brown on

-all the alpine meadows, and made the garden of Hohenszalras blossom

-with a million autumnal glories; it brought also the season of the

-first house-party. Egon Vàsàrhely was to arrive one day before the

-Lilienhöhe and the other guests.

-

-'I want Egon so much to see Bela!' she said, with the thoughtless

-cruelty of a happy mother forgetful of the pain of a rejected lover.

-

-'I fear Bela will find little favor in your cousin's eyes, since he is

-mine too,' said Sabran.

-

-'Oh, Egon is content to be only our cousin by this----'

-

-'You think so? You do not know yourself if you imagine that.'

-

-'Egon is very loyal. He would not come here if he could not greet you

-honestly.'

-

-Sabran's face flushed a little, and he turned away. He vaguely dreaded

-the advent of Egon Vàsàrhely, and there were so many innocent words

-uttered in the carelessness of intimate intercourse which stabbed him

-to the quick; she had so wounded him all unconscious of her act.

-

-'Shall we have a game of billiards?' he asked her as they stood in the

-Rittersaal, whilst the rain fell fast without. She played billiards

-well, and could hold her own against him, though his game was one that

-had often been watched by a crowded _galerie_ in Paris with eager

-speculation and heavy wager. An hour afterwards they were still playing

-when the clang of a great bell announced the approach of the carriage

-which had been sent to Windisch-Matrey.

-

-'Come!' she said joyously, as she put back her cue in its rest; but

-Sabran drew back.

-

-'Receive your cousin first alone,' he said. 'He must resent my presence

-here. I will not force it on him on the threshold of your house.'

-

-'Of our house! Why will you use wrong pronouns? Believe me, dear, Egon

-is too generous to bear you the animosity you think.'

-

-'Then he never loved you,' said Sabran, somewhat impatiently, as he

-sent one ball against another with a sharp collision. 'I will come if

-you wish it,' he added; 'but I think it is not in the best taste to so

-assert myself.'

-

-'Egon is only my cousin and your guest. You are the master of

-Hohenszalras. Come! you were not so difficult when you received the

-Emperor.'

-

-'I had done the Emperor no wrong,' said Sabran, controlling the

-impatience and the reluctance he still felt.

-

-'You have done Egon none. I should not have been his wife had I never

-been yours.'

-

-'Who knows?' murmured Sabran, as he followed her into the entrance

-hall. The stately figure of Egon Vàsàrhely enveloped in furs was just

-passing through the arched doorway.

-

-She went towards him with a glad welcome and both hands outstretched.

-

-Prince Egon bowed to the ground: then took both her hands in his and

-kissed her on the cheek.

-

-Sabran, who grew very pale, advanced and greeted him with ceremonious

-grace.

-

-'My wife has bade me welcome you, Prince, but it would be presumptuous

-in me, a stranger, to do that. All her kindred must be dear and sacred

-here.'

-

-Egon Vàsàrhely, with an effort to which he had for years been vainly

-schooling himself, stretched out his hand to take her husband's; but

-as he did so, and his glance for the first time dwelt on Sabran, a

-look surprised and indefinitely perplexed came on his own features.

-Unconsciously he hesitated a moment; then, controlling himself, he

-replied with a few fitting words of courtesy and friendship. That

-there should be some embarrassment, some constraint, was almost

-inevitable, and did not surprise her: she saw both, but she also saw

-that both were hidden under the serenity of high breeding and worldly

-habit. The most difficult moment had passed: they went together into

-the Rittersaal, talked together a little on a few indifferent topics,

-and in a little space Prince Egon withdrew to his own apartments to

-change his travelling clothes. Sabran left him on the threshold of his

-chamber.

-

-Vàsàrhely locked the doors, locking out even his servant, threw off

-his furs and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. The meeting had

-cost him even more than he had feared that it would do. For five years

-he had dreaded this moment, and its pain was as sharp and as fresh to

-him as though it had been unforeseen. To sleep under the same roof

-with the husband of Wanda von Szalras! He had overrated his power of

-self-control, underrated his power of suffering, when to please her he

-had consented after five years to visit Hohenszalras. What were five

-years?--half a century would not have changed him.

-

-Under the plea of fatigue, he, who had sat in his saddle eighteen hours

-at a stretch, and was braced to every form of endurance in the forest

-chase and in the tented field, sent excuses to his host for remaining

-in his own rooms until the Ave Maria rung. When he at length went

-down to the blue-room where she was, he had recovered, outwardly at

-least, his tranquillity and his self-possession, though here, in this

-familiar, once beloved chamber, where every object had been dear to him

-from his boyhood, a keener trial than any he had passed through awaited

-him, as she led forward to meet him a little boy clad in white velvet,

-with a cloud of light golden hair above deep blue luminous eyes, and

-said to him:

-

-'Egon, this is my Bela. You will love him a little, for my sake?'

-

-Vàsàrhely felt a chill run through him like the cold of death as he

-stooped towards the child; but he smiled and touched the boy's forehead

-with his lips.

-

-'May the spirit of our lost Bela be with him and dwell in his heart,'

-he murmured; 'better I cannot wish him.'

-

-With an effort he turned to Sabran.

-

-'Your little son is a noble child; you may with reason be proud of him.

-He is very like you in feature. I see no trace of the Szalras.'

-

-'The other boy is more like Wanda,' replied Sabran, sensible of a

-certain tenacity of observation with which Vàsàrhely was gazing at

-him. 'As for my daughter, she is too young for anyone to say whom she

-will resemble. All I desire is that she should be like her mother,

-physically and spiritually.'

-

-'Of course,' said the Prince, absently, still looking from Sabran to

-the child, as if in the endeavour to follow some remembrance that

-eluded-him. The little face of Bela was a miniature of his father's,

-they were as alike as it is possible for a child and a man to be so,

-and Egon Vàsàrhely perplexedly mused and wondered at vague memories

-which rose up to him as he gazed on each.

-

-'And what do you like best to do, my little one?' he asked of Bela, who

-was regarding him with curious and hostile eyes.

-

-'To ride,' answered Bela at once, in his pretty uncertain German.

-

-'There you are a true Szalras at least. And your brother Gela, can he

-ride yet? Where is Gela, by the way?'

-

-'He is asleep,' said Bela, with some contempt. 'He is a little thing.

-Yes; he rides, but it is in a chair-saddle. It is not real riding.'

-

-'I see. Well, when you come and see me you shall have some real riding,

-on wild horses if you like;' and he told the child stories of the great

-Magyar steppes, and the herds of young horses, and the infinite delight

-of the unending gallop over the wide hushed plain; and all the while

-his heart ached bitterly, and the sight of the child--who was her

-child, yet had that stranger's face--was to him like a jagged steel

-being turned and twisted inside a bleeding wound. Bela, however, was

-captivated by the new visions that rose before him.

-

-'Bela will come to Hungary,' he said with condescension, and then with

-an added thought, continued: 'I think Bela has great lands there. Otto

-said so.'

-

-'Bela has nothing at all,' said Sabran, sternly. 'Bela talks great

-nonsense sometimes, and it would be better he should go to sleep with

-his brother.'

-

-Bela looked up shyly under his golden cloud of hair. 'Folko is Bela's,'

-he said under his breath. Folko was his pony.

-

-'No,' said Sabran; 'Folko belongs to your mother. She only allows you

-to have him so long as you are good to him.'

-

-'Bela is always good to him,' he said decidedly.

-

-'Bela is faultless in his own estimation,' said his mother, with a

-smile. 'He is too little to be wise enough to see himself as he is.'

-

-This view made Bela's blue eyes open very wide and fill very

-sorrowfully. It was humiliating. He longed to get back to Gela, who

-always listened to him dutifully, and never said anything in answer

-except an entirely acquiescent 'Ja! ja!' which was indeed about the

-limitation of Gela's lingual powers. In a few moments, indeed, his

-governess came for him and took him away, a little dainty figure in his

-ivory velvet and his blue silk stockings, with his long golden curls

-hanging to his waist.

-

-'It is so difficult to keep him from being spoilt,' she said, as the

-door closed on him. 'The people make a little prince, a little god, of

-him. He believes himself to be something wonderful. Gela, who is so

-gentle and quiet, is left quite in the shade.'

-

-'I suppose Gela takes your title?' said Vàsàrhely to his host. 'It

-is usual with the Austrian families for the second son to have some

-distant appellation?'

-

-'They are babies,' said Sabran, impatiently.

-

-'It will be time enough to settle those matters when they are old

-enough to be court-pages or cadets. They are Bela and Gela at present.

-The only real republic is childhood.'

-

-'I am afraid Bela is the _tyrannus_ to which all republics succumb,'

-said Wanda, with a smile. He is extremely autocratic in his notions,

-and in his family. In all his "make believe" games he is crowned.'

-

-'He is a beautiful child,' said her cousin, and she answered, still

-smiling:

-

-'Oh, yes: he is so like Réné!'

-

-Egon Vàsàrhely turned his face from her. The dinner was somewhat dull,

-and the evening seemed tedious, despite the efforts of Sabran to

-promote conversation, and the _écarté_ which he and his guest played

-together. They, were all sensible that some chord was out of tune, and

-glad that on the morrow a large house-party would be there to spare

-them a continuation of this difficult intercourse.

-

-'Your cousin will never forgive me,' said Sabran to her when they were

-alone. 'I think, beside his feeling that I stand for ever between you

-and him there is an impatience of me as a stranger and one unworthy

-you.'

-

-'You do yourself and him injustice,' she answered. 'I shall be unhappy

-if you and he be not friends.'

-

-'Then unhappy you will be, my beloved. We both adore you.'

-

-'Do not say that. He would not be here if it were so.'

-

-'Ah! look at him when he looks at Bela!'

-

-She sighed; she had felt a strong emotion on the sight of her cousin,

-for Egon Vàsàrhely was much changed by these years of pain. His grand

-carriage and his martial beauty were unaltered, but all the fire and

-the light of earlier years were gone out of his face, and a certain

-gloom and austerity had come there. To all other women he would have

-been the more attractive for the melancholy which was in such apt

-contrast with the heroic adventures of his life, but to her the change

-in him was a mute reproach which filled her with remorse though she had

-done no wrong.

-

-Meantime Prince Egon, throwing open his window, leaned out into the

-cold rainy night, as though a hand were at his throat and suffocating

-him. And amidst all the tumult of his pain and revolt, one dim thought

-was incessantly intruding itself; he was always thinking, as he

-recalled the face of Sabran and of Sabran's little son, 'Where have I

-seen those blue eyes, those level brows, those delicate curved lips?'

-

-They were so familiar, yet so strange to him. When he would have given

-a name to them they receded into the shadows of some far away past of

-his own, so far away he could not follow them. He sat up half the night

-letting the wind beat and the rain fall on him. He could not sleep.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVIII.

-

-

-In the morrow thirty or forty people arrived, amongst them Baron

-Kaulnitz _en congé_ from his embassy.

-

-'What think you of Sabran?' he asked of Egon Vàsàrhely, who answered:

-

-'He is a perfect gentleman. He is a charming companion. He plays

-admirably at _écarté._

-

-'_Écarté_! I spoke of his moral worth: what is your impression of that?'

-

-'If he had not satisfied her as to that, Wanda would not be his wife,'

-answered the Prince gravely. 'He has given her beautiful children, and

-it seems to me that he renders her perfectly happy. We should all be

-grateful to him.'

-

-'The children are certainly very beautiful,' said Baron Kaulnitz, and

-said no more.

-

-'The people all around are unfeignedly attached to him,' Vàsàrhely

-continued with generous effort. 'I hear nothing but his praise. Nor do

-I think it the conventional compliment which loyalty leads them to pay

-the husband of their Countess; it is very genuine attachment. The men

-of the old Archduchy are not easily won; it is only qualities of daring

-and manliness which appeal to their sympathies. That he has gained

-their affections is as great testimony to his character in one way as

-that he has gained Wanda's is in another. At Idrac also the people

-adore him, and Croats are usually slow to see merit in strangers.'

-

-'In short, he is a paragon,' said the ambassador, with a little dubious

-smile. 'So much the better, since he is irrevocably connected with us.'

-

-Sabran was at no time seen to greater advantage than when he was

-required to receive and entertain a large house-party. Always graceful,

-easily witty, endowed with that winning tact which is to society as

-cream is to the palate, the charm he possessed for women and the

-ascendency he could, at times, exercise over men--even men who were

-opposed to him--were never more admirably displayed than when he was

-the master of Hohenszalras, with crowned heads, and princes, and

-diplomatists, and beauties gathered beneath his roof. His mastery,

-moreover, of all field sports, and his skill at all games that demanded

-either intelligence or audacity, made him popular with a hardy and

-brilliant nobility; his daring in a boar hunt at noon was equalled by

-his science at whist in the evening. Strongly prejudiced against him at

-the onset, the great nobles who were his guests had long ceased to feel

-anything for him except respect and regard; whilst the women admired

-him none the less for that unwavering devotion to his wife which made

-even the conventionalities of ordinary flirtation wholly impossible to

-him. With all his easy gallantry and his elegant homage to them, they

-all knew that, at heart, he was as cold as the rocks to all women save

-one.

-

-'It is really the knight's love for his lady,' said the Countess

-Brancka once; and Sabran, overhearing, said: 'Yes, and, I think that if

-there were more like my lady on earth, knighthood might revive on other

-scenes than Wagner's.'

-

-Between him and the Countess Brancka there was a vague intangible

-enmity, veiled under the perfection of courtesy. They could ill have

-told why they disliked each other; but they did so. Beneath their

-polite or trivial or careless speech they often aimed at each other's

-feelings or foibles with accuracy and malice. She had stayed at

-Hohenszalras more or less time each year in the course of her flight

-between France and Vienna, and was there now. He admired his wife's

-equanimity and patience under the trial of Mdme. Olga's frivolities,

-but he did not himself forbear from as much sarcasm as was possible

-in a man of the world to one who was his guest, and by marriage his

-relative, and he was sensible of her enmity to himself, though she

-paid him many compliments, and sometimes too assiduously sought his

-companionship. '_Elle fait le ronron, mais gare à ses pattes!_' he said

-once to his wife concerning her.

-

-Sabran appraised her indeed with unflattering accuracy. He knew

-by heart all the wiles and wisdom of such a woman as she was. Her

-affectations did not blind him to her real danger, and her exterior

-frivolity did not conceal from him the keen and subtle self-interest

-and the strong passions which laboured beneath it.

-

-She felt that she had an enemy in him, and partly in self-protection,

-partly in malice, she set herself to convert a foe into a friend,

-perhaps, without altogether confessing it to herself, into a lover as

-well.

-

-The happiness that prevailed at Hohenszalrasburg annoyed her for

-no other reason than that it wearied her to witness it. She did

-not envy it, because she did not want happiness at all; she wanted

-perpetual change, distraction, temptation, passion, triumph--in a word,

-excitement, which becomes the drug most unobtainable to those who have

-early exhausted all the experiences and varieties of pleasure.

-

-Mdme. Brancka had always an unacknowledged resentment against her

-sister-in-law, for being the owner of all the vast possessions of the

-Szalras. 'If Gela had lived!' she thought constantly. 'If I had only

-had a son by him before he died, this woman would have had her dower

-and nothing more.' That his sister should possess all, whilst she had

-by her later marriage lost her right even to a share in that vast

-wealth, was a perpetual bitterness to her.

-

-Stefan Brancka was indeed rich, but he was an insensate gambler. She

-was extravagant to the last degree, with all the costly caprices of

-a _cocodette_ who reigned in the two most brilliant capitals of the

-world. They were often troubled by their own folly, and again and again

-the generosity of his elder brother had rescued them from humiliating

-embarrassments. At such moments she had almost hated Wanda von Szalras

-for these large possessions, of which, according to her own views,

-her sister-in-law made no use whatever. Meantime, she wished Egon

-Vàsàrhely to die childless, and to that end had not been unwilling

-for the woman he loved to marry anyone else. She had reasoned that the

-Szalras estates would go to the Crown or the Church if Wanda did not

-marry; whilst all the power and possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely must, if

-he had no sons, pass in due course to his brother. She had the subtle

-acuteness of her race, and she had the double power of being able at

-once to wait very patiently and to spring with swift rage on what she

-needed. To her sister-in-law she always appeared a mere flutterer on

-the breath of fashion. The grave and candid nature of the one could not

-follow or perceive the intricacies of the other.

-

-'She is a cruel woman and a perilous one,' Sabran said one day to his

-wife's surprise.

-

-She answered him that Olga Brancka had always seemed to her a mere

-frivolous _mondaine_, like so many others of their world.

-

-'No,' he persisted. 'You are wrong; she is not a butterfly. She has too

-much energy. She is a profoundly immoral woman also. Look at her eyes.'

-

-'That is Stefan's affair,' she answered, 'not ours. He is indifferent.'

-

-'Or unsuspicious? Did your brother care for her?'

-

-'He was madly in love with her. She was only sixteen when he married

-her. He fell at Solferino half a year later. When she married my

-cousin it shocked and disgusted me. Perhaps I was foolish to take it

-thus, but it seemed such a sin against Gela. To die _so_, and not to be

-even remembered!'

-

-'Did your cousin Egon approve this second marriage?'

-

-'No,' he opposed it; he had our feeling about it. But Stefan, though

-very young, was beyond any control. He had the fortune as he had the

-title of his mother, the Countess Brancka, and Olga bewitched him as

-she had done my brother.'

-

-'She _is_ a witch, a wicked witch,' said Sabran.

-

-The great autumn party was brilliant and agreeable. All things went

-well, and the days were never monotonous. The people were well

-assorted, and the social talent of their host made their outdoor sports

-and their indoor pastimes constantly varied, whilst Hungarian musicians

-and Viennese comedians played waltzes that would have made a statue

-dance, and represented the little comedies for which he himself had

-been famous at the Mirlitons.

-

-He was not conscious of it, but he was passionately eager for Egon

-Vàsàrhely to be witness, not only of his entire happiness, but of his

-social powers. To Vàsàrhely he seemed to put forward the perfection

-of his life with almost insolence; with almost exaggeration to exhibit

-the joys and the gifts with which nature and chance had so liberally

-dowered him. The stately Magyar soldier, sitting silent and melancholy

-apart, watched him with a curious pang, that in a lesser nature would

-have been a consuming envy. Now and then, though Sabran and his wife

-spoke rarely to each other in the presence of others, a glance, a

-smile, a word passed between them that told of absolute unuttered

-tenderness, profound and inexhaustible as the deep seas; in the very

-sound of their laughter, in the mere accent of their voices, in a

-careless caress to one of their children, in a light touch of the hand

-to one another as they rode, or as they met in a room, there was the

-expression of a perfect joy, of a perfect faith between them, which

-pierced the heart of the watcher of it. Yet would he not have had it

-otherwise at her cost.

-

-'Since she has chosen him as the companion of her life, it is well

-that he should be what she can take pride in, and what all men can

-praise,' he thought, and yet the happiness of this man seemed to him an

-audacity, an insolence. What human lover could merit her?

-

-Between himself and Sabran there was the most perfect courtesy, but no

-intimacy. They both knew that if for fifty years they met continually

-they would never be friends. All her endeavours to produce sympathy

-between them failed. Sabran was conscious of a constant observation of

-him by her cousin, which seemed to him to have a hostile motive, and

-which irritated him extremely, though he did not allow his irritation

-any visible vent. Olga Brancka perceived, and with the objectless

-malice of women of her temperament, amused herself with fanning, the

-slumbering enmity, as children play at fire.

-

-'You cannot expect Egon to love you,' she said once to her host. 'You

-know he was the betrothed of Wanda from her childhood--at least in his

-own hopes, and in the future sketched for them by their families.'

-

-'I was quite aware of that before I married,' he answered her

-indifferently. 'But those family arrangements are tranquil disposals of

-destiny which, if they be disturbed, leave no great trace of trouble.

-The Prince is young still, and a famous soldier as well as a great

-noble. He has no lack of consolation if he need it, and I cannot

-believe that he does.'

-

-Mdme. Olga laughed.

-

-'You know as well as I do that Egon adores the very stirrup your wife's

-foot touches!'

-

-'I know he is her much beloved cousin,' said Sabran, in a tone which

-admitted of no reply.

-

-To Vàsàrhely his sister-in-law said confidentially:

-

-'Dear Egon, why did you not stay on the _pusztas_ or remain with your

-hussars? You make _le beau_ Sabran jealous.'

-

-'Jealous!' asked Vàsàrhely, with a bitter smile. 'He has much cause,

-when she has neither eye nor ear, neither memory nor thought of any

-kind for any living thing except himself and those children who are

-all his very portraits! Why do you say these follies, Olga? You know

-that my cousin Wanda chose her lord out of all the world, and loves

-him as no one would have supposed she had it in her to love any mortal

-creature.'

-

-He spoke imperiously, harshly, and she was silenced.

-

-'What do you think of him?' she said with hesitation.

-

-'Everyone asks me that question. I am not his keeper!'

-

-'But you must form some opinion. He is virtual lord of Hohenszalras,

-and I believe she has made over to him all the appanages of Idrac, and

-his children will have everything.'

-

-'Are they not her natural heirs? Who should inherit from her if not her

-sons?'

-

-'Of course, of course they will inherit, only they inherit nothing

-from him. It was certainly a great stroke of fortune for a landless

-gentleman to make. Why does the _gentilhomme pauvre_ always so

-captivate women?'

-

-'What do you mean to insinuate, Olga?' he asked her, with a stern

-glance of his great black eyes.'

-

-'Oh, nothing; only his history was peculiar. I remember his arrival

-in France, his first appearance in society; it is many years ago now.

-All the Faubourg received him, but some said at the time that it was

-too romantic to be true--those Mexican forests, that long exile of the

-Sabran, the sudden appearance of this beautiful young marquis; you

-will grant it was romantic. I suppose it was the romance that made

-even Wanda's clear head turn a little. It is a _vin capiteux_ for many

-women. And then such a life in Paris after it--duels, baccara, bonnes

-fortunes, clever comedies, a touch like Liszt's, a sudden success in

-the Chamber--it was all so romantic; it was bound to bring him at

-last to his haven, the Prince Charmant of an enchanted castle! Only

-enchanted castles sometimes grow dull, and Princes Charmants are not

-always amusable by the same châtelaine!'

-

-Egon Vàsàrhely, with his eyes sombre under their long black lashes,

-listened to the easy bantering phrases with the vague suspicion of an

-honest and slow-witted man that a woman is trying to drop poison into

-his ear which she wishes to pass as _eau sucrée._ He did not altogether

-follow her insinuation, but he understood something of her drift. They

-were alone in a corner of the ball-room, whilst the cotillon was at its

-height, conducted by Sabran, who had been famous for its leadership in

-Paris and Vienna. He stooped his head and looked her full in her eyes.

-

-'Look here, Olga. I am not sure what you mean, but I believe you are

-tired of seeing my cousin's happiness, merely because it is something

-with which you cannot interfere. For myself I would protect her

-happiness as I would her honour if I thought either endangered. Whether

-you or I like the Marquis de Sabran is wholly beyond the question. She

-loves him, and she has made him one of us. His honour is now ours.

-For myself I would defend him in his absence as though he were my own

-brother. Not for his sake at all--for hers. I do not express myself

-very well, but you know what I mean. Here is Max returning to claim

-you.'

-

-Silenced and a little alarmed the Countess Brancka rose and went off to

-her place in the cotillon.

-

-Vàsàrhely, sitting where she had left him, watched the mazes of the

-cotillon, the rhythm of the tzigane musicians coming to his ear

-freighted with a thousand familiar memories of the czardas danced madly

-in the long Hungarian nights. Time had been when the throb of the

-tzigane strings had stirred all his pulses like magic, but now all his

-bold bright life seemed numb and frozen in him.

-

-His eyes rested on his cousin, where she stood conversing with a crown

-prince, who was her chief guest, and passed from her to follow the

-movements of Sabran, who with supreme ease and elegance was leading a

-new intricate measure down the ball-room.

-

-She was happy, that he could not doubt. Every action, every word, every

-glance said so with a meaning not to be doubted. He thought she had

-never looked so handsome as she did to-night since that far away day

-in her childhood when he had seen her with the red and white roses in

-her lap and the crown upon her curls. She had the look of her childhood

-in her eyes, that serene and glad light which had been dimmed by her

-brothers' death, but now shone there again tranquil, radiant, and pure

-as sunlight is. She wore white velvet and white brocade; her breast

-was hidden in white roses; she wore her famous pearls and the ribbons

-of the Starred Cross of Austria and of the Prussian Order of Merit;

-she held in her hand a large painted fan which had belonged to Maria

-Theresa. Every now and then, as she talked with her royal guest, her

-glance strayed down the room to where her husband was, and lingered

-there a moment with a little smile.

-

-Vàsàrhely watched her for awhile, then rose abruptly, and made his way

-out of the ball-room and the state apartments down the corridors of the

-old house he knew so well towards his own chamber. He thought he would

-write to her and leave upon the morrow. What need was there for him to

-stay on in this perpetual pain? He had done enough for the world, which

-had seen him under the roof of Hohenszalras.

-

-As he took his way through the long passages, tapestry-hung or

-oak-panelled, which led across the great building to his own set of

-rooms in the clock tower, he passed an open door out of which a light

-was streaming. As he glanced within he saw it was the children's

-sleeping apartment, of which the door was open because the night was

-warm, unusually warm for the heart of the Gross Glöckner mountains. An

-impulse he could not have explained made him pause and enter. The three

-little white beds of carved Indian work, with curtains of lace, looked

-very snowy and peaceful in the pale light from a hanging lamp. The

-children were all asleep; the one nearest the door was Bela.

-

-Vàsàrhely stood and looked at him. His head was thrown back on his

-pillow and his arms were above his head. His golden hair, which was

-cut straight and low over his forehead, had been pushed back in his

-slumber; he looked more like his father than in his waking hours,

-for as he dreamed there was a look of coldness and of scorn upon his

-childish face, which made him so resemble Sabran that the man who

-looked on him drew his breath hard with pain.

-

-The night-nurse rose from her seat, recognising Prince Egon, whom she

-had known from his childhood.

-

-'The little Count is so like the Marquis,' she said, approaching; 'so

-is Herr Gela. Ah, my Prince, you remember the noble gentlemen whose

-names they bear? God send they may be like them in their lives and not

-their deaths!'

-

-'An early death is good,' said Vàsàrhely, as he stood beside the

-child's bed. He thought how good it would have been if he had fallen

-at Sadowa or Königsgrätz, or earlier by the side of Gela and Victor,

-charging with his White Hussars.

-

-The old nurse rambled on, full of praise and stories of the children's

-beauty, and strength, and activity, and intelligence. Vàsàrhely did not

-hear her; he stood lost in thought looking down on the sleeping figure

-of Bela, who, as if conscious of strange eyes upon him, moved uneasily

-in his slumber, and ruffled his golden hair with his hands, and thrust

-off his coverings from his beautiful round white limbs.

-

-'Count Bela is not like our saint who died,' said the old nurse. 'He

-is always masterful, and loves his own way. My lady is strict with

-him, and wisely so, for he is a proud rebellious child. But he is very

-generous, and has noble ways. Count Gela is a little angel; he will be

-like the Heilige Graf.'

-

-Vàsàrhely did not hear anything she said. His gaze was bent on the

-sleeping child, studying the lines of the delicate brows, of the

-curving lips, of the long black lashes. It was so familiar, so

-familiar! Suddenly as he gazed a light seemed to leap out of the

-darkness of long forgotten years, and the memory which had haunted him

-stood out clear before him.

-

-'He is like Vassia Kazán!' he cried, half aloud. The face of the child

-had recalled what in the face of the man had for ever eluded his

-remembrance.

-

-He thrust a gold coin in the nurse's hand, and hurried from the

-chamber. A sudden inconceivable, impossible suspicion had leaped up

-before him as he had gazed on the sleeping loveliness of Sabran's

-little son.

-

-The old woman saw his sudden pallor, his uncertain gesture, and

-thought, 'Poor gallant gentleman! He wishes these pretty boys were his

-own. Well, it might have been better if he had been master here, though

-there is nothing to say against the one who is so. Still, a stranger is

-always a stranger, and foreign blood is bad.'

-

-Then she drew the coverings over Bela's naked little limbs, and passed

-on to make sure that the little Ottilie, who had been born when the

-primroses where first out in the Iselthal woods, was sleeping soundly,

-and wanted nothing.

-

-Vàsàrhely made his way to his own chamber, and there sat down heavily,

-mechanically, like a man waking out from a bad dream.

-

-His memory went back to twenty years before, when he, a little lad, had

-accompanied his father on a summer visit to the house of a Russian,

-Prince Paul Zabaroff. It was a house, gay, magnificent, full of idle

-men and women of facile charm; it was not a house for youth; but

-both the Prince Vàsàrhely and the Prince Zabaroff were men of easy

-morals--_viveurs_, gamesters, and philosophers, who at fifteen years

-old themselves had been lovers and men of the world. At that house

-had been present a youth, some years older than he was, who was known

-as Vassia Kazán: a youth whose beauty and wit made him the delight of

-the women there, and whose skill at games and daring in sports won him

-the admiration of the men. It was understood without even being said

-openly that Vassia Kazán was a natural son of the Prince Zabaroff. The

-little Hungarian prince, child as he was, had wit enough and enough

-knowledge of life to understand that this brilliant companion, of his

-was base-born. His kind heart moved him to pity, but his intense pride

-curbed his pity with contempt. Vassia Kazán had resented the latter too

-bitterly to even be conscious of the first. The gentlemen assembled had

-diverted themselves by the unspoken feud that had soon risen between

-the boys, and the natural intelligence of the little Magyar noble had

-been no match for the subtle and cultured brain of the Parisian Lycéen.

-

-One day one of the lovely ladies there, who plundered Zabaroff and

-caressed his son, amused herself with a war of words between the lads,

-and so heated, stung, spurred and tormented the Hungarian boy that,

-exasperated by the sallies and satires of his foe, and by the presence

-of this lovely goddess of discord, he so far forgot his chivalry that

-he turned on Vassia with a taunt. 'You would be a serf if you were in

-Russia!' he said, with his great black eyes flashing the scorn of the

-noble on the bastard. Without a word, Vassia, who had come in from

-riding and had his whip in his hand, sprang on him, held him in a grip

-of steel, and thrashed him. The fiery Magyar, writhing under the blows

-of one who to him was as a slave, as a hound, freed his right arm,

-snatched from a table near an oriental dagger lying there with other

-things of value, and plunged it into the shoulder of his foe. The

-cries of the lady, alarmed at her own work, brought the men in from

-the adjoining room; the boys were forced apart and carried to their

-chambers.

-

-Prince Vàsàrhely left the house that evening with his son, still

-furious and unappeased. Vassia Kazán remained, made a hero of and

-nursed by the lovely woman who had thrown the apple of strife. His

-wound was healed in three weeks' time; soon after his father's

-house-party was scattered, and he himself returned to his college. Not

-a syllable passed between him and Zabaroff as to his quarrel with the

-little Hungarian magnate. To the woman who had wrought the mischief

-Zabaroff said: 'Almost I wish he were my lawful son. He is a true wolf

-of the steppes. Paris has only combed his hide and given him a silken

-coat; he is still a wolf, like all true Russians.'

-

-Looking on the sleeping child of Sabran, all that half-forgotten scene

-had risen up before the eyes of Egon Vàsàrhely. He seemed to see the

-beautiful fair face of Vassia Kazán, with the anger on the knitted

-brows, and the ferocity on the delicate stern lips as he had raised his

-arm to strike. Twenty years had gone by; he himself, whenever he had

-remembered the scene, had long grown ashamed of the taunt he had cast,

-not of the blow he had given, for the sole reproof his father had ever

-made him was to say: 'A noble, only insults his equals. To insult an

-inferior is ungenerous, it is derogatory; whom you offend you raise for

-the hour to a level with yourself. Remember to choose your foes not

-less carefully than you choose your friends.'

-

-Why with the regard, the voice, the air of Sabran had some vague

-intangible remembrance always come before him?'

-

-Why, as he had gazed on the sleeping child had the vague uncertainty

-suddenly resolved itself into distinct revelation?

-

-'He is Vassia Kazán! He is Vassia Kazán!' he said to himself a score

-of times stupidly, persistently, as one speaks in a dream. Yet he knew

-he must be a prey to delusion, to phantasy, to accidental resemblance.

-He told himself so. He resisted his own folly, and all the while a

-subtler inner consciousness seemed to be speaking in him, and saying to

-him:

-

-'That man is Vassia Kazán. Surely he is Vassia Kazán.'

-

-And then the loyal soul of him strengthened itself and made him think:

-

-'Even if he be Vassia Kazán he is her husband. He is what she loves; he

-is the father of those children that are hers.'

-

-He never went to his bed that night. When the music ceased at an hour

-before dawn, and the great house grew silent, he still sat there by

-the open casement, glad of the cold air that blew in from over the

-Szalrassee, as with daybreak a fine film of rain began to come down the

-mountain sides.

-

-Once he heard the voice of Sabran, who passed the door on his way to

-his own apartment. Sabran was saying in German with a little laugh:

-

-'My lady!' I am jealous of your crown prince. When I left him now in

-his chamber I was disposed to immortalise myself by regicide. He adores

-you!'

-

-Then he heard Wanda laugh in answer, with some words that did not

-reach his ear as they passed on further down the corridor. Vàsàrhely

-shivered, and instinctively rose to his feet. He felt as if he must

-seek him out and cry out to him:

-

-'Am I mad or is it true? Let me see your shoulder--have you the mark of

-the wound that I gave? Your little child has the face of Vassia Kazán.

-Are you Vassia Kazán? Are you the bastard of Zabaroff? Are you the wolf

-of the steppes?'

-

-He had desired to go from Hohenszalras, where every hour was pain to

-him, but now he felt an irresistible fascination in the vicinity of

-Sabran. His mind was in that dual state which at once rejects a fact as

-incredible, and believes in it absolutely. His reason told him that his

-suspicion was a folly; his instinct told him that it was a truth.

-

-When in the forenoon the castle again became animated, and the guests

-met to the mid-day breakfast in the hall of the knights, he descended,

-moved by an eagerness that made him for the first time in his life

-nervous. When Sabran addressed him he felt himself grow pale; he

-followed the movements, he watched the features, he studied the tones

-of his successful rival, with an intense absorption in them. Through

-the hunting breakfast, at which only men were present, he was conscious

-of nothing that was addressed to him; he only seemed to hear a voice in

-his ear saying perpetually----'Yonder is Vassia Kazán.'

-

-The day was spent in sport, sport rough and real, that gave fair play

-to the beasts and perilous exposure to the hunters. For the first time

-in his life, Egon Vàsàrhely let a brown bear go by him untouched,

-and missed more than one roebuck. His eyes were continually seeking

-his host; a mile off down a forest glade the figure of Sabran seemed

-to fill his vision, a figure full of grace and dignity, clad in a

-hunting-dress of russet velvet, with a hunting-horn slung at his side

-on a broad chain of gold, the gift of his wife in memory of the fateful

-day when he had aimed at the _kuttengeier_ in her woods.

-

-Sabran of necessity devoted himself to the crown prince throughout

-the day's sport; only in the twilight as they returned he spoke to

-Vàsàrhely.

-

-'Wanda is so full of regret that you wish to leave us,' he said, with

-graceful cordiality; 'if only I can persuade you to remain, I shall

-take her the most welcome of all tidings from the forest. Stay at the

-least another week, the weather has cleared.'

-

-As he spoke he thought that Vàsàrhely looked at him strangely; but

-he knew that he could not be much loved by his wife's cousin, and

-continued with good humour to persist in his request. Abruptly, the

-other answered him at last.

-

-'Wanda wishes me to stay? Well, I will stay then. It seems strange to

-hear a stranger invite _me_ to Hohenszalras.'

-

-Sabran coloured; he said with hauteur:

-

-'That I am a stranger to Prince Vàsàrhely is not my fault. That I have

-the right to invite him to Hohenszalras is my happiness, due to his

-cousin's goodness, which has been far beyond my merit.'

-

-Vàsàrhely's eyes dwelt on him gloomily; he was sensible of the dignity,

-the self-command, and the delicacy of reproof which were blent in the

-answer he had received; he felt humbled and convicted of ill-breeding.

-He said after a pause:

-

-'I should ask your pardon. My cousin would be the first to condemn my

-words; they sounded ill, but I meant them literally. Hohenszalras has

-been one of my homes from boyhood; it will be your son's when we are

-both dead. How like he is to you; he has nothing of his mother.'

-

-Sabran, somewhat surprised, smiled as he answered:

-

-'He is very like me. I regret it; but you know the poets and the

-physiologists are for once agreed as to the cause of that. It is a

-truth proved a million times: _l'enfant de l'amour ressemble toujours

-au père._'

-

-Egon Vàsàrhely grew white under the olive hue of his sun-bronzed

-cheek. The _riposte_ had been made with a thrust that went home. Otto

-at that moment approached his master for orders for the morrow. They

-were no more alone. They entered the house; the long and ceremonious

-dinner succeeded. Vàsàrhely was silent and stern. Sabran was the most

-brilliant of hosts, the happiest of men; all the women present were in

-love with him, his wife the most of all.

-

-'Réné tells me you will stay, Egon. I am so very glad,' his cousin said

-to him during the evening, and she added with a little hesitation, 'If

-you would take time to know him well, you would find him so worthy of

-your regard; he has all the qualities that most men esteem in each

-other. It would make me so happy if you were friends at heart, not only

-in mere courtesy.'

-

-'You know that can never be,' said Vàsàrhely, almost rudely. 'Even you

-cannot work miracles. He is your husband. It is a reason that I should

-respect him, but it is also a reason why I shall for ever hate him.'

-

-He said the last words in a tone scarcely audible, but low as it was,

-there was a force in it that affected her painfully.

-

-'What you say there is quite unworthy of you,' she said with gentleness

-but coldness. 'He has done you no wrong. Long ere I met him I told you

-that what you wished was not what I wished, never would be so. You are

-too great a gentleman, Egon, to nourish an injustice in your heart.'

-

-He looked down; every fibre in him thrilled and burned under the sound

-of her voice, the sense of her presence.

-

-'I saw your children asleep last night,' he said abruptly. 'They have

-nothing of you in them; they are his image.'

-

-'Is it so unusual for children to resemble their father?' she said with

-a smile, whilst vaguely disquieted by his tone.

-

-'No, I suppose not; but the Szalras have always been of one type. How

-came your husband by that face? I have seen it amongst the Circassians,

-the Persians, the Georgians; but you say he is a Breton.'

-

-'The Sabrans of Romaris are Bretons; you have only to consult history.

-Very beautiful faces like his have seldom much impress of nationality;

-they always seem as though they followed the old Greek laws, and were

-cast in the divine heroic mould of another time than ours.'

-

-'Who was his mother?'

-

-'A Spanish Mexican.'

-

-Vàsàrhely was silent.

-

-His cousin left him and went amongst her guests. A vague sense of

-uneasiness went with her at her consciousness of his hostility to

-Sabran. She wished she had not asked him to remain.

-

-'You have never offended Egon?' she asked Sabran anxiously that night.

-'You have always been forbearing and patient with him?'

-

-'I have obeyed you in that as all things, my angel,', he answered her

-lightly. 'What would you? He is in love with you still, and I have

-married you! It is even a crime in his eyes that my children resemble

-me! One can never argue with a passion that is unhappy. It is a kind of

-frenzy.'

-

-She heard with some impatience.

-

-'He has no right to cherish such a resentment. He keeps it alive by

-brooding on it. I had hoped that when he saw you here, saw how happy

-you render me, saw your children too, he would grow calmer, wiser, more

-reconciled to the inevitable.'

-

-'You did not know men, my love,' said Sabran, with a smile.

-

-To him the unhappiness and the ill-will of Egon Vàsàrhely were matters

-of supreme indifference; in a manner they gratified him, they even

-supplied that stimulant of rivalry which a man's passion needs to keep

-at its height in the calm of safe possession. That Egon Vàsàrhely saw

-his perfect happiness lent it pungency and a keener sense of victory.

-When he kissed his wife's hand in the sight of her cousin, the sense

-of the pain it dealt to the spectator gave the trivial action to him

-all the sweetness and the ardour of the first caresses of his accepted

-passion.

-

-Of that she knew nothing. It would have seemed to her ignoble, as so

-much that makes up men's desire always does seem to a woman of her

-temperament, even whilst it dominates and solicits her, and forces her

-to share something of its own intoxication.

-

-'Egon is very unreasonable,' said Mdme. Ottilie. 'He believes that

-if you had not met Réné you would have in time loved himself. It is

-foolish. Love is a destiny. Had you married him you would not have

-loved him. He would soon have perceived that and been miserable, much

-more miserable than he is now, for he would have been unable to release

-you. I think he should not have come here at all if he could not have

-met M. de Sabran with at least equanimity.'

-

-'I think so, too,' said Wanda, and an impatience against her cousin

-began to grow into anger; without being conscious of it, she had placed

-Sabran so high in her own esteem that she could forgive none who did

-not adore her own idol. It was a weakness in her that was lovely and

-touching in a character that had had before hardly enough of the usual

-foibles of humanity. Every error of love is lovable.

-

-Vàsàrhely could not dismiss from his mind the impression which haunted

-him.

-

-'I conclude you knew the Marquis de Sabran well in France?' he said one

-day to Baron Kaulnitz, who was still there.

-

-Kaulnitz demurred.

-

-'No, I cannot say that I did. I knew him by repute; that was not very

-pure. However, the Faubourg always received and sustained him; the

-Comte de Chambord did the same; they were the most interested. One

-cannot presume to think they could be deceived.'

-

-'Deceived!' echoed Prince Egon. 'What a singular word to use. Do you

-mean to imply the possibility of--of any falsity on his part--any

-intrigue to appear what he is not?'

-

-'No,' said Kaulnitz, with hesitation. 'Honestly, I cannot say so much.

-An impression was given me at the moment of his signing his marriage

-contract that he concealed something; but it was a mere suspicion. As I

-told you, the whole Legitimist world, the most difficult to enter, the

-most incredulous of assumption, received him with open arms. All his

-papers were of unimpeachable regularity. There was never a doubt hinted

-by anyone, and yet I will confess to you, my dear Egon, since we are

-speaking in confidence, that I have had always my own doubts as to his

-marquisate of Sabran.'

-

-'_Grosser Gott!_' exclaimed Vàsàrhely, as he started from his seat.

-'Why did you not stop the marriage?'

-

-'One does not stop a marriage by a mere baseless suspicion,' replied

-Kaulnitz. 'I have not one shadow of reason for my probably quite

-unwarranted conjecture. It merely came into my mind also at the

-signing of the contracts. I had already done all I could to oppose

-the marriage, but Wanda was inflexible--you are witness of the charm

-he still possesses for her--and even the Princess was scarcely

-less infatuated. Besides, it must be granted that few men are more

-attractive in every way; and as he _is_ one of us, whatever else he be,

-his honour is now our honour, as you said yourself the other day.'

-

-'One could always kill him,' muttered Vàsàrhely, 'and set her free so,

-if one were sure.'

-

-'Sure of what?' said Kaulnitz, rather alarmed at the effect of his own

-words. 'You Magyar gentlemen always think that every knot can be cut

-with a sword. If he were a mere adventurer (which is hardly possible)

-it would not mend matters for you to run him through the heart; there

-are his children.'

-

-'Would the marriage be legal if his name were assumed?'

-

-'Oh, no! She could have it annulled, of course, both by Church and Law.

-All those pretty children would have no rights and no name. But we are

-talking very wildly and in a theatrical fashion. He is as certainly

-Marquis de Sabran as I am Karl von Kaulnitz.'

-

-Vàsàrhely said nothing; his mind was in tumult, his heart oppressed by

-a sense of secrecy and of a hope that was guilty and mean.

-

-He did not speak to his companion of Vassia Kazán, but his conjecture

-seemed to hover before his sight like a black cloud which grew bigger

-every hour.

-

-He remained at Hohenszalras throughout the autumnal festivities. He

-felt as if he could not go away with that doubt still unsolved, that

-suspicion either confirmed or uprooted. His cousin grew as uneasy at

-his presence there as she had before been uneasy at his absence. Her

-instinct told her that he was the foe of the one dearest to her on

-earth. She felt that the gallant and generous temper of him had changed

-and grown morose; he was taciturn, moody, solitary.

-

-He spent almost all his time out of doors, and devoted himself to the

-hardy sport of the mountains and forests with a sort of rage. Guests

-came and went at the castle; some were imperial, some royal people;

-there was always a brilliant circle of notable persons there, and

-Sabran played his part as their host, with admirable tact, talent, and

-good humour. His wit, his amiability, his many accomplishments, and

-his social charm were in striking contrast to the sombre indifference

-of Vàsàrhely, whom men had no power to amuse and women no power to

-interest. Prince Egon was like a magnificent picture by Rembrandt,

-as he sat in his superb uniform in a corner of a ball-room with the

-collars of his orders blazing with jewels, and his hands crossed on

-the diamond-studded hilt of his sword; but he was so mute, so gloomy,

-so austere, that the vainest, coquette there ceased to hope to please

-him, and his most cordial friends found his curt contemptuous replies

-destroy their desire for his companionship.

-

-Wanda, who was frankly and fondly attached to him, began to long for

-his departure. The gaze of his black eyes, fixed in their fire and

-gloom on the little gay figures of her children, filled her with a

-vague apprehension.

-

-'If he would only find some one and be happy,' she thought, with anger

-at this undesired and criminal love which clung to her so persistently.

-

-'Am I made of wax?' he said to her with scorn, when she ventured to

-hint at her wishes.

-

-'How I wish I had not asked him to remain here!' she said to herself

-many times. It was not possible for her to dismiss her cousin, who had

-been from his infancy accustomed to look on the Hohenszalrasburg as his

-second home. But as circle after circle of guests came, went, and were

-replaced by others, and Egon Vàsàrhely still retained the rooms in the

-west tower that had been his from boyhood, his continual presence grew

-irksome and irritating to her.

-

-'He forgets that it is now my husband's house!' she thought.

-

-There was only one living creature in all the place to whom Vàsàrhely

-unbent from his sullen and haughty reserve, and that one was the child

-Bela.

-

-Bela was as beautiful as the morning, with his shower of golden hair,

-and his eyes like sapphires, and his skin like a lily. With curious

-self-torture Vàsàrhely would attract the child to him by tales of

-daring and of sport, and would watch with intent eyes every line of

-the small face, trying therein to read the secret of the man by whom

-this child had been begotten. Bela, all unconscious, was proud of this

-interest displayed in him by this mighty soldier, of whose deeds in war

-Ulrich and Hubert and Otto told such Homeric tales.

-

-'Bela will fight with you when he is big,' he would say, trying to

-inclose the jewelled hilt of Vàsàrhely's sword in his tiny fingers, or

-trotting after him through the silence of the tapestried corridors.

-When she saw them thus together she felt that she could understand the

-superstitious fear of oriental women when their children are looked at

-fixedly.

-

-'You are very good to my boy,' she said once to Vàsàrhely, when he had

-let the child chatter by his side for hours.

-

-Vàsàrhely turned away abruptly.

-

-'There are times when I could kill your son, because he is his,' he

-muttered, 'and there are times when I could worship him, because he is

-yours.'

-

-'Do not talk so, Egon,'she said, gravely. 'If you will feel so, it is

-best--I must say it--it is best that you should see neither my child

-nor me.'

-

-He took no notice of her words.

-

-'The children would always be yours,' he muttered. 'You would never

-leave him, never disgrace him for their sake; even if one knew--it

-would be of no use.'

-

-'Dear Egon,' she said in real distress, 'what strange things are you

-saying? Are you mad? Whose disgrace do you mean?'

-

-'Let us suppose an extreme case,' he said, with a hard laugh. 'Suppose

-their father were base, or vile, or faithless, would you hate the

-children? Surely you would.'

-

-'I have not imagination enough to suppose any such thing,'she said very

-coldly. 'And you do not know what a mother's love is, my cousin.'

-

-He walked away, leaving her abruptly.

-

-'How strange he grows!' she thought. 'Surely his mind must be touched;

-jealousy is a sort of madness.'

-

-She bade the children's attendants keep Count Bela more in the

-nurseries; she told them that the child teased her guests, and must

-not be allowed to run so often at his will and whim over the house.'

-She never seriously feared that Egon would harm the child: his noble

-and chivalrous nature could not have changed so cruelly as that; but

-it hurt her to see his eyes fixed on the son of Sabran with such

-persistent interrogation and so strange an intensity of observation. It

-made her think of old Italian tales of the evil eye.

-

-She did not know that Vàsàrhely had come thither with a sincere and

-devout intention to conquer his jealous hatred of her husband, and

-to habituate himself to the sight of her in the new relations of her

-life. She did not know that he would probably have honestly tried to

-do his duty, and honestly striven to feel at least esteem for one so

-near to her, if the suspicion which had become almost certainty in his

-own mind had not made him believe that he saw in Sabran a traitor,

-a bastard, and a criminal whose offences were the deepest of all

-possible offences, and whose degradation was the lowest of all possible

-degradation, in the sight of the haughty magnate of Hungary, steeped

-to the lips in all the traditions and the convictions of an unsullied

-nobility. If what he believed were, indeed, the truth, he would hold

-Sabran lower than any beggar crouching at the gate of his palace in

-Buda, than any gipsy wandering in the woods of his mountain fortress

-of Taróc. If what he believed were the truth, no leper would seem to

-him so loathsome as this brilliant and courtly gentleman to whom his

-cousin had given her hand, her honour, and her life.

-

-'Doubt, like a raging tooth,' gnawed at his heart, and a hope, which

-he knew was dishonourable to his chivalry, sprang up in him, vague,

-timid, and ashamed. If, indeed, it were as he believed, would not such

-crime, proven on the sinner, part him for ever from the pure, proud

-life of Wanda von Szalras? And then, as he thought thus, he groaned in

-spirit, remembering the children--the children with their father's face

-and their father's taint in them, for ever living witnesses of their

-mother's surrender to a lying hound.

-

-'Your cousin cannot be said to contribute to the gaiety of your

-house parties, my love,' Sabran observed with a smile one day, when

-they received the announcement of an intended visit from one of the

-archdukes. Egon Vàsàrhely was still there, and even his cousin, much

-as she longed for his departure, could not openly urge it upon him;

-relationship and hospitality alike forbade.

-

-'He is sadly changed,' she answered. 'He was always silent, but he is

-now morose. Perhaps he lives too much at Taróc, where all is very wild

-and solitary.'

-

-'He lives too much in your memory,' said Sabran, with no compassion.

-'Could he determine to forgive my marriage with you, there would be a

-chance for him to recover his peace of mind. Only, my Wanda, it is not

-possible for any man to be consoled for the loss of you.'

-

-'But that is nothing new,' she answered, with impatience. 'If he felt

-so strongly against you, why did he come here? It was not like his

-high, chivalrous honour.'

-

-'Perhaps he came with the frank will to be reconciled to his fate,'

-said Sabran, not knowing how closely he struck the truth, 'and at the

-sight of you, of all that he lost and that I gained, he cannot keep his

-resolution.'

-

-'Then he should go away,' she said, with that indifference to all

-others save the one beloved which all love begets.

-

-'I think he should. But who can tell him so?'

-

-'I did myself the other day. I shall tell him so more plainly, if

-needful. Who cannot honour you shall be no friend of mine, no guest of

-ours.'

-

-'Oh, my love!' said Sabran, whose conscience was touched. 'Do not have

-feud with your relatives for my sake. They are worthier than I.'

-

-The Archduke, with his wife, arrived there on the following day, and

-Hohenszalras was gorgeous in the September sun, with all the pomp with

-which the lords of it had always welcomed their Imperial friends.

-Vàsàrhely looked on as a spectator at a play when he watched its

-present master receive the Imperial Prince with that supreme ease,

-grace, and dignity which were so admirably blent in him.

-

-'Can he be but a marvellous comedian?' wondered the man, to whom a

-bastard was less even than a peasant.

-

-There was nothing of vanity, of effort, of assumption visible in the

-perfect manner of his host. He seemed to the backbone, in all the

-difficult subtleties of society, as in the simple, frank intercourse

-of man and man, that which even Kaulnitz had conceded that he was,

-_gentilhomme de race._ Could he have been born a serf--bred from the

-hour's caprice of a voluptuary for a serving-woman?

-

-Vàsàrhely sat mute, sunk so deeply in his own thoughts that all the

-festivities round him went by like a pageantry on a stage, in which he

-had no part.

-

-'He looks like the statue of the Commendatore,' said Olga Brancka, who

-had returned for the archducal visit, as she glanced at the sombre,

-stately figure of her brother-in-law, Sabran, to whom she spoke,

-laughed with a little uneasiness. Would the hand of Egon Vàsàrhely ever

-seize him and drag him downward like the hand of the statue in _Don

-Giovanni?_

-

-'What a pity that Wanda did not marry him, and that I did not marry

-you!' said Mdme. Brancka, saucily, but with a certain significance of

-meaning.

-

-'You do me infinite honour!' he answered. 'But, at the risk of seeming

-most ungallant, I must confess the truth. I am grateful that the gods

-arranged matters as they are. You are enchanting, Madame Olga, as a

-guest, but as a wife--alas! who can drink _kümmel_ every day?'

-

-She smiled enchantingly, showing her pretty teeth, but she was bitterly

-angered. She had wished for a compliment at the least. 'What can these

-men see in Wanda?' she thought savagely. 'She is handsome, it is true;

-but she has no coquetry, no animation, no passion. She is dressed by

-Worth, and has a marvellous quantity of old jewels; but for that no one

-would say anything of her except that she was much too tall and had a

-German face!' And she persuaded herself that it was so; if the Venus

-de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her

-waist was large.

-

-Mdme. Olga was still very lovely, and took care to be never seen except

-at her loveliest. She always treated Sabran with a great familiarity,

-which his wife was annoyed by, though she did not display her

-annoyance. Mdme Brancka always called him _mon cousin_ or _beau cousin_

-in the language she usually used, and affected much more previous

-knowledge of him than their acquaintance warranted, since it had been

-merely such slight intimacy as results from moving in the same society.

-She was small and slight, but of great spirit; she shot, fished, rode,

-and played billiards with equal skill; she affected an adoration of

-the most dangerous sports, and even made a point of sharing the bear

-and the boar hunt. Wanda, who, though a person of much greater real

-courage, abhorred all the cruelties and ferocities that perforce

-accompany sport, saw her with some irritation go out with Sabran on

-these expeditions.

-

-'Women are utterly out of place in such sport as that, Olga,' she urged

-to her; 'and indeed are very apt to bring the men into peril, for of

-course no man can take care of himself whilst he has the safety of a

-woman to attend to; she must of necessity distract and trouble him.'

-

-But the Countess Stefan only laughed, and slipped with affectation her

-jewelled hunting-knife into its place in her girdle.

-

-Throughout the Archduke's visit, and after the Prince's departure,

-Vàsàrhely continued to stay on, whilst a succession of other guests

-came and went, and the summer deepened into autumn. He felt that he

-could not leave his cousin's house with that doubt unsolved; yet he

-knew that he might stay on for ever with no more certainty to reward

-him and confirm his suspicions than he possessed now. His presence

-annoyed his host, but Sabran was too polished a gentleman to betray

-his irritation; sometimes Vàsàrhely shunned his presence and his

-conversation for days together, at other times he sought them and rode

-with him, shot with him, and played cards with him, in the vain hope of

-gathering from some chance admission or allusion some clue to Sabran's

-early days. But a perfectly happy man is not given at any time to

-retrospection, and Sabran less than most men loved his past. He would

-gladly have forgotten everything that he had ever done or said before

-his marriage at the Hofburg.

-

-The intellectual powers and accomplishments of Sabran dazzled Vàsàrhely

-with a saddened sense of inferiority. Like most great soldiers he

-had a genuine humility in his measurement of himself. He knew that he

-had no talents except as a leader of cavalry. 'It is natural that she

-never looked at me,' he thought, 'when she had once seen this man, with

-his wit, his grace, his facility.' He could not even regard the skill

-of Sabran in the arts, in the salon, in the theatre with the contempt

-which the 'Wild Boar of Taróc' might have felt for a mere maker of

-music, a squire of dames, a writer of sparkling little comedies, a

-painter of screens, because he knew that both at Idrac and in France

-Sabran had showed himself the possessor of those martial and virile

-qualities, by the presence or the absence of which the Hungarian noble

-measured all men. He himself could only love well and live well: he

-reflected sadly that honesty and honour are not alone enough to draw

-love in return.

-

-As the weeks passed on, his host grew so accustomed to his presence

-there that it ceased to give him offence or cause him anxiety.

-

-'He is not amusing, and he is not always polite,' he said to his

-wife, 'but if he likes to consume his soul in gazing at you, I am not

-jealous, my Wanda; and so taciturn a rival would hardly ever be a

-dangerous one.'

-

-'Do not jest about it,' she answered him, with some real pain. 'I

-should be very vexed at his remaining here, were it not that I feel

-sure he will in time learn to live down his regrets, and to esteem and

-appreciate you.'

-

-'Who knows but his estimation of me may not be the right one?' said

-Sabran, with a pang of sad self-knowledge. And although he did not

-attach any significance to the prolonged sojourn of the lord of Taróc

-and Mohacs, he began to desire once more that his guest would return

-to the solitudes of the Carlowitz vineyards, or of the Karpathian

-mountains and gorges of snow.

-

-When over seven weeks had passed by, Vàsàrhely himself began to think

-that to stay in the Iselthal was useless and impossible, and he had

-heard from Taróc tidings which annoyed him--that his brother Stefan

-and his wife, availing themselves of his general permission to visit

-any one of his places when they chose had so strained the meaning of

-the permission that they had gone to his castle, with a score of their

-Parisian friends, and were there keeping high holiday and festival,

-to the scandal of his grave old stewards, and their own exceeding

-diversion. Hospitable to excess as he was, the liberty displeased him,

-especially as his, men wrote him word that his favourite horses; were

-being ruined by over-driving, and in the list of the guests which they

-sent him were the names of more than one too notorious lady, against

-whose acquaintance he had repeatedly counselled Olga Brancka. He would

-not have cared much what they had done at any other of his houses, but

-at Taróc, his mother, whom he had adored, had lived and died, and the

-place was sacred to him.

-

-He determined to tear himself away from Hohenszalras, and go and

-scatter these gay unbidden revellers in the dusky Karpathian ravines.

-'I cannot stay here for ever,' he thought, 'and I might be here for

-years without acquiring any more certainty than my own conviction.

-Either I am wrong, or he has nothing to conceal, or if I be right he is

-too wary to betray himself. If only I could see his shoulder where I

-struck the dagger--but I cannot go into his bath-room and say to him,

-"You are Vassia Kazán!"'

-

-He resolved to leave on the day after the morrow. For the next day

-there was organised on a large scale a hunting party, to which the

-nobility of the Tauern had been bidden. There were only some half-dozen

-men then staying in the Burg, most of them Austrian soldiers. The delay

-gave him the chance he longed for, which but for an accident he might

-never have had, though he had tarried there half a century.

-

-Early in the morning there was a great breakfast in the Rittersaal,

-at which Wanda did not appear. Sabran received the nobles and gentry

-of the province, and did the honours of his table with his habitual

-courtliness and grace. He was not hospitable in Vàsàrhely's sense of

-the word: he was too easily wearied by others, and too contemptuous of

-ordinary humanity; but he was alive to the pleasure of being lord of

-Hohenszalras, and sensible of the favour with which he was looked upon

-by a nobility commonly so exclusive and intolerant of foreign invasion.

-

-Breakfast over, the whole party went out and up into the high woods.

-The sport at Hohenszalras always gave fair play to beast and bird. In

-deference to the wishes of his wife, Sabran would have none of those

-battues which make of the covert or the forest a slaughterhouse. He

-himself disdained that sort of sport, and liked danger and adventure

-to mingle with his out-of-door pastimes. Game fairly found by the

-spaniel or the pointer; the boar, the wolf, the bear, honestly started

-and given its fair chance of escape or revenge; the steinbock stalked

-in a long hard day with peril and effort--these were all delightful

-to him on occasion; but for the crowded drive, the horde of beaters,

-the terrified bewildered troop of forest denizens driven with sticks

-on to the very barrels of the gunners, for this he had the boundless

-contempt of a man who had chased the buffalo over the prairie, and

-lassoed the wild horse and the wild bull leaning down from the saddle

-of his mustang. The day passed off well, and his guests were all

-content: he alone was not, because a large brown bear which he had

-sighted and tired at twice had escaped him, and roused that blood-lust

-in him which is in the hearts of all men.

-

-'Will you come out alone with me to-morrow and try for that grand

-brute?' he said to Vàsàrhely, as the last of his guests took their

-departure.

-

-Vàsàrhely hesitated.

-

-'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since

-you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'

-

-He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught

-at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of

-Sabran.

-

-'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had

-suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had

-intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving

-directions to the _jägermeister_ for the next day.

-

-Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is

-impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance

-resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a

-child.

-

-In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where

-the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a

-rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and

-mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in

-the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with

-no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their

-rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went

-through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a

-mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and

-capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big

-game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting

-and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and

-drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper

-woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian

-pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above

-some underground.

-

-'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper

-to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should

-be his host's.

-

-'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my

-guest.'

-

-Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him

-to contrive to sting and wound him.

-

-Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not

-observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed

-upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both

-in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron,

-good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about

-a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low

-hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and

-would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached.

-The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.

-

-'Well done,' cried Sabran, but scarcely were the words off his lips

-when another bear burst through the boughs ahead of him by fifty yards.

-He levelled his rifle and received its approach with two bullets in

-rapid succession. But neither had entered a vital part, and the animal,

-only rendered furious by pain, reared and came towards him with

-deadliest intent, its great fangs grinning. He fired again, and this

-shot struck home. The poor brute fell with a crash, the blood pouring

-from its mouth. It was not dead and its agony was great.

-

-'I will give it the _coup de grâce_,' said Sabran, who, for his wife's

-sake', was as humane as any hunter ever can be to the beasts he slew.

-

-'Take care,' said Vàsàrhely. 'It is dangerous to touch a wounded bear.

-I have known one that looked stone dead rise up and kill a man.'

-

-Sabran did not heed. He went up to the poor, panting, groaning mass of

-fur and flesh, and drew his hunting-knife to give it the only mercy

-that it was now possible for it to receive. But as he stooped to

-plunge the knife into its heart the bear verified the warning he had

-been given. Gathering all its oozing strength in one dying effort to

-avenge its murder, it leaped on him, dashed him to the earth, and clung

-to him with claw and tooth fast in his flesh. He freed his right arm

-from its ponderous weight, its horrible grip, and stabbed it with his

-knife as it clung to and lacerated him where he lay upon the grass.

-In an instant, Vàsàrhely and the jäger who was with them were by his

-side, freed him from the animal, and raised him from the ground. He

-was deluged with its blood and his own. Vàsàrhely, for one moment of

-terrible joy, for which he loathed himself afterwards, thought, 'Is he

-dead?' Men had died of lesser things than this.

-

-He stood erect and smiled, and said that it was nothing, but even as he

-spoke a faintness came over him, and his lips turned grey.

-

-The jäger supported him tenderly, and would have had him sit down upon

-a boulder of rock, but he resisted.

-

-'Let me get to that water, he said feebly, looking to a spot a few

-yards off, where one of the many torrents of the Hohe Tauern tumbled

-from the wooded cliff above through birch and beechwood, and rushing

-underground left a clear round brown pool amongst the ferns. He took a

-draught from the flask of brandy; tendered him by the lad, and leaning

-on the youth, and struggling against the sinking swoon that was coming

-on him, walked to the edge of the pool, and dropped down there on one

-of the mossy stones which served as a rough chair.

-

-'Strip me, and wash the blood away, he said to the huntsman, whilst the

-green wood and the daylight, and the face of the man grew dim to him,

-and seemed to recede further and further in a misty darkness. The youth

-obeyed, and cut away the velvet coat, the cambric shirt, till he was

-naked to his waist; then, making sponges of handkerchiefs, the jäger

-began to wash the blood from him and staunch it as best he could.

-

-Egon Vàsàrhely stood by, without offering any aid; his eyes were

-fastened on the magnificent bust of Sabran, as the sunlight fell on the

-fair blue-veined flesh, the firm muscles, the symmetrical throat, the

-slender, yet sinewy arms, round one of which was clasped a bracelet of

-fair hair. He had the chance he needed.

-

-He approached and told the lad roughly to leave the Marquis to him,

-he was doing him more harm than good; he himself had seen many

-battle-fields, and many men bleeding to death upon their mother earth.

-By this time Sabran's eyes were closed; he was hardly conscious of

-anything, a great numbness and infinite exhaustion had fallen upon him;

-his lips moved feebly. 'Wanda!' he said once or twice,'Wanda!'

-

-The face of the man who leaned above him grew dark as night; he gnashed

-his teeth as he begun his errand of mercy.

-

-Leave me with your lord,' he said to the young jäger. 'Go you to the

-castle. Find Herr Greswold, bring him; do not alarm the Countess, and

-say nothing to the household.'

-

-The huntsman went, fleet as a roe. Vàsàrhely remained alone with

-Sabran, who only heard the sound of the rushing water magnified a

-million times on his dulled ear.

-

-Vàsàrhely tore the shirt in shreds, and laved and bathed the wounds,

-and then began to bind them with the skill of a soldier who had often

-aided his own wounded troopers. But first of all, when he had washed

-the blood away, he searched with keen and eager eyes for a scar on the

-white skin--and found it.

-

-On the right shoulder was a small triangular mark; the mark of what,

-to a soldier's eyes, told of an old wound. When he saw it he smiled a

-cruel smile, and went on with his work of healing.

-

-Sabran leaned against the rock behind him; his eyes were still closed,

-the pulsations of his heart were irregular. He had lost a great

-quantity of blood, and the pool at his feet was red. They were but

-flesh wounds, and there was no danger in them themselves, but great

-veins had been severed, and the stream of life had hurried forth in

-torrents. Vàsàrhely thrust the flask between his lips, but he could not

-swallow.

-

-All had been done that could be for the immediate moment. The stillness

-of the deep woods was around them; the body of the brown bear lay on

-the soaked grass; a vulture scenting death, was circling above against

-the blue sky. Over the mind of his foe swept at the sight of them one

-of those hideous temptations which assail the noblest natures in an

-hour of hatred. If he tore the bandages he had placed there off the

-rent veins of the unconscious man whom he watched, the blood would

-leap out again in floods, and so weaken the labouring heart that in

-ten minutes more its powers would fall so low that all aid would be

-useless. Never more would the lips of Sabran meet his wife! Never

-more would his dreams be dreamed upon her breast! For the moment the

-temptation seemed to curl about him like a flame; he shuddered, and

-crossed himself. Was he a soldier to slay in cold blood by treachery a

-powerless rival?

-

-He leaned over Sabran again, and again tried to force the mouthpiece

-of his wine-flask through his teeth. A few drops passed them, and

-he revived a little, and swallowed a few drops more. The blood was

-arrested in its escape, and the pulsations of the heart were returning

-to their normal measure; after a while he unclosed his eyes, and looked

-up at the green leaves, at the blue sky.

-

-'Do not alarm Wanda,' he said feebly. 'It is a scratch; it will be

-nothing. Take me home.'

-

-With his left hand he felt for the hair bracelet on his right arm,

-between the shoulder and the wrist. It was stiff with his own blood.

-

-Then Vàsàrhely leaned over him and met his upward gaze, and said in his

-ear, that seemed still filled with the rushing of many waters, 'You are

-Vassia Kazán!'

-

-When a little later the huntsman returned, bringing the physician, whom

-he had met a mile nearer the house in the woods, and some peasants

-bearing a litter made out of pine branches and wood moss, they found

-Sabran stretched insensible beside the water-pool; and Egon Vàsàrhely,

-who stood erect beside him, said in a strange tone:

-

-'I have stanched the blood, and he has swooned, you see. I commit him

-to your hands. I am not needed.'

-

-And, to their surprise, he turned and walked away with swift steps into

-the green gloom of the dense forest.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIX.

-

-

-Sabran was still insensible when he was carried to the house.

-

-When he regained consciousness he was on his own bed, and his wife was

-bending over him. A convulsion of grief crossed his face as he lifted

-his eyelids and looked at her.

-

-'Wanda,' he murmured feebly, 'Wanda, you will forgive----'

-

-She kissed him passionately, while her tears fell like rain upon his

-forehead. She did not hear his words distinctly; she was only alive to

-the intense joy of his recovered consciousness, of the sound of his

-voice, of the sense of his safety. She kneeled by his bed, covering his

-hands with caresses, prodigal of a thousand names of love, given up to

-an abandonment of terror and of hope which broke down all the serenity

-and self-command of her habitual temper. She was not even aware of the

-presence of others. The over-mastering emotions of anguish and of joy

-filled her soul, and made her seem deaf, indifferent to all living

-things save one.

-

-Sabran lay motionless. He felt her lips, he heard her voice; he did not

-look up again, nor did he speak again. He shut his eyes, and slowly

-remembered all that had passed. Greswold approached him and held his

-fingers on his wrist, and held a little glass to his mouth. Sabran put

-it away. 'It is an opiate,' he said feebly; 'I will not have it.'

-

-He was resolute; he closed his teeth, he thrust the calming draught

-away.

-

-He was thinking to himself: 'Sometimes in unconsciousness one speaks.'

-

-'You are not in great pain?' asked the physician. He made a negative

-movement of his head. What were the fire and the smart of his lacerated

-flesh, of his torn muscles, to the torments of his fears, to the agony

-of his long stifled conscience?

-

-'Do not torment him, let him be still,' she said to the physician; she

-held his hand in both her own and pressed it to her heart. His languid

-eyes thanked her, then closed again.

-

-Herr Greswold withdrew to a little distance and waited. It seemed to

-him strange that a man of the high courage and strong constitution of

-Sabran should be thus utterly broken down by any wound that was not

-mortal; should be thus sunk into dejection and apathy, making no effort

-to raise himself, even to console and reassure his wife. It was not

-like his careless and gallant temper, his virile and healthful strength.

-

-It was true, the doctor reflected, that he had lost a great amount of

-blood. Such a loss he knew sometimes affects the heart and shatters the

-nervous system in many unlooked-for ways. Yet, he thought, there was

-something beyond this; the attitude and the regard of Egon Vàsàrhely

-had been unnatural at such an hour of peril. 'When he said just now

-"forgive," what did he mean?' reflected the old man, whose ear had

-caught the word which had escaped that of Wanda, who had been only

-alive to the voice she adored.

-

-The next four days were anxious and terrible. Sabran did not recover as

-the physician expected that he would, seeing the nature of his wounds

-and the naturally elastic and sanguine temperament he possessed. He

-slept little, had considerable fever, woke from the little rest he

-had, startled, alarmed, bathed in cold sweats; at other times he lay

-still in an apathy almost comatose, from which all the caresses and

-entreaties of his wife failed to rouse him. They began to fear that the

-discharge from the arteries had in some subtle and dangerous manner

-affected the action of the heart, the composition of the blood, and

-produced aneurism or pyæmia. 'The hero of Idrac to be prostrated by a

-mere flesh wound!' thought Herr Greswold in sore perplexity. He sent

-for a great man of science from Vienna, who, when he came, declared the

-treatment admirable, the wounds healthy, the heart in a normal state,

-but added it was evident the nervous system had received a severe

-shock, the effects of which still remained.

-

-'But it is that which I cannot understand,' said the old man in

-despair. 'If you only knew the Marquis de Sabran as I know him; the

-most courageous, the most gay, the most resolute of men! A man to laugh

-at death in its face! A man absolutely without fear!'

-

-The other assented.

-

-'Every one knows what he did in the floods at Idrac,' he answered; 'but

-he has a sensitive temperament for all that. If you did not tell me it

-is impossible, I should say that he had had some mental shock, some

-great grief. The prostration seems to me more of the mind than the

-body. But you have assured me it is impossible?'

-

-'Impossible! There does not live on earth a man so happy, so fortunate,

-so blessed in all the world as he.'

-

-'Men have a past that troubles them sometimes,' said the Vienna

-physician. 'Nay, I mean nothing, but I believe that M. de Sabran was a

-man of pleasure. The cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must

-drink long afterwards. I do not mean anything; I merely suggest. The

-prostration has to my view its most probable origin in mental trouble;

-but it would do him more harm than good to excite him by any effort to

-certify this. To the Countess von Szalras I have merely said, that his

-state is the result of the large loss of blood, and, indeed, after all

-it may be so.'

-

-On the fifth day, Sabran, still lying in that almost comatose silence

-which had been scarcely broken since his accident, said in a scarce

-audible voice to his wife:

-

-'Is your cousin here?'

-

-She stooped towards him and answered:

-

-'Yes; he is here, love. All the others went immediately, but Egon

-remained. I suppose he thought it looked kinder to do so. I have

-scarcely seen him, of course.'

-

-The pallor of his face grew greyer; he turned his head away restlessly.

-

-'Why does he not go?' he muttered in his throat. 'Does he wait for my

-death?'

-

-'Oh, Réné! hush, hush!' she said, with horror and amaze. 'My love, how

-can you say such things? You are in no danger; the doctor assures me

-so. In a week or two you will be well, you will be yourself.'

-

-'Send your cousin away.'

-

-She hesitated; troubled by his unreasoning, restless jealousy, which

-seemed to be the only consciousness of life remaining with him. 'I will

-obey you, love; you are lord here,' she said softly; 'but will it not

-look strange? No guest can well be told to go.'

-

-'A guest!--he is an enemy!'

-

-She sighed, knowing how hopelessly reason can struggle against the

-delusions of a sick bed. 'I will tell him to go to-morrow,' she said,

-to soothe him. 'To-night it is too late.'

-

-'Write to him--do not leave me.'

-

-There was a childlike appeal in his voice, that from a man so strong

-had a piteous pathos. Her eyes swam with tears as she heard.

-

-'Oh, my dearest, I will not leave you!' she said passionately, 'not for

-one moment whilst I live; and oh, my beloved! what could death ever

-change in _me_? Have you so little faith?'

-

-'You do not know,' he said, so low that his breath scarcely stirred the

-air.

-

-She thought that he was tormented by a doubt that she would not be

-faithful to him if he died. She stooped and kissed him.

-

-'My own, I would sooner be faithless to you in your life than after

-death. Surely you know me well enough to know that at the least?'

-

-He was silent. A great sigh struggled from his breast and escaped his

-pale lips like a parting breath.

-

-'Kiss me again,' he murmured; 'kiss me again, whilst----That gives me

-life,' he said, as he drew her head down upon his bosom, where his

-heart throbbed labouredly. A little while later he fell asleep. He

-slept some hours. When he awoke he was consumed by a nameless fear.

-

-'Is your cousin gone?' he asked.

-

-She told him that it was one o'clock in the same night; she had not

-written yet.

-

-'Let him stay,' he said feverishly. 'He shall not think I fear him. Do

-you hear me? Let him stay.'

-

-The words seemed to her the causeless caprice of a jealousy magnified

-and distorted by the weakness of fever. She strove to answer him

-calmly. 'He shall go or stay as you please,' she assured him. 'What

-does it matter, dear, what Egon does? You always speak of Egon. You

-have never spoken of the children once.'

-

-She wanted to distract his thoughts. She was pained to think how deep,

-though unspoken, his antagonism to her cousin must have been, that now

-in his feebleness it--was the one paramount absorbing thought.

-

-A great sadness came upon his face as she spoke; his lips trembled a

-little.

-

-'Ah! the children,' he repeated. 'Yes, bring them to me to-morrow. Bela

-is too like me. Poor Bela, it will be his curse.'

-

-'It is my joy of joys,' she murmured, afraid to see how his mind seemed

-astray.

-

-A shudder that was almost a spasm passed over him. He did not reply. He

-turned his face away from her, and seemed to sleep.

-

-The day following he was somewhat calmer, somewhat stronger, though his

-fever was high.

-

-The species of paralysis that had seemed to; fall on all his faculties

-had in a great measure left him. 'You wish, me to recover,' he said to

-her. 'I will do so, though perhaps it were, better not?'

-

-'He says strange things,' she said to Greswold. 'I cannot think why he

-has such thoughts.'

-

-'It is not he, himself, that has them, it is his fever,' answered the

-doctor. 'Why, in fever, do people often hate what they most adore when

-they are in health?'

-

-She was reassured, but not contented.

-

-The children were brought to see him. Bela had with him an ivory

-air-gun, with which he was accustomed to blow down his metal soldiers;

-he looked at his father with awed, dilated eyes, and said that he would

-go out with the gun and kill the brothers of the bear that had done the

-harm.

-

-'The bear was quite right,' said Sabran. 'It was I who was wrong to

-take a life not my own.'

-

-'That is beyond Bela,' said his wife. 'But I will translate it to him

-into language he shall understand, though I fear very much, say what I

-will, he will be a hunter and a soldier one day.'

-

-Bela looked from one to the other, knitting, his fair brows as he sat

-on the edge of the bed.

-

-'Bela will be like Egon,' he said, 'with all gold and fur to dress up

-in, and a big jewelled sword, and ten hundred men and horses, and Bela

-will be a great killer of things!'

-

-Sabran smiled languidly, but she saw that he flinched at her cousin's

-name.

-

-'I shall not love you, Bela, if you are a killer of things that are

-God's dear creatures,' she said, as she sent the child away.

-

-His blue eyes grew dark with anger.

-

-'God only cares about Bela,' he said in innocent profanity, with

-a profound sense of his own vastness in the sight of heaven, 'and

-Gela,' he added, with the condescending tenderness wherewith he always

-associated his brother and himself.

-

-'Where could he get all that overwhelming pride?' she said, as he was

-led away. 'I have tried to rear him so simply. Do what I may he will

-grow arrogant and selfish.'

-

-'My dear,' said Sabran, very bitterly, 'what avails that he was borne

-in your bosom? He is my son!'

-

-'Gela is your son, and he is so different,' she answered, not seeking

-to combat the self-censure to which she was accustomed in him, and

-which she attributed to faults or follies of a past life, magnified by

-a conscience too sensitive.

-

-'He is all yours then,' he said, with a wan smile. 'You have prevailed

-over evil.'

-

-In a few days later his recovery had progressed so far that he had

-regained his usual tone and look; his wounds were healing, and his

-strength was returning. He seemed to the keen eyes of Greswold to have

-made a supreme effort to conquer the moral depression into which he had

-sunk, and to have thrust away his malady almost by force of will. As he

-grew better he never spoke of Egon Vàsàrhely.

-

-On the fifteenth day from his accident he was restored enough to health

-for apprehension to cease. He passed some hours seated at an open

-window in his own room. He never asked if Vàsàrhely were still there or

-not.

-

-Wanda, who never left him, wondered at that silence, but she forbore to

-bring forward a name which had had such power to agitate him. She was

-troubled at the nervousness which still remained to him. The opening of

-a door, the sound of a step, the entrance of a servant made him start

-and turn pale. When she spoke of it with anxiety to Herr Joachim, he

-said vague sentences as to the nervousness which was consequent on

-great loss of blood, and brought forward instances of soldiers who had

-lost their nerve from the same cause. It did not satisfy her. She was

-the descendant of a long line of warriors; she could not easily believe

-that her husband's intrepid and careless courage could have been

-shattered by a flesh wound.

-

-'Did you really mean,' he said abruptly to her that afternoon, as he

-sat for the first time beside the open panes of the oriel; 'did you

-really mean that were I to die you would never forget me for any other?'

-

-She rose quickly as if she had been stung, and her face flushed.

-

-'Do I merit that doubt from you? she said. 'I think not.'

-

-She spoke rather in sadness than in anger. He had hurt her, he could

-not anger her. He felt the rebuke.

-

-'Even if I were dead, should I have all your life?' he murmured, in

-wonder at that priceless gift.

-

-'You and your children,' she said gravely. 'Ah! what can death do

-against great love? Make its bands stronger perhaps, its power purer.

-Nothing else.'

-

-'I thank you,' he said very low, with great humility, with intense

-emotion. For a moment he thought----should he tell her, should he trust

-this deep tenderness which could brave death; and might brave even

-shame unblenching? He looked at her from under his drooped eyelids, and

-then--he dared not. He knew the pride which was in her better than she

-did----her pride, which was inherited by her firstborn, and had been

-the sign manual of all her imperious race.

-

-He looked at her where she stood with the light falling on her through

-the amber hues of painted glass; worn, wan, and tired by so many days

-and nights of anxious vigil, she yet looked a woman whom a nation

-might salute with the _pro rege nostro!_ that Maria Theresa heard. All

-that a great race possesses and rejoices in of valour, of tradition,

-of dignity, of high honour, and of blameless truth were expressed in

-her; every movement, attitude, and gesture spoke of the aristocracy of

-blood. All that potent and subtle sense of patrician descent which had

-most allured and intoxicated him in other days now awed and daunted

-him. He dared not tell her of his treason. He dared not. He was as a

-false conspirator before a great queen he has betrayed.

-

-'Are you faint, my love?' she asked him, alarmed to see the change upon

-his face and the exhaustion with which he sunk, backward against the

-cushions of his chair.

-

-'Mere weakness; it will pass,' he said, smiling as best he might, to

-reassure her. He felt like a man who slides down a crevasse, and has

-time and consciousness enough to see the treacherous ice go by him,

-the black abyss yawning below him, the cold, dark death awaiting him

-beyond, whilst on the heights the sun is shining.

-

-That night he entreated her to leave him and rest. He assured her he

-felt well; he feigned a need of sleep. For fifteen nights she had not

-herself lain down. To please him she obeyed, and the deep slumber of

-tired nature soon fell upon her. When he thought she slept, he rose

-noiselessly and threw on a long velvet coat, sable-lined, that was by

-his bedside, and looked at his watch. It was midnight.

-

-He crossed the threshold of the open door into his wife's chamber and

-stood beside her bed for a moment, gazing at her as she slept. She

-seemed like the marble statue of some sleeping saint; she lay in the

-attitude of S. Cecilia on her bier at Home. The faint lamplight made

-her fair skin white as snow. Bound her arm was a bracelet of his hair

-like the one which he wore of hers. He stood and gazed on her, then

-slowly turned away. Great tears fell down his cheeks as he left her

-chamber. He opened the door of his own room, the outer one which led

-into the corridor, and walked down the long tapestry-hung gallery

-leading to the guest-chambers. It was the first time that he had walked

-without assistance; his limbs felt strange and broken, but he held on,

-leaning now and then to rest against the arras. The whole house was

-still.

-

-He took his way straight to the apartments set aside for guests. All

-was dark. The little lamp he carried shed a circle of light about his

-steps but none beyond him. When he reached the chamber which he knew

-was Egon Vàsàrhely's he did not pause. He struck on its panels with a

-firm hand.

-

-The voice of Vàsàrhely asked from within, 'Who is there? Is there

-anything wrong?'

-

-'It is I! Open,' answered Sabran.

-

-In a moment more the door unclosed. Vàsàrhely stood within it; he was

-not undressed. There were a dozen wax candles burning in silver sconces

-on the table within. The tapestried figures on the walls grew pale and

-colossal in their light. He did not speak, but waited.

-

-Sabran entered and closed the door behind him. His face was bloodless,

-but he carried himself erect despite the sense of faintness which

-assailed him.

-

-'You know who I am?' he said simply, without preface or supplication.

-

-Vàsàrhely gave a gesture of assent.

-

-'How did you know it?'

-

-'I remembered,' answered the other.

-

-There was a moment's silence. If Vàsàrhely could have withered to the

-earth by a gaze of scorn the man before him, Sabran would have fallen

-dead. As it was his eyes dropped beneath the look, but the courage and

-the dignity of his attitude did not alter. He had played his part of

-a great noble for so long that it had ceased to be assumption and had

-become his nature.

-

-'You will tell her?' he said, and his voice did not tremble, though his

-very soul seemed to swoon within him.

-

-'I shall not tell her!'

-

-Vàsàrhely spoke with effort; his words were hoarse and stern.

-

-'You will not?'

-

-An immense joy, unlooked for, undreamed of, sprang up in him, checked

-as it rose by incredulity.

-

-'But you loved her!' he said, on an impulse which he regretted even

-as the exclamation escaped him. Vàsàrhely threw his head back with a

-gesture of fine anger.

-

-'If I loved' her what is that to you?' he said, with a restrained

-violence vibrating in his words. 'It is, perhaps, because I once loved

-her that your foul secret is safe with me now. I shall not tell her. I

-waited to say this to you. I could not write it lest it should meet her

-eyes. You came to ask me this? Be satisfied and go.'

-

-'I came to ask you this because, had you said otherwise, I would have

-shot myself ere she could have heard.'

-

-Vàsàrhely said nothing; a great scorn was still set like the grimness

-of death upon his face. He looked far away at the dim figures on the

-tapestries; he shrunk from the sight of his boyhood's enemy as from

-some loathly unclean thing he must not kill.

-

-'Suicide!' he thought, 'the Slav's courage, the serf's refuge!

-

-Before the sight of Sabran the room went round, the lights grew dull,

-the figures on the walls became, fantastic and unreal. His heart beat

-with painful effort, yet his ears, his throat, his brain seemed full

-of blood. The nerves of his whole body seemed to shrink and thrill and

-quiver, but the force of habit kept him composed and erect before this

-man who was his foe, yet did for him what few friends would have done.

-

-'I do not thank you,' he said at last. 'I understand; you spare me for

-her sake, not mine.'

-

-'But for her, I would treat you so.'

-

-As he spoke he broke in two a slender agate ruler which lay on the

-writing-table at his elbow.

-

-'Go,' he added, 'you have had my word; though we live fifty years you

-are safe from me, because----because----God forgive you! you are hers.'

-

-He made a gesture towards the door. Sabran shivered under the insult

-which his conscience could not resent, his hand dared not avenge.

-

-Hearing this there fell away from him the arrogance that had been his

-mask, the courage that had been his shield. He saw himself for the

-first time as this man saw him, as all the world would see him if once

-it knew his secret. For the first time his past offences rose up like

-ghosts naked from their graves. The calmness, the indifference, the

-cynicism, the pride which had been so long in his manner and in his

-nature deserted him. He felt base-born before a noble, a liar before a

-gentleman, a coward before a man of honour.

-

-Where he stood, leaning on a high caned chair to support himself

-against the sickly weakness which still came on him from his scarce

-healed wounds, he felt for the first time to cower and shrink before

-this man who was his judge, and might become his accuser did he choose.

-Something in the last words of Egon Vàsàrhely suddenly brought home

-to him the enormity of his own sin, the immensity of the other's

-forbearance. He suddenly realised all the offence to honour, all the

-outrage to pride, all the ineffaceable indignity which he had brought

-upon a great race: all that he had done, never to be undone by any

-expiation of his own, in making Wanda von Szalras the mother of his

-sons. Submissive, he turned without a word of gesture or of pleading,

-and felt his way out of the chamber through the dusky mists of the

-faintness stealing on him.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XX.

-

-

-He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against

-the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his

-clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.

-

-She was still asleep.

-

-When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever.

-He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a

-moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his

-desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.

-

-But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.

-

-Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned

-to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had

-left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person,

-as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no

-importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said

-nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental

-impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian

-mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use

-to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife

-attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial

-always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength

-returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a

-gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened

-upon her with a strange appeal.

-

-One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was

-certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following

-words to his foe and his judge:

-

-'Sir,----You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I

-send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical

-weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time

-or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof

-absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that

-the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue

-it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but

-shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of

-action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present

-permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have

-governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or

-chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern

-both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse

-at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia

-Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to

-nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the

-great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was

-taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never

-saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years

-old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I

-remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you,

-and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then

-returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him.

-One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the

-Prince Zabaroff was dead--my protector, as they termed him--and that

-I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make

-you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always

-been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family,

-could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts,

-the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then,

-thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father.

-I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my

-fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother

-Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year

-after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You

-see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things

-or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had

-a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices,

-like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the

-love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit

-which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of

-me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive

-tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in

-my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those

-three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me

-with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be

-rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did

-me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a

-word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis

-with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold

-some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque

-going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down

-with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone

-reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe,

-and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread,

-fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I

-neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me

-popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name

-of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went

-there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the

-moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I

-liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely

-more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his

-fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior.

-Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left

-for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his

-hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the

-Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the

-solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts

-the hiss of an Indian's arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he

-lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of

-him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows

-of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher

-in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been

-subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having

-wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died

-of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to

-think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life

-with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed

-me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the

-dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history

-of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was

-glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike

-as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on

-the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the

-steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men

-I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I

-loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican _ranch_ near,

-within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us

-and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost

-inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps

-covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it

-all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be

-gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies

-which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight

-whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector

-and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose

-heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he

-died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything

-he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would

-collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France.

-For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss.

-I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and

-his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of

-cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave.

-I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the

-temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all

-those which had been brought with him from France by his Jesuit tutors,

-and the certificates of his own and his father's births and marriages,

-with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper

-containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and

-patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden

-in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had

-desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great

-sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine:

-he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human

-being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed

-to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots

-not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had

-the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was

-born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible

-reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years

-I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and

-purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris,

-yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in

-many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong

-which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that

-I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it

-seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had

-deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and

-had given me all he held most dear----the fruits of his researches.

-To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation.

-I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as

-the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew

-that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke

-no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was

-recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned

-to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance

-with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to

-me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not

-having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I

-went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had

-been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The

-priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the

-name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing----Bretons

-never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead

-men who had gone down when the _Estelle_ had foundered off the Pinos.

-I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so

-much during my seven years' absence from Paris that I did not suppose

-anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran.

-And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known

-me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred

-of me as your cousin's husband; and had you even had suspicions you

-could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in

-the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down

-the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me

-take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune

-involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have

-done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and

-some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What

-was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over

-with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is

-my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious

-and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense

-perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it

-as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying

-ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to

-justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware

-that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true

-that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed

-me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to

-me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I

-had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely

-closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became

-almost by necessity a _fainéant_, and fate smiled upon me more than I

-merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all

-his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me.

-I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I

-can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so

-natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made

-me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to

-act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and

-irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call

-_flair._ I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on

-the Bourse. I was also, famous for _la main heureuse_ in all forms of

-gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept

-always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed

-to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded

-the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should

-not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was

-a man of honour until----I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to

-defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware

-of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied

-your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her.

-You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It

-is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions

-of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to

-me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia,

-but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am

-base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting

-elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and

-mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten

-by a great lord's momentary _ennui_ and caprice! But if you will stoop

-so far----if you will consider me ennobled by _her_ enough to meet

-you as an equal would do----we can find with facility some pretext

-of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me.

-You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are

-the only male champion--what her brothers would surely have taken had

-they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have

-passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your

-commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to

-their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet

-you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother's

-than their father's, and she will rear them in all noble ways.'

-

-Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed

-it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return

-of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace

-with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his

-own cowardice and shame.

-

-It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of

-Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief:----

-

-'I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for

-she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.

-

-(Signed) 'PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.'

-

-To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:

-

-'Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did

-not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has

-seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return.

-It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a

-prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go

-to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If

-ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope

-this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen

-you.' Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to

-be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name.

-Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your

-husband, and give me a remembrance in your prayers.

-

-(Signed) 'EGON.'

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXI.

-

-

-The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn

-shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and

-to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of

-her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to

-play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and

-eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this

-unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it

-plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian

-world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it

-was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman,

-which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon

-her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and

-what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at

-Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of

-it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation.

-If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again

-paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and

-her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.

-

-'Wanda has ruined him!' she always thought angrily. 'He always expects

-every other woman to have a soul above _chiffons_ and to bury herself

-in the country with children and horses.'

-

-Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which

-his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to

-her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the

-pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him.

-Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed

-measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to

-entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and

-was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law.

-She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only

-came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild

-forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely,

-and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope,

-which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for

-her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the

-post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and

-soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was

-called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish

-literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race

-of Vàsàrhely.

-

-What was in that letter?

-

-She attended to none of her own, so absorbed was she in the impression

-which gained upon her that the packet which had brought so much

-surprise and even emotion upon his face came from the hand of Wanda.

-'If even she should be no saint at all?' she thought, with a malicious

-amusement. She did not see Egon Vàsàrhely for many hours, but she

-did not lose her curiosity nor cease to cast about for a method of

-gratifying it. At the close of the day when she came back from hunting

-she went into the library, which was then empty. She did not seriously

-expect to see anything that would reward her enterprise, but she knew

-he read his letters there and wrote the few he was obliged to write:

-like most soldiers he disliked using pen and ink. It was dusk, and

-there were a few lights burning in the old silver sconces fixed upon

-the horns of forest animals against the walls. With a quick, calm

-touch, she moved all the litter of papers lying on the huge table

-where he was wont to do such business as he was compelled to transact.

-She found nothing that gratified her inquisitiveness. She was about

-to leave the room in baffled impatience----impatience of she knew not

-what----when her eyes fell upon a pile of charred paper lying on the

-stove.

-

-It was one of those monumental polychrome stoves of fifteenth-century

-work in which the country-houses of Central Europe are so rich; a

-grand pile of fretted pottery, towering half way to the ceiling, with

-the crown and arms of the Vàsàrhely princes on its summit. There was

-no fire in it, for the weather was not cold, and Vàsàrhely, who alone

-used the room, was an ascetic in such matters; but upon its jutting

-step, which was guarded by lions of gilded bronze, there had been some

-paper burned: the ashes lay there in a little heap. Almost all of

-it was ash, but a few torn pieces were only blackened and coloured.

-With the eager curiosity of a woman who is longing to find another

-woman at fault, she kneeled down by the stove and patiently examined

-these pieces. Only one was so little burned that it had a word or two

-legible upon it; two of those words were Vassia Kazán. Nothing else was

-traceable; she recognised the handwriting of Sabran. She attached no

-importance to it, yet she slipped the little scrap, burnt and black as

-it was, within one of her gauntlets; then, as quickly as she had come

-there, she retreated and in another half hour, smiling and radiant,

-covered with jewels, and with no trace of fatigue or of weather, she

-descended the great banqueting-hall, clad as though the heart of the

-Greater Karpathians was the centre of the Boulevard S. Germain.

-

-Who was Vassia Kazán?

-

-The question floated above all her thoughts all that evening. Who was

-he, she, or it, and what could Sabran have to say of him, or her, or

-it to Egon Vàsàrhely? A less wise woman might have asked straightway

-what the unknown name might mean, but straight ways are not those

-which commend themselves to temperaments like hers. The pleasure and

-the purpose of her life was intrigue. In great things she deemed

-it necessity; in trifles it was an amusement; without it life was

-flavourless.

-

-The next day her brother-in-law abandoned Taróc, to join his hussars

-and prepare for the autumn manœuvres in the plains, and left her and

-Stefan in possession of the great place, half palace, half fortress,

-which had withstood more than one siege of Ottoman armies, where it

-stood across a deep gorge with the water foaming black below. But she

-kept the charred, torn, triangular scrap of paper; and she treasured

-in her memory the two words Vassia Kazán; and she said again and again

-and again to herself: 'Why should he write to Egon? Why should Egon

-burn what he writes?' Deep down in her mind there was always at work

-a bitter jealousy of Wanda von Szalras; jealousy of her regular and

-perfect beauty, of her vast possessions, of her influence at the Court,

-of her serene and unspotted repute, and now of her ascendency over the

-lives of Sabran and of Vàsàrhely.

-

-'Why should they both love that woman so much?' she thought very often.

-'She is always alike. She has no temptations. She goes over life as if

-it were frozen snow. She did one senseless thing, but then she was rich

-enough to do it with impunity. She is so habitually fortunate that she

-is utterly uninteresting; and yet they are both her slaves!'

-

-She went home and wrote to a cousin of her own who had been a member

-of the famous Third Section at Petersburg. She said in her letter: 'Is

-there anyone known in Russia as Vassia Kazán? I want you to learn for

-me to what or to whom this name belongs. It is certainly Russian, and

-appears to me to have been taken by some one who has been named _more

-hebrœo_ from the city of Kazán. You, who know everything past,

-present, and to come, will be able to know this.'

-

-In a few days she received an answer from Petersburg. Her cousin wrote:

-'I cannot give you the information you desire. It must be a thing of

-the past. But I will keep it in mind, and sooner or later you shall

-have the knowledge you wish. You will do us the justice to admit that

-we are not easily baffled.'

-

-She was not satisfied, but knew how to be patient.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXII.

-

-

-Strangely enough the consciousness that one person lived who knew

-his secret unnerved him. He had said truly that so much were all his

-instincts and temper those of an aristocrat that he had long ceased to

-remember that he was not the true Marquis de Sabran. The admiration men

-frankly gave him, and the ascendency he exercised over women, had alike

-concurred in fostering his self-delusion. Since his recognition by the

-foe of his boyhood a vivid sense of his own shamefulness, however, had

-come upon him; a morbid consciousness that he was not what he seemed,

-and what all the world believed him, had returned to him. Egon would

-never speak, but he himself could never forget. He said to himself in

-his solitude, 'I am Vassia Kazán! and what he had done appeared to him

-intolerable, infamous, beyond all expiation.

-

-It was like an impalpable but impassable wall built up between himself

-and her. Nothing was changed except that one man knew his secret, but

-this one fact seemed to change the face of the world. For the first

-time all the deference, all the homage with which the people of the

-Tauern treated him seemed to him a derision. Naturally of proud temper,

-and of an intellect which gave him ascendency over others, he had from

-the first moment he had assumed the marquisate of Sabran received

-all the acknowledgments of his rank with an honest unconsciousness

-of imposture. After all he had in his veins blood as patrician as

-that of the Sabrans; but now that Egon Vàsàrhely knew the truth he

-was perpetually conscious of not being what he seemed. The mere sense

-that about the world there was another living being who knew what he

-knew, shook down all the self-possession and philosophy which had so

-long made him assure himself that the assumption of a name was an

-immaterial circumstance, which, harming no one, could concern no one.

-Egon Vàsàrhely seemed to have seized his sophisms in a rude grasp, and

-shaken them down as blossoms fall in wind. He thought with bitter

-self-contempt how true the cynic was who said that no sin exists so

-long as it is not found out; that discovery is the sole form which

-remorse takes.

-

-At times his remorse made him almost afraid of Wanda, almost shrink

-from her, almost tremble at her regard; at other times it intensified

-his passion and infused into his embraces a kind of ferocity of

-triumph. He would show an almost brutal ardour in his caresses, and

-would think with an almost cruel exultation, 'I was born a serf, and I

-am her lover, her lord! Strangely enough, she began to lose something

-of her high influence upon him, of her spiritual superiority in his

-sight. She was so entirely, so perpetually his, that she became in a

-manner tainted with his own degradation. She could no longer check him

-with a word, calm him with a gesture of restraint. She was conscious of

-a change in him which she could not explain to herself. His sweetness

-of temper was broken by occasional irritability that she had never seen

-before. He was at times melancholy and absorbed; he at times displayed

-a jealousy which appeared unworthy of herself and him; at other moments

-he adored her, submitted to her with too great a humility. They were

-still happy, but their happiness was more uncertain, more disturbed by

-passing shadows. She told herself that it was always so in marriage,

-that in the old trite phrase nothing mortal was ever perfect long. But

-this philosophy failed to reconcile her. She found herself continually

-pondering on the alteration that she perceived in him, without being

-able to explain it to herself in any satisfactory manner.

-

-One day he announced to her without preface that he had decided to

-renounce the name of Sabran; that he preferred to any other the title

-which she had given him in the Countship of Idrac. She was astonished,

-but on reflection only saw, in his choice, devotion and deference to

-herself. Perhaps, too, she reflected with a pang, he desired some

-foreign mission such as she had once proposed to him; perhaps the life

-at Hohenszalras was monotonous and too quiet for a man so long used

-to the movement and excitation of Paris. She suggested the invitation

-of a circle of guests more often, but he rejected the idea with some

-impatience. He, who had previously amused himself so well with the

-part of host to a brilliant society, now professed that he saw nothing

-but trouble and _ennui_ in a house full of people, who changed every

-week, and of royal personages who exacted ceremonious observances

-that were tedious and burdensome. So they remained alone, for even

-the Princess Ottilie had gone away to Lilienslust. For her own part

-she asked nothing better. Her people, her lands, her occupations, her

-responsibilities, were always interest enough. She loved the stately,

-serene tread of Time in these mountain solitudes. Life always seemed

-to her a purer, graver, more august thing when no echo of the world

-without jarred on the solemnity of the woods and hills. She wanted her

-children to grow up to love Hohenszalras, as she had always done, far

-above all pomps and pleasures of courts and cities.

-

-The winter went by, and he spent most of the days out of doors in

-violent exercise, sledging, skating, wolf hunting. In the evenings he

-made music for her in the white room: beautiful, dreamy music, that

-carried her soul from earth. He played for hours and hours far into the

-night; he seemed more willing to do anything than to converse. When he

-talked to her she was sensible of an effort of constraint; it was no

-longer the careless, happy, spontaneous conversation of a man certain

-of receiving sympathy in all his opinions, indulgence in all his

-errors, comprehension in even his vaguest or most eccentric ideas: a

-certain charm was gone out of their intercourse. She thought sometimes

-humbly enough, was it because a man always wearies of a woman? Yet

-she could scarcely think that, for his reverential deference to her

-alternated with a passion that had lost nothing of its voluptuous

-intensity.

-

-So the winter passed away. Madame Ottilie was in the South for her

-health, with her relatives of Lilienhöhe; they invited no one, and so

-no one could approach them. The children grew and throve. Bela and his

-brother had a little sledge of their own, drawn by two Spanish donkeys,

-white as the snows that wrapped the Iselthal in their serenity and

-silence. In their little sable coats and their sable-lined hoods the

-two little boys looked like rosebuds wrapped in brown moss. They were a

-pretty spectacle upon the ice, with their stately Heiduck, wrapped in

-his scarlet and black cloak, walking by the gilded shell-shaped sledge.

-

-'Bela loves the ice best. Bela wishes the summer never was!' said the

-little heir of the Counts of Szalras one day, as he leaped out from

-under the bearskin of his snow-carriage. His father heard him, and

-smiled a little bitterly.

-

-'You have the snow in your blood,' he thought. 'I, too, know how I

-loved the winter with all its privations, how I skimmed like a swallow

-down the frozen Volga, how I breasted the wind of the North Sea, sad

-with the dying cries of the swans! But I had an empty stomach and

-naked limbs under my rough goatskin, and you ride there in your sables

-and velvets, a proud little prince, and yet you are my son!'

-

-Was he almost angered against his own child for the great heirship to

-which he was born, as kings are often of their dauphins? Bela looked up

-at him a little timidly, always being in a certain awe of his father.

-

-'May Bela go with you some day with the big black horses, one day when

-you go very far?'

-

-'Ask your mother,' said Sabran.

-

-'She will like it,' said the child. 'Yesterday she said you never do

-think of Bela. She did not say it _to_ Bela, but he heard.'

-

-'I will think of him,' said Sabran, with some emotion: he had a certain

-antagonism to the child, of which he was vaguely ashamed; he was sorry

-that she should have noticed it. He disliked him because Bela so

-visibly resembled himself that he was a perpetual reproach; a living

-sign of how the blood of a Russian lord and of a Persian peasant had

-been infused into the blood of the Austrian nobles.

-

-The next day he took the child with him on a drive of many leagues,

-through the frozen highways winding through the frosted forests under

-the huge snow-covered range of the Glöckner mountains. Bela was in

-raptures; the grand black Russian horses, whose speed was as the wind,

-were much more to his taste than the sedate and solemn Spanish asses.

-When they returned, and Sabran lifted him out of the sledge in the

-twilight, the child kissed his hand.

-

-'Bela loves you,' he said timidly.

-

-'Why do you?' said his father, surprised and touched. 'Because you are

-your mother's child?'

-

-Bela did not understand. He said, after a moment of reflection:

-

-'Bela is afraid, when you are angry; very afraid. But Bela does love

-you.'

-

-Sabran laid his hand on the child's shoulder. 'I shall never be angry

-if Bela obey his mother, and never pain her. Remember that.'

-

-'He will remember,' said Bela. 'And may he go with the big black horses

-very soon again?'

-

-'Your mother's horses are just as big, and just as black. Is it not the

-same thing to go with her?'

-

-'No. Because she takes Bela often; you never.'

-

-'You are ungrateful,' said Sabran, in the tone which always alarmed and

-awed the bold, bright spirit of his child. 'Your mother's love beside

-mine is like the great mountain beside the speck of dust. Can you

-understand? You will when you are a man. Obey her and adore her. So you

-will best please me.'

-

-Bela looked at him with troubled suffused eyes; he went within doors a

-little sadly, led away by Hubert, and when he reached his nursery and

-had his furs taken from off him he was still serious, and for once he

-did not tell his thoughts to Gela, for they were too many for him to

-be able to master them in words. His father was a beautiful, august,

-terrible, magnificent figure in his eyes; with the confused fancies

-of a child's scarce-opened mind he blended together in his admiration

-Sabran and the great marble form of S. Johann of Prague which stretched

-its arm towards the lake from the doors of the great entrance, and, as

-Bela always understood, controlled the waters and the storms at will.

-Bela feared no one else in all the world, but he feared his father,

-and for that reason loved him as he loved nothing else in his somewhat

-selfish and imperious little life.

-

-'It is so good of you to have given Bela that pleasure,' his wife said

-to him when he entered the white room. 'I know you cannot care to hear

-a child chatter as I do. It can only be tiresome to you.'

-

-'I will drive him every day if it please _you_,' said Sabran.

-

-'No, no; that would be too much to exact from you. Besides, he would

-soon despise his donkeys, and desert poor Gela. I take him but seldom

-myself for that reason. He has an idea that he is immeasurably older

-than Gela. It is true a year at their ages is more difference than are

-ten years at ours.'

-

-'The child said something to me, as if he had heard you say I do not

-care for him?'

-

-'You do not, very much. Surely you are inclined to be harsh to him?'

-

-'If I be so, it is only because I see so much of myself in him.'

-

-He looked at her, assailed once more by the longing which at times came

-over him to tell her the truth of himself, to risk everything rather

-than deceive her longer, to throw himself upon her mercy, and cut short

-this life which had so much of duplicity, so much of concealment, that

-every year added to it was a stone added to the mountain of his sins.

-But when he looked at her he dared not. The very grace and serenity

-of her daunted him; all the signs of nobility in her, from the repose

-of her manner to the very beauty of her hands, with their great rings

-gleaming on the long and slender fingers, seemed to awe him into

-silence. She was so proud a woman, so great a lady, so patrician in

-all her prejudices, her habits, her hereditary qualities, he dared not

-tell her that he had betrayed her thus. An infidelity, a folly, even

-any other crime he thought he could have summoned courage to confess

-to her; but to say to her, the daughter of a line of princes: 'I, who

-have made you the mother of my children, I was born a bastard and a

-serf!' How could he dare say that? Anything else she might forgive,

-he thought, since love is great, but never that. Nay, a cold sickness

-stole over him as he thought again that she came of great lords who had

-meted justice out over whole provinces for a thousand years; and he

-had wronged her so deeply that the human tongue scarcely held any word

-of infamy enough to name his crime. The law would set her free, if she

-chose, from a man who had so betrayed her, and his children would be

-bastards like himself.

-

-He had stretched himself on a great couch, covered with white

-bear-skins. He was in shadow; she was in the light that came from the

-fire on the wide hearth, and from the oriel window near, a red warm

-dusky light, that fell on the jewels on her hands, the furs on her

-skirts, the very pearls about her throat.

-

-She glanced at him anxiously, seeing how motionless he lay there, with

-his head turned backward on the cushions.

-

-'I am afraid you are weak still from that wound,' she said, as she rose

-and approached him. 'Greswold assures me it has left no trace, but I am

-always afraid. And you look often so pale. Perhaps you exert yourself

-too much? Let the wolves be. Perhaps it is too cold for you? Would you

-like to go to the south? Do not think of me; my only happiness is to do

-whatever you wish.'

-

-He kissed her hand with deep unfeigned emotion. 'I believe in angels

-since I knew you,' he murmured. 'No; I will not take you away from the

-winter and the people that you love. I am well enough. Greswold is

-right. I could not master those horses if I were not strong; be sure of

-that.'

-

-'But I always fear that it is dull here for you?'

-

-'Dull! with you? "Custom cannot stale her infinite variety." That was

-written in prophecy of your charm for me.'

-

-'You will always flatter me! And I am not "various" at all; I am too

-grave to be entertaining. I am just the German house-mother who cares

-for the children and for you.'

-

-He laughed.

-

-'Is that your portrait of yourself? I think Carolus Duran's is truer,

-my grand châtelaine. When you are at Court the whole circle seems to

-fade to nothing before your presence. Though there are so many women

-high-born and beautiful there, you eclipse them all.'

-

-'Only in your eyes! And you know I care nothing for courts. What I like

-is the life here, where one quiet day is the pattern of all the other

-days. If I were sure that you were content in it----'

-

-'Why should you think of that?'

-

-'My love, tell me honestly, do you never miss the world?'

-

-He rose and walked to the hearth. He, whose life was a long lie, never

-lied to her if he could avoid it; and he knew very well that he did

-miss the world with all its folly, stimulant, and sin. Sometimes the

-moral air here seemed to him too pure, too clear.

-

-'Did I do so I should be thankless indeed--thankless as madmen are who

-do not know the good done to them. I am like a ship that has anchored

-in a fair haven after press of weather. I infinitely prefer to see

-none but yourself: when others are here we are of necessity so much

-apart. If the weather,' he added more lightly, 'did not so very often

-wear Milton's grey sandals, there would be nothing one could ever

-wish changed in the life here. For such great riders as we are, that

-is a matter of regret. Wet saddles are too often our fate, but in

-compensation our forests are so green.'

-

-She did not press the question.

-

-But the next day she wrote a letter to a relative who was a great

-minister and had preponderating influence in the council chamber of the

-Austrian Empire. She did not speak to Sabran of the letter that she

-sent.

-

-She had not known any of that disillusion which befalls most women in

-their love. Her husband had remained her lover, passionately, ardently,

-jealously; and the sincerity of his devotion to her had spared her

-all that terrible consciousness of the man's satiety which usually

-confronts a woman in the earliest years of union. She shrank now with

-horror from the fear which came to her that this passion might, like so

-many others, alter and fade under the dulness of habit. She had high

-courage and clear vision; she met half-way the evil that she dreaded.

-

-In the spring a Foreign Office despatch from Vienna came to him and

-surprised and moved him strongly. With it in his hand he sought her at

-once.

-

-'You did this!' he said quickly. 'They offer me the Russian mission.'

-

-She grew a little pale, but had courage to smile. She had seen by a

-glance at his face the pleasure the offer gave him.

-

-'I only told my cousin Kunst that I thought you might be persuaded to

-try public life, if he proposed it to you.'

-

-'When did you say that?'

-

-'One day in the winter, when I asked you if you did not miss the world.'

-

-'I never thought I betrayed that I did so.'

-

-'You were only over eager to deny it. And I know your generosity, my

-love. You miss the world; we will go back to it for a little. It will

-only make our life here dearer--I hope.'

-

-He was silent; emotion mastered him. 'You have the most unselfish

-nature that was!' he said brokenly. 'It will be a cruel sacrifice to

-you, and yet you urge it for my sake.'

-

-'Dear, will you not understand? What is for your sake is what is most

-for mine. I see you long, despite yourself, to be amidst men once more,

-and use your rare talents as you cannot use them here. It is only right

-that you should have the power to do so. If our life here has taken

-the hold on your heart then, I think you will come back to it all the

-more gladly. And then I too have my vanity; I shall be proud for the

-world to see how you can fill a great station, conduct a difficult

-negotiation, distinguish yourself in every way. When they praise you,

-I shall be repaid a thousand times for any sacrifice of my own tastes

-that there may be.'

-

-He heard her with many conflicting emotions, of which a passionate

-gratitude was the first and highest.

-

-'You make me ashamed,' he said in a low voice. 'No man can be worthy of

-such goodness as yours; and I----'

-

-Once more the avowal of the truth rose to his lips, but stayed

-unuttered. His want of courage took refuge in procrastination.

-

-'We need not decide for a day or two,' he added; 'they give me time; we

-will think well. When do you think I must reply?'

-

-'Surely soon; your delay would seem disrespect. You know we Austrians

-are very ceremonious.'

-

-'And if I accept, it will not make you unhappy?'

-

-'My love, no, a thousand times, no; your choice is always mine.'

-

-He stooped and kissed her hand.

-

-'You are ever the same,' he murmured. 'The noblest, the most

-generous----'

-

-She smiled bravely. 'I am quite sure you have decided already. Go to my

-table yonder, and write a graceful acceptance to my cousin Kunst. You

-will be happier when it is posted.'

-

-'No, I will think a little. It is not a thing to be done in haste. It

-will be irrevocable.'

-

-'Irrevocable? A diplomatic mission? You can throw it up when you

-please. You are not bound to serve longer than you choose.'

-

-He was silent: what he had thought himself had been of the irrevocable

-insult he would be held to have offered to the emperor, the nation, and

-the world, if ever they knew.

-

-'It will not be liked if I accept for a mere caprice. One must never

-treat a State as Bela treats his playthings,' he said as he rang, and

-when the servant answered the summons ordered them to saddle his horse.

-

-'No; there is no haste. Glearemberg is not definitely recalled, I

-think.'

-

-But as she spoke she knew very well that, unknown to himself, he had

-already decided; that the joy and triumph the offer had brought to him

-were both too great for him eventually to resist them. He sat down and

-re-read the letter.

-

-She had said the truth to him, but she had not said all the truth. She

-had a certain desire that he should justify her marriage in the eyes of

-the world by some political career brilliantly followed; but this was

-not her chief motive in wishing him to return to the life of cities.

-She had seen that he was in a manner disquieted, discontented, and

-attributed it to discontent at the even routine of their lives. The

-change in his moods and tempers, the arbitrary violence of his love

-for her, vaguely alarmed and troubled her; she seemed to see the germ

-of much that might render their lives far less happy. She realised

-that she had given herself to one who had the capacity of becoming a

-tyrannical possessor, and retained, even after six years of marriage,

-the irritable ardour of a lover. She knew that it was better for them

-both that the distraction and the restraint of the life of the world

-should occupy some of his thoughts, and check the over-indulgence of

-a passion which in solitude grew feverish and morbid. She had not the

-secret of the change in him, of which the result alone was apparent to

-her, and she could only act according to her light. If he grew morose,

-tyrannical, violent, all the joy of their life would be gone. She knew

-that men alter curiously under the sense of possession. She felt that

-her influence, though strong, was not paramount as it had been, and she

-perceived that he no longer took much interest in the administration

-of the estates, in which he had shown great ability in the first years

-of their marriage. She had been forced to resume her old governance

-of all those matters, and she knew that it was not good for him to

-live without occupation. She feared that the sameness of the days, to

-her so delightful, to him grew tiresome. To ride constantly, to hunt

-sometimes, to make music in the evenings----this was scarcely enough to

-fill up the life of a man who had been a _viveur_ on the bitumen of the

-boulevards for so long.

-

-A woman of a lesser nature would have been too vain to doubt the

-all-sufficiency of her own presence to enthral and to content him; but

-she was without vanity, and had more wisdom than most women. It did

-not even once occur to her, as it would have done incessantly to most,

-that the magnificence of all her gifts to him were title-deeds to his

-content for life.

-

-Public life would be her enemy, would take her from the solitudes she

-loved, would change her plans for her children's education, would bring

-the world continually betwixt herself and her husband; but since he

-wished it that was all she thought of, all her law.

-

-'Surely he will accept?' said Mdme. Ottilie, who had returned from the

-south of France.

-

-'Yes, he will accept,' said his wife. 'He does not know it, but he

-will.'

-

-'I cannot imagine why he should affect to hesitate. It is the career

-he is made for, with his talents, his social graces.'

-

-'He does not affect; he hesitates for my sake. He knows I am never

-happy away from Hohenszalras.'

-

-'Why did you write then to Kunst?'

-

-'Because it will be better for him; he is neither a poet nor a

-philosopher, to be able to live away from the world.'

-

-'Which are you?'

-

-'Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the

-people she----'

-

-'Reigns over,' added the Princess. 'Admit, my beloved, that a part of

-your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be

-quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!'

-

-Wanda von Szalras smiled. 'Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed

-with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.'

-

-'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural

-life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.'

-

-At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great

-avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before

-coming into his wife's presence. He would no more have gone to her with

-the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in

-such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.

-

-When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with

-vivacity:

-

-'Well! you accept, of course?

-

-'I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.'

-

-The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the

-carpet.

-

-'Wanda is a hermit,' she said; 'she should have dwelt in a cave, and

-lived on berries with S. Scholastica. What is the use of leaving it to

-her? She will say No. She loves her mountains.'

-

-'Then she shall stay amidst her mountains.'

-

-'And you will throw all your future away?'

-

-'Dear mother, I have no future----should have had none but for her.'

-

-'All that is very pretty, but after nearly six years of marriage it is

-not necessary to _faire des madrigaux._'

-

-The Princess sat a little more erect, angrily, and continued to tap her

-foot upon the floor. His wife was silent for a little while; then she

-went over to her writing-table, and wrote with a firm hand a few lines

-in German. She rose and gave the sheet to Sabran.

-

-'Copy that,' she said, 'or give it as many graces of style as you like.'

-

-His heart beat, his sight seemed dim as he read what she had written.

-

-It was an acceptance.

-

-'See, my dear Réné!' said the Princess, when she understood;

-'never combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon--

-unselfishness! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort.'

-

-The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her----

-

-'Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of

-_faisant des madrigaux!_'

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXIII.

-

-

-A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna,

-and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called

-her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who

-showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and

-welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the

-most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the

-prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified

-and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware

-that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands

-for _finesse_ and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make

-upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his

-wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and

-splendour it required.

-

-He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when

-the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his

-nerve, his self-command, his _insouciance_; he was once more capable of

-honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman

-he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of

-his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates

-a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must

-always exist, _sub rosa_, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance

-with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for

-every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul

-Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen

-politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The

-prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of

-a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff

-as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle

-projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social

-honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the

-minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in

-all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the

-purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of

-Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked _moujik_ in the

-_isba_ of a Persian peasant.

-

-Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like

-all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify

-his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort

-that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and

-perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men

-was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public

-career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to

-be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor

-had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.

-

-'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition

-that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which

-had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from

-circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of

-his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the

-social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better

-moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess

-von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;'

-and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless

-and ill at ease.

-

-He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold

-by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more

-prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if

-ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate,

-dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him

-with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed

-to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he

-been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his

-own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have

-always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion

-of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his

-own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any

-such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly,

-that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a

-suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always

-reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.

-

-This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life;

-not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a

-jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his

-ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it

-touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the

-felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the

-contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and

-witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and

-too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on

-his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed

-of constancy.

-

-'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of

-dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly

-degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is

-always hers and my love.'

-

-Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of

-her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty

-life led there under the show summits of her hills.

-

-He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's

-caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not

-infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most

-use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the

-daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.

-

-As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the

-Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and

-a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour

-and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he

-had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world

-beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had

-beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He

-went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now

-and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some

-portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some

-quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.

-

-On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:

-

-'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.

-

-(Signed) 'WANDA.'

-

-No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches

-could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful

-affection.

-

-'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.

-

-The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the

-season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the

-sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and

-the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and

-magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present

-at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation,

-as the ambassador-designate to Russia.

-

-Court dress became him, and his great height and elegance of manner

-made him noticeable even in that brilliant crowd of notables. All the

-greatest ladies distinguished him with their smiles, but he gave them

-no more than courtesy. He saw only before the 'eye of memory' his wife

-as he had seen her at the last court ball, with the famous pearls about

-her throat, and her train of silver tissue sown with pearls and looped

-up with white lilac.

-

-'It is the flower I like best,' she had said to him. 'It brought me

-your first love-message in Paris, do you remember? It said little; it

-was very discreet, but it said enough!'

-

-'You are always thinking of Wanda!' said the Countess Brancka to him

-now, with a tinge of impatience in her tone.

-

-He coloured a little, and said with that hauteur with which he always

-repressed any passing jest at his love for his wife:

-

-'When both one's duty and joy point the same way it is easy to follow

-them in thought.'

-

-'I hope you follow them in action too,' said Mdme. Brancka.

-

-'If I do not, I am at least only responsible to Wanda.'

-

-'Who would be a lenient judge you mean? said the Countess, with a

-certain smile that displeased him. 'Do not be too sure; she is a von

-Szalras. They are not agreeable persons when they are angered.'

-

-'I have not been so unhappy as to see her so,' said Sabran coldly,

-with a vague sense of uneasiness. As much as it is possible for a man

-to dislike a woman who is very lovely, and young enough to be still

-charming in the eyes of the world, he disliked Olga Brancka. He had

-known her for many years in Paris, not intimately, but by force of

-being in the same society, and, like many men who do not lead very

-decent lives themselves, he frankly detested _cocodettes._

-

-'If we want these manners we have our _lionnes_,' he was wont to say,

-at a time when Cochonette was seen every day behind his horses by the

-Cascade, and it had been the height of the Countess Olga's ambition at

-that time to be called like Cochonette. A certain resemblance there

-was between the great lady and the wicked one; they had the same small

-delicate sarcastic features, the same red gold curls, the same perfect

-colourless complexion; but where Cochonette had eyes of the slightest

-blue, the wife of Count Stefan had the luminous piercing black eyes of

-the Muscovite physiognomy. Still the likeness was there, and it made

-the sight of Mdme. Brancka distasteful to him, since his memories of

-the other were far from welcome. It was for Cochonette that he had

-broken the bank at Monte Carlo, and into her lap that he had thrown

-all the gold rouleaux at a time when in his soul he had already adored

-Wanda von Szalras, and had despised himself for returning to the slough

-of his old pleasures. It was Cochonette who had sold his secrets to

-the Prussians, and brought them down upon him in the farmhouse amongst

-the orchards of the Orléannais, whilst she passed safely through, the

-German lines and across the frontier, laden with her jewels and her

-_valeurs_ of all kinds, saying in her teeth as she went: 'He will

-never see that Austrian woman again!' That had been the end of all he

-had known of Cochonette, and a presentiment of perfidy, of danger, of

-animosity always came over him whenever he saw the _joli petit minois_

-which in profile was so like Cochonette's, looking up from under the

-loose auburn curls that Mdme. Olga had copied from her.

-

-Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more

-admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds;

-and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette

-would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels

-flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams.

-There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her

-breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.

-

-Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an _étourdissement_

-that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.

-

-'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda,

-_mon beau_ cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are

-really going to Russia?'

-

-'I believe so.'

-

-'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in

-paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'

-

-'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'

-

-'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy

-enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money

-that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'

-

-'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played

-since my marriage.'

-

-'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A

-saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature,

-though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by

-marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean

-nothing.'

-

-'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he

-was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.

-

-'Call me at least _cousinette_,' said Mdme. Olga; 'we are cousins, you

-know, thanks to Wanda. Oh! she will be very unhappy in St. Petersburg;

-she will not amuse herself, she never does. She is incapable of a

-flirtation; she never touches a card. When she dances it is only

-because she must, and then it is only a quadrille or a contre-dance.

-She always reminds me of Marie Thérèse's "In our position nothing is a

-trifle." You remember the Empress's letters to Versailles?'

-

-Sabran was very much angered, but he was afraid to express his anger

-lest it should seem to make him absurd.

-

-'Madame,' he said, with ill-repressed irritation, 'I know you speak

-only in jest, but I must take the liberty to tell you----however

-bourgeois it appear----that I do not allow a jest even from you upon my

-wife. Anything she does is perfect in my sight, and if she be imbued

-with the old traditions of gentle blood, too many ladies desert them in

-these days for me not to be grateful to her for her loyalty.'

-

-She listened, with her bright black eyes fixed on him; then she leaned

-a little more closely on his arm.

-

-'Do you know that you said that very well? Most men are ridiculous

-when they are in love with their wives, but it becomes you, Wanda is

-perfect, we all know that; you are not alone in thinking so. Ask Egon!'

-

-The face of Sabran changed as he heard that name. As she saw the

-change she thought: 'Can it be possible that he is jealous?'

-

-Aloud she said with a little laugh: 'I almost wonder Egon did not

-run you through the heart before you married. Now, of course, he

-is reconciled to the inevitable; or, if not reconciled, he has to

-submit to it as we all have to do. He grows very _farouche_; he lives

-between his troopers and his castle of Taróc, like a barbaric lord

-of the Middle Ages. Were you ever at Taróc? It is worth seeing----a

-huge fortress, old as the days of Ottokar, in the very heart of the

-Karpathians. He leads a wild, fierce life enough there. If he keep the

-memory of Wanda with him it is as some men keep an idolatry for what is

-dead.'

-

-Sabran listened with a sombre irritation. 'Suppose we leave my wife's

-name in peace,' he said coldly. 'The _grosser cotillon_ is about to

-begin; may I aspire to the honour?'

-

-As he led her out, and the light fell on her red gold curls, on her

-dazzling butterflies, her armour of diamonds, her snow-white skin, a

-thousand memories of Cochonette came over him, though the scene around

-him was the ball-room of the Hofburg, and the woman whose great bouquet

-of _rêve d'or_ roses touched his hand was a great lady who had been the

-wife of Gela von Szalras, and the daughter of the Prince Serriatine.

-He distrusted her, he despised her, he disliked her so strongly that

-he was almost ashamed of his own antagonism; and yet her contact, her

-grace of movement, the mere scent of the bouquet of roses had a sort of

-painful and unwilling intoxication for the moment for him.

-

-He was glad when the long and gorgeous figures of the cotillon had

-tired out even her steel-like nerves, and he was free to leave the

-palace and go home to sleep. He looked at a miniature of his wife as

-he undressed; the face of it, with its tenderness and its nobility,

-seemed to him, after the face of this other woman, like the pure high

-air of the Iselthal after the heated and unhealthy atmosphere of a

-gambling-room.

-

-The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence

-was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which

-had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was

-brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural

-gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the

-sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some

-with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the

-empire.

-

-As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way

-slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through

-the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and

-odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After

-all, I may do her some honour before I die.'

-

-When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached

-him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said

-that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought

-it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.

-

-Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the

-staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants

-away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.

-

-There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:

-

-'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to

-him, under secrecy, what I know.'

-

-They were fully signed----'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a

-courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph.

-They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the

-Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXIV.

-

-

-As the carriage of the Countess Olga rolled home through the Graben

-after the military spectacle, she stopped it suddenly, and signed to an

-old man in the crowd who was waiting to cross the road until a regiment

-of cuirassiers had rolled by. He was eyeing them critically, as only an

-old soldier does look at troops.

-

-'Is it you, Georg?' said Madame Olga. 'What brings you here?'

-

-'I came from Taróc with a letter from the Prince, my master,' answered

-the man, an old hussar who had carried Vàsàrhely in his arms off the

-field of Königsgrätz, after dragging him from under a heap of dead men

-and horses.

-

-'A letter! To whom?' asked Olga, who always was curious and persistent

-in investigation of all her brother-in-law's movements and actions.

-

-Vàsàrhely had not laid any injunction as to secrecy, only as to speed,

-upon his faithful servant; so that Georg replied, unwitting of harm,

-'To the Markgraf von Sabran, my Countess.'

-

-'A letter that could not go by post--how strange! And from Egon to

-Wanda's husband!' she thought, with her inquisitive eagerness awakened.

-Aloud she bade the old trooper call at her palace for a packet for

-Taróc, to make excuse for having stopped and questioned him, and drove

-onward lost in thought.

-

-'Perhaps it is a challenge late in the day!' she thought, with a laugh;

-but she was astonished and perplexed that any communication should take

-place between these men; she perplexed her mind in vain in the effort

-to imagine what tie could connect them, what mystery mutually affecting

-them could lie beneath the secret of Vassia Kazán.

-

-When, on the morrow, she heard at Court that the Emperor was deeply

-incensed at the caprice and disrespect of the Count von Idrac, as

-he was called at Court, who, at the eleventh hour, had declined a

-mission already accepted by him, and of which the offer had been in

-itself an unprecedented mark of honour and confidence, her swift

-sagacity instantly associated the action, apparently so excuseless and

-inexcusable, with the letter sent up from Taróc. It was still as great

-a mystery to her as it had been before what the contents of the letter

-could have been, but she had no doubt that in some way or another it

-had brought about the resignation of the appointment. It awakened a

-still more intense curiosity in her, but she was too wise to whisper

-her suspicion to anyone. To her friends at the Court she said, with

-laughter: 'A night or two ago I chanced to tell Sabran that his wife

-would be wretched at St. Petersburg. That is sure to have been enough

-for him. He is such a devoted husband.'

-

-No one of course believed her, but they received the impression that

-she knew the real cause of his resignation, though she could not be

-induced to say it.

-

-What did it matter to her? Nothing, indeed. But the sense of a secret

-withheld from her was to Mdme. Olga like the slot of the fox to a young

-hound. She might have a thousand secrets of her own if it pleased her,

-but she could not endure anyone else to guard one. Besides, in a vague,

-feverish, angry way, she was almost in love with the man who was so

-faithful to his wife that he had looked away from her as from some

-unclean thing when she had wished to dazzle him. She had no perception

-that the secret could concern him himself very nearly, but she thought

-it was probably one which he and Egon Vàsàrhely, for reasons of their

-own, chose to share and keep hidden. And if it were a secret that

-prevented Sabran from going to the Court of Russia? Then, surely, it

-was one worth knowing? And if she gained a knowledge of it, and his

-wife had none?----what a superiority would be hers, what a weapon

-always to hand!

-

-She did not intend any especial cruelty or compass any especial end:

-she was actuated by a vague desire to interrupt a current of happiness

-that flowed on smoothly without her, to interfere where she had no

-earthly title or reason to do so, merely because she was disregarded

-by persons content with each other. It is not always definite motives

-which have the most influence; the subtlest poisons are those which

-enter the system we know not how, and penetrate it ere we are aware.

-The only thing which had ever held her back from any extremes of evil

-had been the mere habit of good-breeding and an absolute egotism which

-had saved her from all strong passions. Now something that was like

-passion had touched her under the sting of Sabran's indifference, and

-with it she became tenacious, malignant, and unsparing: adroit she had

-always been. Instinct is seldom at fault when we are conscious of an

-enemy, and Sabran's had not erred when it had warned him against the

-wife of Stefan Brancka as the serpent who would bring woe and disaster

-to his paradise.

-

-In some three months' time she received a more explicit answer from her

-cousin in St. Petersburg. Giving the precise dates, he told her that

-Vassia Kazán was the name given to the son of Count Paul Ivanovitch

-Zabaroff by a wayside amour with one of his own serfs at a village

-near the border line of Astrachan. He narrated the early history of

-the youth, and said that he had been amongst the passengers on board a

-Havre ship, which had foundered with all hands. So far the brief record

-of Vassia Kazán was clear and complete. But it told her nothing. She

-was unreasonably enraged, and looked at the little piece of burnt paper

-as though she would wrench the secret out of it.

-

-'There must be so much more to know,' she thought. 'What would a mere

-drowned boy be to either of those men----a boy dead too all these years

-before?'

-

-She wrote insolently to her cousin, that the Third Section, with

-its eyes of Argus and its limbs of Vishnoo, had always been but an

-overgrown imbecile, and set her woman's wits to accomplish what the

-Third Section had failed to do for her. So much she thought of it that

-the name seemed forced into her very brain; she seemed to hear every

-one saying----'Vassia Kazán.' It was a word to conjure with, at least:

-she could at the least try the effect of its utterance any day upon

-either of those who had made it the key of their correspondence. Russia

-had written down Vassia Kazán as dead, and the mystery which enveloped

-the name would not open to her. She knew her country too well not to

-know that this bold statement might cover some political secret, some

-story wholly unlike that which was given her. Vassia Kazán might have

-lived and have incurred the suspicions of the police, and be dwelling

-far away in the death in life of Siberian mines, or deep sunk in some

-fortress, like a stone at the bottom of a well. The reply not only

-did not beget her belief in it, but gave her range for the widest and

-wildest conjectures of imagination. 'It is some fault, some folly, some

-crime, who can tell? And Vassia Kazán is the victim or the associate,

-or the confidant of it. But what is it? And how does Egon know of it?'

-

-She passed the summer in pleasures of all kinds, but the subject did

-not lose its power over her, nor did she forget the face of Sabran as

-he had turned it away from her in the ball-room of the Hofburg.

-

-He himself had left the capital, after affirming to the minister that

-private reasons, which he could not enter into, had induced him to

-entreat the Imperial pardon for so sudden a change of resolve, and to

-solicit permission to decline the high honour that had been vouchsafed

-to him.

-

-'What shall I say to Wanda?' he asked himself incessantly, as the

-express train swung through the grand green country towards Salzburg.

-

-She was sitting on the lake terrace with the Princess, when a telegram

-from her cousin Kunst was brought to her. Bela and Gela were playing

-near with squadrons of painted cuirassiers, and the great dogs were

-lying on the marble pavement at her feet. It was a golden close to a

-sunless but fine day; the snow peaks were growing rosy as the sun shone

-for an instant behind the Venediger range, and the lake was calm and

-still and green, one little boat going noiselessly across it from the

-Holy Isle to the further side.

-

-'What a pity to leave it all!' she thought as she took the telegram.

-

-The Minister's message was curt and angered:

-

-'Your husband has resigned; he makes himself and me ridiculous. Unable

-to guess his motive, I am troubled and embarrassed beyond expression.'

-

-The other, from Sabran, said simply: 'I am coming home. I give up

-Russia.'

-

-'Any bad news?' the Princess asked, seeing the seriousness of her face.

-Her niece rose and gave her the papers.

-

-'Is Réné mad!' she exclaimed as she read. His wife, who was startled

-and dismayed at the affront to her cousin and to her sovereign, yet had

-been unable to repress a movement of personal gladness, hastened to say

-in his defence:

-

-'Be sure he has some grave, good reason, dear mother. He knows the

-world too well to commit a folly. Unexplained, it looks strange,

-certainly; but he will be home to-night or in the early morning; then

-we shall know; and be sure we shall find him right.'

-

-'Right!' echoed the Princess, lifting the little girl who was her

-namesake off her knee, a child white as a snowdrop, with golden curls,

-who looked as if she had come out of a band of Correggio's baby angels.

-

-'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who

-had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard

-suspended in the air.

-

-'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme

-displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when

-through him you are probably _brouillée_ with your Sovereign for life.'

-

-She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a

-caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon.

-I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible

-excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such

-vast importance.'

-

-'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would

-condemn Réné unheard?'

-

-'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'

-

-'Perhaps none. I know it is a very grave offence that he has committed,

-and yet I cannot help being happy,' said his wife with a smile, as she

-lifted up the little Ottilie, and murmured over the child's fair curls,

-'Ah, my dear little dove! We are not going to Russia after all. You

-little birds will not leave your nest!'

-

-'Bela is not going to the snow palace?' said he, whose ears were very

-quick, and to whom his attendants had told marvellous narratives of an

-utterly imaginary Russia.

-

-'No; are not you glad, my dear?'

-

-He thought very gravely for a moment.

-

-'Bela is not sure. Marc says Bela would have slaves in Russia, and

-might beat them.'

-

-'Bela would be beaten himself if he did, and by my own hand, said his

-mother very gravely. 'Oh, child! where did you get your cruelty?'

-

-'He is not cruel,' said the Princess. 'He is only masterful.'

-

-'Alas! it is the same thing.'

-

-She sent the children indoors, and remained after the sun-glow had all

-faded, and Mdme. Ottilie had gone away to her own rooms, and paced

-to and fro the length of the terrace, troubled by an anxiety which

-she would have owned to no one. What could have happened to make

-him so offend alike the State and the Court? She tormented herself

-with wondering again and again whether she had used any incautious

-expression in her letters which could have betrayed to him the poignant

-regret the coming exile gave her. No! she was sure she had not done

-so. She had only written twice, preferring telegrams as quicker, and,

-to a man, less troublesome than letters. She knew courts and cabinets

-too well not to know that the step her husband had taken was one which

-would wholly ruin the favour he enjoyed with the former, and wholly

-take away all chance of his being ever called again to serve the

-latter. Personally she was indifferent to that kind of ambition; but

-her attachment to the Imperial house was too strong, and her loyalty

-to it too hereditary, for her not to be alarmed at the idea of losing

-its good-will. Disquieted and afraid of all kinds of formless unknown

-ills, she went with a heavy heart into the Rittersaal to a dinner for

-which she could find no appetite. The Princess also, so talkative and

-vivacious at other times, was silent and pre-occupied. The evening

-passed tediously. He did not come.

-

-It was past midnight, and she had given up all hope of his arrival,

-when she heard the returning trot of the horses, who had been sent over

-to Matrey in the evening on the chance of his being there. She was in

-her own chamber, having dismissed her women, and was trying in vain to

-keep her thoughts to nightly prayer. At the sound of the horses' feet

-without, she threw on a _négligé_ of white satin and lace, and went,

-out on to the staircase to meet him. As he came up the broad stairs,

-with Donau and Neva gladly leaping on him, he looked up and saw her

-against the background of oak and tapestry and old armour, with the

-light of a great Persian lamp in metal that swung above shed full upon

-her. She had never looked more lovely to him than as she stood so, her

-eyes eagerly searching the dim shadow for him, and the loose white

-folds embroidered in silk with pale roses flowing downward from her

-throat to her feet. He drew her within her chamber, and took her in his

-arms with a passionate gesture.

-

-'Let us forget everything,' he murmured, 'except that we have been

-parted nearly a month!'

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXV.

-

-

-In the morning, after breakfast in the little Saxe room, she said to

-him with gentle firmness: 'Réné, you must tell me now--why have you

-refused Russia?'

-

-He had known that the question must come, and all the way on his

-homeward journey he had been revolving in his mind the answer he would

-give to it. He was very pale, but otherwise he betrayed no agitation as

-he turned and looked at her.

-

-'That is what I cannot tell you,' he replied.

-

-She could not believe she heard aright.

-

-'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'I have had a message from Kunst;

-he is deeply angered. I understand that, after all was arranged, you

-abruptly resigned the Russian mission. I ask your reasons. It is a very

-grave step to have taken. I suppose your motives must be very strong

-ones?'

-

-'They are so,' said Sabran; and he continued in the forced and measured

-tone of one who recites what he has taught himself to say: 'It is quite

-natural that your cousin Kunst should be offended; the Emperor also.

-You perhaps will be the same when I say to you that I cannot tell you,

-as I cannot tell them, the grounds of my withdrawal. Perhaps you, like

-them, will not forgive it.'

-

-Her nostrils dilated and her breast heaved: she was startled,

-mortified, amazed. 'You do not choose to tell _me_!' she said in

-stupefaction.

-

-'I cannot tell you.'

-

-'She gazed at him with the first bitterness of wrath that he had ever

-seen upon her face. She had been used to perfect submission of others

-all her life. She had the blood in her of stern princes, who had meted

-out rule and justice against which there had been no appeal. She was

-accustomed even in him to deference, homage, consideration, to be

-consulted always, deferred to often. His answer for the moment seemed

-to her an unwarrantable insult.

-

-Her influence, her relatives, her sovereign, had given him one of the

-highest honours conceivable, and he did not choose to even say why he

-was thankless for it! Passionate and withering words rose to her lips,

-but she restrained their utterance. Not even in that moment could she

-bring herself to speak what might seem to rebuke him with the weight

-of all his debt to her. She remained silent, but he understood all the

-intense indignation that held her speechless there. He approached her

-more nearly, and spoke with emotion, but with a certain sternness in

-his voice----

-

-'I know very well that I must offend and even outrage you. But I

-cannot tell you my motives. It is the first time that I have ever

-acted independently of you or failed to consult your wishes. I only

-venture to remind you that marriage does give to the man the right to

-do so, though I have never availed myself of it. Nay, even now, I owe

-you too much to be ingrate enough to take refuge in my authority as

-your husband. I prefer to owe more, as I have owed so much, to your

-tenderness. I prefer to ask of you, by your love for me, not to press

-me for an answer that I am not in a position to make; to be content

-with what I say--that I have relinquished the Russian mission because I

-have no choice but to do so.'

-

-He spoke firmly, because he spoke only the truth, although not all the

-truth.

-

-A great anger rose up in her, the first that she had ever been moved to

-by him. All the pride of her temper and all her dignity were outraged

-by this refusal to have confidence in her. It seemed incredible

-to her. She still thought herself the prey of some dream, of some

-hallucination. Her lips parted to speak, but again she withheld the

-words she was about to utter. Her strong justice compelled her to admit

-that he was but within his rights, and her sense of duty was stronger

-than her sense of self-love.

-

-She did not look at him, nor could she trust her voice. She turned

-from him without a syllable, and left the room. She was afraid of the

-violence of the anger that she felt.

-

-'If it had been only to myself I would pardon it,' she thought; 'but an

-insult to my people, to my country, to my sovereign!--an insult without

-excuse, or explanation, or apology----'

-

-She shut herself alone within her oratory and passed the most bitter

-hour of her life. The imperious and violent temper of the Szalras

-was dormant in her character, though she had chastened and tamed it,

-and the natural sweetness and serenity of her disposition had been a

-counterpoise to it so strong that the latter had become the only thing

-visible in her. But all the wrath of her race was now aroused and in

-arms against what she loved best on earth.

-

-'If it had been anything else,' she thought; 'but a public act like

-this--an ingratitude to the Crown itself! A caprice for all the world

-to chatter of and blame!'

-

-It would have been hard enough to bear, difficult enough to explain

-away to others, if he had told her his reasons, however captious,

-unwise, or selfish they might be; but to have the door of his soul

-thus shut upon her, his thoughts thus closed to her, hurt her with

-intolerable pain, and filled her with a deep and burning indignation.

-

-She passed all the early morning hours alone in her little temple of

-prayer, striving in vain against the bitterness of her heart; above

-her the great ivory Crucifixion, the work of Angermayer, beneath which

-so many generations of the women of the House of Szalras had knelt in

-their hours of tribulation or bereavement.

-

-When she left the oratory she had conquered herself. Though she could

-not extinguish the human passions that smarted and throbbed within her,

-she knew her duty well enough to know that it must lie in submission

-and in silence.

-

-She sought for him at once. She found him in the library: he was

-playing to himself a long dreamy concerto of Schubert's, to soothe the

-irritation of his own nerves and pass away a time of keen suspense. He

-rose as she came into the room, and awaited her approach with a timid

-anxiety in his eyes, which she was too absorbed by her own emotions to

-observe. He had assumed a boldness that he had not, and had used his

-power to dominate her rather in desperation than in any sense of actual

-mastery. In his heart it was he who feared her.

-

-'You were quite right,' she said simply to him. 'Of course, you are

-master of your own actions, and owe no account of them to me. We will

-say no more about it. For myself, you know I am content enough to

-escape exile to any embassy.'

-

-He kissed her hand with an unfeigned reverence and humility.

-

-'You are as merciful as you are great,' he murmured. 'If I be silent it

-is my misfortune.' He paused abruptly.

-

-A sudden thought came over her as he spoke.

-

-'It is some State secret that he knows and cannot speak of, and that

-has made him unwilling to go. Why did I never think of that before?'

-

-An explanation that had its root in honour, a reticence that sprang

-from conscience, were so welcome to her, and to her appeared so

-natural, that they now consoled her at once, and healed the wounds to

-her own pride.

-

-'Of course, if it be so, he is right not to speak even to me,' she

-mused, and her only desire was now to save him from the insistence and

-the indignation of the Princess, and the examination which these were

-sure to entail upon him when he should meet her at the noon breakfast

-now at hand.

-

-To that end she sought out her aunt in her own apartments, taking

-with her the tiny Ottilie, who always disarmed all irritation in her

-godmother by the mere presence of her little flower-like face.

-

-'Dear mother,' she said softly, when the child had made her morning

-obeisance, 'I am come to ask of you a great favour and kindness to me.

-Réné returned last night. He has done what he thought right. I do not

-even ask his reasons. He has acted from _force majeure_ by dictate of

-his own honour. Will you do as I mean to do? Will you spare him any

-interrogation? I shall be so grateful to you, and so will he.'

-

-Mdme. Ottilie, opening her bonbonnière for her namesake, drew up her

-fragile figure with a severity unusual to her.

-

-'Do I hear you aright? You do not even know the reasons of the insult

-M. de Sabran has passed upon the Crown and Cabinet, and you do not even

-mean to ask them?'

-

-'I do mean that; and what I do not ask I feel sure you will admit no

-one else has any right to ask of him.'

-

-'No one certainly except His Majesty.'

-

-'I presume His Majesty has had all information due to him as our

-Imperial master. All I entreat of you, dearest mother, is to do as

-I have done; assume, as we are bound to assume, that Réné has acted

-wisely and rightly, and not weary him with questions to which it will

-be painful to him not to respond.'

-

-'Questions! I never yet indulged in anything so vulgar as curiosity,

-that you should imagine I shall be capable of subjecting your husband

-to a cross-examination. If you be satisfied, I can have no right to

-be more exacting than yourself. The occurrence is to me lamentable,

-inexcusable, unintelligible; but if explanation be not offered me you

-may rest assured I shall not intrude my request for it.'

-

-'Of that I am sure; but I am not contented only with that. I want you

-to feel no dissatisfaction, no doubt, no anger against him. You may be

-sure that he has acted from conviction, because he was most desirous to

-go to Russia, as you saw when you urged him to accept the mission.'

-

-'I have said the utmost that I can say,' replied the Princess, with a

-chill light in her blue eyes. 'This little child is no more likely to

-ask questions than I am, after what you have stated. But you must not

-regard my silence as any condonation of what must always appear to me a

-step disrespectful to the Crown, contrary to all usages of etiquette,

-and injurious to his own future and that of his children. His scruples

-of conscience came too late.'

-

-'I did not say they were exactly that. I believe he learned something

-which made him consider that his honour required him to withdraw.'

-

-'That may be,' said the Princess, frigidly. 'As I observed, it came

-lamentably late. You will excuse me if I breakfast in my own rooms this

-morning.'

-

-Wanda left her, gave the child to a nurse who waited without, and

-returned to the library. She had offended and pained Mdme. Ottilie,

-but she had saved her husband from annoyance. She knew that though

-the Princess was by no means as free from curiosity as she declared

-herself, she was too high-bred and too proud to solicit a confidence

-withheld from her.

-

-Sabran was seated at the piano where she had left him, but his forehead

-rested on the woodwork of it, and his whole attitude was suggestive

-of sad and absorbed thought and abandonment to regrets that were

-unavailing.

-

-'It has cost him so much,' she reflected as she looked at him. 'Perhaps

-it has been a self-sacrifice, a heroism even; and I, from mere wounded

-feeling, have been angered against him and almost cruel!'

-

-With the exaggeration in self-censure of all generous natures, she was

-full of remorse at having added any pain to the disappointment which

-had been his portion; a disappointment none the less poignant, as she

-saw, because it had been voluntarily, as she imagined, accepted.

-

-As he heard her approach he started and rose, and the expression of his

-face startled her for a moment; it was so full of pain, of melancholy,

-almost (could she have believed it) of despair. What could this matter

-be to affect him thus, since being of the State it could be at its

-worst only some painful and compromising secret of political life which

-could have no personal meaning for him? It was surely impossible that

-mere disappointment----a disappointment self-inflicted----could bring

-upon him such suffering? But she threw these thoughts away. In her

-great loyalty she had told herself that she must not even think of this

-thing, lest she should let it come between them once again and tempt

-her from her duty and obedience. Her trust in him was perfect.

-

-The abandonment of a coveted distinction was in itself a bitter

-disappointment, but it seemed to him as nothing beside the sense of

-submission and obedience compelled from him to Vàsàrhely. He felt as

-though an iron hand, invisible, weighed on his life, and forced it into

-subjection. When he had almost grown secure that his enemy's knowledge

-was a buried harmless thing, it had risen and barred his way, speaking

-with an authority which it was not possible to disobey. With all his

-errors he was a man of high courage, who had always held his own with

-all men. How the old forgotten humiliation of his earliest years

-revived, and enforced from him the servile timidity of the Slav blood

-which he had abjured. He had never for an instant conceived it possible

-to disregard the mandate he received; that an apparently voluntary

-resignation was permitted to him was, his conscience acknowledged, more

-mercy than he could have expected. That Vàsàrhely would act thus had

-not occurred to him; but before the act he could not do otherwise than

-admit its justice and obey.

-

-But the consciousness of that superior will compelling him, left in him

-a chill tremor of constant fear, of perpetual self-abasement. What was

-natural to him was the reckless daring which many Russians, such as

-Skobeleff, have shown in a thousand ways of peril. He was here forced

-only to crouch and to submit; it was more galling, more cruel to him

-than utter exposure would have been. The sense of coercion was always

-upon him like a dragging chain. It produced on him a despondency, which

-not even the presence of his wife or the elasticity of his own nature

-could dispel.

-

-He had to play a part to her, and to do this was unfamiliar and hateful

-to him. In all the years before he had concealed a fact from her, but

-he had never been otherwise false. Though to his knowledge there had

-been always between them the shadow of a secret untold, there had

-never been any sense upon him of obligation to measure his words, to

-feign sentiments he had not, to hide behind a carefully constructed

-screen of untruth. Now, though he had indeed not lied with his lips,

-he had to sustain a concealment which was a thousand times more trying

-to him than that concealment of his birth and station to which he had

-been so long accustomed that he hardly realised it as any error. The

-very nobility with which she had accepted his silence, and given it,

-unasked, a worthy construction, smote him with a deeper sense of shame

-than even that which galled him when he remembered the yoke laid on him

-by the will of Egon Vàsàrhely.

-

-He roused himself to meet her with composure.

-

-She rested her hand caressingly on his.

-

-'We will never speak of Russia any more. I should be sorry were the

-Kaiser to think you capricious or disloyal, but you have too much

-ability to have incurred this risk. Let it all be as though there had

-never arisen any question of public life for you. I have explained

-to Aunt Ottilie; she will not weary you with interrogation; she

-understands that you have acted as your honour bade you. That is enough

-for those who love you as do she and I.'

-

-Every word she spoke entered his very soul with the cruellest irony,

-the sharpest reproach. But of these he let her see nothing. Yet he

-was none the less abjectly ashamed, less passionately self-condemned,

-because he had to consume his pain in silence, and had the self-control

-to answer, still with a smile, as he touched a chord or two of music:

-

-'When the Israelites were free they hankered after the flesh-pots of

-Egypt. They deserved eternal exile, eternal bondage. So do I, for

-having ever been ingrate enough to dream of leaving Hohenszalras for

-the world of men!'

-

-Then he turned wholly towards the Erard keyboard, and with splendour

-and might there rolled forth under his touch the military march of

-Rákóczi: he was glad of the majesty and passion of the music which

-supplanted and silenced speech.

-

-'That is very grand,' she said, when the last notes had died away.

-'One seems to hear the _Eljén!_ of the whole nation in it. But play me

-something more tender, more pathetic----some _lieder_ half sorrow and

-half gladness, you know so many of all countries.'

-

-He paused a moment; then his hands wandered lightly across the notes,

-and called up the mournful folk-songs that he had heard so long, so

-long, before; songs of the Russian peasants, of the maidens borne off

-by the Tartar in war, of the blue-eyed children carried away to be

-slaves, of the homeless villagers beholding their straw-roofed huts

-licked up by the hungry hurrying flame lit by the Kossack or the Kurd;

-songs of a people without joy, that he had heard in his childish days,

-when the great rafts had drifted slowly down the Volga water, and

-across the plains the lines of chained prisoners had crept as slowly

-through the dust; or songs that he had sung to himself, not knowing

-why, where the winter was white on all the land, and the bay of the

-famished wolves afar off had blent with the shrill sad cry of the wild

-swans dying of cold and of hunger and of thirst on the frozen rivers,

-and the reeds were grown hard as spears of iron, and the waves were

-changed to stone.

-

-The intense melancholy penetrated her very heart. She listened with

-the tears in her eyes, and her whole being stirred and thrilled by a

-pain not her own. A kind of consciousness came to her, borne on that

-melancholy melody, of some unspoken sorrow which lived in this heart

-which beat so near her own, and whose every throb she had thought she

-knew. A sudden terror seized her lest all this while she who believed

-his whole life hers was in truth a stranger to his deepest grief, his

-dearest memories.

-

-When the last sigh of those plaintive songs without words had died

-away, she signed to him to approach her.

-

-'Tell me,' she said very gently, 'tell me the truth. Réné, did you ever

-care for any woman, dead or lost, more than, or as much as, you care

-for me? I do not ask you if you loved others. I know all men have many

-caprices, but was any one of them so dear to you that you regret her

-still? Tell me the truth; I will be strong to bear it.'

-

-He, relieved beyond expression that she but asked him that on which his

-conscience was clear and his answer could be wholly sincere, sat down

-at her feet and leaned his head against her knee.

-

-'Never, so hear me God!' he said simply. 'I have loved no woman as I

-love you.'

-

-'And there is not one that you regret?'

-

-'There is not one.'

-

-'Then what is it that you do regret? Something more weighs on you than

-the mere loss of diplomatic life, which; after all, to you is no more

-than the loss of a toy to Bela.'

-

-'If I do regret,' he said, with a smile, 'it is foolish and thankless.

-The happiness you give me here is worth all the fret and fever of

-the world's ambitions. You are so great and good to be so little

-angered with me for my reticence. All my life, such as it is, shall be

-dedicated to my gratitude.'

-

-Once more an impulse to tell her all passed over him----a sense that

-he might trust her absolutely for all tenderness and all pity came

-upon him; but with the weakness which so constantly holds back human

-souls from their own deliverance, his courage once again failed him.

-He once more looking at her thought: 'Nay! I dare not. She would never

-understand, she would never pardon, she would never listen. At the

-first word she would abhor me.'

-

-He did not dare; he bent his face down on her knees as any child might

-have done.

-

-'What I ever must regret is not to be worthy of you!' he murmured; and

-the subterfuge was also a truth.

-

-She looked down at him wistfully with doubt and confusion mingled. She

-sighed, for she understood that buried in his heart there was some pain

-he would not share, perchance some half involuntary unfaithfulness he

-did not dare confess. She thrust this latter thought away quickly; it

-hurt her as the touch of a hot iron hurts tender flesh; she would not

-harbour it. It might well be, she knew.

-

-She was silent some little time, then she said calmly:

-

-'I think you worthy. Is not that enough? Never say to me what you do

-not wish to say. But----but----if there be anything you believe that I

-should blame, be sure of this, love: I am no fair weather friend. Try

-me in deep water, in dark storm!'

-

-And still he did not speak.

-

-His evil angel held him back and said to him, 'Nay! she would never

-forgive.'

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXVI.

-

-

-One day in this winter time she sat alone in her octagon-room whilst he

-was out driving in the teeth of a strong wind blowing from the north

-and frequent bursts of snowstorm. Rapid exercise, eager movements, were

-necessary to him at once as tonic and as anodyne, and the northern

-blood that was in him made the bitter cold, the keen and angry air, the

-conflict with the frantic horses tearing at their curbs welcome and

-wholesome to him. Paul Zabaroff had many a day driven so over the hard

-snows of Russian plains.

-

-She sat at home as the twilight drew on, her feet buried in the furs

-before her chair, the fragrance shed about her from a basket of forced

-narcissus and bowls full of orange flowers and of violets, the light

-of the burning wood shining on the variegated and mellow hues of the

-tiles of the hearth. The last poems of Coppée were on her lap, but

-her thoughts had wandered away from those to Sabran, to her children,

-to a thousand happy trifles connected with one or the other. She was

-dreaming idly in that vague reverie which suits the last hour of the

-reclining day in the grey still winter of a mountain-land. She was

-almost sorry when Hubert entered and brought her the mail-bag, which

-had just come through the gloomy defiles and the frosted woods which

-stretched between them and Matrey.

-

-'It grows late,' she said to him. 'I fear it will be a stormy night.

-Have you heard the Marquis return?

-

-He told her that Sabran had not yet driven in, and ventured to add

-his hope that his master would not be out long; then he asked if she

-desired the lamps lit, and on being told she did not, withdrew, leaving

-the leather bag on a table close to one of the Saxe bowls of violets.

-There was plenty of light from the fire, and even from the windows, to

-read her letters by; she went first to one of the casements and looked

-at the night, which was growing very wild and dark. Though day still

-lingered, she could hear the wind go screaming down the lake, and

-the rush of the swollen water swirling against the terrace buttresses

-below. All beyond, woods, hills, mountains, were invisible under the

-grey mist.

-

-'I hope he will not be late,' she thought, but she was too keen a

-mountaineer to be apprehensive. Sabran now knew every road and path

-through all the Tauern as well as she did. She returned to her seat and

-unlocked the leather bag; there were several newspapers, two letters

-for the Princess, three or four for Sabran, and one only for herself.

-She laid his aside for him, sent those of the Princess to her room,

-and opened her own. The writing of it she did not recognise; it was

-anonymous, and was very brief.

-

-

-'If you wish to know why the Marquis de Sabran did not go to Russia,

-ask Egon Vàsàrhely.'

-

-

-That was all: so asps are little.

-

-She sat quite still, and felt as if a bolt had fallen on her from the

-leaden skies without. Vàsàrhely knew, the writer of the letter knew,

-and she----_she----_ did not know! That was her first distinct thought.

-

-If Sabran had entered the room at that instant she would have held to

-him this letter, and would have said, 'I ask you, not him.' He was

-absent, and she sat motionless, keeping the unsigned note in her hand,

-and staring down on it. Then she turned and looked at the post-mark.

-It was 'Vienna,' A city of a million souls! What clue to the writer

-was there? She read it again and again, as even the wisest will read

-such poisonous things, as though by repeated study that mystery would

-be compelled to stand out clearly revealed. It did not say enough to

-have been the mere invention of the sender; it was not worded as an

-insinuation, but as a fact. For that reason it took a hold upon her

-mind which would at once have rejected a fouler or a darker suggestion.

-Although free from any baseness of suspicion there was yet that in the

-name of her cousin, in juxtaposition with her husband's, which could

-not do otherwise than startle and carry with it a corroboration of the

-statement made. A wave of the deep anger which had moved her on her

-husband's first refusal swept over her again. Her hand clenched, her

-eyes hashed, where she sat alone in the gathering shadows.

-

-There came a sound at the door of the room and a small golden head came

-from behind the tapestry.

-

-'May we come in?' said Bela; it was the children's hour.

-

-She rose, and put him backward.

-

-'Not now, my darling; I am occupied. Go away for a little while.'

-

-The women who were with them took the children back to their

-apartments. She sat down with the note still in her hand. What could

-it mean? No good thing was ever said thus. She pondered long, and was

-unable to imagine any sense or meaning it could have, though all the

-while memories thronged upon, her of words, and looks, and many trifles

-which had told her of the enmity that was existent between her cousin

-and Sabran. That she saw; but there her knowledge ceased, her vision

-failed. She could go no further, conjecture nothing more.

-

-'Ask Egon!' Did they think she would ask him or any living being that

-which Sabran had refused to confide in her? Whoever wrote this knew her

-little, she thought. Perhaps there were women who would have done so.

-She was not one of them.

-

-With a sudden impulse of scorn she cast the sheet of paper into the

-fire before her. Then she went to her writing-table and enclosed the

-envelope in another, which she addressed to her lawyers in Salzburg.

-She wrote with it: 'This is the cover to an anonymous letter which I

-have received. Try your uttermost to discover the sender.'

-

-Then she sat down again and thought long, and wearily, and vainly. She

-could make nothing of it. She could see no more than a wayfarer whom a

-blank wall faces as he goes. The violets and orange blossoms were close

-at her elbow; she never in after time smelt their perfume without a

-sick memory of the stunned, stupefied bewilderment of that hour.

-

-The door unclosed again, a voice again spoke behind as a hand drew back

-the folds of the tapestry.

-

-'What, are you in darkness here? I am very cold. Have you no tea for

-me?' said Sabran, as he entered, his eyes brilliant; his cheeks warm,

-from the long gallop against the wind. He had changed his clothes, and

-wore a loose suit of velvet; the servants, entering behind him, lit the

-candelabra, and brought in the lamps; warmth, and gladness, and light

-seemed to come with him; she looked up and thought, 'Ah! what does any

-thing matter? He is home in safety!'

-

-The impulse to ask of him what she had been bidden to ask of Egon

-Vàsàrhely had passed with the intense surprise of the first moment. She

-could not ask of him what she had promised never to seek to know; she

-could not reopen a long-closed wound. But neither could she forget the

-letter lying burnt there amongst the flames of the wood. He noticed

-that her usual perfect calm was broken as she welcomed him, gave him

-his letters, and bade the servants bring tea; but he thought it mere

-anxiety, and his belated drive; and being tired with a pleasant fatigue

-which made rest sweet, he stretched his limbs out on a low couch beside

-the hearth, and gave himself up to that delicious dreamy sense of

-_bien-être_ which a beautiful woman, a beautiful room, tempered warmth

-and light, and welcome repose, bring to any man after some hours effort

-and exposure in wild weather and intense cold and increasing darkness.

-

-'I almost began to think I should not see you to-night,' he said

-happily, as he took from her hand the little cup of Frankenthal china

-which sparkled like a jewel in the light. 'I had fairly lost my way,

-and Josef knew it no better than I; the snow fell with incredible

-rapidity, and it seemed to grow night in an instant. I let the horses

-take their road, and they brought us home; but if there be any poor

-pedlars or carriers on the hills to-night I fear they will go to their

-last sleep.'

-

-She shuddered and looked at him with dim, fond eyes, 'He is here; he is

-mine,' she thought; 'what else matters?'

-

-Sabran stretched out his fingers and took some of the violets from the

-Saxe bowl and fastened them in his coat as he went on speaking of the

-weather, of the perils of the roads whose tracks were obliterated, and

-of the prowess and intelligence of his horses, who had found the way

-home when he and his groom, a man born and bred in the Tauern, had both

-been utterly at a loss. The octagon-room had never looked lovelier and

-gayer to him, and his wife had never looked more beautiful than both

-did now as he came to them out of the darkness and the snowstorm and

-the anxiety of the last hour.

-

-'Do not run those risks,' she murmured. 'You know all that your life is

-to me.'

-

-The letter which lay burnt in the fire, and the dusky night of ice

-and wind without, had made him dearer to her than ever. And yet the

-startled, shocked sense of some mystery, of some evil, was heavy upon

-her, and did not leave her that evening nor for many a day after.

-

-'You are not well?' he said to her anxiously later, as they left the

-dinner-table. She answered evasively.

-

-'You know I am not always quite well now. It is nothing. It will pass.'

-

-'I was wrong to alarm you by being out so late in such weather,' he

-said with self-reproach. 'I will go out earlier in future.'

-

-'Do not wear those violets,' she said, with a trivial caprice wholly

-unlike her, as she took them from his coat. 'They are Bonapartist

-emblems--_fleurs de malheur_.'

-

-He smiled, but he was surprised, for he had never seen in her any one

-of those fanciful whims and vagaries that are common to women.

-

-'Give me any others instead,' he said; 'I wear but your symbol, O my

-lady!'

-

-She took some myrtle and lilies of the valley from one of the large

-porcelain jars in the Rittersaal.

-

-'These are our flowers,' she said as she gave them to him. 'They mean

-love and peace.'

-

-He turned from her slightly as he fastened them where the others had

-been.

-

-All the evening she was pre-occupied and nervous. She could not forget

-the intimation she had received. It was intolerable to her to have

-anything of which she could not speak to her husband. Though they had

-their own affairs apart one from the other, there had been nothing

-of moment in hers that she had ever concealed from him. But here it

-was impossible for her to speak to him, since she had pledged herself

-never to seek to know the reason of an action which, however plausibly

-she explained it to herself, remained practically inexplicable and

-unintelligible. It was terrible to her, too, to feel that the lines

-of a coward who dared not sign them had sunk so deeply into her mind

-that she did not question their veracity. They had at once carried

-conviction to her that Egon Vàsàrhely did know what they said he did.

-She could not have told why this was, but it was so. It was what hurt

-her most----others knew; she did not.

-

-She felt that if she could have spoken to Sabran of it, the matter

-would have become wholly indifferent to her; but the obligation of

-reticence, the sense of separation which it involved, oppressed her

-greatly. She was also haunted by the memory of the enmity which existed

-between these men, whose names were so strangely coupled in the

-anonymous counsel given her.

-

-She stayed long in her oratory that night, seeking vainly for calmness

-and patience under this temptation; seeking beyond all things for

-strength to put the poison of it wholly from her mind. She dreaded lest

-it should render her irritable and suspicious. She reproached herself

-for having been guilty of even so much insinuation of rebuke to him

-as her words with the flower had carried in them. She had ideas of

-the duties of a woman to her husband widely different to those which

-prevail in the world. She allowed herself neither irritation nor irony

-against him. 'When the thoughts rebel, the acts soon revolt,' she was

-wont to say to herself, and even in her thoughts she would never blame

-him.

-

-Prayer, even if it have no other issue or effect, rarely fails to

-tranquillise and fortify the heart which is lifted up ever so vaguely

-in search of a superhuman aid. She left her oratory strengthened and

-calmed, resolved in no way to allow such partial success to their

-unknown foe as would be given if the treacherous warning brought any

-suspicion or bitterness to her mind. She passed through the open

-archway in the wall which divided his rooms from hers, and looked at

-him where he lay already asleep upon his bed, early fatigued by the

-long cold drive from which he had returned at nightfall. He was never

-more handsome than sleeping calmly thus, with the mellow light of a

-distant lamp reaching the fairness of his face. She looked at him with

-all her heart in her eyes; then stooped and kissed him without awaking

-him.

-

-'Ah! my love,' she thought, 'what should ever come between us? Hardly

-even death, I think, for if I lost you I should not live long without

-you.'

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXVII.

-

-

-The Salzburg lawyers employed all the resources of the Viennese police

-to discover the sender of the envelope, but vainly; nothing was

-learned by all the efforts made. But the letter constantly haunted her

-thoughts. It produced in her an uneasiness and an apprehensiveness

-wholly foreign to her temper. The impossibility also of saying anything

-about it increased the weight of it on her memory. Yet she never once

-thought of asking Vàsàrhely. She wrote to him now and then, as she had

-always done, to give him tidings of her health or of her movements,

-but she never once alluded in the most distant terms to the anonymous

-information she had received. If he had been there beside her she would

-not have spoken of it. Of the two, she would sooner have reopened the

-subject to her husband. But she never did so. She had promised him

-to be silent, and to her creed a promise was inviolate, never to be

-retracted, be the pressure or the desire to do so what it would.

-

-It was these grand lines on which her character and her habits were

-cast that awed him, and made him afraid to tell her his true history.

-Had he revered her less he would probably have deceived her less. Had

-she been of a less noble temperament she would also probably have been

-much less easy to deceive.

-

-Her health was at this time languid, and more uncertain than usual,

-and the two lines of the letter were often present to her thoughts,

-tormenting her with idle conjecture, painful doubt, none the less

-painful because it could take no definite shape. Sometimes when she

-was not well enough to accompany him out of doors or drive her own

-sleigh through the keen clear winter air, she sat doing nothing, and

-thinking only of this thing, in the same room, with the same smell of

-violets about her, musing on what it might by any possibility mean. Any

-secret was safe with Egon, but then since the anonymous writer was in

-possession of it the secret was not only his. She wondered sometimes in

-terror whether it could be anything that might in after years affect

-her children's future, and then as rapidly discarded the bare thought

-as so much dishonour to their father. 'It is only because I am now

-nervous and impressionable,' she said to herself,'that this folly takes

-such a hold upon me. When I am well again I shall not think of it. Who

-is it says of anonymous letters that they are like "_les immondices des

-rues: il faut boucher le nez, tourner la tête et passer outre?_"'

-

-But '_les immondices_' spoiled the odours of the new year violets to

-her.

-

-In the early spring of the year she gave birth to another son. She

-suffered more than she had ever done before, and recovered less

-quickly. The child was like all the others, fair, vigorous, and full

-of health. She wished to give him her husband's name, but Sabran so

-strenuously opposed the idea that she yielded, and named him after her

-brother Victor, who had fallen at Magenta.

-

-There were the usual rejoicings throughout the estates, rejoicings

-that were the outcome of genuine affection and fealty to the race of

-Szalras, whose hold on the people of the Tauern had resisted all the

-revolutionary movements of the earlier part of the century, and had

-fast root in the hearts of the staunch and conservative mountaineers.

-But for the first time as she heard the hearty '_Hoch!_' of the

-assembled peasantry echoing beneath her windows, and the salvos fired

-from the old culverins on the keep, a certain fear mingled with her

-maternal pride, and she thought: 'Will the people love them as well

-twenty years hence, fifty years hence, when I shall be no more? Will my

-memory be any shield to them? Will the traditions of our race outlast

-the devouring changes of the world?'

-

-Meantime the Princess, happy and smiling, showed the little new-born

-noble to the stalwart chamois hunters, the comely farmers and

-fishermen, the clear-eyed stout-limbed shepherds and labourers gathered

-bareheaded round the Schloss.

-

-Bela stood by contemplating the crowd he knew so well; he did not see

-why they should cheer any other child beside himself. He stood with his

-little velvet cap in his hand, because he was always told to do so, but

-he felt very inclined to put it on; if his father had not been present

-there he would have done so.

-

-'If I have ever so many brothers,' he said at last thoughtfully to

-Greswold, who was by his side, 'it will not make any difference, will

-it? I shall always be _the_ one?'

-

-'What do you mean?' asked the physician.

-

-'They will none of them be like me? They will none of them be as great

-as I am? Not if I have twenty?'

-

-'You will be always the eldest son, of course,' said the old man,

-repressing a smile. 'Yes; you will be their head, their chief, their

-leading spirit; but for that reason you will have much more expected of

-you than will be expected of them; you will have to learn much more,

-and try to be always good. Do you follow me, Count Bela?'

-

-Bela's little rosy mouth shut itself up contemptuously. 'I shall be

-always the eldest, and I shall do whatever I like. I do not see why

-they want any others than me.'

-

-'You will not do always what you like, Count Bela.'

-

-'Who shall prevent me?'

-

-'The law, which you will have to obey like everyone else.'

-

-'I shall make the laws when I am a little older,' said Bela. 'And they

-will be for my brothers and all the people, but not for me. I shall do

-what I like.'

-

-'That will be very ungenerous,' said Greswold, quietly. 'Your mother,

-the Countess, is very different. She is stern to herself, and indulgent

-to all others. That is why she is beloved. If you will think of

-yourself so much when you are grown up, you will be hated.'

-

-Bela flushed a little guiltily and angrily.

-

-'That will not matter,' he said sturdily. 'I shall please myself

-always.'

-

-'And be unkind to your brothers?'

-

-'Not if they do what I tell them; I will be very kind if they are good.

-Gela always does what I tell him,' he added after a little pause; 'I do

-not want any but Gela.'

-

-'It is natural you should be fondest of Gela, as he is nearest your

-age, but you must love all the brothers you may have, or you will

-distress your mother very greatly.'

-

-'Why does she want any but me?' said Bela, clinging to his sense of

-personal wrong. And he was not to be turned from that.

-

-'She wants others beside you,' said the physician, adroitly, 'because

-to be happy she needs children who are tender-hearted, unselfish, and

-obedient. You are none of those things, my Count Bela, so Heavens ends

-her consolation.'

-

-Bela opened his blue eyes very wide, and he coloured with mortification.

-

-'She always loves me best!' he said haughtily. 'She always will!'

-

-'That will depend on yourself, my little lord,' said Greswold, with a

-significance which was not lost on the quick intelligence of the child;

-and he never forgot this day when his brother Victor was shown to the

-people.

-

-'There will be no lack of heirs to Hohenszalras,' said the Princess

-meanwhile to his father.

-

-He thought as he heard:

-

-'And if ever she know she can break her marriage like a rotten thread!

-Those boys can all be made as nameless as I was! Would she do it?

-Perhaps not, for the children's sake. God knows----she might change

-even to them; she might hate them as she loves them now, because they

-are mine.'

-

-Even as he sat beside her couch with her hand in his these thoughts

-pursued and haunted him. Remorse and fear consumed him. When she looked

-at the blue eyes of her new-born son, and said to him with a happy

-smile: 'He will be just as much like you as the others are,' he could

-only think with a burning sense of shame, 'Like me! like a traitor!

-like a liar! like a thief!'----and the faces of these children seemed

-to him like those of avenging angels.

-

-He thought with irrepressible agony of the fact that her country's

-laws would divorce her from him if she chose, did ever the truth come

-to her ear. He had always known this indeed, as he had known all the

-other risks he ran in doing what he did. Put it had been far away,

-indistinct, unasserted; whenever the memory of it had passed over him

-he had thrust it away. Now when another knew his secret, he could

-not do so. He had a strange sensation of having fallen from some

-great height; of having all his life slide away like melting ice out

-of his hands. He never once doubted for an instant the good faith of

-Egon Vàsàrhely. He knew that his lips would no more unclose to tell

-his secret than the glaciers yonder would find human voice. But the

-consciousness that one man lived, moved, breathed, rose with each day,

-and went amongst other men, bearing with him that fatal knowledge,

-made it now impossible for himself ever to forget it. A dull remorse,

-a sharp apprehension, were for ever his companions, and never left him

-for long even in his sweetest hours. He did justice to the magnificent

-generosity of the one who spared him. Egon Vàsàrhely knew, as he knew,

-that she, hearing the truth, could annul the marriage if she chose.

-His children would have no rights, no name, if their mother chose to

-separate herself from him. The law would make her once more as free

-as though she had never wedded him. He knew that, and the other man

-who loved her knew it too. He could measure the force of Vàsàrhely's

-temptation as that simple and heroic soldier could not stoop to measure

-his.

-

-He was deeply unhappy, but he concealed it from her. Even when his

-heart beat against hers it seemed to him always that there was an

-invisible wall between himself and her. He longed to tell the whole

-truth to her, but he was afraid; if the whole pain and shame had been

-his own that the confession would have caused, he would have dared it;

-but he had not the heart to inflict on her such suffering, not the

-courage to destroy their happiness with his own hand. Egon Vàsàrhely

-alone knew, and he for her sake would never speak. As for the reproach

-of his own conscience, as for the remorse that the words of his

-children might at any moment call up in him, these lie must bear. He

-was a man of cool judgment and of ready resource, and though he had

-never foreseen the sharp repentance which his better nature now felt,

-he knew that he would be able to live it down as he had crushed out so

-many other scruples. He vowed to himself that as far as in him lay he

-would atone for his act. The moral influence of his wife had not been

-without effect on him. Not altogether, but partially, he had grown to

-believe in what she believed in, of the duty of human life to other

-lives; he had not her sympathy for others, but he had admired it, and

-in his own way followed it, though without her faith.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXVIII.

-

-

-Life went on in its old pathways at Hohenszalras. Nothing more, was

-said by him, or to him, as to his rejection of the Russian mission. She

-was niggard in nothing, and when she offered her faith or pledged her

-silence, gave both entirely and ungrudgingly. Sabran to her showed an

-increase of devotion, an absolute adoration which would in themselves

-have sufficed to console any woman; and if the most observant member

-of their household, Greswold, perceived in him a preoccupation, a

-languor, a gloom, which boded ill for their future peace, the old man

-was too loyal in his attachment not to endeavour to shake off his own

-suspicions and discredit his own penetration.

-

-The Princess had been favoured by a note from Olga Brancka, in which

-that lady wrote: 'Have you discovered the nature of his refusal of

-Russia? Myself, I believe that I was to blame. I hinted to him that

-he would be tempted to his old sins in St. Petersburg, and that Wanda

-would be very miserable there. It seems that this was enough for the

-tender heart of this devoted lover, and too much for his wisdom and

-his judgment; he rejected the mission after accepting it. I believe

-the Court is furious. I am not _de service_ now, so that I have no

-opportunity of endeavouring to restore him to favour; but I imagine the

-Emperor will not quarrel for ever with the Hohenszalrasburg.

-

-The letter restored him at least to the favour of Mdme. Ottilie.

-Exaggerated as such a scruple appeared it did not seem to her

-impossible in a man whose devotion to his wife she daily witnessed,

-shown in a hundred traits. She blamed him still severely in her own

-thoughts for what she held an inexcusable disrespect to the Crown, but

-she kept her word scrupulously and never spoke to him on the subject.

-

-'Where else in the wide world would any man have found such

-forbearance?' he thought with gratitude, and he knew that nowhere

-would such delicate sentiment have existed outside the pale of that

-fine patrician dignity which is as incapable of the vulgarity of

-inquisitiveness and interrogation as was the Spartan of lament.

-

-The months went by. They did not leave home; he seemed to have lost

-all wish for any absence, and even repulsed the idea of inviting the

-usual house parties of the year. She supposed that he was averse to

-meeting people who might recur to his rejection of the post he had

-once accepted. The summer passed and the autumn came; he spent his

-time in occasional sport, the keen and perilous sport of the Austrian

-mountains, and more often and more faithfully beguiled himself with

-those arts of which he was a brilliant master, though he would call

-himself no more than a mere amateur. From the administration of the

-estates he had altogether withdrawn himself.

-

-'You are so much wiser than I,' he always said to her; and when she

-would have referred to him, replied: 'You have your lawyers; they are

-all honest men. Consult them rather than me.'

-

-With the affairs of Idrac only he continued to concern himself a

-little, and was persistent in setting aside all its revenues to

-accumulate for his second son.

-

-'I wish you cared more about all these things,' she said to him one

-day, when she had in her hand the reports from the mines of Galicia.

-He answered angrily, 'I have no right to them. They are not mine. If

-you chose to give them all away to the Crown I should say nothing.'

-

-'Not even for the children's sake?'

-

-'No: you would be entirely justified if you liked to give the children

-nothing.'

-

-'I really do not understand you,' she said in great surprise.

-

-'Everything is yours,' he said abruptly.

-

-'And the children too, surely!' she said, with a smile: but the

-strangeness of the remark disquieted her. 'It is over-sensitiveness,'

-she thought; 'he can never altogether forget that he was poor. It is

-for that reason public life would have been so good for him; dignities

-which he enjoyed of his own, honours that he arrived at through his own

-attainments.'

-

-Chagrined to have lost, the opportunity of winning personal honours

-in a field congenial to him, the sense that everything was hers could

-hardly fail to gall him sometimes constantly, though she strove to

-efface any remembrance or reminder that it was so.

-

-In the midsummer of that year, whilst they were quite alone, they were

-surprised by another letter from Mdme. Brancka, in which she proposed

-to take Hohenszalras on her way from France to Tsarköe Selo, where she

-was about to pay a visit which could not be declined by her.

-

-When in the spring he had written with formality to her to announce the

-birth of his son Victor, she had answered with a witty coquettish reply

-such as might well have been provocative of further correspondence.

-But he had not taken up the invitation. Mortified and irritated, she

-had compared his writing with the piece of burnt paper, and been more

-satisfied than ever that he had penned the name of Vassia Kazán. But

-even were it so, what, she wondered, had it to do with Russia? He

-and Egon Vàsàrhely were not friends so intimate that they had any

-common interests one with the other. The mystery had interested her

-intensely when her rapid intuition had connected the resignation of

-Sabran's appointment with the messenger sent to him from Taróc. Her

-impatience to be again in his presence grew intense. She imagined a

-thousand stories, to cast each aside in derision as impossible. All her

-suppositions were built upon no better basis than a fragment of charred

-paper; but her shrewd intuition bore her into the region of truth,

-though the actual truth of course never suggested itself to her even in

-her most fantastic and dramatic visions. Finally she thus proposed to

-visit Hohenszalras in the midsummer months.

-

-'Last year you had such a crowd about you,' she wrote, 'that I

-positively saw nothing of you, _liebe_ Wanda. You are alone now, and

-I venture to propose myself for a fortnight. You cannot exactly be

-said to be in the way to anywhere, but I shall make you so. When one

-is going to Russia, a matter of another five hundred miles or so is a

-bagatelle.'

-

-'We must let her come,' said Wanda, as she gave the letter to Sabran,

-who, having read it, said with much sincerity----

-

-'For heaven's sake, do not. A fortnight of Madame Olga! as well

-have----a century of "Madame Angot!"'

-

-'Can I prevent her?'

-

-'You can make some excuse. I do not like Mdme. Brancka.'

-

-'Why?'

-

-He hesitated; he could not tell her what he had felt at the ball of

-the Hofburg. 'She reminds me of a woman who drew me into a thousand

-follies, and to cap her good deeds betrayed me to the Prussians. If you

-must let her come I will go away. I will go and see your haras on the

-Pusztas.'

-

-'Are you serious?'

-

-'Quite serious. Were I not ashamed of such a weakness, I should use a

-feminine expression. I should say "_elle me donne des nerfs._"'

-

-'I think she has a great admiration for you, and she does not conceal

-it.'

-

-'Merely because she is sensible that I do not like her. Such women as

-she are discontented if only one person fail to admit their charm. She

-is accustomed to admiration, and she is not scrupulous as to how she

-obtains it.'

-

-'My dear! pray remember that she is our guest, and doubly our relative.'

-

-'I will try and remember it; but, believe me, all honour is wholly

-wasted upon Mdme. Olga. You offer her a coin of which the person and

-the superscription are alike unknown to her.'

-

-'You are very severe,' said his wife.

-

-She looked at him, and perceived that he was not jesting, that he

-was on the contrary disturbed and annoyed, and she remembered the

-persistence with which Olga Brancka had sought his companionship and

-accompanied him on his sport in the summer of her visit there.

-

-'If she had not married first my brother and then my cousin, she would

-never have been an intimate friend of mine,' she continued. 'She is of

-a world wholly opposed to all my tastes. For you to be absent, if she

-came, would be too marked, I think; but we can both leave, if you like.

-I am well enough for any movement now, and I can leave the child with

-his nurse. Shall we make a tour in Hungary? The haras will interest

-you. There are the mines, too, that one ought to visit.'

-

-He received her assent with gratitude and delight. He felt that he

-would have gone to the uttermost ends of the earth rather than run the

-risk of spending long lonely summer days in the excitation of Mdme.

-Brancka's presence. He detested her, he would always detest her; and

-yet when he shut his eyes he saw her so clearly, with the malicious

-light in her dusky glance, and the jewelled butterfly trembling about

-her breasts.

-

-'She shall never come under Wanda's roof if I can prevent it,' he

-thought, remembering her as she had been that night.

-

-A few days later the Countess Brancka, much to her rage, had a note

-from the Hohenszalrasburg, which said that they were on the point of

-leaving for Hungary and Galicia, but that if she would come there in

-their absence, the Princess Ottilie, who remained, would be charmed to

-receive her. Of course she excused herself, and did not go. A visit to

-the solitudes of the Iselthal, where she would, see no one but a lady

-of eighty years old and four little children, had few attractions for

-the adventurous and vivacious wife of Stefan Brancka.

-

-'It is only Wanda's jealousy,' she thought, and was furious; but she

-looked at herself in the mirror, and was almost consoled as she thought

-also, 'He avoids me. Therefore he is afraid of me!'

-

-She went to her god, _le monde_, and worshipped at all its shrines and

-in all its fashions; but in the midst of the turmoil and the triumphs,

-the worries and the intoxications of her life, she did not lose her

-hold on her purpose, nor forget that he had slighted her. His beautiful

-face, serene and scornful, was always before her. He might have been at

-her feet, and he chose to dwell beside his wife under those solitary

-forests, amongst those solitary mountains of the High Tauern!

-

-'With a woman he has lived with all these eight years!' she thought,

-with furious impatience. 'With a woman who has grafted the Lady of La

-Garaye on Libussa, who never gives him a moment's jealousy, who is

-as flawless as an ivory statue or a marble throne, who suckles her

-children and could spin their clothes if she wanted, who never cares

-to go outside the hills of her own home----the Teuton _Hausfrau_ to

-her finger-tips.' And she was all the more bitter and the more angered

-because, always as she tried to think thus, the image of Wanda rose up

-before her, as she had seen her so often at Vienna or Hohenszalras,

-with the great pearls on her hair and on her breast.

-

-/$

-A planet at whose passing, lo!

-All lesser stars recede, and night

-Grows clear as day thus lighted up

-By all her loveliness, which burns

-With pure white flame of chastity;

-And fires of fair thought....

-$/

-

-

-END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

-

-

-

-

-

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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52136 ***
+
+WANDA
+
+BY
+
+OUIDA
+
+
+
+    _'Doch!--alles was dazu mich trieb;_
+    _Gott!--war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'_
+                                         Goethe
+
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES
+
+VOL. II.
+
+
+London
+
+CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
+
+1883
+
+
+
+
+WANDA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+On her return she spoke of her royal friends, of her cousins, of
+society, of her fears for the peace of Europe, and her doubts as to
+the strength of the empire; but she did not speak of the one person of
+whom, beyond all others, Mdme. Ottilie was desirous to hear. When some
+hours had passed, and still she had never alluded to the existence of,
+the Princess could bear silence no longer, and casting prudence to the
+winds, said boldly and with impatience:
+
+'And your late guest? Have you nothing to tell me? Surely you have seen
+him?'
+
+'He called once,' she answered, 'and I heard him speak at the Chamber.'
+
+'And was that all?' cried the Princess, disappointed.
+
+'He speaks very well in public,' added Wanda, 'and he said many tender
+and grateful things of you, and sent you many messages--such grateful
+ones that my memory is too clumsy a tray to hold such eggshell china.'
+
+She was angered with herself as she spoke, but the fragrance of the
+white lilac and the remembrance of its donor pursued her--angered
+with herself, too, because Hohenszalras seemed for the moment sombre,
+solitary, still, almost melancholy, wrapped in that winter whiteness
+and stillness which she had always loved so well.
+
+The next morning she saw all her people, visited her schools and her
+stables, and tried to persuade herself that she was as contented as
+ever.
+
+The aurist came from Paris shortly after her, and consoled the Princess
+by assuring her that the slight deafness she suffered from occasionally
+was due to cold.
+
+'Of course!' she said, with some triumph. 'These mountains, all this
+water, rain whenever there is not snow, snow whenever there is not
+rain; it is a miracle, and the mercy of Heaven, if one saves any of
+one's five senses uninjured in a residence here.'
+
+She had her satin hood trebly wadded, and pronounced the aurist a
+charming person. Herr Greswold in an incautious moment had said to her
+that deafness was one of the penalties of age and did not depend upon
+climate. A Paris doctor would not have earned his fee of two hundred
+napoleons if he had only produced so ungallant a truism. She heard a
+little worse after his visit, perhaps, but if so, she said that was
+caused by the additional wadding in her hood. He had told her to use a
+rose-water syringe, and Herr Greswold was forbidden her presence for a
+week because he averred that you might as well try to melt the glacier
+with a lighted pastille.
+
+The aurist gone, life at Hohenszalras resumed its even tenor; and
+except for, the post, the tea-cups, and the kind of dishes served at
+dinner, hardly differed from what life had been there in the sixteenth
+century, save that there were no saucy pages playing in the court, and
+no destriers stamping in the stalls, and no culverins loaded on the
+bastions.
+
+'It is like living between the illuminated leaves of one of the Hours,'
+thought the Princess, and though her conscience told her that to dwell
+so in a holy book like a pressed flower was the most desirable life
+that could be granted by Heaven to erring mortality, still she felt it
+was dull. A little gossip, a little movement, a little rolling of other
+carriage-wheels than her own, had always seemed desirable to her.
+
+Life here was laid down on broad lines. It was stately, austere,
+tranquil; one day was a mirror of all the rest. The Princess fretted
+for some little _frou-frou_ of the world to break its solemn silence.
+
+When Wanda returned from her ride one forenoon she said a little
+abruptly to her aunt:
+
+'I suppose you will be glad to hear you have convinced me. I have
+telegraphed to Ludwig to open and air the house in Vienna; we will go
+there for three months. It is, perhaps, time I should be seen at Court.'
+
+'It is a very sudden decision!' said Madame Ottilie, doubting that she
+could hear aright.
+
+'It is the fruit of your persuasions, dear mother mine! The only
+advantage in having houses in half a dozen different places is to be
+able to go to them without consideration. You think me obstinate,
+whimsical, barbaric; the Kaiserin thinks so too. I will endeavour to
+conquer my stubbornness. We will go to Vienna next week. You will see
+all your old friends, and I all my old jewels.'
+
+The determination once made, she adhered to it. She had felt a vague
+annoyance at the constancy and the persistency with which regret for
+the lost society of Sabran recurred to her. She had attributed it to
+the solitude in which she lived: that solitude which is the begetter
+and the nurse of thought may also be the hotbed of unwise fancies.
+It was indeed a solitude filled with grave duties, careful labours,
+high desires and endeavours; but perhaps, she thought, the world for a
+while, even in its folly, might be healthier, might preserve her from
+the undue share which the memory of a stranger had in her musings.
+
+Her people, her lands, her animals, would none of them suffer by
+a brief absence; and perhaps there were duties due as well to her
+position as to her order. She was the only representative of the great
+Counts of Szalras. With the whimsical ingratitude to fate common
+to human nature, she thought she would sooner have been obscure,
+unnoticed, free. Her rank began to drag on her with something like the
+sense of a chain. She felt that she was growing irritable, fanciful,
+thankless; so she ordered the huge old palace in the Herrengasse to be
+got ready, and sought the world as others sought the cloister.
+
+In a week's time she was installed in Vienna, with a score of horses,
+two score of servants, and all the stir and pomp that attend a great
+establishment in the most aristocratic city of Europe, and she made her
+first appearance at a ball at the Residenz covered with jewels from
+head to foot; the wonderful old jewels that for many seasons had lain
+unseen in their iron coffers--opals given by Rurik, sapphires taken
+from Kara Mustafa, pearls worn by her people at the wedding of Mary of
+Burgundy, diamonds that had been old when Maria Theresa had been young.
+
+She had three months of continual homage, of continual flattery, of
+what others called pleasure, and what none could have denied was
+splendour. Great nobles laid their heart and homage before her feet,
+and all the city looked after her for her beauty as she drove her
+horses round the Ringstrasse. It left her all very cold and unamused
+and indifferent.
+
+She was impatient to be back at Hohenszalras, amidst the stillness of
+the woods, the sound of the waters.
+
+'You cannot say now that I do not care for the world, because I have
+forgotten what it was like,' she observed to her aunt.
+
+'I wish you cared more,' said the Princess. 'Position has its duties.'
+
+'I never dispute that; only I do not see that being wearied by society
+constitutes one of them. I cannot understand why people are so afraid
+of solitude; the routine of the world is quite as monotonous.'
+
+'If you only appreciated the homage that you receive----'
+
+'Surely one's mind is something like one's conscience: if one can be
+not too utterly discontented with what it says one does not need the
+verdict of others.'
+
+'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with
+your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your
+overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the
+one I possess.'
+
+'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be
+pride--the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely
+better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'
+
+'They are not all simpletons.'
+
+'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very
+stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well
+as of the Wurstel-Prater.'
+
+The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the
+Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw
+the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she
+was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something
+wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up,
+nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.
+
+The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain,
+and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging
+primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of
+the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging
+with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass
+was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale
+sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras,
+and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she
+returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.
+
+'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold,
+as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the
+Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias
+and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between
+the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of
+their stalls.
+
+'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert,
+as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with
+tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with
+'_Willkommen_' written on it.
+
+She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single
+word.
+
+How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that
+day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been
+sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.
+
+'That is the Stanhopea tigrina,' said Herr Greswold, touching one with
+reverent fingers; 'they are all very rare. It is a welcome worthy of
+you, my lady.'
+
+'A very extravagant one,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a certain
+displeasure that mingled with a softened emotion. 'Who brought it?'
+
+'The Marquis de Sabran, by _extra-poste_, himself this morning,'
+answered Hubert--an answer she did not expect. 'But he would not wait;
+he would not even take a glass of tokayer, or let his horses stay for a
+feed of corn.'
+
+'What knight-errantry!' said the Princess well pleased.
+
+'What folly!' said Wanda, but she had the basket of orchids taken to
+her own octagon room.
+
+It seemed as if he had divined how much of late she had thought of him.
+She was touched, and yet she was angered a little.
+
+'Surely she will write to him,' thought the Princess wistfully very
+often: but she did not write. To a very proud woman the dawning
+consciousness of love is always an irritation, an offence, a failure, a
+weakness: the mistress of Hohenszalras could not quickly pardon herself
+for taking with pleasure the message of the orchids.
+
+A little while later she received a letter from Olga Brancka. In it she
+wrote from Paris:
+
+'Parsifal is doing wonders in the Chamber, that is, he is making Paris
+talk; his party will forbid him doing anything else. You certainly
+worked a miracle. I hear he never plays, never looks at an actress,
+never does anything wrong, and when a grand heiress was offered to
+him by her people refused her hand blandly but firmly. What is one to
+think? That he washed his soul white in the Szalrassee?'
+
+It was the subtlest flattery of all, the only flattery to which she
+would have been accessible, this entire alteration in the current
+of a man's whole life; this change in habit, inclination, temper,
+and circumstance. If he had approached her its charm would have been
+weakened, its motive suspected; but aloof and silent as he remained,
+his abandonment of all old ways, his adoption of a sterner and worthier
+career, moved her with its marked, mute homage of herself.
+
+When she read his discourses in the French papers she felt a glow
+of triumph, as if she had achieved some personal success; she felt
+a warmth at her heart as of something near and dear to her, which
+was doing well and wisely in the sight of men. His cause did not,
+indeed, as Olga Brancka had said, render tangible, practical, victory
+impossible for him, but he had the victories of eloquence, of
+patriotism, of high culture, of pure and noble language, and these
+blameless laurels seemed to her half of her own gathering.
+
+'Will you never reward him?' the Princess ventured to say at last,
+overcome by her own impatience to rashness. 'Never? Not even by a word?'
+
+'Hear mother,' said Wanda, with a smile which perplexed and baffled the
+Princess, 'if your hero wanted reward he would not be the leader of a
+lost cause. Pray do not suggest to me a doubt of his disinterestedness.
+You will do him very ill service.'
+
+The Princess was mute, vaguely conscious that she had said something
+ill-timed or ill-advised.
+
+Time passed on and brought beautiful weather in the month of June,
+which here in the High Tauern means what April does in the south.
+Millions of song-birds were shouting in the woods, and thousands of
+nests were suspended on the high branches of the forest trees, or
+hidden in the greenery of the undergrowth; water-birds perched and
+swung in the tall reeds where the brimming streams tumbled; the purple,
+the white, and the grey herons were all there, and the storks lately
+flown home from Asia or Africa were settling in bands by the more
+marshy grounds beside the northern shores of the Szalrassee.
+
+One afternoon she had been riding far and fast, and on her return a
+telegram from Vienna had been brought to her, sent on from Lienz.
+Having opened it, she approached her aunt and said with an unsteady
+voice:
+
+'War is declared between France and Prussia!'
+
+'We expected it; we are ready for it,' said the Princess, with all
+her Teutonic pride in her eyes. 'We shall show her that we cannot be
+insulted with impunity.'
+
+'It is a terrible calamity for the world,' said Wanda, and her face was
+very pale.
+
+The thought which was present to her was that Sabran would be foremost
+amidst volunteers. She did not hear a word of all the political
+exultation with which Princess Ottilie continued to make her militant
+prophecies. She shivered as with cold in the warmth of the midsummer
+sunset.
+
+'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her
+house.
+
+The Princess demurred.
+
+'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all
+the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial.
+You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the
+especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge
+Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'
+
+'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.
+
+She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from
+her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.
+
+In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War
+is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss
+of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I
+shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw
+bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every
+sword she has.'
+
+Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:
+
+'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her
+soil is bound to arm.'
+
+More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her
+grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.
+
+But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,'
+written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were
+filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that
+was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a
+child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian
+campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made
+her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal
+conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she
+became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had
+at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from
+the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the
+shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the
+command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their
+own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was
+congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of
+his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally,
+in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name
+mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That
+was all.
+
+The autumn began to deepen into winter, and complete silence covered
+all his life. She thought with a great remorse--if he were dead?
+Perhaps he was dead? Why had she been always so cold to him? She
+suffered intensely; all the more intensely because it was not a sorrow
+which she could not confess even to herself. When she ceased altogether
+to hear anything of or from him, she realised the hold which he had
+taken on her life.
+
+These months of suspense did more to attach her to him than years
+of assiduous and ardent homage could have done. She, a daughter of
+soldiers, had always felt any man almost unmanly who had not received
+the baptism of fire.
+
+Mdme. Ottilie talked of him constantly, wondered frequently if he were
+wounded, slain, or in prison; she never spoke his name, and dreaded to
+hear it.
+
+Greswold, who perceived an anxiety in her that, he did not dare to
+allude to, ransacked every journal that was published in German to find
+some trace of Sabran's name. At the first he saw often some mention of
+the Cuirassiers d'Orléans, and of their intrepid Colonel Commandant:
+some raid, skirmish, or charge in which they had been conspicuous for
+reckless gallantry. But after the month of November he could find
+nothing. The whole regiment seemed to have been obliterated from
+existence.
+
+Winter settled down on Central Austria with cold silence, with roads
+blocked and mountains impassable. The dumbness, the solitude around
+her, which she had always loved so well, now grew to her intolerable.
+It seemed like death.
+
+Paris capitulated. The news reached her at the hour of a violent
+snowstorm; the postillion of her post-sledge bringing it had his feet
+frozen.
+
+Though her cousins of Lilienhöhe were amongst those who entered the
+city as conquerors, the fate of Paris smote her with a heavy blow. She
+felt as if the cold of the outer world had chilled her very bones, her
+very soul. The Princess, looking at her, was afraid to rejoice.
+
+On the following day she wrote to her cousin Hugo of Lilienhöhe, who
+was in Paris with the Imperial Guard. She asked him to inquire for and
+tell her the fate of a friend, the Marquis de Sabran.
+
+In due time Prince Hugo answered:
+
+'The gentleman you asked for was one of the most dangerous of our
+enemies. He commanded a volunteer cavalry regiment, which was almost
+cut to pieces by the Bavarian horse in an engagement before Orleans.
+Two or three alone escaped; their Colonel was severely wounded in
+the thigh, and had his charger shot dead under him. He was taken
+prisoner by the Bavarians after a desperate resistance. Whilst he
+lay on the ground he shot three of our men with his revolver. He was
+sent to a fortress, I think Ehrenbreitstein, but I will inquire more
+particularly. I am sorry to think that you have any French friends.
+
+By-and-by she heard that he had been confined not at Ehrenbreitstein
+but at a more obscure and distant fortress on the Elbe; that his wounds
+had been cured, and that he would shortly be set free like other
+prisoners of war. In the month of March in effect she received a brief
+letter from his own hand, gloomy and profoundly dejected.
+
+'Our plans were betrayed,' he wrote. 'We were surprised and surrounded
+just as we had hobbled our horses and lain down to rest, after being
+the whole day in the saddle. Bavarian cavalry, outnumbering us four to
+one, attacked us almost ere we could mount our worn-out beasts. My
+poor troopers were cut to pieces. They hunted me down when my charger
+dropped, and I was made a prisoner. When they could they despatched
+me to one of their places on the Elbe. I have been here December and
+January. I am well. I suppose I must be very strong; nothing kills
+me. They are now about to send me back to the frontier. My beautiful
+Paris! What a fate! But I forget, I cannot hope for your sympathy; your
+kinsmen are our conquerors. I know not whether the house I lived in
+there exists, but if you will write me a word at Romaris, you will be
+merciful, and show me that you do not utterly despise a lost cause and
+a vanquished soldier.'
+
+She wrote to him at Romaris, and the paper she wrote on felt her tears.
+In conclusion she said:
+
+'Whenever you will, come and make sure for yourself that both the
+Princess Ottilie and I honour courage and heroism none the less because
+it is companioned by misfortune.'
+
+But he did not come.
+
+She understood why he did not. An infinite pity for him overflowed her
+heart. His public career interrupted, his country ruined, his future
+empty, what remained to him? Sometimes she thought, with a blush on her
+face, though she was all alone: 'I do.' But then, if he never came to
+hear that?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+The little hamlet of Romaris, on the coast of Finisterre, was very dull
+and dark and silent. A few grave peasant women knitted as they walked
+down the beach or sat at their doors; a few children did the same. Out
+on the _landes_ some cows were driven through the heather and broom;
+out on the sea some fishing-boats with rough, red sails were rocking to
+and fro. All was melancholy, silent, poor; life was hard at Romaris for
+all. The weatherbeaten church looked grey and naked on a black rock;
+the ruins of the old _manoir_ faced it amidst sands and surfs; the only
+thing of beauty was the bay, and that for the folk of Romaris had no
+beauty; they had seen it kill so many.
+
+There was never any change at Romaris, unless it were a change in the
+weather, a marriage, a birth, or a death. Therefore the women and
+children who were knitting had lifted up their heads as a stranger,
+accompanied by their priest, had come down over the black rocks, on
+which the church stood, towards the narrow lane that parted the houses
+where they clustered together face to face on the edge of the shore.
+
+Their priest, an old man much loved by them, came slowly towards them,
+conversing in low tones with the stranger, who had been young and
+handsome, and a welcome sight, since a traveller to Romaris always
+needed a sailing-boat or a rowing-boat, a guide over the moors, or a
+drive in an ox-waggon through the deep-cut lanes of the country.
+
+But they had ceased to think of such things as these when the curate,
+with his hands extended as when he blessed them, had said in _bas_
+Breton as he stood beside them:
+
+'My children, this is the last of the Sabrans of Romaris, come back to
+us from the far west that lies in the setting of the sun. Salute him,
+and show him that in Brittany we do not forget--nay, not in a hundred
+years.'
+
+Many years had gone by since then, and of the last of the old race,
+Romaris had scarcely seen more than when he had been hidden from
+their sight on the other side of the heaving ocean. Sabran rarely came
+thither. There was nothing to attract a man who loved the world and
+who was sought by it, in the stormy sea coast, the strip of sea-lashed
+oak forest, that one tall tower with its gaunt walls of stone which
+was all that was left of what had once been the fortress of his race.
+Now and then they saw him, chiefly when he had heard that there was
+wild weather on the western coast, and at such times he would go out
+in their boats to distressed vessels, or steer through churning waters
+to reach a fishing-smack in trouble, with a wild courage and an almost
+fierce energy which made him for the moment one of themselves. But
+such times had been few, and all that Romaris really knew of the last
+marquis was that he was a gay gentleman away there in distant Paris.
+
+He had been a mere name to them. Now and then he had sent fifty
+napoleons, or a hundred, to the old priest for such as were poor or
+sick amongst them. That was all. Now after the war he came hither.
+Paris had become hateful to him; his political career was ended, at
+all events for the time; the whole country groaned in anguish; the
+vices and follies that had accompanied his past life disgusted him
+in remembrance. He had been wounded and a prisoner; he had suffered
+betrayal at unworthy hands; Cochonette had sold him to the Prussians,
+in revenge of his desertion of her.
+
+He was further removed from the Countess von Szalras than ever. In the
+crash with which the Second Empire had fallen and sunk out of sight for
+evermore, his own hopes had gone down like a ship that sinks suddenly
+in a dark night. All his old associations were broken, half his old
+friends were dead or ruined; gay châteaux that he had ever been welcome
+at were smoking ruins or melancholy hospitals; the past had been
+felled to the ground like the poor avenues of the Bois. It affected
+him profoundly. As far as he was capable of an impersonal sentiment
+he loved France, which had been for so many years his home, and which
+had always seemed to smile at him with indulgent kindness. Her vices,
+her disgrace, her feebleness, her fall, hurt him with an intense pain
+that was not altogether selfish, but had in it a nobler indignation, a
+nobler regret.
+
+When he was released by the Prussians and sent across the frontier, he
+went at once to this sad sea village of Romaris, to collect as best
+he might the shattered fragments of his life, which seemed to him as
+though it had been thrown down by an earthquake. He had resigned his
+place as deputy when he had offered his sword to France; he had now no
+career, no outlet for ambition, no occupation. Many of his old friends
+were dead or ruined; although such moderate means as he possessed were
+safe, they were too slender to give him any position adequate to his
+rank. His old life in Paris, even if Paris arose from her tribulations,
+gay and glorious once more, seemed to him altogether impossible. He had
+lost taste for those pleasures and distractions which had before the
+war--or before his sojourn on the Holy Isle--seemed to him the Alpha
+and Omega of a man's existence. '_Que faire?_' he asked himself wearily
+again and again. He did not even know whether his rooms in Paris had
+been destroyed or spared; a few thousands of francs which he had
+made by a successful speculation years before, and placed in foreign
+funds, were all he had to live on. His keen sense told him that the
+opportunity which might have replaced the Bourbon throne had been lost
+through fatal hesitation. His own future appeared to him like a blank
+dead wall that rose up in front of him barring all progress; he was no
+longer young enough to select a career and commence it. With passionate
+self-reproach he lamented all the lost irrevocable years that he had
+wasted.
+
+Romaris was not a place to cheer a disappointed and dejected soldier
+who had borne the burning pain of bodily wounds and the intolerable
+shame of captivity in a hostile land. Its loneliness, its darkness,
+its storms, its poverty, had nothing in them with which to restore his
+spirit to hope or his sinews to ambition. In these cold, bleak, windy
+days of a dreary and joyless spring-time, the dusky moors and the
+gruesome sea were desolate, without compensating grandeur. The people
+around him were all taciturn, dull, stupid; they had not suffered by
+the war, but they understood that, poor as they were, they would have
+to bear their share in the burden of the nation's ransom. They barred
+their doors and counted their hoarded gains in the dark with throbbing
+hearts, and stole out in the raw, wet, gusty dawns to kneel at the
+bleeding feet of their Christ. He envied them their faith; he could not
+comfort them, they could not comfort him; they were too far asunder.
+
+The only solace he had was the knowledge that he had done his duty by
+France, and to the memory of those whose name he bore; that he had
+rendered what service he could; that he had not fled from pain and
+peril; that he had at least worn his sword well and blamelessly; that
+he had not abandoned his discrowned city of pleasure in the day of
+humiliation and martyrdom. The only solace he had was that he felt
+Wanda von Szalras herself could have commanded him to do no more than
+he had done in this the Année Terrible.
+
+But, though his character had been purified and strengthened by the
+baptism of fire, and though his egotism had been destroyed by the
+endless scenes of suffering and of heroism which he had witnessed, he
+could not in a year change so greatly that he could be content with the
+mere barren sense of duty done and honour redeemed. He was deeply and
+restlessly miserable. He knew not where to turn, either for occupation
+or for consolation. Time hung on his hands like a wearisome wallet of
+stones.
+
+When all the habits of life are suddenly rent asunder, they are like a
+rope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or they may be
+thrown altogether aside and a new strand woven, but they will never be
+the same thing again.
+
+Romaris, with its few wind-tortured trees and its leaden-hued dangerous
+seas, seemed to him, indeed, a _champ des trépassés_, as it was called,
+a field of death. The naked, ugly, half-ruined towers, which no ivy
+shrouded and no broken marble ennobled, as one or the other would have
+done had it been in England or in Italy, was a dreary residence for
+a man who was used to all the elegant and luxurious habits of a man
+of the world, who was also a lover of art and a collector of choice
+trifles. His rooms had been the envy of his friends, with all their
+eighteenth century furniture, and their innumerable and unclassified
+treasures; when he had opened his eyes of a morning a pastel of La
+Tour had smiled at him, rose-coloured windows had made even a grey
+sky smile. Without, there had been the sound of wheels going down
+the gay Boulevard Haussmann. All Paris had passed by, tripping and
+talking, careless and mirthful, beneath his gilded balconies bright
+with canariensis and volubilis; and on a little table, heaped in
+their hundreds, had been cards that bade him to all the best and most
+agreeable houses, whilst, betwixt them, slipped coyly in many an
+amorous note, many an unlooked-for declaration, many an eagerly-desired
+appointment.
+
+'_Quel beau temps!_' he thought, as he awoke in the chill, bare,
+unlively chamber of the old tower by the sea; and it seemed to him
+that he must be dreaming: that all the months of the war had been
+a nightmare; that if he fully awakened he would find himself once
+more with the April sunshine shining through the rose glass, and
+the carriages rolling beneath over the asphalt road. But it was no
+nightmare, it was a terrible, ghastly reality to him, as to so many
+thousands. There were the scars on his breast and his loins where
+the Prussian steel had hacked and the Prussian shot had pierced him;
+there was his sword in a corner all dinted, notched, stained; there
+was a crowd of hideous ineffaceable tumultuous memories; it was all
+true enough, only too true, and he was alone at Romaris, with all his
+dreams and ambitions faded into thin air, vanished like the blown burst
+bubbles of a child's sport.
+
+In time to come he might recover power and nerve to recommence his
+struggle for distinction, but at present it seemed to him that all was
+over. His imprisonment had shaken and depressed him as nothing else
+in the trials of war could have done. He had been shut up for months
+alone, with his own desperation. To a man of high courage and impatient
+appetite for action there is no injury so great and in its effect so
+lasting as captivity. Joined to this he had the fever of a strong, and
+now perfectly hopeless, passion.
+
+Pacing to and fro the brick floor of the tower looking down on the
+sands and rocks of the coast, his thoughts were incessantly with Wanda
+von Szalras in her stately ancient house, built so high up amidst the
+mountains and walled in by the great forests and the ice slopes of the
+glaciers. In the heat and stench of carnage he had longed for a breath
+of that mountain breeze, for a glance from those serene eyes; he longed
+for them still.
+
+As he passed to and fro in the wild wintry weather, his heart was sick
+with hope deferred, with unavailing regret and repentance, with useless
+longings.
+
+It was near noonday; there was no sun; a heavy wrack of cloud was
+sweeping up from the west; on the air the odour of rotting fish and
+of fish-oil, and of sewage trickling uncovered to the beach, were too
+strong to be driven away by the pungency of the sea.
+
+The sea was high and moaning loud; the dusk was full of rain; the
+wind-tormented trees groaned and seemed to sigh; their boughs were
+still scarce in bud though May had come. He felt cold, weary, hopeless.
+His walk brought no warmth to his veins, and his thoughts none to
+his heart. The moisture of the air seemed to chill him to the bone,
+and he went within and mounted the broken granite stairs to his
+solitary chamber, bare of all save the simplest necessaries, gloomy
+and cheerless with the winds and the bats beating together at the high
+iron-barred casement. He wearily lighted a little oil lamp, and threw
+a log or two of drift-wood on the hearth and set fire to them with a
+faggot of dried ling.
+
+He dreaded his long lonely evening.
+
+He had set the lamp on a table while he had set fire to the wood; its
+light fell palely on a small white square thing. It was a letter. He
+took it up eagerly; he, who in Paris had often tossed aside, with a
+passing glance, the social invitations of the highest personages and
+the flattering words of the loveliest women.
+
+Here, any letter seemed a friend, and as he took up this his pulse
+quickened; he saw that it was sealed with armorial bearings which he
+knew--a shield bearing three vultures with two knights as supporters,
+and with the motto '_Gott und mein Schwert_;' the same arms, the same
+motto as were borne upon the great red and gold banner floating from
+the keep on the north winds at the Hohenszalrasburg. He opened it with
+a hand which shook a little and a quick throb of pleasure at his heart.
+He had scarcely hoped that she would write again to him. The sight of
+her writing filled him with a boundless joy, the purest he had ever
+known called forth by the hand of woman.
+
+The letter was brief, grave, kind. As he read he seemed to hear the
+calm harmonious voice of the lady of Hohenszalras speaking to him in
+her mellowed and softened German tongue.
+
+She sent him words of consolation, of sympathy, of congratulation, on
+the course of action he had taken in a time of tribulation, which had
+been the touchstone of character to so many.
+
+'Tell me something of Romaris,' she said in conclusion. 'I am sure
+you will grow to care for the place and the people, now that you seek
+both in the hour of the martyrdom of France. Have you any friends near
+you? Have you books? How do your days pass? How do you fill up time,
+which must seem so dull and blank to you after the fierce excitations
+and the rapid changes of war? Tell me all about your present life, and
+remember that we at Hohenszalras know how to honour courage and heroic
+misfortune.'
+
+He laid the letter down after twice reading it. Life seemed no longer
+all over for him. He had earned her praise and her sympathy. It was
+doubtful if years of the most brilliant political successes would have
+done as much as his adversity, his misadventure, and his daring had
+done for him in her esteem. She had the blood of twenty generations of
+warriors in her, and nothing appealed so forcibly to her sympathies and
+her instincts as the heroism of the sword. Those few lines too were
+a permission to write to her. He replied at once, with a gratitude
+somewhat guardedly expressed, and with details almost wholly impersonal.
+
+She was disappointed that he said so little of himself, but she did
+justice to the delicacy of the carefully guarded words from a man
+whose passion appealed to her by its silence, where it would only have
+alienated her by any eloquence. Of Romaris he said nothing, save that,
+had Dante ever been upon their coast, he would have added another canto
+to the 'Purgatorio,' more desolate and more unrelieved in gloom than
+any other.
+
+'Does he regret Cochonette?' she thought, with a jealous
+contemptuousness of which she was ashamed as soon as she felt it.
+
+Having once written to her, however, he thought himself privileged
+to write again, and did so several times. He wrote with ease, grace,
+and elegance: he wrote as he spoke, which gives this charm to
+correspondence, seem close at hand to the reader in intimate communion.
+The high culture of his mind displayed itself without effort, and he
+had that ability of polished expression which is in our day too often
+a neglected one. His letters became welcome to her: she answered them
+briefly, but she let him see that they were agreeable to her. There
+was in them the note of a profound depression, of an unuttered, but
+suggested hopelessness which touched her. If he had expressed it in
+plain words, it would not have appealed to her one half so forcibly.
+
+They remained only the letters of a man of culture to a woman capable
+of comprehending the intellectual movement of the time, but it
+was because of this limitation that she allowed them. Any show of
+tenderness would have both alarmed and alienated her. There was no
+reason after all, she thought, why a frank friendship should not exist
+between them.
+
+Sometimes she was surprised at herself for having conceded so much,
+and angry that she had done so. Happily he had the good taste to take
+no advantage of it. Interesting as his letters were they might have
+been read from the housetops. With that inconsistency of her sex from
+which hitherto she had always flattered herself she had been free, she
+occasionally felt a passing disappointment that they were not more
+personal as regarded himself. Reticence is a fine quality; it is the
+marble of human nature. But sometimes it provokes the impatience that
+the marble awoke in Pygmalion.
+
+Once only he spoke of his own aims. Then he wrote:
+
+'You bade me do good at Romaris. Candidly, I see no way to do it
+except in saving a crew off a wreck, which is not an occasion that
+presents itself every week. I cannot benefit these people materially,
+since I am poor; I cannot benefit them morally, because I have not
+their faith in the things unseen, and I have not their morality in the
+things tangible. They are God-fearing, infinitely patient, faithful
+in their daily lives, and they reproach no one for their hard lot,
+cast on an iron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at risk
+of their lives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What
+should I say to them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience,
+one petulant mutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only
+take them what the world always takes into solitude--discontent. It
+would be a cruel gift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any
+other. It is a homely saying that no blood comes out of a stone; so,
+out of a life saturated with the ironies, the contempt, the disbelief,
+the frivolous philosophies, the hopeless negations of what we call
+society, there can be drawn no water of hope and charity, for the
+well-head--belief--is dried up at its source. Some pretend, indeed,
+to find in humanity what they deny to exist as deity, but I should
+be incapable of the illogical exchange. It is to deny that the seed
+sprang from a root; it is to replace a grand and illimitable theism by
+a finite and vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased
+mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the
+poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a _vibrion_,
+a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere
+bundle of phosphorus and carbon? how can it contain the elements of
+worship; what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the
+weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty.
+It becomes ridiculous. The _carpe diem_ of the classic sensualists, the
+morality of the "Satyricon" or the "Decamerone," are its only natural
+concomitants and outcome; but as yet it is not honest enough to say
+this. It affects the soothsayer's long robe, the sacerdotal frown, and
+is a hypocrite.'
+
+In answer she wrote back to him:
+
+'I do not urge you to have my faith: what is the use? Goethe was
+right. It is a question between a man and his own heart. No one should
+venture to intrude there. But taking life even as you do, it is surely
+a casket of mysteries. May we not trust that at the bottom of it, as
+at the bottom of Pandora's, there may be hope? I wish again to think
+with Goethe that immortality is not an inheritance, but a greatness
+to be achieved like any other greatness, by courage, self-denial, and
+purity of purpose--a reward allotted to the just. This is fanciful, may
+be, but it is not illogical. And without being either a Christian or a
+Materialist, without beholding either majesty or divinity in humanity,
+surely the best emotion that our natures know--pity--must be large
+enough to draw us to console where we can, and sustain where we can, in
+view of the endless suffering, the continual injustice, the appalling
+contrasts, with which the world is full. Whether man be the _vibrion_
+or the heir to immortality, the bundle of carbon or the care of angels,
+one fact is indisputable: he suffers agonies, mental and physical,
+that are wholly out of proportion to the brevity of his life, while he
+is too often weighted from infancy with hereditary maladies, both of
+body and of character. This is reason enough, I think, for us all to
+help each other, even though we feel, as you feel, that we are as lost
+children wandering in a great darkness, with no thread or clue to guide
+us to the end.'
+
+When Sabran read this answer, he mused to himself:
+
+'Pity! how far would her pity reach? How great offences would it cover?
+She has compassion for the evil-doers, but it is easy, since the evil
+does not touch her. She sits on the high white throne of her honour and
+purity, and surveys the world with beautiful but serene compassion.
+If the mud of its miry labyrinths reached and soiled her, would her
+theories prevail? They are noble, but they are the theories of one who
+sits in safety behind a gate of ivory and jasper, whilst outside, far
+below, the bitter tide of the human sea surges and moans too far off,
+too low down, for its sound to reach within. _Tout comprendre, c'est
+tout pardonner._ But since she would never understand, how could she
+ever pardon? There are things that the nature must understand rather
+than the mind; and her nature is as high, as calm, as pure as the snows
+of her high hills.'
+
+And then the impulse came over him for a passing moment to tell her
+what he had never told any living creature; to make confession to
+her and abide her judgment, even though he should never see her face
+again. But the impulse shrank and died away before the remembrance
+of her clear, proud eyes. He could not humiliate himself before her.
+He would have risked her anger; he could not brave her disdain.
+Moreover, straight and open ways were hot natural to him, though he was
+physically brave to folly. There was a subtlety and a reticence in him
+which were the enemies of candour.
+
+To her he was more frank than to any other because her influence
+was great on him, and a strong reverence was awakened in him that
+was touched by a timid fear quite alien to a character naturally
+contemptuously cynical and essentially proud. But even to her he could
+not bring himself to be entirely truthful in revelation of his past.
+Truthfulness is in much a habit, and he had never acquired its habit.
+When he was most sincere there was always some reserve lying behind
+it. This was perhaps one of the causes of the attraction he exercised
+on all women. All women are allured by the shadows and the suggestions
+of what is but imperfectly revealed. Even on the clear, strong nature
+of Wanda von Szalras it had its unconscious and intangible charm. She
+herself was like daylight, but the subtle vague charm of the shadows
+had their seduction for her; Night holds dreams and passions that fade
+and flee before the lucid noon, and who, at noonday wishes not for
+night?
+
+For himself, the letters he received from her seemed the only things
+that bound him to life at all.
+
+The betrayal of him by a base and mercenary woman had hurt him more
+than it was worthy to do; it had stung his pride and saddened him in
+this period of adversity with a sense of degradation. He had been sold
+by a courtezan; it seemed to him to make him ridiculous as Samson was
+ridiculous, and he had no gates of Gaza to pull down upon himself and
+her. He could only be idle, and stare at an unoccupied and valueless
+future. The summer went on, and he remained at Romaris. An old servant
+had sent him word that all his possessions were safe in Paris, and his
+apartments unharmed; but he felt no inclination to go there: he felt no
+sympathy with Communists or Versaillists, with Gambetta or Gallifet. He
+stayed on at the old storm-beaten sea-washed tower, counting his days
+chiefly by the coming to him of any line from the castle by the lake.
+
+She seemed to understand that and pity it, for each week brought him
+some tidings.
+
+At midsummer she wrote him word that she was about to be honoured again
+by a two days' visit of her Imperial friends.
+
+'We shall have, perforce, a large house party,' she said. 'Will you
+be inclined this time to join it? It is natural that you should
+sorrow without hope for your country, but the fault of her disasters
+lies not with you. It is, perhaps, time that you should enter the
+world again; will you commence with what for two days only will be
+worldly--Hohenszalras? Your old friends the monks will welcome you
+willingly and lovingly on the Holy Isle?'
+
+He replied with gratitude, but he refused. He did not make any plea or
+excuse; he thought it best to let the simple denial stand by itself.
+She would understand it.
+
+'Do not think, however,' he wrote, 'that I am the less profoundly
+touched by your admirable goodness to a worsted and disarmed combatant
+in a lost cause.'
+
+'It is the causes that are lost which are generally the noble ones,'
+she said in answer. 'I do not see why you should deem your life at an
+end because a sham empire, which you always despised, has fallen to
+pieces. If it had not perished by a blow from without, it would have
+crumbled to pieces from its own internal putrefaction.'
+
+'The visit has passed off very well,' she continued. 'Every one was
+content, which shows their kindness, for these things are all of
+necessity so much alike that it is difficult to make them entertaining.
+The weather was fortunately fine, and the old house looked bright.
+You did rightly not to be present, if you felt festivity out of tone
+with your thoughts. If, however, you are ever inclined for another
+self-imprisonment upon the island, you know that your friends, both at
+the monastery and at the burg, will be glad to see you, and the monks
+bid me salute you with affection.'
+
+A message from Mdme. Ottilie, a little news of the horses, a few
+phrases on the politics of the hour, and the letter was done. But,
+simple as it was, it seemed to him to be like a ray of sunshine amidst
+the gloom of his empty chamber.
+
+From her the permission to return to the monastery when he would
+seemed to say so much. He wrote her back calm and grateful words of
+congratulation and cordiality; he commenced with the German formality,
+'Most High Lady,' and ended them with the equally formal 'devoted and
+obedient servant;' but it seemed to him as if under that cover of
+ceremony she must see his heart beating, his blood throbbing; she must
+know very well, and if knowing, she suffered him to return to the Holy
+Isle, why then--he was all alone, but he felt the colour rise to his
+face.
+
+'And I must not go! I must not go!' he thought, and looked at his
+pistols.
+
+He ought sooner to blow his brains out, and leave a written confession
+for her.
+
+The hoarse sound of the sea surging amongst the rocks at the base of
+the tower was all that stirred the stillness; evening was spreading
+over all the monotonous inland country; a west wind was blowing and
+rustling amidst the gorse; a woman led a cow between the dolmen,
+stopping for it to crop grass here and there; the fishing-boats were
+far out to sea, hidden under the vapours and the shadows. It was all
+melancholy, sad-coloured, chill, lonesome. As he leaned against the
+embrasure of the window and looked down, other familiar scenes, long
+lost, rose up to his memory. He saw a wide green rolling river, long
+lines of willows and of larches bending under a steel-hued sky, a vast
+dim plain stretching away to touch blue mountains, a great solitude,
+a silence filled at intervals with the pathetic song of the swans,
+chanting sorrowfully because the nights grew cold, the ice began to
+gather, the food became scanty, and they were many in number.
+
+'I must not go!' he said to himself; 'I must never see Hohenszalras.'
+
+And he lit his study lamp, and held her letter to it and burnt it.
+It was his best way to do it honour, to keep it holy. He had the
+letters of so many worthless women locked in his drawers and caskets
+in his rooms in Paris. He held himself unworthy to retain hers. He
+had burned each written by her as it had come to him, in that sort
+of exaggeration of respect with which it seemed to him she was most
+fittingly treated by him. There are less worthy offerings than the
+first scruple of an unscrupulous life. It is like the first pure drops
+that fall from a long turbid and dust-choked fountain.
+
+As he walked the next day upon the windblown, rock-strewn strip of sand
+that parted the old oak wood from the sea, he thought restlessly of her
+in those days of stately ceremony which suited her so well. What did he
+do here, what chance had he to be remembered by her? He chafed at his
+absence, yet it seemed to him impossible that he could ever go to her.
+What had been at first keen calculation with him had now become a finer
+instinct, was now due to a more delicate sentiment, a truer and loftier
+emotion. What could he ever look to her if he sought her but a mere
+base fortune-seeker, a mere liar, with no pride and no manhood in him?
+And what else was he? he thought, with bitterness, as he paced to and
+fro the rough strip of beach, with the dusky heaving waves trembling
+under a cloudy sky, where a red glow told the place of the setting sun.
+
+There were few bolder men living than He, and he was cynical and
+reckless before many things that most men reverence; but at the thought
+of her possible scorn he felt himself tremble like a child. He thought
+he would rather never see her face again than risk her disdain; there
+was in him a vague romantic wishfulness rather to die, so that she
+might think well of his memory, than live in her love through any
+baseness that would be unworthy of her.
+
+Sin had always seemed a mere superstitious name to him, and if he had
+abstained from its coarser forms it had been rather from the revolt
+of the fine taste of a man of culture than from any principle or
+persuasion of duty. Men he believed were but ephemera, sporting their
+small hours, weaving their frail webs, and swept away by the great
+broom of destiny as spiders by the housewife. In the spineless doctrine
+of altruism he had had too robust a temperament, too clear a reason,
+to seek a guide for conduct. He had lived for himself, and had seen
+no cause to do otherwise. That he had not been more criminal had been
+due partly to indolence, partly to pride. In his love for Wanda von
+Szalras, a love with which considerable acrimony had mingled at the
+first, he yet, through all the envy and the impatience which alloyed
+it, reached a moral height which he had never touched before. Between
+her and him a great gulf yawned. He abstained from any effort to pass
+it. It was the sole act of self-denial of a selfish life, the sole
+obedience to conscience in a character which obeyed no moral laws, but
+was ruled by a divided tyranny of natural instinct and conventional
+honour.
+
+The long silent hours of thought in the willow-shaded cloisters of
+the Holy Isle had not been wholly without fruit. He desired, with
+passion and sincerity, that she should think well of him, but he did
+not dare to wish for more; love offered from him to her seemed to him
+as if it would be a kind of blasphemy. He remembered in his far-off
+childhood, which at times still seemed so near to him, nearer than all
+that was around him, the vague, awed, wistful reverence with which
+he had kneeled in solitary hours before the old dim picture of the
+Madonna with the lamp burning above it, a little golden flame in the
+midst of the gloom; he remembered so well how his fierce young soul and
+his ignorant yearning child's heart had gone out in a half-conscious
+supplication, how it had seemed to him that if he only knelt long
+enough, prayed well enough, she would come down to him and lay her
+hands on him. It was all so long ago, yet, when he thought of Wanda
+von Szalras, something of that same emotion rose up in him, something
+of the old instinctive worship awoke in him. In thought he prostrated
+himself once more whenever the memory of her came to him. He had no
+religion; she became one to him.
+
+Meanwhile, he was constantly thinking restlessly to himself, 'Did I do
+ill not to go?'
+
+His bodily life was at Romaris, but his mental life was at
+Hohenszalras. He was always thinking of her as she would look in those
+days of the Imperial visit; he could see the stately ceremonies of
+welcome, the long magnificence of the banquets, the great Rittersaal
+with cressets of light blazing on its pointed emblazoned roofs; he
+could see her as she would move down the first quadrille which she
+would dance with her Kaiser: she would wear her favourite ivory-white
+velvet most probably, and her wonderful old jewels, and all her orders.
+She would look as if she had stepped down off a canvas of Velasquez
+or Vandyck, and she would be a little tired, a little contemptuous, a
+little indifferent, despite her loyalty; she would be glad, he knew,
+when the brilliant gathering was broken up, and the old house, and the
+yew terrace, and the green lake were all once more quiet beneath the
+rays of the watery moon. She was so unlike other women. She would not
+care about a greatness, a compliment, a success more or less. Such
+triumphs were for the people risen yesterday, not for a Countess von
+Szalras.
+
+He knew the simplicity of her life and the pride of her temper,
+and they moved him to the stronger admiration because he knew also
+that those mere externals which she held in contempt had for him an
+exaggerated value. He was scarcely conscious himself of how great a
+share the splendour of her position, united to her great indifference
+to it, had in the hold she had taken on his imagination and his
+passions. He did know that there were so much greater nobilities in
+her that he was vaguely ashamed of the ascendency which her mere rank
+took in his thoughts of her. Yet he could not divest her of it, and
+it seemed to enhance both her bodily and spiritual beauty, as the
+golden calyx of the lily makes its whiteness seem the whiter by its
+neighbourhood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+In the Iselthal the summer was more brilliant and warm than usual. The
+rains were less frequent, and the roses on the great sloping lawns
+beneath the buttresses and terraces of Hohenszalras were blooming
+freely.
+
+Their mistress did not for once give them much heed. She rode long and
+fast through the still summer woods, and came back after nightfall. Her
+men of business, during their interviews with her, found her attention
+less perfect, her interest less keen. In stormy days she sat in the
+library, and read Heine and Schiller often, and all the philosophers
+and men of science rarely. A great teacher has said that the Humanities
+must outweigh the Sciences at all times, and he is unquestionably
+true, if it were only for the reason that in the sweet wise lore of
+ages every human heart in pain and perplexity finds a refuge; whilst in
+love or in sorrow the sciences seem the poorest and chilliest of mortal
+vanities that ever strove to measure the universe with a foot-rule.
+
+The Princess watched her with wistful, inquisitive eyes, but dared
+not name the person of whom they both thought most. Wanda was herself
+intolerant of the sense of impatience with which she awaited the coming
+of the sturdy pony that brought the post-bag from Windisch-Matrey.
+He in his loneliness and emptiness of life on the barren sea-shore
+of Romaris did not more anxiously await her letters than did the
+châtelaine of Hohenszalras, amidst all her state, her wealth, and her
+innumerable occupations, await his. She pitied him intensely; there was
+something pathetic to her in the earnestness with which he had striven
+to amend his ways of life, only to have his whole career shattered by
+an insensate and unlooked-for national war. She understood that his
+poverty stood in the path of his ambition, and she divined that his
+unhappiness had broken that spring of manhood in him which would have
+enabled him to construct a new career for himself out of the ruins of
+the old. She understood why he was listless and exhausted.
+
+There were moments when she was inclined to send him some invitation
+more cordial, some bidding more clear; but she hesitated to take a step
+which would bind her in her own honour to so much more. She knew that
+she ought not to suggest a hope to him to which she was not prepared
+to give full fruition. And again, how could he respond? It would be
+impossible for him to accept. She was one of the great alliances of
+Europe, and he was without fortune, without career, without a future.
+Even friendship was only possible whilst they were far asunder.
+
+Two years had gone by since he had come across from the monastery in
+the green and gold of a summer afternoon. The monks had not forgotten
+him; throughout the French war they had prayed for him. When their
+Prior saw her, he said anxiously sometimes: 'And the Markgraf von
+Sabran, will he never come to us again? Were we too dull for him?
+Will your Excellency remember us to him, if ever you can?' And she
+had answered with a strange emotion at her heart: 'His country is
+in trouble, holy father; a good son cannot leave his land in her
+adversity. No: I do not think he was dull with you; he was quite happy,
+I believe. Perhaps he may come again some day, who knows? He shall be
+told what you say.'
+
+Then a vision would rise up to her of herself and him, as they would
+be perhaps when they should be quite old. Perhaps he would retire into
+this holy retreat of the Augustines, and she would be a grave sombre
+woman, not gay and pretty and witty, as the Princess was. The picture
+was gloomy; she chased it away, and galloped her horse long and far
+through the forests.
+
+The summer had been so brilliant that the autumn which followed was
+cold and severe, earlier than usual, and heavy storms swept over the
+Tauern, almost ere the wheat harvest could be reaped. Many days were
+cheerless and filled only with the sound of incessant rains. In the
+Pinzgau and the Salzkammergut floods were frequent. The Ache and the
+Szalzach, with all their tributary streams and wide and lonely lakes,
+were carrying desolation and terror into many parts of the land which
+in summer they made beautiful. Almost every day brought her some
+tidings of some misfortunes in the villages on the farms belonging to
+her in the more distant parts of Austria; a mill washed away, a bridge
+down, a dam burst, a road destroyed, a harvest swept into the water,
+some damage or other done by the swollen river and torrents, she heard
+of by nearly every communication that her stewards and her lawyers made
+to her at this season.
+
+'Our foes the rivers are more insidious than your mighty enemy the
+salt water,' she wrote to Romaris. 'The sea deals open blows, and men
+know what they must expect if they go out on the vasty deep. But here
+a little brook that laughed and chirped at noon-day as innocently as
+a child may become at nightfall or dawn a roaring giant, devouring
+all that surrounds him. We pay heavily for the glory of our mountain
+waters.'
+
+These autumn weeks seemed very dreary to her. She visited her horses
+chafing at inaction in their roomy stalls, and attended to her affairs,
+and sat in the library or the octagon room hearing the rain beat
+against the emblazoned leaded panes, and felt the days, and above all
+the evenings, intolerably dull and melancholy. She had never heeded
+rain before, or minded the change of season.
+
+One Sunday a messenger rode through the drenching storm, and brought
+her a telegram from her lawyer in Salzburg. It said: 'Idrac flooded:
+many lives lost: great distress: fear town wholly destroyed. Please
+send instructions.'
+
+The call for action roused her as a trumpet sounding rouses a cavalry
+charger.
+
+'Instructions!' she echoed as she read. 'They write as if I could bid
+the Danube subside, or the Drave shrink in its bed!'
+
+She penned a hasty answer.
+
+'I will go to Idrac myself.'
+
+Then she sent a message also to S. Johann im Wald for a special train
+to be got in readiness for her, and told one of her women and a trusty
+servant to be ready to go with her to Vienna in an hour. It was still
+early in the forenoon.
+
+'Are you mad?' cried Madame Ottilie, when she was informed of the
+intended journey.
+
+Wanda kissed her hand.
+
+'There is no madness in what I shall do, dear mother, and Bela surely
+would have gone.'
+
+'Can you stay the torrents of heaven? Can you arrest a river in its
+wrath?'
+
+'No; but lives are often lost because poor people lose their senses in
+fright. I shall be calmer than anyone there. Besides, the place belongs
+to us; we are bound to share its danger. If only Egon were not away
+from Hungary!'
+
+'But he is away. You have driven him away.'
+
+'Do not dissuade me, dearest mother. It would be cowardice not to go.'
+
+'What can women do in such extremities?'
+
+'But we of Hohenszalras must not be mere women when we are wanted in
+any danger. Remember Luitgarde von Szalras, the _kuttengeier._'
+
+The Princess sighed, prayed, even wept, but Wanda was gently
+inflexible. The Princess could not see why a precious life should be
+endangered for the sake of a little half barbaric, half Jewish town,
+which was remarkable for nothing except for shipping timber and selling
+_salbling._ The population was scarcely Christian, so many Hebrews were
+there, and so benighted were the Sclavonian poor, who between them made
+up the two thousand odd souls that peopled Idrac. To send a special
+messenger there, and to give any quantity of money that the distress
+of the moment might demand, would be all right and proper; indeed,
+an obligation on the owner of the little feudal river-side town. But
+to go! A Countess von Szalras to go in person where not one out of a
+hundred of the citizens had been properly baptized or confirmed! The
+Princess could not view this Quixotism in any other light than that of
+an absolute insanity.
+
+'Bela lost his life in just such a foolish manner!' she pleaded.
+
+'So did the saints, dear mother,' said his sister, gently.
+
+The Princess coloured and coughed.
+
+'Of course, I am aware that many holy lives have been--have been--what
+appears to our finite senses wasted,' she said, with a little asperity.
+'But I am also aware, Wanda, that the duties most neglected are those
+which lie nearest home and have the least display; consideration for
+_me_ might be better, though less magnificent, than so much heroism for
+Idrac.'
+
+'It pains me that you should put it in that light, dearest mother,'
+said Wanda, with inexhaustible patience. 'Were you in any danger I
+would stay by you first, of course; but you are in none. These poor,
+forlorn, ignorant, cowardly creatures are in the very greatest. I
+draw large revenues from the place; I am in honour bound to share
+its troubles. Pray do not seek to dissuade me. It is a matter not of
+caprice but of conscience. I shall be in no possible peril myself. I
+shall go down the river in my own vessel, and I will telegraph to you
+from every town at which I touch.'
+
+The Princess ceased not to lament, to oppose, to bemoan her own
+powerlessness to check intolerable follies. Sitting in her easy chair
+in her warm blue-room, sipping her chocolate, the woes of a distant
+little place on the Danube, whose population was chiefly Semitic, were
+very bearable and altogether failed to appeal to her.
+
+Wanda kissed her, asked her blessing humbly, and took her way in the
+worst of a blinding storm along the unsafe and precipitous road which
+went over the hills to Windisch-Matrey.
+
+'What false sentiment it all is!' thought the Princess, left alone.
+'She has not seen this town since she was ten years old. She knows that
+they are nearly all Jews, or quite heathenish Sclavonians. She can do
+nothing at all--what should a woman do?--and yet she is so full of her
+conscience that she goes almost to the Iron Gates in quest of a duty in
+the wettest of weather, while she leaves a man like Egon and a man like
+Sabran wretched for want of a word! I must say,' thought the Princess,
+'false sentiment is almost worse than none at all!'
+
+The rains were pouring down from leaden skies, hiding all the sides of
+the mountains and filling the valleys with masses of vapour. The road
+was barely passable; the hill torrents dashed across it; the little
+brooks were swollen to water-courses; the protecting wall on more than
+one giddy height had been swept away; the gallop of the horses shook
+the frail swaying galleries and hurled the loosened stones over the
+precipice with loud resounding noise. The drive to Matrey and thence
+with post-horses to S. Johann im Wald, the nearest railway station, was
+in itself no little peril, but it was accomplished before the day had
+closed in, and the special train she had ordered being in readiness
+left at once for Vienna, running through the low portions of the
+Pinzgau, which were for the most part under water.
+
+All the way was dim and watery, and full of the sound of running
+or of falling water. The Ache and the Szalsach, both always deep
+and turbulent rivers, were swollen and boisterous, and swirled and
+thundered in their rocky beds; in the grand Pass of Lueg the gloom,
+always great, was dense as at midnight, and when they reached Salzburg
+the setting sun was bursting through ink-black clouds, and shed a
+momentary glow as of fire upon the dark sides of the Untersberg, and
+flamed behind the towers of the great castle on its rocky throne. All
+travellers know the grandeur of that scene; familiar as it was to her
+she looked upward at it with awe and pleasure commingled. Salzburg in
+the evening light needs Salvator Rosa and Rembrandt together to portray
+it.
+
+The train only paused to take in water; the station was crowded as
+usual, set as it is between the frontiers of empire and kingdom, but in
+the brief interval she saw one whom she recognised amongst the throng,
+and she felt the colour come into her own face as she did so.
+
+She saw Sabran; he did not see her. Her train moved out of the station
+rapidly, to make room for the express from Munich; the sun dropped down
+into the ink-black clouds; the golden and crimson pomp of Untersberg
+changed to black and grey; the ivory and amber and crystal of the
+castle became stone and brick and iron, that frowned sombrely over a
+city sunk in river-mists and in rain-vapours. She felt angrily that
+there was an affinity between the landscape and herself; that so, at
+sight of him, a light had come into her life which had no reality in
+fact, prismatic colours baseless as a dream.
+
+She had longed to speak to him; to stretch out her hand to him; to
+say at least how her thoughts and her sympathies had been with him
+throughout the war. But her carriage was already in full onward
+movement, and in another moment had passed at high speed out of the
+station into that grand valley of the Szalzach where Hohensalzburg
+seems to tower as though Friederich Barbarossa did indeed sleep there.
+With a sigh she sank backward amongst her furs and cushions, and saw
+the soaring fortress pass, into the clouds.
+
+The night had now closed in; the rain fell heavily. As the little
+train, oscillating greatly from its lightness, swung over the iron
+rails, there was a continual sound of splashing water audible above
+the noise of the wheels and the throb of the engine. She had often
+travelled at night and had always slept soundly; this evening she could
+not sleep. She remained wide awake watching the swaying of the lamp,
+listening to the shrill shriek of the wheels as they rushed through
+water where some hillside brook had broken bounds and spread out in a
+shallow lagoon. The skies were overcast in every direction; the rain
+was everywhere unceasing; the night seemed to her very long.
+
+She pondered perpetually on his presence at Salzburg, and wondered if
+he were going to the Holy Isle. Three months had gone by since she had
+sent him the semi-invitation to her country.
+
+The train sped on; the day dawned; she began to get glimpses of the
+grand blue river, now grey and ochre-coloured and thick with mud, its
+turbid waves heaving sullenly under the stormy October skies. She had
+always loved the great Donau; she knew its cradle well in the north
+land of the Teutons. She had often watched the baby-stream rippling
+over the stones, and felt the charm, as of some magical transformation,
+as she thought of the same stream stretching broadly under the monastic
+walls of Klosterneuberg, rolling in tempest by the Iron Gates, and
+gathering its mighty volume higher and deeper to burst at last into
+the sunlight of the eastern sea. Amidst the levelled monotony of
+modern Europe the Danube keeps something of savage grandeur, something
+of legendary power, something of oriental charm; it is still often
+tameless, a half-barbaric thing, still a Tamerlane amidst rivers: and
+yet yonder at its birthplace it is such a slender thread of rippling
+water! She and Bela had crossed it with bare feet to get forget-me-nots
+in Taunus, talking together of Chriemhilde and her pilgrimage to the
+land of the Huns.
+
+The little train swung on steadily through the water above and below,
+and after a night of no little danger came safely to Vienna as the dawn
+broke. She went straight to her yacht, which was in readiness off the
+Lobau and weighed anchor as the pale and watery morning broadened into
+day above the shores that had seen Aspern and Wagram. The yacht was
+a yawl, strongly built and drawing little water, made on purpose for
+the ascent and descent of the Danube, from Passau up in the north to
+as far south as the Bosphorus if needed. The voyage had been of the
+greatest joys of hers and of Bela's childhood; they had read on deck
+alternately the 'Nibelungen-Lied' and the 'Arabian Nights,' clinging
+together in delighted awe as they passed through the darkness of the
+defile of Kasan.
+
+Idrac was situated between Pesth and Peterwardein, lying low on marshy
+ground that was covered with willows and intersected by small streams
+flowing from the interior to the Danube.
+
+The little town gave its name and its seigneurie to the owner of its
+burg; an ancient place built on a steep rock that rose sheer out of
+the fast-running waves, and dominated the passage of the stream. The
+Counts of Idrac had been exceeding powerful in the old times, when
+they had stopped at their will the right of way of the river; and
+their appanages with their title had come by marriage into the House
+of Szalras some four centuries before, and although the dominion over
+the river was gone, the fortress and the little town and all that
+appertained thereto still formed a considerable possession; it had
+usually been given with its Countship to the second son of the Szalras.
+
+Making the passage to Pesth in fourteen hours, the yacht dropped
+anchor before the Franz Josef Quai as the first stars came out above
+the Blocksburg, for by this time the skies had lightened and the rains
+had ceased. Here she stayed the night perforce, as an accident had
+occurred to the machinery of the vessel. She did not leave the yacht,
+but sent into the inner city for stores of provisions and of the local
+cordial, the _slibowitza_, to distribute to the half-drowned people
+amongst whom she was about to go. It was noonday before the yawl got
+under weigh and left the twin-towns behind her. A little way further
+down the stream they passed a great castle, standing amidst beech woods
+on a rock that rose up from fields covered with the Carlowitz vine. She
+looked at it with a sigh: it was the fortress of Kohacs, one of the
+many possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely.
+
+The weather had now cleared, but the skies were overcast, and the
+plains, which began to spread away monotonously from either shore,
+were covered with white fog. Soon the fog spread also over the river,
+and the yacht was compelled to advance cautiously and slowly, so that
+the voyage was several hours longer than usual. When the light of the
+next day broke they had come in sight of the flooded districts on their
+right: the immense flat fields that bore the flax and grain which make
+the commerce of Baja, of Neusatz, and of other riverain towns, were
+all changed to shallow estuaries. The Theiss, the Drave, and many
+minor streams, swollen by the long autumnal rains, had burst their
+boundaries and laid all the country under water for hundreds of square
+leagues. The granaries, freshly filled with the late abundant harvest,
+had at many places been flooded or destroyed: thousands of stacks of
+grain were floating like shapeless, dismasted vessels. Timber and the
+thatched roofs of the one-storied houses were in many places drifting
+too, like the flotsam and the hulls of wrecked ships.
+
+There are few scenes more dreary, more sad, more monotonous than those
+of a flat country swamped by flood: the sky above them was leaden
+and heavy, the Danube beneath them was turgid and discoloured; the
+shrill winds whistled through the brakes of willow, the water-birds,
+frightened, flew from their osier-beds on the islands, the bells of
+churches and watch-towers tolled dismally.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when she came within sight of her little
+town on the Sclavonian shore, which Ernst von Szalras had fired on
+August 29, 1526, to save it from the shame of violation by the Turks.
+Though he had perished, and most of the soldiers and townsfolk with
+him, the fortress, the _têtes du pont_, and the old water-gates and
+walls had been too strong for the flames to devour, and the town had
+been built up again by the Turks and subsequently by the Hungarians.
+
+The slender minarets of the Ottomans' two mosques still raised
+themselves amidst the old Gothic architecture of the mediæval
+buildings, and the straw-covered roofs and the white-plastered walls
+of the modern houses. As they steamed near it the minarets and the
+castle towers rose above what looked a world of waters, all else seemed
+swallowed in the flood; the orchards, which had surrounded all save the
+river-side of the town; were immersed almost to the summits of their
+trees. The larger vessels could never approach Idrac in ordinary times,
+the creek being too shallow on which it stood; but now the water was
+so high that though it would be too imprudent to anchor there, the
+yacht easily passed in, and hove-to underneath the water-walls, a pilot
+taking careful soundings as they steered. It was about three in the
+afternoon. The short, grey day was near its end; a shout of welcome
+rose from some people on the walls as they recognised the build and the
+ensign of the yawl. Some crowded boats were pulling away from the town,
+laden with fugitives and their goods.
+
+'How soon people run away! They are like rats,' she thought. 'I would
+sooner be like the stork, and not quit my nest if it were in flames.'
+
+She landed at the water-stairs of the castle. Men, women, and children
+came scrambling along the walls, where they were huddled together out
+of temporary reach of the flood, and threw themselves down at her
+feet and kissed her skirts with abject servility. They were half mad
+with terror, and amongst the population there were many hundreds of
+Jews, the most cowardly people in all the world. The boats were quite
+inadequate in number to the work they had to do; the great steamers
+passing up and down did not pause to help them; the flood was so
+general below Pesth that on the right shore of the river each separate
+village and township was busy with its own case and had no help for
+neighbours: the only aid came from those on the opposite shore, but
+that was scanty and unwisely ministered. The chief citizens of Idrac
+had lost their wits, as she had foreseen they would do. To ring the
+bells madly night and day, and fire off the old culverins from the
+water-gate, was all they seemed to know how to do. They told her that
+many lives had been lost, as the inland waters had risen in the night,
+and most of the houses were of only one storey. In the outlying
+flax-farms it was supposed that whole households had perished. In the
+town itself there were six feet of water everywhere, and many of the
+inhabitants were huddled together in the two mosques, which were now
+granaries, in the towers, and in the fortress itself; but several
+families had been enabled to escape, and had climbed upon the roofs,
+clinging to the chimneys for bare life.
+
+Her mere presence brought reviving hope and energy to the primitive
+population. Their Lady had a romantic legendary reputation amongst
+them, and they were ready to cling round the pennon of the yacht as
+their ancestors had rallied round the standard of Ernst von Szalras.
+
+She ascended to the Rittersaal of the fortress, and assembled a few of
+the men about her, who had the most influence and energy in the little
+place. She soon introduced some kind of system and method into the
+efforts made, promised largesse to those who should be the most active,
+and had the provisions she had brought distributed amongst those who
+most needed them. The boats of the yawl took many away to a temporary
+refuge on the opposite shore. Many others were brought in to the
+state-room of the castle for shelter. Houses were constantly falling,
+undermined by the water, and there were dead and wounded to be attended
+to, as well as the hungry and terrified living creatures. Once before,
+Idrac had been thus devastated by flood, but it had been far away in
+the previous century, and the example was too distant to have been a
+warning to the present generation.
+
+She passed a fatiguing and anxious night. It was impossible to
+think of sleep with so much misery around. The yacht was obliged to
+descend, the river for safe anchorage, but the boats remained. She
+went herself, now in one, now in another, to endeavour to inspire the
+paralysed people with some courage and animation. A little wine, a
+little bread, were all she took; food was very scarce. The victuals of
+the yacht's provisioning did not last long amongst so many famishing
+souls. She ordered her skipper at dawn to go down as far as Neusatz
+and purchase largely. There were five thousand people, counting those
+of the neighbourhood, or more, homeless and bereft of all shelter. The
+telegraph was broken, the poles had been snapped by the force of the
+water in many places.
+
+With dawn a furious storm gathered and broke, and renewed rains added
+their quota to the inundation and their discomfort to the exposed
+sufferers. The cold was great, and the chill that made them shudder
+from head to foot was past all cure by cordials. She regretted not
+to have brought Greswold with her. She was indifferent to danger,
+indefatigable in exertion, and strong as Libussa, brave as Chriemhilde.
+Because the place belonged to her in almost a feudal manner, she held
+herself bound to give her life for it if need be. Bela would have done
+what she was doing.
+
+Twice or thrice during the two following days she heard the people
+speak of a stranger who had arrived fifteen hours before her, and had
+wrought miracles of deliverance. Unless the stories told her were
+greatly exaggerated, this foreigner had shown a courage and devotion
+quite unequalled. He had thrown himself into the work at once on his
+arrival there in a boat from Neusatz, and had toiled night and day,
+enduring extreme fatigue and running almost every hour some dire peril
+of his life. He had saved whole families of the poorest and most
+wretched quarter; he had sprung on to roofs that were splitting and
+sinking, on to walls that were trembling and tottering, and had borne
+away in safety men, women, and children, the old, and the sick, and the
+very animals; he had infused some of his own daring and devotedness
+into the selfish and paralysed Hebrew population; priests and rabbis
+were alike unanimous in his praise, and she, as she heard, felt that
+he who had fought for France had been here for her sake. They told
+her that he was now out amongst the more distant orchards and fields,
+amidst the flooded farms where the danger was even greater than in the
+town itself. Some Czechs said that he was S. John of Nepomuc himself.
+She bade them bring him to her, that she might thank him, whenever he
+should enter the town again, and then thought of him no more.
+
+Her whole mind and feeling were engrossed by the spectacle of a misery
+that even all her wealth could not do very much to alleviate. The
+waters as yet showed no sign of abatement. The crash of falling houses
+sounded heavily ever and again through the gloom. The melancholy sight
+of humble household things, of drowned cattle, of dead dogs, borne down
+the discoloured flood out to the Danube renewed itself every hour.
+The lamentations of the ruined people went up in an almost continuous
+wail like the moaning of a winter wind. There was nothing grand,
+nothing picturesque, nothing exciting to redeem the dreariness and the
+desolation. It was all ugly, miserable, dull. It was more trying than
+war, which even in its hideous senselessness lends a kind of brutal
+intoxication to all whom it surrounds.
+
+She was incessantly occupied and greatly fatigued, so that the time
+passed without her counting it. She sent a message each day to the
+Princess at home, and promised to return as soon as the waters had
+subsided and the peril passed. For the first time in her life she
+experienced real discomfort, real privation; she had surrendered nearly
+all the rooms in the burg to the sick people, and food ran short and
+there was none of good quality, though she knew that supplies would
+soon come from the steward at Kohacs and by the yacht.
+
+On the fourth day the waters had sunk an inch. As she heard the good
+tidings she was looking out inland over the waste of grey and yellow
+flood; a Jewish rabbi was beside her speaking of the exertions of the
+stranger, in whom the superstitious of the townsfolk saw a saint from
+heaven.
+
+'And does no one even know who he is?' she asked.
+
+'No one has asked,' answered the Jew. 'He has been always out where the
+peril was greatest.'
+
+'How came he here?'
+
+'He came by one of the big steamers that go to Turkey. He pulled
+himself here in a little boat that he had bought; the boat in which he
+has done such good service.'
+
+'What is he like in appearance?'
+
+'He is very tall, very fair, and handsome; I should think he is
+northern.'
+
+Her pulse beat quicker for a moment; then she rejected the idea as
+absurd, though indeed, she reflected, she had seen him at Salzburg.
+
+'He must at least be a brave man,' she said quietly. 'If you see him
+bring him to me that I may thank him. Is he in the town now?'
+
+'No; he is yonder, where the Rathwand farms are, or were; where your
+Excellency sees those dark, long islands which are not islands at all,
+but only the summits of cherry orchards. He has carried the people
+away, carried them down to Peterwardein; and he is now about to try and
+rescue some cattle which were driven up on to the roof of a tower, poor
+beasts--that tower to the east there, very far away: it is five miles
+as the crow flies.'
+
+'I suppose he will come into the town again?'
+
+'He was here last night; he had heard of your Excellency, and asked for
+her health.'
+
+'Ah! I will see and thank him if he come again.'
+
+But no one that day saw the stranger in Idrac.
+
+The rains fell again and the waters again rose. The maladies which
+come of damp and of bad exhalations spread amongst the people; they
+could not all be taken to other villages or towns, for there was no
+room for them. She had quinine, wines, good food ordered by the great
+steamers, but they were not yet arrived. What could be got at Neusatz
+or Peterwardein the yacht brought, but it was not enough for so many
+sick and starving people. The air began to grow fœtid from the many
+carcases of animals, though as they floated the vultures from the hills
+fed on them. She had a vessel turned into a floating hospital, and
+the most delicate of the sick folk carried to it, and had it anchored
+off the nearest port. Her patience, her calmness, and her courage did
+more to revive the sinking hearts of the homeless creatures than the
+cordials and the food. She was all day long out in her boat, being
+steered from one spot to another. At night she rested little and passed
+from one sick bed to another. She had never been so near to hopeless
+human misery before. At Hohenszalras no one was destitute.
+
+One twilight hour on the ninth day, as she was rowed back to the castle
+stairs, she passed another boat in which were two lads and a man. The
+man was rowing, a dusky shadow in the gloom of the wet evening and the
+uncouthness of his waterproof pilot's dress; but she had a lantern
+beside her, and she flashed its light full on the boat as it passed
+her. When she reached the burg, she said to her servant Anton: 'Herr
+von Sabran is in Idrac; go and say that I desire to see him.'
+
+Anton, who remembered him well, returned in an hour, and said he could
+neither find him nor hear of him.
+
+All the night long, a cheerless tedious night, with the rain falling
+without and the storm that was raging in the Bosphorus sending its
+shrill echoes up the Danube, she sat by the beds of the sick women
+or paced up and down the dimly-lit Rittersaal in an impatience which
+it humiliated her to feel. It touched her that he should be here,
+so silently, so sedulously avoiding her, and doing so much for the
+people of Idrac, because they were her people. The old misgiving that
+she had been ungenerous in her treatment of him returned to her. He
+seemed always to have the finer part--the _beau rôle._ To her, royal
+in giving, imperious in conduct, it brought a sense of failure, of
+inferiority. As she read the psalms in Hungarian to the sick Magyar
+women, her mind perpetually wandered away to him.
+
+She did not see Sabran again, but she heard often of him. The fair
+stranger, as the people called him, was always conspicuous wherever
+the greatest danger was to be encountered. There was always peril in
+almost every movement where the undermined houses, the tottering walls,
+the stagnant water, the fever-reeking marshes presented at every turn a
+perpetual menace to life. 'He is not vainly _un fils des preux_,' she
+thought, with a thrill of personal pride, as if someone near and dear
+to her were praised, as she listened to the stories of his intrepidity
+and his endurance. Whole nights spent in soaked clothes, in half
+swamped boats; whole days lost in impotent conflict with the ignorance
+or the poltroonery of an obstinate populace, continual risk encountered
+without counting its cost to rescue some poor man's sick beast, or pull
+a cripple from beneath falling beams, or a lad from choking mud; hour
+on hour of steady laborious rowing, of passage to and fro the sullen
+river with a freight of moaning, screaming peasantry--this was not
+child's play, nor had it any of the animation and excitation which in
+war or in adventure make of danger a strong wine that goes merrily and
+voluptuously to the head. It was all dull, stupid, unlovely, and he
+had come to it for her sake. For her sake certainly, though he never
+approached her; though when Anton at last found and took her message
+to him he excused himself from obedience to it by a plea that he was
+at that moment wet and weary, and had come from a hut where typhoid
+raged. She understood the excuse; she knew that he knew well she was no
+more afraid than he of that contagion. She admired him the more for his
+isolation; in these grey, rainy, tedious, melancholy days his figure
+seemed to grow into a luminous heroic shape like one of the heroes of
+the olden time. If he had once seemed to seek a guerdon for it the
+spell would have been broken. But he never did. She began to believe
+that such a knight deserved any recompense which she could give.
+
+'Egon himself could have done no more,' she said in her own thoughts,
+and it was the highest praise that she could give to any man, for
+her Magyar cousin was the embodiment of all martial daring, of all
+chivalrous ardour, and had led his glittering hussars down on to the
+French bayonets, as on to the Prussian Krupp guns, with a fury that
+bore all before it, impetuous and irresistible as a stream of fired
+naphtha.
+
+On the twelfth morning the river had sunk so much lower that the yacht
+arriving with medicines and stores of food from Neusatz signalled that
+she could not enter the creek on which Idrac stood, and waited orders.
+It had ceased to rain, but the winds were still strong and the skies
+heavy. She descended to her boat at the water-gate, and told the men to
+take her out to the yacht. It was early, the sun behind the clouds had
+barely climbed above the distant Wallachian woods, and the scene had
+lost nothing of its melancholy. A man was standing on the water-stairs
+as she descended them, and turned rapidly away, but she had seen him
+and stretched out her long staff and touched him lightly.
+
+'Why do you avoid me?' she said, as he uncovered his head; 'my men
+sought you in all directions; I wished to thank you.'
+
+He bowed low over the hand she held out to him. 'I ventured to be near
+at hand to be of use,' he answered. 'I was afraid the exposure, and,
+the damp, and all this pestilence would make you ill: you are not ill?'
+
+'No; I am quite well. I have heard of all your courage and endurance.
+Idrac owes you a great debt.'
+
+'I only pay my debt to Hohenszalras.'
+
+They were both silent; a certain constraint was upon them both.
+
+'How did you know of the inundation? It was unkind of you not to come
+to me,' she said, and her voice was unsteady as she spoke. 'I want so
+much to tell you, better than letters can do, all that we felt for you
+throughout that awful war.'
+
+He turned away slightly with a shudder. 'You are too good. Thousands of
+men much better than I suffered much more.'
+
+The tears rose to her eyes as she glanced at him. He was looking pale
+and worn. He had lost the graceful _insouciance_ of his earlier manner.
+He looked grave, weary, melancholy, like a man who had passed through
+dire disaster, unspeakable pain, and had seen his career snapped in
+two like a broken wand. But there was about him instead something
+soldierlike, proven, war-worn, which became him in her eyes, daughter
+of a race of warriors as she was.
+
+'You have much to tell me, and I have much to hear,' she said, after
+a pause. 'You should have come to the monastery to be cured of your
+wounds. Why were you so mistrustful of our friendship?'
+
+He coloured and was silent.
+
+'Indeed,' she said gravely, 'we can honour brave men in the Tauern and
+in Idrac too. You are very brave. I do not know how to thank you for my
+people or for myself.'
+
+'Pray do not speak so,' he said, in a very low voice. 'To see you again
+would be recompense for much worthier things than any I have done.'
+
+'But you might have seen me long ago,' she said, with a certain
+nervousness new to her, 'had you only chosen to come to the Isle. I
+asked you twice.'
+
+He looked at her with eyes of longing and pathetic appeal.
+
+'Do not tempt me,' he murmured. 'If I yielded, and if you despised
+me----'
+
+'How could I despise one who has so nobly saved the lives of my people?'
+
+'You would do so.'
+
+He spoke very low: he was silent a little while, then he said very
+softly:
+
+'One evening, when we spoke together on the terrace at Hohenszalras,
+you leant your hand upon the ivy there. I plucked the leaf you touched;
+you did not see. I had the leaf with me all through the war. It was
+a talisman. It was like a holy thing. When your cousin's soldiers
+stripped me in their ambulance, they took it from me.'
+
+His voice faltered. She listened and was moved to a profound emotion.
+
+'I will give you something better,' she said very gravely. He did not
+ask her what she would give.
+
+She looked away from him awhile, and her face flushed a little. She was
+thinking of what she would give him; a gift so great that the world
+would deem her mad to bestow it, and perhaps would deem him dishonoured
+to take it.
+
+'How did you hear of these floods along the Danube?' she asked him,
+recovering her wonted composure.
+
+'I read about them in telegrams in Paris,' he made answer. 'I had
+mustered courage to revisit my poor Paris; all I possess is there.
+Nothing has been injured; a shell burst quite close by but did not
+harm my apartments. I went to make arrangements for the sale of my
+collections, and on the second day that I arrived there I saw the news
+of the inundations of Idrac and the lower Danubian plains. I remembered
+the name of the town; I remembered it was yours. I remembered your
+saying once that where you had feudal rights you had feudal duties, so
+I came on the chance of being of service.'
+
+'You have been most devoted to the people.'
+
+'The people! What should I care though the whole town perished? Do not
+attribute to me a humanity that is not in my nature.'
+
+'Be as cynical as you like in words so long as you are heroic in
+action. I am going out to the yacht; will you come with me?'
+
+He hesitated. 'I merely came to hear from the warder of your health. I
+am going to catch the express steamer at Neusatz; all danger is over.'
+
+'The yacht can take you to Neusatz. Come with me.'
+
+He did not offer more opposition; he accompanied her to the boat and
+entered it.
+
+The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing more, but she could not
+forget that scores of her own people here had owed their lives to his
+intrepidity and patience, and that he had never hesitated to throw his
+life into the balance when needed. And it had been done for her sake
+alone. The love of humanity might have been a nobler and purer motive,
+but it would not have touched her so nearly as the self-abandonment of
+a man by nature selfish and cold.
+
+In a few moments they were taken to the yawl. He ascended the deck with
+her.
+
+The tidings the skipper brought, the examination of the stores, the
+discussion of ways and means, the arrangements for the general relief,
+were air dull, practical matters that claimed careful attention and
+thought. She sat in the little cabin that was brave with marqueterie
+work and blue satin and Dresden mirrors, and made memoranda and
+calculations, and consulted him, and asked his advice on this, on
+that. The government official, sent to make official estimates of the
+losses in the township, had come on board to salute and take counsel
+with her. The whole forenoon passed in these details. He wrote, and
+calculated, and drew up reports for her. No more tender or personal
+word was spoken between them; but there was a certain charm for them
+both in this intimate intercourse, even though it took no other shape
+than the study of how many boatloads of wheat were needed for so many
+hundred people, of how many florins a day might be passed to the head
+of each family, of how many of the flooded houses would still be
+serviceable with restoration, of how many had been entirely destroyed,
+of how the town would best be rebuilt, and of how the inland rivers
+could best be restrained in the future.
+
+To rebuild it she estimated that she would have to surrender for five
+years the revenues from her Galician and Hungarian mines, and she
+resolved to do it altogether at her own cost. She had no wish to see
+the town figure in public prints as the object of public subscription.
+
+'I am sure all my woman friends,' she said, 'would kindly make it
+occasion for a fancy fair or a lottery (with new costumes) in Vienna,
+but I do not care for that sort of thing, and I can very well do what
+is needed alone.'
+
+He was silent. He had always known that her riches were great, but
+he had never realised them as fully as he now did when she spoke of
+rebuilding an entire town as she might have spoken of building a
+carriage.
+
+'You would make a good prime minister,' she said, smiling; 'you have
+the knowledge of a specialist on so many subjects.'
+
+At noon they served her a little plain breakfast of Danubian
+_salbling_, with Carlowitzer wine and fruit sent by the steward of
+Mohacs. She bade him join her in it.
+
+'Had Egon himself been here he could not have done more for Idrac than
+you have done,' she said.
+
+'Is this Prince Egon's wine?' he said abruptly, and on hearing that it
+was so, he set the glass down untasted.
+
+She looked surprised, but she did not ask him his reason, for she
+divined it. There was an exaggeration in the unspoken hostility more
+like the days of Arthur and Lancelot than their own, but it did not
+displease her.
+
+They were both little disposed to converse during their meal; after the
+dreary and terrible scenes they had been witness of, the atmosphere
+of life seems grave and dark even to those whom the calamity had not
+touched. The most careless spirit is oppressed by a sense of the
+precariousness and the cruelty of existence.
+
+When they ascended to the deck the skies were lighter than they had
+been for many weeks; the fog had cleared, so that, in the distance, the
+towers of Neusatz and the fortress of Peterwardein were visible; vapour
+still hung over the vast Hungarian plain, but the Danube was clear and
+the affluents of it had sunk to their usual level.
+
+'You really go to-night?' she said, as they looked down the river.
+
+'There is no need for me to stay; the town is safe, and you are well,
+you say. If there be anything I can still do, command me.'
+
+She smiled a little and let her eye meet his for a moment.
+
+'Well, if I command you to remain then, will you do so as my viceroy?
+I want to return home; Aunt Ottilie grows daily more anxious, more
+alarmed, but I cannot leave these poor souls all alone with their
+priests, and their rabbi, who are all as timid as sheep and as stupid.
+Will you stay in the castle and govern them, and help them till they
+recover from their fright? It is much to ask, I know, but you have
+already done so much for Idrac that I am bold to ask you to do more?'
+
+He coloured with a mingled emotion.
+
+'You could ask me nothing that I would not do,' he said in a low tone.
+'I could wish you asked me something harder.'
+
+'Oh, it will be very hard,' she said, with an indifference she did not
+feel. 'It will be very dull, and you will have no one to speak to that
+knows anything save how to grow flax and cherries. You will have to
+talk the Magyar tongue all day, and you will have nothing to eat save
+_kartoffeln_ and _salbling_; and I do not know that I am even right,'
+she added, more gravely, 'to ask you to incur the risks that come from
+all that soaked, ground, which will be damp so long.'
+
+'The risks that you have borne yourself! Pray do not wound me by any
+such scruple as that. I shall be glad, I shall be proud, to be for ever
+so short or so long a time as you command, your representative, your
+servant.'
+
+'You are very good.'
+
+'No.'
+
+His eyes looked at hers with a quick flash, in which all the passion
+he dared not express was spoken. She averted her glance and continued
+calmly: 'You are very good indeed to Idrac. It will be a great
+assistance and comfort to me to know that you are here. The poor people
+already love you, and you will write to me and tell me all that may
+need to be done. I will leave you the yacht and Anton. I shall return
+by land with my woman; and when I reach home I will send you Herr
+Greswold. He is a good companion, and has a great admiration for you,
+though he wishes that you had not forsaken the science of botany.'
+
+'It is like all other dissection or vivisection; it spoils the artistic
+appreciation of the whole. I am yet unsophisticated enough to feel the
+charm of a bank of violets, of a cliff covered with alpen-roses. I may
+write to you?'
+
+'You must write to me! It is you who will know all the needs of Idrac.
+But are you sure that to remain here will not interfere with your own
+projects, your own wishes, your own duties?'
+
+'I have none. If I had any I would throw them away, with pleasure, to
+be of use to one of your dogs, to one of your birds.'
+
+She moved from his side a little.
+
+'Look how the sun has come out. I can see the sparkle of the brass on
+the cannon down yonder at Neusatz. We had better go now. I must see my
+sick people and then leave as soon as I can. The yacht must take me to
+Mohacs; from there I will send her back to you.'
+
+'Do as you will. I can have no greater happiness than to obey you.'
+
+'I am sure that I thank you in the way that you like best, when I say
+that I believe you.'
+
+She said the words in a very low tone, but so calmly that the calmness
+of them checked any other words he might have uttered. It was a royal
+acceptance of a loyal service; nothing more. The boat took them back
+to the fortress. Whilst she was occupied in her farewell to the sick
+people, and her instructions to those who attended on them, he, left
+to himself in the apartment she had made her own, instinctively went
+to an old harpsichord that stood there and touched the keys. It had a
+beautiful case, rich with the varnish of the Martins. He played with
+it awhile for its external beauty, and then let his fingers stray over
+its limited keyboard. It had still sweetness in it, like the spinet
+of Hohenszalras. It suited certain pathetic quaint old German airs he
+knew, and which he half unconsciously reproduced upon it, singing them
+as he did so in a low tone. The melody, very soft and subdued, suited
+to the place where death had been so busy and nature so unsparing, and
+where a resigned exhaustion had now succeeded to the madness of terror,
+reached the ears of the sick women in the Rittersaal and of Wanda von
+Szalras seated beside their beds.
+
+'It is like the saints in Heaven sighing in pity for us here,' said one
+of the women who was very feeble and old, and she smiled as she heard.
+The notes, tremulous from age but penetrating in their sweetness, came
+in slow calm movements of harmony through the stillness of the chamber;
+his voice, very low also, but clear, ascended with them. Wanda sat
+quite still, and listened with a strange pleasure. 'He alone,' she
+thought, 'can make the dumb strings speak.
+
+It was almost dusk when she descended to the room which she had made
+her own. In the passages of the castle oil wicks were lighted in the
+iron lamps and wall sconces, but here it was without any light, and
+in the gloom she saw the dim outline of his form as he sat by the
+harpsichord. He had ceased playing; his head was bent down and rested
+on the instrument; he was lost in thought, and his whole attitude was
+dejected. He did not hear her approach, and she looked at him some
+moments, herself unseen. A great tenderness came over her: he was
+unhappy, and he had been very brave, very generous, very loyal: she
+felt almost ashamed. She went nearer, and he raised himself abruptly.
+
+'I am going,' she said to him. 'Will you come with me to the yacht?'
+
+He rose, and though it was dusk, and in this chamber so dark that his
+face was indistinct to her, she was sure that tears had been in his
+eyes.
+
+'Your old harpsichord has the vernis Martin,' he said, with effort.
+'You should not leave it buried here. It has a melody in it too, faint
+and simple and full of the past, like the smell of dead rose-leaves.
+Yes, I will have the honour to come with you. I wish there were a full
+moon. It will be a dark night on the Danube.'
+
+'My men know the soundings of the river well. As for the harpsichord,
+you alone have found its voice. It shall go to your rooms in Paris.'
+
+'You are too good, but I would not take it. Let it go to Hohenszalras.'
+
+'Why would you not take it?
+
+'I would take nothing from you.'
+
+He spoke abruptly, and with some sternness.
+
+'I think there is such a thing as being too proud? she said, with
+hesitation.
+
+'Your ancestors would not say so,' he answered, with an effort; she
+understood the meaning that underlay the words. He turned away and
+closed the lid of the harpsichord, where little painted cupids wantoned
+in a border of metal scroll-work.
+
+All the men and women well enough to stand crowded on the water-stairs
+to see her departure; little children were held up in their mother's
+arms and bidden remember her for evermore; all feeble creatures lifted
+up their voices to praise her; Jew and Christian blessed her; the
+water-gate was cumbered with sobbing people, trying to see her face,
+to kiss her skirt for the last time. She could not be wholly unmoved
+before that unaffected, irrepressible emotion. Their poor lives were
+not worth much, but such as they were she, under Heaven, had saved them.
+
+'I will return and see you again,' she said to them, as she made a slow
+way through the eager crowd. 'Thank Heaven, my people, not me. And I
+leave my friend with you, who did much more for you than I. Respect him
+and obey him.'
+
+They raised with their thin trembling voices a loud _Eljén_! of homage
+and promise, and she passed away from their sight into the evening
+shadows on the wide river.
+
+Sabran accompanied her to the vessel, which was to take her to the town
+of Mohacs, thence to make her journey home by railway.
+
+'I shall not leave until you bid me, even though you should forget to
+call me all in my life!' he said, as the boat slipped through the dark
+water.
+
+'Such oblivion would be a poor reward.'
+
+'I have had reward enough. You have called me your friend.'
+
+She was silent. The boat ran through the dusk and the rippling rays of
+light streaming from the sides of the yacht, and they went on board. He
+stood a moment with uncovered head before her on the deck, and she gave
+him her hand.
+
+'You will come to the Holy Isle?' she said, as she did so.
+
+'If you bid me,' he said, as he bowed and kissed her hand. His lips
+trembled as he did so, and by the lamplight she saw that he was very
+pale.
+
+'I shall bid you,' she said, very softly, by-and-by. Farewell!'
+
+He bowed very low once more, then he dropped over the yacht's side into
+the boat waiting below; the splash of the oars told her he was gone
+back to Idrac. The yawl weighed anchor and began to go up the river,
+a troublesome and tedious passage at all seasons. She sat on deck
+watching the strong current of the Danube as it rolled on under the bow
+of the schooner. For more than a league she could see the beacon that
+burned by the water-gate of the fortress. When the curve of the stream
+hid it from her eyes she felt a pang of painful separation, of wistful
+attachment to the old dreary walls where she had seen so much suffering
+and so much courage, and where she had learned to read her own heart
+without any possibility of ignoring its secrets. A smile came on her
+mouth and a moisture in her eyes as she sat alone in the dark autumn
+night, while the schooner made her slow ascent through the swell that
+accompanies the influx of the Drave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+In two days' time Hohenszalras received its mistress home.
+
+She was not in any way harmed by the perils she had encountered, and
+the chills and fever to which she had been exposed. On the contrary,
+her eyes had a light and her face had a bloom which for many months had
+not been there.
+
+The Princess heard a brief sketch of what had passed in almost
+total silence. She had disapproved strongly, and she said that her
+disapproval could not change, though a merciful heavenly host had
+spared her the realisation of her worst fears.
+
+The name of Sabran was not spoken. Wanda was of a most truthful temper,
+but she could not bring herself to speak of his presence at Idrac; the
+facts would reveal themselves inevitably soon enough.
+
+She sent Greswold to the Danube laden with stores and medicines.
+She received a letter every morning from her delegate; but he wrote
+briefly, and with scrupulous care, the statements of facts connected
+with the town and reports of what had been done. Her engineer had
+arrived from the mines by Kremnitz, and the builders estimated that
+the waters would have subsided and settled enough, if no fresh rising
+took place, for them to begin the reconstruction of the town with the
+beginning of the new month. Ague and fever were still very common, and
+fresh cases were brought in every hour to the hospital in the fortress.
+He wrote on the arrival of Herr Greswold, that, with her permission, he
+himself would still stay on, for the people had grown used to him, and
+having some knowledge of hydraulics he would be interested to see the
+plans proposed by her engineers for preserving the town from similar
+calamities.
+
+Three weeks passed; all that time she spoke but little either of him or
+of any other subject. She took endless rides, and she sat many hours
+doing nothing in the white room, absorbed in thought. The Princess,
+who had learned what had passed, with admirable exercise of tact and
+self-restraint made neither suggestion nor innuendo, and accepted the
+presence of a French Marquis at a little obscure town in Sclavonia as
+if it were the most natural circumstance in the world.
+
+'All the Szalras have been imperious, arrogant, and of complicated
+character,' she thought; 'she has the same temper, though it is
+mitigated in her by great natural nobility of disposition and strong
+purity of motives. She will do as she chooses, let all the world do
+what it may to change her. If I say a word either way it may take
+effect in some wholly unforeseen manner that I should regret. It is
+better to abstain. In doubt do nothing, is the soundest of axioms.'
+
+And Princess Ottilie, who on occasion had the wisdom of the serpent
+with the sweetness of the dove, preserved a discreet silence, and
+devoured her really absorbing curiosity in her own heart.
+
+At the end of the fourth week she heard that all was well at Idrac,
+so far as it could be so in a place almost wholly destroyed. There
+was no sign of renewed rising of the inland streams. The illness was
+diminished, almost conquered; the people had begun to take heart and
+hope, and, being aided, wished to aid themselves. The works for new
+embankments, water-gates, and streets were already planned, though
+they could not be begun until the spring. Meanwhile, strong wooden
+houses were being erected on dry places, which which could shelter
+_ad interim_ many hundreds of families; the farmers were gradually
+venturing to return to their flooded lands. The town had suffered
+grievously and in much irreparably, but it began to resume its trade
+and its normal life.
+
+She hesitated a whole day when she heard this. Though Sabran did not
+hint at any desire of his own to leave the place, she knew it, was
+impossible to bid him remain longer, and that a moment of irrevocable
+decision was come. She hesitated all the day, slept little all the
+night, then sent him a brief telegram: 'Come to the Island.'
+
+Obey the summons as rapidly as he might, he could not travel by Vienna
+and Salzburg more quickly than in some thirty hours or more. The time
+passed to her in a curious confusion and anxiety. Outwardly she was
+calm enough; she visited the schools, wrote some letters, and took her
+usual long ride in the now leafless woods, but at heart she was unquiet
+and ill at ease, troubled more than by anything else at the force of
+the desire she felt to meet him once more. It was but a month since
+they had parted on the deck, and it seemed ten years. She had known
+what he had meant when he had said that he would come if she bade him;
+she had known that she would only do the sheerest cruelty and treachery
+if she called him thither only to dismiss him. It had not been a visit
+of the moment, but all his life that she had consented to take when she
+had written 'Come to the Island.'
+
+She would never have written it unless she had been prepared to fulfil
+all to which it tacitly pledged her. She was incapable of wantonly
+playing with any passion that moved another, least of all with his. The
+very difference of their position would have made indecision or coyness
+in her seem cruelty, humiliation. The decision hurt her curiously with
+a sense of abdication, mortification, and almost shame. To a very proud
+woman in whom the senses have never asserted their empire, there is
+inevitably an emotion of almost shame, of self-surrender, of loss of
+self-respect, in the first impulses of love. It made her abashed and
+humiliated to feel the excitation that the mere touch of his hand, the
+mere gaze of his eyes, had power to cause her. 'If this be love,' she
+thought, 'no wonder the world is lost for it.'
+
+Do what she would, the time seemed very long; the two evenings that
+passed were very tedious and oppressive. The Princess seemed to
+observe nothing of what she was perfectly conscious of, and her
+flute-like voice murmured on in an unending stream of commonplaces to
+which her niece replied much at random.
+
+In the afternoon of the third day she stood on the terrace looking down
+the lake and towards the Holy Isle, with an impatience of which she was
+in turn impatient. She was dressed in white woollen stuff with silver
+threads in it; she had about her throat an old necklace of the Golden
+Fleece, of golden shells enamelled, which had been a gift from Charles
+the Fifth to one of her house; over her shoulders, for the approach
+of evening was cold, she had thrown a cloak of black Russian sables.
+She made a figure beautiful, stately, patrician, in keeping with the
+background of the great donjon tower, and the pinnacled roofs, and the
+bronze warriors in their Gothic niches.
+
+When she had stood there a few minutes looking down the lake towards
+the willows of the monastery island, a boat came out from the willow
+thickets, and came over the mile-and-half of green shadowy water. There
+was only one person in it. She recognised him whilst he was still far
+off, and a smile came on her mouth that it was a pity he could not see.
+
+He was a bold man, but his heart stood still with awe of her, and his
+soul trembled within him at this supreme moment of his fate. For he
+believed that she would not have bidden him there unless her hand were
+ready to hold out destiny to him--the destiny of his maddest, of his
+sweetest, dreams.
+
+She came forward a few paces to meet him; her face was grave and pale,
+but her eyes had a soft suppressed light.
+
+'I have much for which to thank you,' she said, as she held out her
+hand to him. Her voice was tremulous though calm.
+
+He kissed her hand, then stood silent. It seemed to him that there was
+nothing to say. She knew what he would have said if he had been king,
+or hero, or meet mate for her. His pulses were beating feverishly, his
+self-possession was gone, his eyes did not dare to meet hers. He felt
+as if the green woods, the shining waters, the rain-burdened skies were
+wheeling round him. That dumbness, that weakness, in a man so facile
+of eloquence, so hardy and even cynical in courage, touched her to a
+wondering pitifulness.
+
+'After all,' she thought once more, 'if we love one another what is it
+to anyone else? We are both free.'
+
+If the gift she would give would be so great that the world would blame
+him for accepting it, what would that matter so long as she knew him
+blameless?
+
+They were both mute: he did not even look at her, and she might have
+heard the beating of his heart. She looked at him and the colour came
+back into her face, the smile back upon her mouth.
+
+'My friend,' she said very gently,'did never you think that I also----'
+
+She paused: it was very hard to her to say what she must say, and he
+could not help her, dared not help her, to utter it.
+
+They stood thus another moment mute, with the sunset glow upon the
+shining water, and upon the feudal majesty of the great castle.
+
+Then she looked at him with a straight, clear, noble glance, and with
+the rich blood mounting in her face, stretched out her hand to him with
+a royal gesture.
+
+'They robbed you of your ivy leaf, my cruel Prussian cousins. Will
+you--take--this--instead?'
+
+Then Heaven itself opened to his eyes. He did not take her hand. He
+fell at her feet and kissed them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Is it wisest after all to be very unwise, dear mother mine?' she said a
+little later, with a smile that was tender and happy.
+
+The Princess looked up quickly, and so looking understood.
+
+'Oh, my beloved, is it indeed so? Yes, you are wise to listen to your
+heart; God speaks in it!'
+
+With tears in her eyes she stretched out her pretty hands in solemn
+benediction.
+
+'Be His Spirit for ever with you,' she said with great emotion. 'I
+shall be so content to know that I leave you not alone when our Father
+calls me, for I think your very greatness and dominion, my dear, but
+make you the more lonely, as sovereigns are, and it is not well to be
+alone, Wanda; it is well to have human love close about us.'
+
+'It is to lean on a reed, perhaps,'murmured Wanda, in that persistent
+misgiving which possessed her. 'And when the reed breaks, then though
+it has been so weak before, it becomes of iron, barbed and poisoned.'
+
+'What gloomy thoughts! And you have made me so happy, and surely you
+are happy yourself?'
+
+'Yes. My reed is in full flower, but--but--yes, I am happy; I hope that
+Bela knows.'
+
+The Princess kissed her once again.
+
+'Ah! he loves you so well.'
+
+'That I am sure of; yet I might never have known it but for you.'
+
+'I did for the best.'
+
+'I will send him to you. I want to be alone a little. Dear mother, he
+cares for you as tenderly as though he were your son.'
+
+'I have been his friend always,' said the Princess, with a smile,
+whilst the tears still stood in her eyes. 'You cannot say so much,
+Wanda; you were very harsh.'
+
+'I know it. I will atone to him.'
+
+The eyes of the Princess followed her tenderly.'
+
+'And she will make her atonement generously, grandly,' she thought.
+'She is a woman of few protestations, but of fine impulses and of
+unerring magnanimity. She will be incapable of reminding him that
+their kingdom is hers. I have done this thing; may Heaven be with it!
+If she had loved no one, life would have grown so pale, so chill, so
+monotonous to her; she would have tired of herself, having nothing
+but herself for contemplation. Solitude has been only grand to her
+hitherto because she has been young, but as the years rolled on she
+would have died without ever having lived; now she will live. She may
+have to bear pains, griefs, infidelities, calamities that she would
+have escaped; but even so, how much better the summer day, even with
+the summer storm, than the dull, grey, quiet, windless weather! Of
+course, if she could have found sanctuary in the Church----But her
+faith is not absolute and unwavering enough for that; she has read too
+many philosophies; she requires, too, open-air and vigorous life; the
+cloister would have been to her a prison. She is one of those whose
+religion lies in activity; she will worship God through her children.'
+
+Sabran entered as she mused, and knelt down before her.
+
+'You have been my good angel, always,' he murmured. 'How can I thank
+you? I think she would never have let her eyes rest on me but for you.'
+
+The Princess smiled.
+
+'My friend, you are one of those on whom the eyes of women willingly
+rest, perhaps too willingly. But you--you will have no eyes for any
+other now? You must deserve my faith in you. Is it not so?'
+
+'Ah, madame,' he answered with deep emotion, 'all words seem so trite
+and empty; any fool can make phrases, but when I say that my life
+shall be consecrated to her, I mean it, in the uttermost royalty, the
+uttermost gratitude.'
+
+'I believe you,' said the Princess, as she laid her hand lightly
+on his bent head. 'Perhaps no man can understand entirely all that
+she surrenders in admitting that she loves you; for a proud woman
+to confess so much of weakness is very hard: but I think you will
+comprehend her better than any other would. I think you will not force
+her to pass the door of disillusion; and remember that though she will
+leave you free as air--for she is not made of that poor stuff which
+would enslave what it loves--she would not soon forgive too great abuse
+of freedom. I mean if you were ever--ever unfaithful----
+
+'For what do you take me?' he cried, with indignant passion. 'Is there
+another woman in the world who could sit beside her, and not be
+dwarfed, paled, killed, as a candle by the sun?'
+
+'You are only her betrothed,' said the Princess, with a little sigh.
+'Men see their wives with different eyes; so I have been told, at
+least. Familiarity is no courtier, and time is always cruel.'
+
+'Nay, time shall be our dearest friend,' said Sabran, with a tenderness
+in his voice that spoke more constancy than a thousand oaths. 'She will
+be beautiful when she is old, as you are; age will neither alarm nor
+steal from her; her bodily beauty is like her spiritual, it is cast
+in lines too pure and clear not to defy the years. Oh, mother mine!
+(let me call you that) fear nothing; I will love her so well that, all
+unworthy now, I will grow worthy her, and cause her no moment's pain
+that human love can spare her.'
+
+'Her people shall be your people, and her God your God,' murmured the
+Princess, with her hand still lying lightly on his head, obediently
+bent.
+
+When late that night he went across the lake the monks were at their
+midnight orisons; their voices murmured as one man's the Latin words of
+praise and prayer, and made a sound like that of a great sea rolling
+slowly on a lonely shore.
+
+He believed naught that they believed. Deity was but a phrase to him;
+faith and a future life were empty syllables to him. Yet, in the
+fulness of his joy and the humiliation of his spirit, he felt his heart
+swell, his pride sink subdued. He knelt down in the hush and twilight
+of that humble place of prayer, and for the first moment in many years
+he also praised God.
+
+No one heeded him; he knelt behind them in the gloom unnoticed; he rose
+refreshed as men in barren lands in drought are soothed by hearing the
+glad fall of welcome rain. He had no place there, and in another hour
+would have smiled at his own weakness; but now he remembered nothing
+except that he, utterly beyond his deserts, was blessed. As the monks
+rose to their feet and their loud chanting began to vibrate in the air,
+he went out unheard, as he had entered, and stood on the narrow strip
+of land that parted the chapel from the lake. The green waters were
+rolling freshly in under a strong wind, the shadows of coming night
+were stealing on; in the south-west a pale yellow moonlight stretched
+broadly in a light serene as dawn, and against it there rose squarely
+and darkly with its many turrets the great keep of Hohenszalras.
+
+He looked, but it was not of that great pile and all which it
+represented and symbolised that he thought now.
+
+It was of the woman he loved as a woman, not as a great possessor of
+wealth and lands.
+
+'Almost I wish that she were poor as the saints she resembles!' he
+thought, with a tender passion that for the hour was true. It seemed
+to him that had he seen her standing in her shift in the snow, like
+our Lady of Hungary, discrowned and homeless, he would have been glad.
+He was honest with the honesty of passion. It was not the mistress of
+Hohenszalras that he loved, but his own wife.
+
+Such a marriage could not do otherwise than arouse by its announcement
+the most angry amazement, the most indignant protests from all the
+mighty houses with which for so many centuries the house of Szalras
+had allied itself. In a few tranquil sentences she made known her
+intentions to those of her relations whom she felt bound thus to
+honour; but she gave them clearly to understand that it was a formula
+of respect not an act of consultation. When they received her letters
+they knew that her marriage was already quite as irrevocable as though
+it had already taken place in the Hof-Kapelle of Vienna.
+
+All her relatives and all her order were opposed to her betrothal;
+a cold sufferance was the uttermost which any of them extended to
+Sabran. A foreigner and poor, and, with a troubled and uncertain
+past behind him, he was bitterly unwelcome to the haughty Prussian,
+Austrian, and Hungarian nobilities to which she belonged; neither his
+ancient name nor his recent political brilliancy and military service
+could place him on an equality with them in their eyes. Her trustees,
+the Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe and the Cardinal Vàsàrhely, with her
+cousin Kaulnitz, hurried in person as swiftly as special trains could
+bring them to the Iselthal, but they were too late to avert the blow.
+
+'It is not a marriage for her,' said Kaulnitz, angrily.
+
+'Why not? It is a very old family,' said the Princess, with no less
+irritation.
+
+'But quite decayed, long ruined,' he returned. 'This man was himself
+born in exile.'
+
+'As they exile everybody twice in every ten years in France!
+
+'And there have been stories----'
+
+'Of whom are there not stories? Calumny is the parasite of character;
+the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler.'
+
+'I never heard him accused of any strength, except of the wrist in
+_l'escrime!_'
+
+'Do you know anything dishonourable of him? If you do you are bound to
+say it.'
+
+'Dishonourable is a grave word. No, I cannot say that I do; the society
+he frequents is a guarantee against that; but his life has been
+indifferent, complicated, uncertain, not a life to be allied with that
+of such a woman as Wanda. My dear Princess, it has been a life _dans le
+milieu parisien_; what more would you have me say?'
+
+'Prince Archambaud's has been that. Yet three years since you earnestly
+pressed his suit on Wanda.'
+
+'Archambaud! He is one of the first alliances in Europe; he is of blood
+royal, and he has not been more vicious than other men.'
+
+'It would be better he should have been less so, since he lives so near
+'the fierce light that beats upon the throne;' an electric light which
+blackens while it illumines! My good Kaulnitz, you wander very far
+afield. If you know anything serious against M. de Sabran it is your
+duty to say it.'
+
+'He is a gambler.'
+
+'He has renounced gambling.'
+
+'He is a duellist.'
+
+'Society was of much better constitution when the duel was its habitual
+phlebotomy.'
+
+'He has been the lover of many women.'
+
+'I am afraid that is nothing singular.'
+
+'He is hardly more than an adventurer.'
+
+'He counts his ancestry in unbroken succession from the clays of
+Dagobert.
+
+'He has nothing but a _pignon sur rue_ in Paris, and a league or two of
+rocks and sand in Brittany; yet, though so poor, he made money enough
+by cards and speculation to be for three years the _amant en titre_ of
+Cochonette.'
+
+Madame Ottilie rose with a little frown.
+
+'I think we will say no more, my dear Baron; the matter is, after all,
+not yours or mine to decide. Wanda will assuredly do as she likes.'
+
+'But you have so much influence with her.'
+
+'I have none; no one has any: and I think you do not understand her in
+the least. It may cost her very much to avow to him that she loves him,
+but once having done that, it will cost her nothing at all to avow it
+to the world. She is much too proud a woman to care for the world.'
+
+'He is _gentilhomme de race_, I grant,' admitted with reluctance the
+Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe.
+
+'When has a noble of Brittany been otherwise?' asked the Princess
+Ottilie.
+
+'I know,' said the Prince; 'but you will admit that he occupies a
+difficult position--an invidious one.'
+
+'And he carries himself well through it. It is a difficult position
+which is the test of breeding,' said the Princess, triumphantly, 'and
+I deny entirely that it is what you call an invidious one. It is you
+who have the idea of the crowd when you lay so much stress on the mere
+absence of money.'
+
+'It is the idea of the crowd that dominates in this age.'
+
+'The more reason for us to resist it, if it be so.'
+
+'I think you are in love with him yourself, my sister!'
+
+'I should be were I forty years younger.'
+
+The Countess Brancka alone wrote with any sort of sympathy and pleasure
+to congratulate them both.
+
+'I was sure that Parsifal would win soon or late,' she said. 'Only
+remember that he is a Parsifal _doublé_ by a de Morny.'
+
+Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than
+the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of
+the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied.
+De Morny!--a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The
+comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!
+
+She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or
+remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had
+so much of the '_éternel féminin_' in her that she was only the more
+resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and
+exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was
+natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All
+the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those
+who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances
+produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as
+Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again
+Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had
+no power of persuasion.
+
+The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more
+graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as
+might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were
+present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that
+he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The
+sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man,
+whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of
+many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had
+they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her
+hand.
+
+'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of
+this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of
+birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere
+difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or
+the inches of one's stature.'
+
+The Princess shook her head.
+
+'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he
+is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always
+be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at
+large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'
+
+'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what
+matters the opinion of others?'
+
+'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt
+those motives?'
+
+Wanda did not reply.
+
+'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has
+been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him
+as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to
+him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the
+power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'
+
+As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was
+listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ
+within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of
+grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous
+years to come.
+
+When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:
+
+'I want you to promise me one thing.'
+
+'I promise you all things. What is this one?'
+
+'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those
+great fortunes which form the _acte d'accusation_ of socialists against
+society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of
+Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It
+is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed
+by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious
+barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one
+of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!--Promise me that
+you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may
+enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'
+
+He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to
+speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still
+remained silent.
+
+'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is
+too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against
+me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a
+few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too
+much!'
+
+He stooped and kissed her hand.
+
+'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with
+passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that
+I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be
+right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away
+from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'
+
+A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her
+hands as he held them clasped in his.
+
+'We will drink that wafer together, and as long as we are together it
+will never be bitter, I think,' she said very softly.
+
+Her voice seemed to sink into his very soul, so much it said of faith,
+so much it aroused of remorse.
+
+Then the great joy which had entered his life, like a great dazzling
+flood of light suddenly let loose into a darkened chamber, so blinded
+consumed, and intoxicated him, that he forgot all else; all else save
+this one fact--she would be his, body and soul, night and day, in life
+and in death for ever; his children borne by her, his life spent with
+her, her whole existence surrendered to him.
+
+For some days after that she mused upon the possibility of rendering
+him entirely independent of herself, without insulting him by a direct
+offer of a share in her possessions. At last a solution occurred
+to her. The whole of the fiefs of Idrac constituted a considerable
+appanage apart; its title went with it. When it had come into the
+Szalras family by marriage, as far back as the fifteenth century, it
+had been a principality; it was still a seigneurie, and many curious
+feudal privileges and distinctions went with it.
+
+It was Idrac now that she determined to abandon to her lover.
+
+'He will be seigneur of Idrac,' she thought, 'and I shall be so glad
+for him to bear an Austrian name.'
+
+'She herself would always retain her own name, and would take no other.
+
+'We will go and revisit it together,' she thought, and though she
+was all alone' at that moment, a soft warmth came into her face, and
+a throb of emotion to her heart, as she remembered all that would lie
+in that one word 'together,' all the tender and intimate union of the
+years to come.
+
+Her trustees were furious, and sought the aid of the men of law to
+enable them to step in and arrest her in what they deemed a course
+of self-destruction, but the law could not give them so much power;
+she was her own mistress, and as sole inheritrix had received her
+possessions singularly untrammelled by restrictions. In vain Prince
+Lilienhöhe spent his severe and chilly anger, Kaulnitz his fine
+sarcasm and delicate insinuations, and the Cardinal his stately and
+authoritative wrath. She was not to be altered in her decision.
+
+Austrian law allowed her to give away an estate to her husband if she
+chose, and there was nothing in the private settlements of her property
+to prevent her availing herself of the law.
+
+Strenuous opposition was encountered by her to this project, by every
+one of her relatives, hardly excluding the Princess Ottilie; 'for,'
+said that sagacious recluse, 'your horses may show you, my dear, the
+dangers of a rein too loose.'
+
+'I want no rein at all,' said Wanda. 'You forget that, to my thinking,
+marriage should never be bondage; two people with independent wills,
+tastes, and habits should mutually concede a perfect independence of
+action to each other. When one must yield, it must be the woman.'
+
+'Those are very fine theories,' the Princess remarked with caution.
+
+'I hope we shall put them in practice,' said Wanda, with unruffled good
+humour. 'Dear mother, I am sure you can understand that I want him
+to feel he is wholly independent of me. To what I love best on earth
+shall I dole out a niggard largesse from my wealth? If I were capable
+of doing so he would grow in time to hate me, and his hatred would be
+justified.'
+
+'I never should have supposed you would become so romantic,' said the
+Princess.
+
+'It will make him independent of you,' objected Prince Lilienhöhe.
+
+'That is what, beyond all, I desire him to be,' she answered.
+
+'It is an infatuation,' sighed Cardinal Vàsàrhely, out of her hearing,
+'when Egon would have brought to her a fortune as large as her own.'
+
+'You think water should always run to the sea,' said Princess Ottilie;
+'surely that is great waste sometimes?'
+
+'I think you are as infatuated as she is,' murmured the Cardinal. 'You
+forget that had she not been inspired with this unhappy sentiment she
+would have most probably left Hohenszalras to the Church.'
+
+'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,'
+answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else,
+had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'
+
+That would have been better than to an adventurer.'
+
+'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest
+aristocracies of the world, if poor.'
+
+'_Ce que femme veut_,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the
+Church had been worsted by women.
+
+The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the
+marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any
+possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband,
+and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of
+action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the
+deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself,
+as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud
+to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your
+hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he
+will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always
+will. If not--if not--well, he must go!'
+
+One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment
+emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She
+spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He
+looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush
+that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow
+tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires.
+She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of
+the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before
+him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.
+
+'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you
+to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of
+Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their
+feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been
+lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the
+reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary
+passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'
+
+'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with
+those roses.'
+
+'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced
+flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment.
+It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'
+
+'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your
+coronet, to which I can add none!'
+
+But to please her he bent over the crabbed black letter and the antique
+blazonings of the great roll to which the great dead men had set their
+sign and seal. She watched him as he read it, then after a little time
+she put her hand with a caressing movement on his shoulder.
+
+'My love, I can do just as I will with Idrac. The lawyers are agreed on
+that, and the Kaiser will confirm whatever I do. Now I want to give you
+Idrac, make you wholly lord of it; indeed, the thing is already done. I
+have signed all the documents needful, and, as I say, the Emperor will
+confirm any part of them that needs his assent. My Réné, you are a very
+proud man, but you will not be too proud to take Idrac and its title
+from your wife. But for that town who can say that our lives might not
+have been passed for ever apart? Why do you look so grave? The Kaiser
+and I both want you to be Austrian. When I transfer to you the fief of
+Idrac you are its Count for evermore.'
+
+He drew a quick deep breath as if he had been struck a blow, and stood
+gazing at her. He did not speak, his eyes darkened as with pain. For
+the moment she was afraid that she had wounded him. With exquisite
+softness of tone and touch she took his hand and said to him tenderly:
+
+'Why will you be so proud? After all, what are these things? Since
+we love one another, what is mine is yours; a formula more or less
+is no offence. It is my fancy that you should have the title and the
+fief. The people know you there, and your heroic courage will be for
+ever amongst their best traditions. Dear! once I read that it needs a
+greater soul to take generously than to give. Be great so, now, for my
+sake!'
+
+'Great!' he echoed the word hoarsely, and a smile of bitter irony
+passed for a moment over his features. But he controlled the passionate
+self-contempt that rose in him. He knew that whatever else he was,
+he was her lover, and her hero in her sight. If the magnitude and
+magnanimity of her gifts overwhelmed and oppressed him, he was recalled
+to self-control by the sense of her absolute faith in him. He pressed
+her hands against his heavily-beating heart.
+
+'All the greatness is with you, my beloved,' he said with effort.
+'Since you delight to honour me, I can but strive my utmost to deserve
+your honour. It is like your beautiful and lavish nature to be prodigal
+of gifts. But when you give yourself, what need is there for aught
+else?'
+
+'But Idrac is my caprice. You must gratify it.'
+
+'I will take the title gladly at your hands then. The revenues--No.'
+
+'You must take it all, the town and the title, and all they bring,' she
+insisted. 'In truth, but for you there would possibly be no town at
+all. Nay, my dear, you must do me this little pleasure; it will become
+you so well that Countship of Idrac: it is as old a place as Vindobona
+itself.'
+
+'Do you not understand?' she added, with a flush on her face. 'I want
+you to feel that it is wholly yours; that if I die, or if you leave me,
+it remains yours still. Oh, I do not doubt you; not for one moment. But
+liberty is always good. And Idrac will make you an Austrian noble in
+your own right. If you persist in refusing it I will assign it to the
+Crown; you will pain me and mortify me.'
+
+'That is enough! Never wittingly in my life will I hurt you. But if you
+wish me to be lord of Idrac, invest me with the title, my Empress. I
+will take it and be proud of it; and as for the revenues--well, we will
+not quarrel for them. They shall go to make new dykes and new bastions
+for the town, or pile themselves one on another in waiting for your
+children.'
+
+She smiled and her face grew warm as she turned aside and took up one
+of the great swords with jewelled hilts and damascened scabbards, which
+were ranged along the wall of the Rittersaal with other stands of arms.
+
+She drew the sword, and as he fell on his knee before her smote him
+lightly on the shoulder with its blade.
+
+'Rise, Graf von Idrac!' she said, stooping and touching his forehead
+with the bouquet that she wore at her breast. He loosened one of the
+roses and held it to his lips.
+
+'I swear my fealty now and for ever,' he said with emotion, and his
+face was paler and his tone was graver than the playfulness of the
+moment seemed to call for in him.
+
+'Would to Heaven I had had no other name than this one you give me,'
+he murmured as he rose. 'Oh, my love, my lady, my guardian angel!
+Forget that ever I lived before, forget all my life when I was unworthy
+you; let me live only from the day that will make me your vassal and
+your----'
+
+'That will make you my lord!' she said softly; then she stooped, and
+for the first time kissed him.
+
+What caused her the only pain that disturbed the tranquillity of these
+cloudless days was the refusal of her cousin Egon to be present at
+her marriage. He sent her, with some great jewels that had come from
+Persia, a few words of sad and wistful affection.
+
+'My presence,' he added in conclusion, 'is no more needed for your
+happiness than are these poor diamonds and pearls needed in your
+crowded jewel-cases. You will spare me a trial, which it could be of no
+benefit to you for me to suffer. I pray that the Marquis de Sabran may
+all his life be worthy of the immense trust and honour which you have
+seen fit to give to him. For myself, I have been very little always in
+your life. Henceforth I shall be nothing. But if ever you call on me
+for any service--which it is most unlikely you ever will do--I entreat
+you to remember that there is no one living who will more gladly or
+more humbly do your bidding at all cost than I, your cousin Egon.'
+
+The short letter brought tears to her eyes. She said nothing of it to
+Sabran. He had understood from Mdme. Ottilie that Prince Vàsàrhely had
+loved his cousin hopelessly for many years, and could not be expected
+to be present at her marriage.
+
+In a week from that time their nuptials were celebrated in the Court
+Chapel of the Hofburg at Vienna, with all the pomp and splendour that
+a brilliant and ceremonious Court could lend to the espousal of one of
+the greatest ladies of the old Duchy of Austria.
+
+Immediately after the ceremony they left the capital for Hohenszalras.
+
+At the signing of the contract on the previous night, when he had taken
+up the pen he had grown very pale; he had hesitated a moment, and
+glanced around him on the magnificent crowd, headed by the Emperor and
+Empress, with a gleam of fear and of anxiety in his eyes, which Baron
+Kaulnitz, who was intently watching him, had alone perceived.
+
+'There is something. What is it?' had mused the astute German.
+
+It was too late to seek to know. Sabran had bent down over the
+parchment, and with a firm hand had signed his name and title.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+It was midsummer once more in the Iselthal, five years and a half after
+the celebration at the Imperial palace of those nuptials which had been
+so splendid that their magnificence had been noticeable even at that
+magnificent Court. The time had seemed to her like one long, happy,
+cloudless day, and if to him there had come any fatigue, any satiety,
+any unrest, such as almost always come to the man in the fruition of
+his passion, he suffered her to see none of them.
+
+It was one of those rare marriages in which no gall of a chain is felt,
+but a quick and perfect sympathy insures that harmony which passion
+alone is insufficient to sustain. He devoted himself with ardour to the
+care of the immense properties that belonged to his wife; he brought
+to their administration a judgment and a precision that none had looked
+for in a man of pleasure; he entered cordially into all her schemes for
+the well-being of her people dependent on her, and carried them out
+with skill and firmness. The revenues of Idrac he never touched; he
+left them to accumulate for his younger son, or expended them on the
+township itself, where he was adored.
+
+If he were still the same man who had been the lover of Cochonette,
+the terror of Monte Carlo, the hero of night-long baccara and frontier
+duels, he had at least so banished the old Adam that it appeared wholly
+dead. Nor was the death of it feigned. He had flung away the slough
+of his old life with a firm hand, and the peace, the dignity of his
+present existence were very precious to him. He was glad to steep
+himself in them, as a tired and fevered wayfarer was glad to bathe his
+dusty and heated limbs in the cool, clear waters of the Szalrassee. And
+he loved his wife with a great love, in which reverence, and gratitude,
+and passion were all blent. Possession had not dulled, nor familiarity
+blunted it. She was still to him a sovereign, a saint, a half divine
+creature, who had stooped to become mortal for his sake, and his
+children's.
+
+The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls
+and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the
+Szalrassee.
+
+'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath
+the great yews beside the keep.
+
+'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but
+watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as
+ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty
+amphitheatre.
+
+She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of
+whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy
+with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The
+other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months
+of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were
+all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.
+
+'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the
+world called so proud.
+
+'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near
+her wicker chair.
+
+'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it,
+at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you
+it will be he who will be dearest to me.'
+
+As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.
+
+She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.
+
+'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that
+we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all
+the world who have passed five years and more together without once
+disagreeing?'
+
+'In all the world there is not another Countess Wanda!'
+
+'Ah! that is your only defect; you will always avoid argument by
+escaping through the side-door of compliment. It is true, to be sure,
+that your flattery is a very high and subtle art.'
+
+'It is like all high art then, based on what is eternally true.'
+
+'You will always have the last word, and it is always so graceful a
+one that it is impossible to quarrel with it. But, Réné, I want you
+to speak without compliment to me for once. Tell me, are you indeed
+never--never--a little weary of being here?'
+
+He hesitated a moment and a slight flush came on his face.
+
+She observed both signs, slight as they were, and sighed; it was the
+first sigh she had ever breathed since her marriage.
+
+'Of course you are, of course you must be,' she said quickly. 'It has
+been selfish and blameable of me never to think of it before. It is
+paradise to me, but no doubt to you, used as you have been to the stir
+of the world, there, must be some tedium, some dulness in this mountain
+isolation. I ought to have remembered that before.'
+
+'You need do nothing of the kind, now,' he said. 'Who has been talking
+to you? Who has brought this little snake into our Eden?'
+
+'No one; and it is not a snake at all, but a natural reflection.
+Hohenszalras and you are the world to me, but I cannot expect that
+Hohenszalras and I can be quite as much to yourself. It is always the
+difference between the woman and the man. You have great talents; you
+are ambitious.'
+
+'Were I as ambitious as Alexander, surely I have gained wherewithal to
+be content!'
+
+'That is only compliment again, or if truth it is only a side of the
+truth. Nay, love, I do not think for a moment you are tired of me;
+I am too self-satisfied for that! But I think it is possible that
+this solitude may have grown, or may grow, wearisome to you; that you
+desire, perhaps without knowing it, to be more amidst the strife,
+the movement, and the pleasures of men. Aunt Ottilie calls this
+"confinement to a fortress;" now that is a mere pleasantry, but if ever
+you should feel tempted to feel what she feels, have confidence enough
+in my good sense and in my affection to say so to me, and then----.'
+
+'And then? We will suppose I have this ingratitude and bad taste, what
+then?'
+
+'Why then, my own wishes should not stand for one instant in the way
+of yours, or rather I would make yours mine. And do not use the word
+ingratitude, my dearest; there can be no question of that betwixt you
+and me.'
+
+'Yes,' said Sabran, as he stooped towards her and touched her hair
+with his lips. 'When you gave me yourself, you made me your debtor
+for all time; would have made me so had you been as poor as you are
+rich. When I speak of gratitude it is of _that_ gift, I think, not of
+Hohenszalras.'
+
+A warmth of pleasure flushed her cheek for a moment, and she smiled
+happily.
+
+'You shall not beg the question so,' she said, with gentle insistence
+after a moment's pause. 'I have not forgotten your eloquence in the
+French Chamber.' You are that rare thing a born orator. You are
+not perhaps fitted to be a statesman, for I doubt if you would have
+the application or bear the tedium necessary, but you have every
+qualification for a diplomatist, a foreign minister.'
+
+'I have not the first qualification, I have no country!'
+
+She looked at him, in surprise--he spoke with bitterness and
+self-contempt; but in a moment he had added quickly:--
+
+'France is nothing to me now, and though I am Austrian by all ties and
+affections, I am not an Austrian before the law.'
+
+'That is hardly true,' she answered, satisfied with the explanation.
+'Since France is little to you you could be naturalised here whenever
+you chose, even if Idrac have not made you a Croat noble, as I believe
+the lawyers would say it had; and the Emperor, who knows and admires
+you, would, I think, at once give you gladly any mission you preferred;
+you would make so graceful, so perfect, so envied an ambassador!
+Diplomacy has indeed little force now, yet tact still tells wherever
+it be found, and it is as rare as blue roses in the unweeded garden of
+the world. I do not speak for myself, dear; that you know. Hohenszalras
+is my beloved home, and it was enough for me before I knew you, and
+nowhere else could life ever seem to me so true, so high, so simple,
+and so near to God as here. But I do remember that men weary even of
+happiness when it is unwitnessed, and require the press and stir of
+emulation and excitation; and, if you feel that want, say so. Have
+confidence enough in me to believe that your welfare will be ever my
+highest law. Promise me this.'
+
+He changed colour slightly at her generous and trustful words, but he
+answered without a moment's pause:
+
+'Whenever I am so thankless to fate I will confess it. No; the world
+and I never valued one another much. I am far better here in the heart
+of your mountains. Here only have I known peace and rest.'
+
+He spoke with a certain effort and emotion, and he stooped over his
+little son and raised him on her knees.
+
+'These children shall grow up at Hohenszalras,' he continued, 'and you
+shall teach them your love of the open air, the mountain solitudes, the
+simple people, the forest creatures, the influences and the ways of
+nature. You care for all those things, and they make up true wisdom,
+true contentment. As for myself, if you always love me I shall ask no
+more of fate.'
+
+'If! Can you be afraid?'
+
+'Sometimes. One always fears to lose what one has never merited.'
+
+'Ah, my love, do not be so humble! If you saw yourself as I see you,
+you would be very proud.'
+
+She smiled as she spoke, and stretched her hand out to him over the
+golden head of her child.
+
+He took it and held it against his heart, clasped in both his own.
+Bela, impatient, slipped off his mother's lap to pursue his capture of
+the daisies; the butterflies were forbidden joys, and he was obedient,
+though in his own little way he was proud and imperious. But there
+was a blue butterfly just in front of him, a Lycœna Adonis, like a
+little bit of the sky come down and dancing about; he could not resist,
+he darted at it. As he was about to seize it she caught his fingers.
+
+'I have told you, Bela, you are never to touch anything that flies or
+moves. You are cruel.'
+
+He tried to get away, and his face grew very warm and passionate.
+
+'Bela will be cruel, if he like,' he said, knitting his pretty brows.
+
+Though he was not more than four years old he knew very well that he
+was the Count Bela, to whom all the people gave homage, crowding to
+kiss his tiny hand after Mass on holy-days. He was a very beautiful
+child, and all the prettier for his air of pride and resolution; he had
+been early put on a little mountain pony, and could ride fearlessly
+down the forest glades with Otto. All the imperiousness of the great
+race which had dealt out life and death so many centuries at their
+caprice through the Hohe Tauern seemed to have been inherited by him,
+coupled with a waywardness and a vanity that were not traits of the
+house of Szalras. It was impossible, even though those immediately
+about him were wise and prudent, to wholly prevent the effects of the
+adulation with which the whole household was eager to wait on every
+whim of the little heir.
+
+'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his
+desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that
+to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it
+his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition,
+and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very
+affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.
+
+With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he
+said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'
+
+Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very
+frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been
+four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.
+
+Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.
+
+'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'
+
+Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.
+
+'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'
+
+Then he burst into tears.
+
+'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his
+father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his
+nurse, who came for him.
+
+'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him
+more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give
+you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'
+
+It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil
+qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son,
+and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was
+unworthy to beget _her_ children,' he thought, with the self-reproach
+that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his
+satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what
+trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years
+to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his
+blood?
+
+'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to
+see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It
+hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own
+little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill;
+do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is
+your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud
+of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'
+
+'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows
+older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to
+enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy
+that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry
+passions, of my degraded humanity?'
+
+'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think
+me.'
+
+'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'
+
+'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a _beau défaut_,
+and I would not have you lose it.'
+
+'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and
+passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'
+
+She looked at him surprised, and vaguely troubled at the self-reproach
+and the self-scorn of his passionate utterance. Seeing that surprise
+and trouble in her glance, he controlled the emotion that for the
+moment mastered him.
+
+'Ah, love!' he said quickly and truly, 'if you could but guess how
+gross and base a man's life seems to him contrasted with the life of
+a pure and noble woman! Being born of you, those children, I think,
+should be as faultless and as soilless as those pearls that lie on your
+breast. But then they are mine also; so already on that boy's face one
+sees the sins of revolt, of self-will, of cruelty--being mine also,
+your living pearls are dulled and stained!'
+
+A greater remorse than she dreamed of made his heart ache as he said
+these words; but she heard in them only the utterance of that extreme
+and unwavering devotion to her which he had shown in all his acts and
+thoughts from the first hours of their union.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The Princess Ottilie was scarcely less happy than they in the
+realisation of her dreams and prophecies. Those who had been most
+bitterly opposed to her alliance with him could find no fault in his
+actions and his affections.
+
+'I always said that Wanda ought to marry, since she had plainly no
+vocation for the cloister,' she said a hundred times a year. 'And I was
+certain that M. de Sabran was the person above all others to attract
+and to content her. She has much more imagination than she would be
+willing to allow and he is capable at once of fascinating her fancy
+and of satisfying her intellect. No one can be dull where he is; he is
+one of those who make _la pluie et le beau temps_ by his absence or
+presence; and, besides that, no commonplace affection would have ever
+been enough for her. And he loves her like a poet, which he is at once
+whenever he leaves the world for Beethoven and Bach. I cannot imagine
+why you should have opposed the marriage, merely because he had not two
+millions in the Bank of France.'
+
+'Not for that,' answered the Grand Duke; 'rather because he broke the
+bank of Monte Carlo, and other similar reasons. A great player of
+baccara is scarcely the person to endow with the wealth of the Szalras.'
+
+'The wealth is tied up tightly enough at the least, and you will admit
+that he was yet more eager than you that it should be so.'
+
+'Oh, yes! he behaved very well. I never denied it. But she has placed
+it in his power to make away with the whole of Idrac, if he should ever
+choose. That was very unwise, but we had no power to oppose.'
+
+'You may be quite sure that Idrac will go intact to the second son, as
+it has always done; and I believe but for his own exertions Idrac would
+now be beneath the Danube waters. Perhaps you never heard all that
+story of the flood?'
+
+'I only hope that if I have detractors you will defend me from them,'
+said Prince Lilienhöhe, giving up argument.
+
+Fair weather is always especially fair in the eyes of those who have
+foretold at sunset that the morrow would be fine; and so the married
+life of Wanda von Szalras was especially delightful as an object of
+contemplation, as a theme of exultation, to the Princess, who alone had
+been clear-sighted enough to foresee the future. She really also loved
+Sabran like a son, and took pride and pleasure in the filial tenderness
+he showed her, and in his children, with the beautiful blue eyes that
+had gleams of light in them like sapphires. The children themselves
+adored her; and even the bold and wilful Bela was as quiet as a
+startled fawn beside this lovely little lady, with her snow-white hair
+and her delicate smile, whose cascades of lace always concealed such
+wonderful bon-bon boxes, and gilded cosaques, and illuminated stories
+of the saints.
+
+Almost all their time was spent at Hohenszalras. A few winter months
+in Vienna was all they had ever passed away from it, except one visit
+to Idrac and the Hungarian estates. The children never left it for
+a day. He shared her affection for the place, and for the hardy and
+frank mountain people around them. He seemed to her to entirely forget
+Romaris, and beyond the transmission of moneys to its priest, he
+took no heed of it. She hesitated to recall it to him, since to do
+so might have seemed to remind him that it was she, not he, who was
+suzerain in the Hohe Tauern. Romaris was but a bleak rock, a strip of
+sea-swept sand; it was natural that it should have no great hold on his
+affections, only recalling as it did all that its lords had lost.
+
+'I hate its name,' he said impetuously once; and seeing the surprise
+upon her face, he added: 'I was very lonely and wretched there; I
+tried to take interest in it because you bade me, but I failed; all
+I saw, all I thought of, was yourself, and I believed you as far and
+for ever removed from me as though you had dwelt in some other planet.
+No! perhaps I am superstitious: I do not wish you to go to Romaris. I
+believe it would bring us misfortune. The sea is full of treachery, the
+sands are full of graves.'
+
+She smiled.
+
+'Superstition is a sort of parody of faith; I am sure you are not
+superstitious. I do not care to go to Romaris; I like to cheat myself
+into the belief that you were born and bred in the Iselthal. Otto said
+to me the other day, "My lord must be a son of the soil, or how could
+he know our mountains so well as he does, and how could he anywhere
+have learned to shoot like that?"'
+
+'I am very glad that Otto does me so much honour. When he first met
+me, he would have shot me like a fox, if you had given the word. Ah, my
+love! how often I think of you that day, in your white serge, with your
+girdle of gold, and your long gold-headed staff, and your little ivory
+horn. You were truly a châtelaine of the old mystical German days.
+You had some _Schlüsselblumen_ in your hand. They were indeed the key
+flower to my soul, though, alas! treasures, I fear, you found none on
+your entrance there.'
+
+'I shall not answer you, since to answer would be to flatter you, and
+Aunt Ottilie already, does that more than is good for you,' she said
+smiling, as she passed her fingers over the waves of his hair. 'By the
+way, whom shall we invite to meet the Lilienhöhe? Will you make out a
+list?'
+
+'The Grand Duke does not share Frau Ottilie's goodness for me.'
+
+'What would you? He has been made of buckram and parchment; besides
+which; nothing that is not German has, to his mind, any right to exist.
+By the way, Egon wrote to me this morning; he will be here at last.'
+
+He looked up quickly in unspoken alarm: 'Your cousin Egon? Here?'
+
+'Why are you so surprised? I was sure that sooner or later he would
+conquer that feeling of being unable to meet you. I begged him to come
+now; it is eight whole years since I have seen him. When once you have
+met you will be friends--for my sake.'
+
+He was silent; a look of trouble and alarm was still upon his face.
+
+'Why should you suppose it any easier to him now than then?' he said at
+length. 'Men who love _you_ do not change. There are women who compel
+constancy, _sans le vouloir_. The meeting can but be painful to Prince
+Vàsàrhely.'
+
+'Dear Réné,' she answered in some surprise, 'my nearest male relative
+and I cannot go on for ever without seeing each other. Even these years
+have done Egon a great deal of harm. He has been absent from the Court
+for fear of meeting us. He has lived with his hussars, or voluntarily
+confined to his estates, until he grows morose and solitary. I am
+deeply attached to him. I do not wish to have the remorse upon me of
+having caused the ruin of his gallant and brilliant life. When he
+has been once here he will like you: men who are brave have always
+a certain sympathy. When he has seen you here he will realise that
+destiny is unchangeable, and grow reconciled to the knowledge that I am
+your wife.'
+
+Sabran gave an impatient gesture of denial, and began to write the list
+of invitations for the autumn circle of guests who were to meet the
+Prince and Princess of Lilienhöhe.
+
+Once every summer and every autumn Hohenszalras was filled with a
+brilliant house-party, for she sacrificed her own personal preferences
+to what she believed to be for the good of her husband. She knew that
+men cannot always live alone; that contact with the world is needful to
+their minds and bracing for it. She had a great dread lest the ghost
+_ennui_ should show his pale face over her husband's shoulder, for
+she realised that from the life of the asphalte of the Champs-Élysées
+to the life amidst the pine forests of the Iselthal was an abrupt
+transition that might easily bring tedium in its train. And tedium is
+the most terrible and the most powerful foe love ever encounters.
+
+Sabran completed the list, and when he had corrected it into due
+accordance with all Lilienhöhe's personal and political sympathies and
+antipathies, despatched the invitations, 'for eight days,' written on
+cards that bore the joint arms of the Counts of Idrac and the Counts of
+Szalras. He had adopted the armorial bearings of the countship of Idrac
+as his own, and seemed disposed to abandon altogether those of the
+Sabrans of Romaris.
+
+When they were written he went out by himself and rode long and fast
+through the mists of a chilly afternoon, through dripping forest ways
+and over roads where little water-courses spread in shining shallows.
+The coming of Egon Vàsàrhely troubled him and alarmed him. He had
+always dreaded his first meeting with the Magyar noble; and as the
+years had dropped by one after another, and her cousin had failed
+to find courage to see her again, he had begun to believe that they
+and Vàsàrhely would remain always strangers. His wish had begotten
+his thought. He knew that she wrote at intervals to her cousin, and
+he to her; he knew that at the birth of each of their children some
+magnificent gift, with a formal letter of felicitation, had come from
+the Colonel of the White Hussars; but as time had gone on and Prince
+Egon had avoided all possibility of meeting them, he had grown to
+suppose that the wound given her rejected lover was too profound ever
+to close; nor did he wonder that it was so: it seemed to him that any
+man who loved her must do so for all eternity, if eternity there should
+be. To learn suddenly that within another month Vàsàrhely would be his
+guest, distressed and alarmed him in a manner she never dreamed. They
+had been so happy. On their cloud less heaven there seemed to him to
+rise a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but bearing with it disaster
+and a moonless night.
+
+'Perhaps he will have forgotten,' he thought, as he strove to shake off
+his forebodings. 'We were so young then. He was not even as old as I!'
+
+And he rode fast and furiously homewards as the day drew in, and the
+lighted windows of the great castle seemed to smile at him as lie saw
+it high up above the darkness of the woods and of the evening mists,
+his home, beloved, sacred, infinitely dear to him; dear as the soil of
+the mother country which the wrecked mariner reaches after facing death
+on the deep sea.
+
+'God save her from suffering by me!' he said, in an unconscious prayer,
+as he drew rein before the terrace of Hohenszalras. Almost he believed
+in God through her.
+
+When, after dressing, he went into, the Saxe room, the peace and
+beauty of the scene had never struck him so strongly as it did now,
+coming out of the shadows of the wet woods and the gloom of his own
+anxieties; anxieties the heavier and the more wearing because they
+could be shared by no one. The soft, full light of the wax candles fell
+on the Louis Seize embroideries and the white woodwork of the panelling
+and the china borders of the mirrors. The Princess Ottilie sat making
+silk-netting for the children's balls; his wife was reading, and Bela
+and Gela, who were there for their privileged half-hour before dinner,
+were fitting together on a white bearskin, playing with the coloured
+balls of the game of solitaire. The soft light from the chandeliers
+and sconces of the Saxe Royale china fell on the golden heads and the
+velvet frocks of the children, on the old laces and the tawny-coloured
+plush of their mothers skirts, on the great masses of flowers in the
+Saxe bowls, and on the sleeping forms of the big dogs Donau and Neva.
+It was an interior that would have charmed Chardin, that would have
+been worthy of Vandyck.
+
+As he looked at it he thought with a sort of ecstasy, 'All that is
+mine;' and then his heartstrings tightened as he thought again, 'If she
+knew----?'
+
+She looked up at his entrance with a welcome on her face that needed no
+words.
+
+'Where have you been in the rain all this long afternoon?' You see we
+have a fire, even though it is midsummer. Bela, rise, and make your
+obeisance, and push that chair nearer the hearth.'
+
+The two little boys stood up and kissed his hand, one after another,
+with the pretty formality; of greeting on which she always insisted;
+then they went back to their coloured glass balls, and he sank into a
+low chair beside his wife with a sigh half of fatigue, half of content.
+
+'Yes, I have been riding all the time,' he said to her. 'I am not sure
+that Siegfried approved it. But it does one good sometimes, and after
+the blackness and the wetness of that forest how charming it is to come
+home!'
+
+She looked at him with wistfulness.
+
+'I wish you were not vexed that Egon is coming! I am sure you have been
+thinking of it as you rode.'
+
+'Yes, I have; but I am ashamed of doing so. He is your cousin, that
+shall be enough for me. I will do my best to make him welcome. Only
+there is this difficulty; a welcome from me to him will seem in itself
+an insult.'
+
+'An insult! when you are my husband? One would think you were my
+_jägermeister._ Dear mother mine, help me to scold him.'
+
+'I am a stranger,' he said, under his breath.
+
+She smiled a little, but she said with a certain hauteur:
+
+'You are master of Hohenszalras, as your son will be when our places
+shall know us no more. Do not let the phantom of Egon come between us,
+I beseech you. His real presence never will do so, that is certain.'
+
+'Nothing shall come between us,' said Sabran, as his hand took and
+closed upon hers. 'Forgive me if I have brought some gloomy _nix_ out
+of the dark woods with me; he will flee away in, the light of this
+beloved white-room. No evil spirits could dare stay by your hearth.'
+
+'There are _nixes_ in the forests,' said Bela in a whisper to his
+brother.
+
+'Ja!' said Gela, not comprehending.
+
+'We will kill them all when we are big,' said Bela.
+
+'Ja! ja!' said Gela.
+
+Bela knew very well what a _nix_ was. Otto had told him all about
+kobolds and sprites, as his pony trotted down the drives.
+
+'Or we will take them prisoners,' he added, remembering that his mother
+never allowed anything to be killed, not even butterflies.
+
+'Ja!' said Gela again, rolling the pretty blue and pink and amber balls
+about in the white fur of the bearskin.
+
+Gela's views of life were simplified by the disciple's law of
+imitation; they were restricted to doing whatever Bela did, when that
+was possible, when it was not possible he remained still adoring Bela,
+with his little serious face as calm as a god's.
+
+She used to think that when they should grow up Bela would be a great
+soldier like Wallenstein or Condé, and Gela would stay at home and
+take care of his people here in the green, lone, happy Iselthal.
+
+Time ran on and the later summer made the blooming hay grow brown on
+all the alpine meadows, and made the garden of Hohenszalras blossom
+with a million autumnal glories; it brought also the season of the
+first house-party. Egon Vàsàrhely was to arrive one day before the
+Lilienhöhe and the other guests.
+
+'I want Egon so much to see Bela!' she said, with the thoughtless
+cruelty of a happy mother forgetful of the pain of a rejected lover.
+
+'I fear Bela will find little favor in your cousin's eyes, since he is
+mine too,' said Sabran.
+
+'Oh, Egon is content to be only our cousin by this----'
+
+'You think so? You do not know yourself if you imagine that.'
+
+'Egon is very loyal. He would not come here if he could not greet you
+honestly.'
+
+Sabran's face flushed a little, and he turned away. He vaguely dreaded
+the advent of Egon Vàsàrhely, and there were so many innocent words
+uttered in the carelessness of intimate intercourse which stabbed him
+to the quick; she had so wounded him all unconscious of her act.
+
+'Shall we have a game of billiards?' he asked her as they stood in the
+Rittersaal, whilst the rain fell fast without. She played billiards
+well, and could hold her own against him, though his game was one that
+had often been watched by a crowded _galerie_ in Paris with eager
+speculation and heavy wager. An hour afterwards they were still playing
+when the clang of a great bell announced the approach of the carriage
+which had been sent to Windisch-Matrey.
+
+'Come!' she said joyously, as she put back her cue in its rest; but
+Sabran drew back.
+
+'Receive your cousin first alone,' he said. 'He must resent my presence
+here. I will not force it on him on the threshold of your house.'
+
+'Of our house! Why will you use wrong pronouns? Believe me, dear, Egon
+is too generous to bear you the animosity you think.'
+
+'Then he never loved you,' said Sabran, somewhat impatiently, as he
+sent one ball against another with a sharp collision. 'I will come if
+you wish it,' he added; 'but I think it is not in the best taste to so
+assert myself.'
+
+'Egon is only my cousin and your guest. You are the master of
+Hohenszalras. Come! you were not so difficult when you received the
+Emperor.'
+
+'I had done the Emperor no wrong,' said Sabran, controlling the
+impatience and the reluctance he still felt.
+
+'You have done Egon none. I should not have been his wife had I never
+been yours.'
+
+'Who knows?' murmured Sabran, as he followed her into the entrance
+hall. The stately figure of Egon Vàsàrhely enveloped in furs was just
+passing through the arched doorway.
+
+She went towards him with a glad welcome and both hands outstretched.
+
+Prince Egon bowed to the ground: then took both her hands in his and
+kissed her on the cheek.
+
+Sabran, who grew very pale, advanced and greeted him with ceremonious
+grace.
+
+'My wife has bade me welcome you, Prince, but it would be presumptuous
+in me, a stranger, to do that. All her kindred must be dear and sacred
+here.'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely, with an effort to which he had for years been vainly
+schooling himself, stretched out his hand to take her husband's; but
+as he did so, and his glance for the first time dwelt on Sabran, a
+look surprised and indefinitely perplexed came on his own features.
+Unconsciously he hesitated a moment; then, controlling himself, he
+replied with a few fitting words of courtesy and friendship. That
+there should be some embarrassment, some constraint, was almost
+inevitable, and did not surprise her: she saw both, but she also saw
+that both were hidden under the serenity of high breeding and worldly
+habit. The most difficult moment had passed: they went together into
+the Rittersaal, talked together a little on a few indifferent topics,
+and in a little space Prince Egon withdrew to his own apartments to
+change his travelling clothes. Sabran left him on the threshold of his
+chamber.
+
+Vàsàrhely locked the doors, locking out even his servant, threw off
+his furs and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. The meeting had
+cost him even more than he had feared that it would do. For five years
+he had dreaded this moment, and its pain was as sharp and as fresh to
+him as though it had been unforeseen. To sleep under the same roof
+with the husband of Wanda von Szalras! He had overrated his power of
+self-control, underrated his power of suffering, when to please her he
+had consented after five years to visit Hohenszalras. What were five
+years?--half a century would not have changed him.
+
+Under the plea of fatigue, he, who had sat in his saddle eighteen hours
+at a stretch, and was braced to every form of endurance in the forest
+chase and in the tented field, sent excuses to his host for remaining
+in his own rooms until the Ave Maria rung. When he at length went
+down to the blue-room where she was, he had recovered, outwardly at
+least, his tranquillity and his self-possession, though here, in this
+familiar, once beloved chamber, where every object had been dear to him
+from his boyhood, a keener trial than any he had passed through awaited
+him, as she led forward to meet him a little boy clad in white velvet,
+with a cloud of light golden hair above deep blue luminous eyes, and
+said to him:
+
+'Egon, this is my Bela. You will love him a little, for my sake?'
+
+Vàsàrhely felt a chill run through him like the cold of death as he
+stooped towards the child; but he smiled and touched the boy's forehead
+with his lips.
+
+'May the spirit of our lost Bela be with him and dwell in his heart,'
+he murmured; 'better I cannot wish him.'
+
+With an effort he turned to Sabran.
+
+'Your little son is a noble child; you may with reason be proud of him.
+He is very like you in feature. I see no trace of the Szalras.'
+
+'The other boy is more like Wanda,' replied Sabran, sensible of a
+certain tenacity of observation with which Vàsàrhely was gazing at
+him. 'As for my daughter, she is too young for anyone to say whom she
+will resemble. All I desire is that she should be like her mother,
+physically and spiritually.'
+
+'Of course,' said the Prince, absently, still looking from Sabran to
+the child, as if in the endeavour to follow some remembrance that
+eluded-him. The little face of Bela was a miniature of his father's,
+they were as alike as it is possible for a child and a man to be so,
+and Egon Vàsàrhely perplexedly mused and wondered at vague memories
+which rose up to him as he gazed on each.
+
+'And what do you like best to do, my little one?' he asked of Bela, who
+was regarding him with curious and hostile eyes.
+
+'To ride,' answered Bela at once, in his pretty uncertain German.
+
+'There you are a true Szalras at least. And your brother Gela, can he
+ride yet? Where is Gela, by the way?'
+
+'He is asleep,' said Bela, with some contempt. 'He is a little thing.
+Yes; he rides, but it is in a chair-saddle. It is not real riding.'
+
+'I see. Well, when you come and see me you shall have some real riding,
+on wild horses if you like;' and he told the child stories of the great
+Magyar steppes, and the herds of young horses, and the infinite delight
+of the unending gallop over the wide hushed plain; and all the while
+his heart ached bitterly, and the sight of the child--who was her
+child, yet had that stranger's face--was to him like a jagged steel
+being turned and twisted inside a bleeding wound. Bela, however, was
+captivated by the new visions that rose before him.
+
+'Bela will come to Hungary,' he said with condescension, and then with
+an added thought, continued: 'I think Bela has great lands there. Otto
+said so.'
+
+'Bela has nothing at all,' said Sabran, sternly. 'Bela talks great
+nonsense sometimes, and it would be better he should go to sleep with
+his brother.'
+
+Bela looked up shyly under his golden cloud of hair. 'Folko is Bela's,'
+he said under his breath. Folko was his pony.
+
+'No,' said Sabran; 'Folko belongs to your mother. She only allows you
+to have him so long as you are good to him.'
+
+'Bela is always good to him,' he said decidedly.
+
+'Bela is faultless in his own estimation,' said his mother, with a
+smile. 'He is too little to be wise enough to see himself as he is.'
+
+This view made Bela's blue eyes open very wide and fill very
+sorrowfully. It was humiliating. He longed to get back to Gela, who
+always listened to him dutifully, and never said anything in answer
+except an entirely acquiescent 'Ja! ja!' which was indeed about the
+limitation of Gela's lingual powers. In a few moments, indeed, his
+governess came for him and took him away, a little dainty figure in his
+ivory velvet and his blue silk stockings, with his long golden curls
+hanging to his waist.
+
+'It is so difficult to keep him from being spoilt,' she said, as the
+door closed on him. 'The people make a little prince, a little god, of
+him. He believes himself to be something wonderful. Gela, who is so
+gentle and quiet, is left quite in the shade.'
+
+'I suppose Gela takes your title?' said Vàsàrhely to his host. 'It
+is usual with the Austrian families for the second son to have some
+distant appellation?'
+
+'They are babies,' said Sabran, impatiently.
+
+'It will be time enough to settle those matters when they are old
+enough to be court-pages or cadets. They are Bela and Gela at present.
+The only real republic is childhood.'
+
+'I am afraid Bela is the _tyrannus_ to which all republics succumb,'
+said Wanda, with a smile. He is extremely autocratic in his notions,
+and in his family. In all his "make believe" games he is crowned.'
+
+'He is a beautiful child,' said her cousin, and she answered, still
+smiling:
+
+'Oh, yes: he is so like Réné!'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely turned his face from her. The dinner was somewhat dull,
+and the evening seemed tedious, despite the efforts of Sabran to
+promote conversation, and the _écarté_ which he and his guest played
+together. They, were all sensible that some chord was out of tune, and
+glad that on the morrow a large house-party would be there to spare
+them a continuation of this difficult intercourse.
+
+'Your cousin will never forgive me,' said Sabran to her when they were
+alone. 'I think, beside his feeling that I stand for ever between you
+and him there is an impatience of me as a stranger and one unworthy
+you.'
+
+'You do yourself and him injustice,' she answered. 'I shall be unhappy
+if you and he be not friends.'
+
+'Then unhappy you will be, my beloved. We both adore you.'
+
+'Do not say that. He would not be here if it were so.'
+
+'Ah! look at him when he looks at Bela!'
+
+She sighed; she had felt a strong emotion on the sight of her cousin,
+for Egon Vàsàrhely was much changed by these years of pain. His grand
+carriage and his martial beauty were unaltered, but all the fire and
+the light of earlier years were gone out of his face, and a certain
+gloom and austerity had come there. To all other women he would have
+been the more attractive for the melancholy which was in such apt
+contrast with the heroic adventures of his life, but to her the change
+in him was a mute reproach which filled her with remorse though she had
+done no wrong.
+
+Meantime Prince Egon, throwing open his window, leaned out into the
+cold rainy night, as though a hand were at his throat and suffocating
+him. And amidst all the tumult of his pain and revolt, one dim thought
+was incessantly intruding itself; he was always thinking, as he
+recalled the face of Sabran and of Sabran's little son, 'Where have I
+seen those blue eyes, those level brows, those delicate curved lips?'
+
+They were so familiar, yet so strange to him. When he would have given
+a name to them they receded into the shadows of some far away past of
+his own, so far away he could not follow them. He sat up half the night
+letting the wind beat and the rain fall on him. He could not sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+In the morrow thirty or forty people arrived, amongst them Baron
+Kaulnitz _en congé_ from his embassy.
+
+'What think you of Sabran?' he asked of Egon Vàsàrhely, who answered:
+
+'He is a perfect gentleman. He is a charming companion. He plays
+admirably at _écarté._
+
+'_Écarté_! I spoke of his moral worth: what is your impression of that?'
+
+'If he had not satisfied her as to that, Wanda would not be his wife,'
+answered the Prince gravely. 'He has given her beautiful children, and
+it seems to me that he renders her perfectly happy. We should all be
+grateful to him.'
+
+'The children are certainly very beautiful,' said Baron Kaulnitz, and
+said no more.
+
+'The people all around are unfeignedly attached to him,' Vàsàrhely
+continued with generous effort. 'I hear nothing but his praise. Nor do
+I think it the conventional compliment which loyalty leads them to pay
+the husband of their Countess; it is very genuine attachment. The men
+of the old Archduchy are not easily won; it is only qualities of daring
+and manliness which appeal to their sympathies. That he has gained
+their affections is as great testimony to his character in one way as
+that he has gained Wanda's is in another. At Idrac also the people
+adore him, and Croats are usually slow to see merit in strangers.'
+
+'In short, he is a paragon,' said the ambassador, with a little dubious
+smile. 'So much the better, since he is irrevocably connected with us.'
+
+Sabran was at no time seen to greater advantage than when he was
+required to receive and entertain a large house-party. Always graceful,
+easily witty, endowed with that winning tact which is to society as
+cream is to the palate, the charm he possessed for women and the
+ascendency he could, at times, exercise over men--even men who were
+opposed to him--were never more admirably displayed than when he was
+the master of Hohenszalras, with crowned heads, and princes, and
+diplomatists, and beauties gathered beneath his roof. His mastery,
+moreover, of all field sports, and his skill at all games that demanded
+either intelligence or audacity, made him popular with a hardy and
+brilliant nobility; his daring in a boar hunt at noon was equalled by
+his science at whist in the evening. Strongly prejudiced against him at
+the onset, the great nobles who were his guests had long ceased to feel
+anything for him except respect and regard; whilst the women admired
+him none the less for that unwavering devotion to his wife which made
+even the conventionalities of ordinary flirtation wholly impossible to
+him. With all his easy gallantry and his elegant homage to them, they
+all knew that, at heart, he was as cold as the rocks to all women save
+one.
+
+'It is really the knight's love for his lady,' said the Countess
+Brancka once; and Sabran, overhearing, said: 'Yes, and, I think that if
+there were more like my lady on earth, knighthood might revive on other
+scenes than Wagner's.'
+
+Between him and the Countess Brancka there was a vague intangible
+enmity, veiled under the perfection of courtesy. They could ill have
+told why they disliked each other; but they did so. Beneath their
+polite or trivial or careless speech they often aimed at each other's
+feelings or foibles with accuracy and malice. She had stayed at
+Hohenszalras more or less time each year in the course of her flight
+between France and Vienna, and was there now. He admired his wife's
+equanimity and patience under the trial of Mdme. Olga's frivolities,
+but he did not himself forbear from as much sarcasm as was possible
+in a man of the world to one who was his guest, and by marriage his
+relative, and he was sensible of her enmity to himself, though she
+paid him many compliments, and sometimes too assiduously sought his
+companionship. '_Elle fait le ronron, mais gare à ses pattes!_' he said
+once to his wife concerning her.
+
+Sabran appraised her indeed with unflattering accuracy. He knew
+by heart all the wiles and wisdom of such a woman as she was. Her
+affectations did not blind him to her real danger, and her exterior
+frivolity did not conceal from him the keen and subtle self-interest
+and the strong passions which laboured beneath it.
+
+She felt that she had an enemy in him, and partly in self-protection,
+partly in malice, she set herself to convert a foe into a friend,
+perhaps, without altogether confessing it to herself, into a lover as
+well.
+
+The happiness that prevailed at Hohenszalrasburg annoyed her for
+no other reason than that it wearied her to witness it. She did
+not envy it, because she did not want happiness at all; she wanted
+perpetual change, distraction, temptation, passion, triumph--in a word,
+excitement, which becomes the drug most unobtainable to those who have
+early exhausted all the experiences and varieties of pleasure.
+
+Mdme. Brancka had always an unacknowledged resentment against her
+sister-in-law, for being the owner of all the vast possessions of the
+Szalras. 'If Gela had lived!' she thought constantly. 'If I had only
+had a son by him before he died, this woman would have had her dower
+and nothing more.' That his sister should possess all, whilst she had
+by her later marriage lost her right even to a share in that vast
+wealth, was a perpetual bitterness to her.
+
+Stefan Brancka was indeed rich, but he was an insensate gambler. She
+was extravagant to the last degree, with all the costly caprices of
+a _cocodette_ who reigned in the two most brilliant capitals of the
+world. They were often troubled by their own folly, and again and again
+the generosity of his elder brother had rescued them from humiliating
+embarrassments. At such moments she had almost hated Wanda von Szalras
+for these large possessions, of which, according to her own views,
+her sister-in-law made no use whatever. Meantime, she wished Egon
+Vàsàrhely to die childless, and to that end had not been unwilling
+for the woman he loved to marry anyone else. She had reasoned that the
+Szalras estates would go to the Crown or the Church if Wanda did not
+marry; whilst all the power and possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely must, if
+he had no sons, pass in due course to his brother. She had the subtle
+acuteness of her race, and she had the double power of being able at
+once to wait very patiently and to spring with swift rage on what she
+needed. To her sister-in-law she always appeared a mere flutterer on
+the breath of fashion. The grave and candid nature of the one could not
+follow or perceive the intricacies of the other.
+
+'She is a cruel woman and a perilous one,' Sabran said one day to his
+wife's surprise.
+
+She answered him that Olga Brancka had always seemed to her a mere
+frivolous _mondaine_, like so many others of their world.
+
+'No,' he persisted. 'You are wrong; she is not a butterfly. She has too
+much energy. She is a profoundly immoral woman also. Look at her eyes.'
+
+'That is Stefan's affair,' she answered, 'not ours. He is indifferent.'
+
+'Or unsuspicious? Did your brother care for her?'
+
+'He was madly in love with her. She was only sixteen when he married
+her. He fell at Solferino half a year later. When she married my
+cousin it shocked and disgusted me. Perhaps I was foolish to take it
+thus, but it seemed such a sin against Gela. To die _so_, and not to be
+even remembered!'
+
+'Did your cousin Egon approve this second marriage?'
+
+'No,' he opposed it; he had our feeling about it. But Stefan, though
+very young, was beyond any control. He had the fortune as he had the
+title of his mother, the Countess Brancka, and Olga bewitched him as
+she had done my brother.'
+
+'She _is_ a witch, a wicked witch,' said Sabran.
+
+The great autumn party was brilliant and agreeable. All things went
+well, and the days were never monotonous. The people were well
+assorted, and the social talent of their host made their outdoor sports
+and their indoor pastimes constantly varied, whilst Hungarian musicians
+and Viennese comedians played waltzes that would have made a statue
+dance, and represented the little comedies for which he himself had
+been famous at the Mirlitons.
+
+He was not conscious of it, but he was passionately eager for Egon
+Vàsàrhely to be witness, not only of his entire happiness, but of his
+social powers. To Vàsàrhely he seemed to put forward the perfection
+of his life with almost insolence; with almost exaggeration to exhibit
+the joys and the gifts with which nature and chance had so liberally
+dowered him. The stately Magyar soldier, sitting silent and melancholy
+apart, watched him with a curious pang, that in a lesser nature would
+have been a consuming envy. Now and then, though Sabran and his wife
+spoke rarely to each other in the presence of others, a glance, a
+smile, a word passed between them that told of absolute unuttered
+tenderness, profound and inexhaustible as the deep seas; in the very
+sound of their laughter, in the mere accent of their voices, in a
+careless caress to one of their children, in a light touch of the hand
+to one another as they rode, or as they met in a room, there was the
+expression of a perfect joy, of a perfect faith between them, which
+pierced the heart of the watcher of it. Yet would he not have had it
+otherwise at her cost.
+
+'Since she has chosen him as the companion of her life, it is well
+that he should be what she can take pride in, and what all men can
+praise,' he thought, and yet the happiness of this man seemed to him an
+audacity, an insolence. What human lover could merit her?
+
+Between himself and Sabran there was the most perfect courtesy, but no
+intimacy. They both knew that if for fifty years they met continually
+they would never be friends. All her endeavours to produce sympathy
+between them failed. Sabran was conscious of a constant observation of
+him by her cousin, which seemed to him to have a hostile motive, and
+which irritated him extremely, though he did not allow his irritation
+any visible vent. Olga Brancka perceived, and with the objectless
+malice of women of her temperament, amused herself with fanning, the
+slumbering enmity, as children play at fire.
+
+'You cannot expect Egon to love you,' she said once to her host. 'You
+know he was the betrothed of Wanda from her childhood--at least in his
+own hopes, and in the future sketched for them by their families.'
+
+'I was quite aware of that before I married,' he answered her
+indifferently. 'But those family arrangements are tranquil disposals of
+destiny which, if they be disturbed, leave no great trace of trouble.
+The Prince is young still, and a famous soldier as well as a great
+noble. He has no lack of consolation if he need it, and I cannot
+believe that he does.'
+
+Mdme. Olga laughed.
+
+'You know as well as I do that Egon adores the very stirrup your wife's
+foot touches!'
+
+'I know he is her much beloved cousin,' said Sabran, in a tone which
+admitted of no reply.
+
+To Vàsàrhely his sister-in-law said confidentially:
+
+'Dear Egon, why did you not stay on the _pusztas_ or remain with your
+hussars? You make _le beau_ Sabran jealous.'
+
+'Jealous!' asked Vàsàrhely, with a bitter smile. 'He has much cause,
+when she has neither eye nor ear, neither memory nor thought of any
+kind for any living thing except himself and those children who are
+all his very portraits! Why do you say these follies, Olga? You know
+that my cousin Wanda chose her lord out of all the world, and loves
+him as no one would have supposed she had it in her to love any mortal
+creature.'
+
+He spoke imperiously, harshly, and she was silenced.
+
+'What do you think of him?' she said with hesitation.
+
+'Everyone asks me that question. I am not his keeper!'
+
+'But you must form some opinion. He is virtual lord of Hohenszalras,
+and I believe she has made over to him all the appanages of Idrac, and
+his children will have everything.'
+
+'Are they not her natural heirs? Who should inherit from her if not her
+sons?'
+
+'Of course, of course they will inherit, only they inherit nothing
+from him. It was certainly a great stroke of fortune for a landless
+gentleman to make. Why does the _gentilhomme pauvre_ always so
+captivate women?'
+
+'What do you mean to insinuate, Olga?' he asked her, with a stern
+glance of his great black eyes.'
+
+'Oh, nothing; only his history was peculiar. I remember his arrival
+in France, his first appearance in society; it is many years ago now.
+All the Faubourg received him, but some said at the time that it was
+too romantic to be true--those Mexican forests, that long exile of the
+Sabran, the sudden appearance of this beautiful young marquis; you
+will grant it was romantic. I suppose it was the romance that made
+even Wanda's clear head turn a little. It is a _vin capiteux_ for many
+women. And then such a life in Paris after it--duels, baccara, bonnes
+fortunes, clever comedies, a touch like Liszt's, a sudden success in
+the Chamber--it was all so romantic; it was bound to bring him at
+last to his haven, the Prince Charmant of an enchanted castle! Only
+enchanted castles sometimes grow dull, and Princes Charmants are not
+always amusable by the same châtelaine!'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely, with his eyes sombre under their long black lashes,
+listened to the easy bantering phrases with the vague suspicion of an
+honest and slow-witted man that a woman is trying to drop poison into
+his ear which she wishes to pass as _eau sucrée._ He did not altogether
+follow her insinuation, but he understood something of her drift. They
+were alone in a corner of the ball-room, whilst the cotillon was at its
+height, conducted by Sabran, who had been famous for its leadership in
+Paris and Vienna. He stooped his head and looked her full in her eyes.
+
+'Look here, Olga. I am not sure what you mean, but I believe you are
+tired of seeing my cousin's happiness, merely because it is something
+with which you cannot interfere. For myself I would protect her
+happiness as I would her honour if I thought either endangered. Whether
+you or I like the Marquis de Sabran is wholly beyond the question. She
+loves him, and she has made him one of us. His honour is now ours.
+For myself I would defend him in his absence as though he were my own
+brother. Not for his sake at all--for hers. I do not express myself
+very well, but you know what I mean. Here is Max returning to claim
+you.'
+
+Silenced and a little alarmed the Countess Brancka rose and went off to
+her place in the cotillon.
+
+Vàsàrhely, sitting where she had left him, watched the mazes of the
+cotillon, the rhythm of the tzigane musicians coming to his ear
+freighted with a thousand familiar memories of the czardas danced madly
+in the long Hungarian nights. Time had been when the throb of the
+tzigane strings had stirred all his pulses like magic, but now all his
+bold bright life seemed numb and frozen in him.
+
+His eyes rested on his cousin, where she stood conversing with a crown
+prince, who was her chief guest, and passed from her to follow the
+movements of Sabran, who with supreme ease and elegance was leading a
+new intricate measure down the ball-room.
+
+She was happy, that he could not doubt. Every action, every word, every
+glance said so with a meaning not to be doubted. He thought she had
+never looked so handsome as she did to-night since that far away day
+in her childhood when he had seen her with the red and white roses in
+her lap and the crown upon her curls. She had the look of her childhood
+in her eyes, that serene and glad light which had been dimmed by her
+brothers' death, but now shone there again tranquil, radiant, and pure
+as sunlight is. She wore white velvet and white brocade; her breast
+was hidden in white roses; she wore her famous pearls and the ribbons
+of the Starred Cross of Austria and of the Prussian Order of Merit;
+she held in her hand a large painted fan which had belonged to Maria
+Theresa. Every now and then, as she talked with her royal guest, her
+glance strayed down the room to where her husband was, and lingered
+there a moment with a little smile.
+
+Vàsàrhely watched her for awhile, then rose abruptly, and made his way
+out of the ball-room and the state apartments down the corridors of the
+old house he knew so well towards his own chamber. He thought he would
+write to her and leave upon the morrow. What need was there for him to
+stay on in this perpetual pain? He had done enough for the world, which
+had seen him under the roof of Hohenszalras.
+
+As he took his way through the long passages, tapestry-hung or
+oak-panelled, which led across the great building to his own set of
+rooms in the clock tower, he passed an open door out of which a light
+was streaming. As he glanced within he saw it was the children's
+sleeping apartment, of which the door was open because the night was
+warm, unusually warm for the heart of the Gross Glöckner mountains. An
+impulse he could not have explained made him pause and enter. The three
+little white beds of carved Indian work, with curtains of lace, looked
+very snowy and peaceful in the pale light from a hanging lamp. The
+children were all asleep; the one nearest the door was Bela.
+
+Vàsàrhely stood and looked at him. His head was thrown back on his
+pillow and his arms were above his head. His golden hair, which was
+cut straight and low over his forehead, had been pushed back in his
+slumber; he looked more like his father than in his waking hours,
+for as he dreamed there was a look of coldness and of scorn upon his
+childish face, which made him so resemble Sabran that the man who
+looked on him drew his breath hard with pain.
+
+The night-nurse rose from her seat, recognising Prince Egon, whom she
+had known from his childhood.
+
+'The little Count is so like the Marquis,' she said, approaching; 'so
+is Herr Gela. Ah, my Prince, you remember the noble gentlemen whose
+names they bear? God send they may be like them in their lives and not
+their deaths!'
+
+'An early death is good,' said Vàsàrhely, as he stood beside the
+child's bed. He thought how good it would have been if he had fallen
+at Sadowa or Königsgrätz, or earlier by the side of Gela and Victor,
+charging with his White Hussars.
+
+The old nurse rambled on, full of praise and stories of the children's
+beauty, and strength, and activity, and intelligence. Vàsàrhely did not
+hear her; he stood lost in thought looking down on the sleeping figure
+of Bela, who, as if conscious of strange eyes upon him, moved uneasily
+in his slumber, and ruffled his golden hair with his hands, and thrust
+off his coverings from his beautiful round white limbs.
+
+'Count Bela is not like our saint who died,' said the old nurse. 'He
+is always masterful, and loves his own way. My lady is strict with
+him, and wisely so, for he is a proud rebellious child. But he is very
+generous, and has noble ways. Count Gela is a little angel; he will be
+like the Heilige Graf.'
+
+Vàsàrhely did not hear anything she said. His gaze was bent on the
+sleeping child, studying the lines of the delicate brows, of the
+curving lips, of the long black lashes. It was so familiar, so
+familiar! Suddenly as he gazed a light seemed to leap out of the
+darkness of long forgotten years, and the memory which had haunted him
+stood out clear before him.
+
+'He is like Vassia Kazán!' he cried, half aloud. The face of the child
+had recalled what in the face of the man had for ever eluded his
+remembrance.
+
+He thrust a gold coin in the nurse's hand, and hurried from the
+chamber. A sudden inconceivable, impossible suspicion had leaped up
+before him as he had gazed on the sleeping loveliness of Sabran's
+little son.
+
+The old woman saw his sudden pallor, his uncertain gesture, and
+thought, 'Poor gallant gentleman! He wishes these pretty boys were his
+own. Well, it might have been better if he had been master here, though
+there is nothing to say against the one who is so. Still, a stranger is
+always a stranger, and foreign blood is bad.'
+
+Then she drew the coverings over Bela's naked little limbs, and passed
+on to make sure that the little Ottilie, who had been born when the
+primroses where first out in the Iselthal woods, was sleeping soundly,
+and wanted nothing.
+
+Vàsàrhely made his way to his own chamber, and there sat down heavily,
+mechanically, like a man waking out from a bad dream.
+
+His memory went back to twenty years before, when he, a little lad, had
+accompanied his father on a summer visit to the house of a Russian,
+Prince Paul Zabaroff. It was a house, gay, magnificent, full of idle
+men and women of facile charm; it was not a house for youth; but
+both the Prince Vàsàrhely and the Prince Zabaroff were men of easy
+morals--_viveurs_, gamesters, and philosophers, who at fifteen years
+old themselves had been lovers and men of the world. At that house
+had been present a youth, some years older than he was, who was known
+as Vassia Kazán: a youth whose beauty and wit made him the delight of
+the women there, and whose skill at games and daring in sports won him
+the admiration of the men. It was understood without even being said
+openly that Vassia Kazán was a natural son of the Prince Zabaroff. The
+little Hungarian prince, child as he was, had wit enough and enough
+knowledge of life to understand that this brilliant companion, of his
+was base-born. His kind heart moved him to pity, but his intense pride
+curbed his pity with contempt. Vassia Kazán had resented the latter too
+bitterly to even be conscious of the first. The gentlemen assembled had
+diverted themselves by the unspoken feud that had soon risen between
+the boys, and the natural intelligence of the little Magyar noble had
+been no match for the subtle and cultured brain of the Parisian Lycéen.
+
+One day one of the lovely ladies there, who plundered Zabaroff and
+caressed his son, amused herself with a war of words between the lads,
+and so heated, stung, spurred and tormented the Hungarian boy that,
+exasperated by the sallies and satires of his foe, and by the presence
+of this lovely goddess of discord, he so far forgot his chivalry that
+he turned on Vassia with a taunt. 'You would be a serf if you were in
+Russia!' he said, with his great black eyes flashing the scorn of the
+noble on the bastard. Without a word, Vassia, who had come in from
+riding and had his whip in his hand, sprang on him, held him in a grip
+of steel, and thrashed him. The fiery Magyar, writhing under the blows
+of one who to him was as a slave, as a hound, freed his right arm,
+snatched from a table near an oriental dagger lying there with other
+things of value, and plunged it into the shoulder of his foe. The
+cries of the lady, alarmed at her own work, brought the men in from
+the adjoining room; the boys were forced apart and carried to their
+chambers.
+
+Prince Vàsàrhely left the house that evening with his son, still
+furious and unappeased. Vassia Kazán remained, made a hero of and
+nursed by the lovely woman who had thrown the apple of strife. His
+wound was healed in three weeks' time; soon after his father's
+house-party was scattered, and he himself returned to his college. Not
+a syllable passed between him and Zabaroff as to his quarrel with the
+little Hungarian magnate. To the woman who had wrought the mischief
+Zabaroff said: 'Almost I wish he were my lawful son. He is a true wolf
+of the steppes. Paris has only combed his hide and given him a silken
+coat; he is still a wolf, like all true Russians.'
+
+Looking on the sleeping child of Sabran, all that half-forgotten scene
+had risen up before the eyes of Egon Vàsàrhely. He seemed to see the
+beautiful fair face of Vassia Kazán, with the anger on the knitted
+brows, and the ferocity on the delicate stern lips as he had raised his
+arm to strike. Twenty years had gone by; he himself, whenever he had
+remembered the scene, had long grown ashamed of the taunt he had cast,
+not of the blow he had given, for the sole reproof his father had ever
+made him was to say: 'A noble, only insults his equals. To insult an
+inferior is ungenerous, it is derogatory; whom you offend you raise for
+the hour to a level with yourself. Remember to choose your foes not
+less carefully than you choose your friends.'
+
+Why with the regard, the voice, the air of Sabran had some vague
+intangible remembrance always come before him?'
+
+Why, as he had gazed on the sleeping child had the vague uncertainty
+suddenly resolved itself into distinct revelation?
+
+'He is Vassia Kazán! He is Vassia Kazán!' he said to himself a score
+of times stupidly, persistently, as one speaks in a dream. Yet he knew
+he must be a prey to delusion, to phantasy, to accidental resemblance.
+He told himself so. He resisted his own folly, and all the while a
+subtler inner consciousness seemed to be speaking in him, and saying to
+him:
+
+'That man is Vassia Kazán. Surely he is Vassia Kazán.'
+
+And then the loyal soul of him strengthened itself and made him think:
+
+'Even if he be Vassia Kazán he is her husband. He is what she loves; he
+is the father of those children that are hers.'
+
+He never went to his bed that night. When the music ceased at an hour
+before dawn, and the great house grew silent, he still sat there by
+the open casement, glad of the cold air that blew in from over the
+Szalrassee, as with daybreak a fine film of rain began to come down the
+mountain sides.
+
+Once he heard the voice of Sabran, who passed the door on his way to
+his own apartment. Sabran was saying in German with a little laugh:
+
+'My lady!' I am jealous of your crown prince. When I left him now in
+his chamber I was disposed to immortalise myself by regicide. He adores
+you!'
+
+Then he heard Wanda laugh in answer, with some words that did not
+reach his ear as they passed on further down the corridor. Vàsàrhely
+shivered, and instinctively rose to his feet. He felt as if he must
+seek him out and cry out to him:
+
+'Am I mad or is it true? Let me see your shoulder--have you the mark of
+the wound that I gave? Your little child has the face of Vassia Kazán.
+Are you Vassia Kazán? Are you the bastard of Zabaroff? Are you the wolf
+of the steppes?'
+
+He had desired to go from Hohenszalras, where every hour was pain to
+him, but now he felt an irresistible fascination in the vicinity of
+Sabran. His mind was in that dual state which at once rejects a fact as
+incredible, and believes in it absolutely. His reason told him that his
+suspicion was a folly; his instinct told him that it was a truth.
+
+When in the forenoon the castle again became animated, and the guests
+met to the mid-day breakfast in the hall of the knights, he descended,
+moved by an eagerness that made him for the first time in his life
+nervous. When Sabran addressed him he felt himself grow pale; he
+followed the movements, he watched the features, he studied the tones
+of his successful rival, with an intense absorption in them. Through
+the hunting breakfast, at which only men were present, he was conscious
+of nothing that was addressed to him; he only seemed to hear a voice in
+his ear saying perpetually----'Yonder is Vassia Kazán.'
+
+The day was spent in sport, sport rough and real, that gave fair play
+to the beasts and perilous exposure to the hunters. For the first time
+in his life, Egon Vàsàrhely let a brown bear go by him untouched,
+and missed more than one roebuck. His eyes were continually seeking
+his host; a mile off down a forest glade the figure of Sabran seemed
+to fill his vision, a figure full of grace and dignity, clad in a
+hunting-dress of russet velvet, with a hunting-horn slung at his side
+on a broad chain of gold, the gift of his wife in memory of the fateful
+day when he had aimed at the _kuttengeier_ in her woods.
+
+Sabran of necessity devoted himself to the crown prince throughout
+the day's sport; only in the twilight as they returned he spoke to
+Vàsàrhely.
+
+'Wanda is so full of regret that you wish to leave us,' he said, with
+graceful cordiality; 'if only I can persuade you to remain, I shall
+take her the most welcome of all tidings from the forest. Stay at the
+least another week, the weather has cleared.'
+
+As he spoke he thought that Vàsàrhely looked at him strangely; but
+he knew that he could not be much loved by his wife's cousin, and
+continued with good humour to persist in his request. Abruptly, the
+other answered him at last.
+
+'Wanda wishes me to stay? Well, I will stay then. It seems strange to
+hear a stranger invite _me_ to Hohenszalras.'
+
+Sabran coloured; he said with hauteur:
+
+'That I am a stranger to Prince Vàsàrhely is not my fault. That I have
+the right to invite him to Hohenszalras is my happiness, due to his
+cousin's goodness, which has been far beyond my merit.'
+
+Vàsàrhely's eyes dwelt on him gloomily; he was sensible of the dignity,
+the self-command, and the delicacy of reproof which were blent in the
+answer he had received; he felt humbled and convicted of ill-breeding.
+He said after a pause:
+
+'I should ask your pardon. My cousin would be the first to condemn my
+words; they sounded ill, but I meant them literally. Hohenszalras has
+been one of my homes from boyhood; it will be your son's when we are
+both dead. How like he is to you; he has nothing of his mother.'
+
+Sabran, somewhat surprised, smiled as he answered:
+
+'He is very like me. I regret it; but you know the poets and the
+physiologists are for once agreed as to the cause of that. It is a
+truth proved a million times: _l'enfant de l'amour ressemble toujours
+au père._'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely grew white under the olive hue of his sun-bronzed
+cheek. The _riposte_ had been made with a thrust that went home. Otto
+at that moment approached his master for orders for the morrow. They
+were no more alone. They entered the house; the long and ceremonious
+dinner succeeded. Vàsàrhely was silent and stern. Sabran was the most
+brilliant of hosts, the happiest of men; all the women present were in
+love with him, his wife the most of all.
+
+'Réné tells me you will stay, Egon. I am so very glad,' his cousin said
+to him during the evening, and she added with a little hesitation, 'If
+you would take time to know him well, you would find him so worthy of
+your regard; he has all the qualities that most men esteem in each
+other. It would make me so happy if you were friends at heart, not only
+in mere courtesy.'
+
+'You know that can never be,' said Vàsàrhely, almost rudely. 'Even you
+cannot work miracles. He is your husband. It is a reason that I should
+respect him, but it is also a reason why I shall for ever hate him.'
+
+He said the last words in a tone scarcely audible, but low as it was,
+there was a force in it that affected her painfully.
+
+'What you say there is quite unworthy of you,' she said with gentleness
+but coldness. 'He has done you no wrong. Long ere I met him I told you
+that what you wished was not what I wished, never would be so. You are
+too great a gentleman, Egon, to nourish an injustice in your heart.'
+
+He looked down; every fibre in him thrilled and burned under the sound
+of her voice, the sense of her presence.
+
+'I saw your children asleep last night,' he said abruptly. 'They have
+nothing of you in them; they are his image.'
+
+'Is it so unusual for children to resemble their father?' she said with
+a smile, whilst vaguely disquieted by his tone.
+
+'No, I suppose not; but the Szalras have always been of one type. How
+came your husband by that face? I have seen it amongst the Circassians,
+the Persians, the Georgians; but you say he is a Breton.'
+
+'The Sabrans of Romaris are Bretons; you have only to consult history.
+Very beautiful faces like his have seldom much impress of nationality;
+they always seem as though they followed the old Greek laws, and were
+cast in the divine heroic mould of another time than ours.'
+
+'Who was his mother?'
+
+'A Spanish Mexican.'
+
+Vàsàrhely was silent.
+
+His cousin left him and went amongst her guests. A vague sense of
+uneasiness went with her at her consciousness of his hostility to
+Sabran. She wished she had not asked him to remain.
+
+'You have never offended Egon?' she asked Sabran anxiously that night.
+'You have always been forbearing and patient with him?'
+
+'I have obeyed you in that as all things, my angel,', he answered her
+lightly. 'What would you? He is in love with you still, and I have
+married you! It is even a crime in his eyes that my children resemble
+me! One can never argue with a passion that is unhappy. It is a kind of
+frenzy.'
+
+She heard with some impatience.
+
+'He has no right to cherish such a resentment. He keeps it alive by
+brooding on it. I had hoped that when he saw you here, saw how happy
+you render me, saw your children too, he would grow calmer, wiser, more
+reconciled to the inevitable.'
+
+'You did not know men, my love,' said Sabran, with a smile.
+
+To him the unhappiness and the ill-will of Egon Vàsàrhely were matters
+of supreme indifference; in a manner they gratified him, they even
+supplied that stimulant of rivalry which a man's passion needs to keep
+at its height in the calm of safe possession. That Egon Vàsàrhely saw
+his perfect happiness lent it pungency and a keener sense of victory.
+When he kissed his wife's hand in the sight of her cousin, the sense
+of the pain it dealt to the spectator gave the trivial action to him
+all the sweetness and the ardour of the first caresses of his accepted
+passion.
+
+Of that she knew nothing. It would have seemed to her ignoble, as so
+much that makes up men's desire always does seem to a woman of her
+temperament, even whilst it dominates and solicits her, and forces her
+to share something of its own intoxication.
+
+'Egon is very unreasonable,' said Mdme. Ottilie. 'He believes that
+if you had not met Réné you would have in time loved himself. It is
+foolish. Love is a destiny. Had you married him you would not have
+loved him. He would soon have perceived that and been miserable, much
+more miserable than he is now, for he would have been unable to release
+you. I think he should not have come here at all if he could not have
+met M. de Sabran with at least equanimity.'
+
+'I think so, too,' said Wanda, and an impatience against her cousin
+began to grow into anger; without being conscious of it, she had placed
+Sabran so high in her own esteem that she could forgive none who did
+not adore her own idol. It was a weakness in her that was lovely and
+touching in a character that had had before hardly enough of the usual
+foibles of humanity. Every error of love is lovable.
+
+Vàsàrhely could not dismiss from his mind the impression which haunted
+him.
+
+'I conclude you knew the Marquis de Sabran well in France?' he said one
+day to Baron Kaulnitz, who was still there.
+
+Kaulnitz demurred.
+
+'No, I cannot say that I did. I knew him by repute; that was not very
+pure. However, the Faubourg always received and sustained him; the
+Comte de Chambord did the same; they were the most interested. One
+cannot presume to think they could be deceived.'
+
+'Deceived!' echoed Prince Egon. 'What a singular word to use. Do you
+mean to imply the possibility of--of any falsity on his part--any
+intrigue to appear what he is not?'
+
+'No,' said Kaulnitz, with hesitation. 'Honestly, I cannot say so much.
+An impression was given me at the moment of his signing his marriage
+contract that he concealed something; but it was a mere suspicion. As I
+told you, the whole Legitimist world, the most difficult to enter, the
+most incredulous of assumption, received him with open arms. All his
+papers were of unimpeachable regularity. There was never a doubt hinted
+by anyone, and yet I will confess to you, my dear Egon, since we are
+speaking in confidence, that I have had always my own doubts as to his
+marquisate of Sabran.'
+
+'_Grosser Gott!_' exclaimed Vàsàrhely, as he started from his seat.
+'Why did you not stop the marriage?'
+
+'One does not stop a marriage by a mere baseless suspicion,' replied
+Kaulnitz. 'I have not one shadow of reason for my probably quite
+unwarranted conjecture. It merely came into my mind also at the
+signing of the contracts. I had already done all I could to oppose
+the marriage, but Wanda was inflexible--you are witness of the charm
+he still possesses for her--and even the Princess was scarcely
+less infatuated. Besides, it must be granted that few men are more
+attractive in every way; and as he _is_ one of us, whatever else he be,
+his honour is now our honour, as you said yourself the other day.'
+
+'One could always kill him,' muttered Vàsàrhely, 'and set her free so,
+if one were sure.'
+
+'Sure of what?' said Kaulnitz, rather alarmed at the effect of his own
+words. 'You Magyar gentlemen always think that every knot can be cut
+with a sword. If he were a mere adventurer (which is hardly possible)
+it would not mend matters for you to run him through the heart; there
+are his children.'
+
+'Would the marriage be legal if his name were assumed?'
+
+'Oh, no! She could have it annulled, of course, both by Church and Law.
+All those pretty children would have no rights and no name. But we are
+talking very wildly and in a theatrical fashion. He is as certainly
+Marquis de Sabran as I am Karl von Kaulnitz.'
+
+Vàsàrhely said nothing; his mind was in tumult, his heart oppressed by
+a sense of secrecy and of a hope that was guilty and mean.
+
+He did not speak to his companion of Vassia Kazán, but his conjecture
+seemed to hover before his sight like a black cloud which grew bigger
+every hour.
+
+He remained at Hohenszalras throughout the autumnal festivities. He
+felt as if he could not go away with that doubt still unsolved, that
+suspicion either confirmed or uprooted. His cousin grew as uneasy at
+his presence there as she had before been uneasy at his absence. Her
+instinct told her that he was the foe of the one dearest to her on
+earth. She felt that the gallant and generous temper of him had changed
+and grown morose; he was taciturn, moody, solitary.
+
+He spent almost all his time out of doors, and devoted himself to the
+hardy sport of the mountains and forests with a sort of rage. Guests
+came and went at the castle; some were imperial, some royal people;
+there was always a brilliant circle of notable persons there, and
+Sabran played his part as their host, with admirable tact, talent, and
+good humour. His wit, his amiability, his many accomplishments, and
+his social charm were in striking contrast to the sombre indifference
+of Vàsàrhely, whom men had no power to amuse and women no power to
+interest. Prince Egon was like a magnificent picture by Rembrandt,
+as he sat in his superb uniform in a corner of a ball-room with the
+collars of his orders blazing with jewels, and his hands crossed on
+the diamond-studded hilt of his sword; but he was so mute, so gloomy,
+so austere, that the vainest, coquette there ceased to hope to please
+him, and his most cordial friends found his curt contemptuous replies
+destroy their desire for his companionship.
+
+Wanda, who was frankly and fondly attached to him, began to long for
+his departure. The gaze of his black eyes, fixed in their fire and
+gloom on the little gay figures of her children, filled her with a
+vague apprehension.
+
+'If he would only find some one and be happy,' she thought, with anger
+at this undesired and criminal love which clung to her so persistently.
+
+'Am I made of wax?' he said to her with scorn, when she ventured to
+hint at her wishes.
+
+'How I wish I had not asked him to remain here!' she said to herself
+many times. It was not possible for her to dismiss her cousin, who had
+been from his infancy accustomed to look on the Hohenszalrasburg as his
+second home. But as circle after circle of guests came, went, and were
+replaced by others, and Egon Vàsàrhely still retained the rooms in the
+west tower that had been his from boyhood, his continual presence grew
+irksome and irritating to her.
+
+'He forgets that it is now my husband's house!' she thought.
+
+There was only one living creature in all the place to whom Vàsàrhely
+unbent from his sullen and haughty reserve, and that one was the child
+Bela.
+
+Bela was as beautiful as the morning, with his shower of golden hair,
+and his eyes like sapphires, and his skin like a lily. With curious
+self-torture Vàsàrhely would attract the child to him by tales of
+daring and of sport, and would watch with intent eyes every line of
+the small face, trying therein to read the secret of the man by whom
+this child had been begotten. Bela, all unconscious, was proud of this
+interest displayed in him by this mighty soldier, of whose deeds in war
+Ulrich and Hubert and Otto told such Homeric tales.
+
+'Bela will fight with you when he is big,' he would say, trying to
+inclose the jewelled hilt of Vàsàrhely's sword in his tiny fingers, or
+trotting after him through the silence of the tapestried corridors.
+When she saw them thus together she felt that she could understand the
+superstitious fear of oriental women when their children are looked at
+fixedly.
+
+'You are very good to my boy,' she said once to Vàsàrhely, when he had
+let the child chatter by his side for hours.
+
+Vàsàrhely turned away abruptly.
+
+'There are times when I could kill your son, because he is his,' he
+muttered, 'and there are times when I could worship him, because he is
+yours.'
+
+'Do not talk so, Egon,'she said, gravely. 'If you will feel so, it is
+best--I must say it--it is best that you should see neither my child
+nor me.'
+
+He took no notice of her words.
+
+'The children would always be yours,' he muttered. 'You would never
+leave him, never disgrace him for their sake; even if one knew--it
+would be of no use.'
+
+'Dear Egon,' she said in real distress, 'what strange things are you
+saying? Are you mad? Whose disgrace do you mean?'
+
+'Let us suppose an extreme case,' he said, with a hard laugh. 'Suppose
+their father were base, or vile, or faithless, would you hate the
+children? Surely you would.'
+
+'I have not imagination enough to suppose any such thing,'she said very
+coldly. 'And you do not know what a mother's love is, my cousin.'
+
+He walked away, leaving her abruptly.
+
+'How strange he grows!' she thought. 'Surely his mind must be touched;
+jealousy is a sort of madness.'
+
+She bade the children's attendants keep Count Bela more in the
+nurseries; she told them that the child teased her guests, and must
+not be allowed to run so often at his will and whim over the house.'
+She never seriously feared that Egon would harm the child: his noble
+and chivalrous nature could not have changed so cruelly as that; but
+it hurt her to see his eyes fixed on the son of Sabran with such
+persistent interrogation and so strange an intensity of observation. It
+made her think of old Italian tales of the evil eye.
+
+She did not know that Vàsàrhely had come thither with a sincere and
+devout intention to conquer his jealous hatred of her husband, and
+to habituate himself to the sight of her in the new relations of her
+life. She did not know that he would probably have honestly tried to
+do his duty, and honestly striven to feel at least esteem for one so
+near to her, if the suspicion which had become almost certainty in his
+own mind had not made him believe that he saw in Sabran a traitor,
+a bastard, and a criminal whose offences were the deepest of all
+possible offences, and whose degradation was the lowest of all possible
+degradation, in the sight of the haughty magnate of Hungary, steeped
+to the lips in all the traditions and the convictions of an unsullied
+nobility. If what he believed were, indeed, the truth, he would hold
+Sabran lower than any beggar crouching at the gate of his palace in
+Buda, than any gipsy wandering in the woods of his mountain fortress
+of Taróc. If what he believed were the truth, no leper would seem to
+him so loathsome as this brilliant and courtly gentleman to whom his
+cousin had given her hand, her honour, and her life.
+
+'Doubt, like a raging tooth,' gnawed at his heart, and a hope, which
+he knew was dishonourable to his chivalry, sprang up in him, vague,
+timid, and ashamed. If, indeed, it were as he believed, would not such
+crime, proven on the sinner, part him for ever from the pure, proud
+life of Wanda von Szalras? And then, as he thought thus, he groaned in
+spirit, remembering the children--the children with their father's face
+and their father's taint in them, for ever living witnesses of their
+mother's surrender to a lying hound.
+
+'Your cousin cannot be said to contribute to the gaiety of your
+house parties, my love,' Sabran observed with a smile one day, when
+they received the announcement of an intended visit from one of the
+archdukes. Egon Vàsàrhely was still there, and even his cousin, much
+as she longed for his departure, could not openly urge it upon him;
+relationship and hospitality alike forbade.
+
+'He is sadly changed,' she answered. 'He was always silent, but he is
+now morose. Perhaps he lives too much at Taróc, where all is very wild
+and solitary.'
+
+'He lives too much in your memory,' said Sabran, with no compassion.
+'Could he determine to forgive my marriage with you, there would be a
+chance for him to recover his peace of mind. Only, my Wanda, it is not
+possible for any man to be consoled for the loss of you.'
+
+'But that is nothing new,' she answered, with impatience. 'If he felt
+so strongly against you, why did he come here? It was not like his
+high, chivalrous honour.'
+
+'Perhaps he came with the frank will to be reconciled to his fate,'
+said Sabran, not knowing how closely he struck the truth, 'and at the
+sight of you, of all that he lost and that I gained, he cannot keep his
+resolution.'
+
+'Then he should go away,' she said, with that indifference to all
+others save the one beloved which all love begets.
+
+'I think he should. But who can tell him so?'
+
+'I did myself the other day. I shall tell him so more plainly, if
+needful. Who cannot honour you shall be no friend of mine, no guest of
+ours.'
+
+'Oh, my love!' said Sabran, whose conscience was touched. 'Do not have
+feud with your relatives for my sake. They are worthier than I.'
+
+The Archduke, with his wife, arrived there on the following day, and
+Hohenszalras was gorgeous in the September sun, with all the pomp with
+which the lords of it had always welcomed their Imperial friends.
+Vàsàrhely looked on as a spectator at a play when he watched its
+present master receive the Imperial Prince with that supreme ease,
+grace, and dignity which were so admirably blent in him.
+
+'Can he be but a marvellous comedian?' wondered the man, to whom a
+bastard was less even than a peasant.
+
+There was nothing of vanity, of effort, of assumption visible in the
+perfect manner of his host. He seemed to the backbone, in all the
+difficult subtleties of society, as in the simple, frank intercourse
+of man and man, that which even Kaulnitz had conceded that he was,
+_gentilhomme de race._ Could he have been born a serf--bred from the
+hour's caprice of a voluptuary for a serving-woman?
+
+Vàsàrhely sat mute, sunk so deeply in his own thoughts that all the
+festivities round him went by like a pageantry on a stage, in which he
+had no part.
+
+'He looks like the statue of the Commendatore,' said Olga Brancka, who
+had returned for the archducal visit, as she glanced at the sombre,
+stately figure of her brother-in-law, Sabran, to whom she spoke,
+laughed with a little uneasiness. Would the hand of Egon Vàsàrhely ever
+seize him and drag him downward like the hand of the statue in _Don
+Giovanni?_
+
+'What a pity that Wanda did not marry him, and that I did not marry
+you!' said Mdme. Brancka, saucily, but with a certain significance of
+meaning.
+
+'You do me infinite honour!' he answered. 'But, at the risk of seeming
+most ungallant, I must confess the truth. I am grateful that the gods
+arranged matters as they are. You are enchanting, Madame Olga, as a
+guest, but as a wife--alas! who can drink _kümmel_ every day?'
+
+She smiled enchantingly, showing her pretty teeth, but she was bitterly
+angered. She had wished for a compliment at the least. 'What can these
+men see in Wanda?' she thought savagely. 'She is handsome, it is true;
+but she has no coquetry, no animation, no passion. She is dressed by
+Worth, and has a marvellous quantity of old jewels; but for that no one
+would say anything of her except that she was much too tall and had a
+German face!' And she persuaded herself that it was so; if the Venus
+de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her
+waist was large.
+
+Mdme. Olga was still very lovely, and took care to be never seen except
+at her loveliest. She always treated Sabran with a great familiarity,
+which his wife was annoyed by, though she did not display her
+annoyance. Mdme Brancka always called him _mon cousin_ or _beau cousin_
+in the language she usually used, and affected much more previous
+knowledge of him than their acquaintance warranted, since it had been
+merely such slight intimacy as results from moving in the same society.
+She was small and slight, but of great spirit; she shot, fished, rode,
+and played billiards with equal skill; she affected an adoration of
+the most dangerous sports, and even made a point of sharing the bear
+and the boar hunt. Wanda, who, though a person of much greater real
+courage, abhorred all the cruelties and ferocities that perforce
+accompany sport, saw her with some irritation go out with Sabran on
+these expeditions.
+
+'Women are utterly out of place in such sport as that, Olga,' she urged
+to her; 'and indeed are very apt to bring the men into peril, for of
+course no man can take care of himself whilst he has the safety of a
+woman to attend to; she must of necessity distract and trouble him.'
+
+But the Countess Stefan only laughed, and slipped with affectation her
+jewelled hunting-knife into its place in her girdle.
+
+Throughout the Archduke's visit, and after the Prince's departure,
+Vàsàrhely continued to stay on, whilst a succession of other guests
+came and went, and the summer deepened into autumn. He felt that he
+could not leave his cousin's house with that doubt unsolved; yet he
+knew that he might stay on for ever with no more certainty to reward
+him and confirm his suspicions than he possessed now. His presence
+annoyed his host, but Sabran was too polished a gentleman to betray
+his irritation; sometimes Vàsàrhely shunned his presence and his
+conversation for days together, at other times he sought them and rode
+with him, shot with him, and played cards with him, in the vain hope of
+gathering from some chance admission or allusion some clue to Sabran's
+early days. But a perfectly happy man is not given at any time to
+retrospection, and Sabran less than most men loved his past. He would
+gladly have forgotten everything that he had ever done or said before
+his marriage at the Hofburg.
+
+The intellectual powers and accomplishments of Sabran dazzled Vàsàrhely
+with a saddened sense of inferiority. Like most great soldiers he
+had a genuine humility in his measurement of himself. He knew that he
+had no talents except as a leader of cavalry. 'It is natural that she
+never looked at me,' he thought, 'when she had once seen this man, with
+his wit, his grace, his facility.' He could not even regard the skill
+of Sabran in the arts, in the salon, in the theatre with the contempt
+which the 'Wild Boar of Taróc' might have felt for a mere maker of
+music, a squire of dames, a writer of sparkling little comedies, a
+painter of screens, because he knew that both at Idrac and in France
+Sabran had showed himself the possessor of those martial and virile
+qualities, by the presence or the absence of which the Hungarian noble
+measured all men. He himself could only love well and live well: he
+reflected sadly that honesty and honour are not alone enough to draw
+love in return.
+
+As the weeks passed on, his host grew so accustomed to his presence
+there that it ceased to give him offence or cause him anxiety.
+
+'He is not amusing, and he is not always polite,' he said to his
+wife, 'but if he likes to consume his soul in gazing at you, I am not
+jealous, my Wanda; and so taciturn a rival would hardly ever be a
+dangerous one.'
+
+'Do not jest about it,' she answered him, with some real pain. 'I
+should be very vexed at his remaining here, were it not that I feel
+sure he will in time learn to live down his regrets, and to esteem and
+appreciate you.'
+
+'Who knows but his estimation of me may not be the right one?' said
+Sabran, with a pang of sad self-knowledge. And although he did not
+attach any significance to the prolonged sojourn of the lord of Taróc
+and Mohacs, he began to desire once more that his guest would return
+to the solitudes of the Carlowitz vineyards, or of the Karpathian
+mountains and gorges of snow.
+
+When over seven weeks had passed by, Vàsàrhely himself began to think
+that to stay in the Iselthal was useless and impossible, and he had
+heard from Taróc tidings which annoyed him--that his brother Stefan
+and his wife, availing themselves of his general permission to visit
+any one of his places when they chose had so strained the meaning of
+the permission that they had gone to his castle, with a score of their
+Parisian friends, and were there keeping high holiday and festival,
+to the scandal of his grave old stewards, and their own exceeding
+diversion. Hospitable to excess as he was, the liberty displeased him,
+especially as his, men wrote him word that his favourite horses; were
+being ruined by over-driving, and in the list of the guests which they
+sent him were the names of more than one too notorious lady, against
+whose acquaintance he had repeatedly counselled Olga Brancka. He would
+not have cared much what they had done at any other of his houses, but
+at Taróc, his mother, whom he had adored, had lived and died, and the
+place was sacred to him.
+
+He determined to tear himself away from Hohenszalras, and go and
+scatter these gay unbidden revellers in the dusky Karpathian ravines.
+'I cannot stay here for ever,' he thought, 'and I might be here for
+years without acquiring any more certainty than my own conviction.
+Either I am wrong, or he has nothing to conceal, or if I be right he is
+too wary to betray himself. If only I could see his shoulder where I
+struck the dagger--but I cannot go into his bath-room and say to him,
+"You are Vassia Kazán!"'
+
+He resolved to leave on the day after the morrow. For the next day
+there was organised on a large scale a hunting party, to which the
+nobility of the Tauern had been bidden. There were only some half-dozen
+men then staying in the Burg, most of them Austrian soldiers. The delay
+gave him the chance he longed for, which but for an accident he might
+never have had, though he had tarried there half a century.
+
+Early in the morning there was a great breakfast in the Rittersaal,
+at which Wanda did not appear. Sabran received the nobles and gentry
+of the province, and did the honours of his table with his habitual
+courtliness and grace. He was not hospitable in Vàsàrhely's sense of
+the word: he was too easily wearied by others, and too contemptuous of
+ordinary humanity; but he was alive to the pleasure of being lord of
+Hohenszalras, and sensible of the favour with which he was looked upon
+by a nobility commonly so exclusive and intolerant of foreign invasion.
+
+Breakfast over, the whole party went out and up into the high woods.
+The sport at Hohenszalras always gave fair play to beast and bird. In
+deference to the wishes of his wife, Sabran would have none of those
+battues which make of the covert or the forest a slaughterhouse. He
+himself disdained that sort of sport, and liked danger and adventure
+to mingle with his out-of-door pastimes. Game fairly found by the
+spaniel or the pointer; the boar, the wolf, the bear, honestly started
+and given its fair chance of escape or revenge; the steinbock stalked
+in a long hard day with peril and effort--these were all delightful
+to him on occasion; but for the crowded drive, the horde of beaters,
+the terrified bewildered troop of forest denizens driven with sticks
+on to the very barrels of the gunners, for this he had the boundless
+contempt of a man who had chased the buffalo over the prairie, and
+lassoed the wild horse and the wild bull leaning down from the saddle
+of his mustang. The day passed off well, and his guests were all
+content: he alone was not, because a large brown bear which he had
+sighted and tired at twice had escaped him, and roused that blood-lust
+in him which is in the hearts of all men.
+
+'Will you come out alone with me to-morrow and try for that grand
+brute?' he said to Vàsàrhely, as the last of his guests took their
+departure.
+
+Vàsàrhely hesitated.
+
+'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since
+you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'
+
+He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught
+at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of
+Sabran.
+
+'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had
+suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had
+intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving
+directions to the _jägermeister_ for the next day.
+
+Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is
+impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance
+resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a
+child.
+
+In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where
+the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a
+rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and
+mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in
+the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with
+no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their
+rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went
+through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a
+mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and
+capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big
+game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting
+and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and
+drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper
+woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian
+pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above
+some underground.
+
+'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper
+to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should
+be his host's.
+
+'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my
+guest.'
+
+Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him
+to contrive to sting and wound him.
+
+Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not
+observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed
+upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both
+in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron,
+good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about
+a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low
+hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and
+would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached.
+The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.
+
+'Well done,' cried Sabran, but scarcely were the words off his lips
+when another bear burst through the boughs ahead of him by fifty yards.
+He levelled his rifle and received its approach with two bullets in
+rapid succession. But neither had entered a vital part, and the animal,
+only rendered furious by pain, reared and came towards him with
+deadliest intent, its great fangs grinning. He fired again, and this
+shot struck home. The poor brute fell with a crash, the blood pouring
+from its mouth. It was not dead and its agony was great.
+
+'I will give it the _coup de grâce_,' said Sabran, who, for his wife's
+sake', was as humane as any hunter ever can be to the beasts he slew.
+
+'Take care,' said Vàsàrhely. 'It is dangerous to touch a wounded bear.
+I have known one that looked stone dead rise up and kill a man.'
+
+Sabran did not heed. He went up to the poor, panting, groaning mass of
+fur and flesh, and drew his hunting-knife to give it the only mercy
+that it was now possible for it to receive. But as he stooped to
+plunge the knife into its heart the bear verified the warning he had
+been given. Gathering all its oozing strength in one dying effort to
+avenge its murder, it leaped on him, dashed him to the earth, and clung
+to him with claw and tooth fast in his flesh. He freed his right arm
+from its ponderous weight, its horrible grip, and stabbed it with his
+knife as it clung to and lacerated him where he lay upon the grass.
+In an instant, Vàsàrhely and the jäger who was with them were by his
+side, freed him from the animal, and raised him from the ground. He
+was deluged with its blood and his own. Vàsàrhely, for one moment of
+terrible joy, for which he loathed himself afterwards, thought, 'Is he
+dead?' Men had died of lesser things than this.
+
+He stood erect and smiled, and said that it was nothing, but even as he
+spoke a faintness came over him, and his lips turned grey.
+
+The jäger supported him tenderly, and would have had him sit down upon
+a boulder of rock, but he resisted.
+
+'Let me get to that water, he said feebly, looking to a spot a few
+yards off, where one of the many torrents of the Hohe Tauern tumbled
+from the wooded cliff above through birch and beechwood, and rushing
+underground left a clear round brown pool amongst the ferns. He took a
+draught from the flask of brandy; tendered him by the lad, and leaning
+on the youth, and struggling against the sinking swoon that was coming
+on him, walked to the edge of the pool, and dropped down there on one
+of the mossy stones which served as a rough chair.
+
+'Strip me, and wash the blood away, he said to the huntsman, whilst the
+green wood and the daylight, and the face of the man grew dim to him,
+and seemed to recede further and further in a misty darkness. The youth
+obeyed, and cut away the velvet coat, the cambric shirt, till he was
+naked to his waist; then, making sponges of handkerchiefs, the jäger
+began to wash the blood from him and staunch it as best he could.
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely stood by, without offering any aid; his eyes were
+fastened on the magnificent bust of Sabran, as the sunlight fell on the
+fair blue-veined flesh, the firm muscles, the symmetrical throat, the
+slender, yet sinewy arms, round one of which was clasped a bracelet of
+fair hair. He had the chance he needed.
+
+He approached and told the lad roughly to leave the Marquis to him,
+he was doing him more harm than good; he himself had seen many
+battle-fields, and many men bleeding to death upon their mother earth.
+By this time Sabran's eyes were closed; he was hardly conscious of
+anything, a great numbness and infinite exhaustion had fallen upon him;
+his lips moved feebly. 'Wanda!' he said once or twice,'Wanda!'
+
+The face of the man who leaned above him grew dark as night; he gnashed
+his teeth as he begun his errand of mercy.
+
+Leave me with your lord,' he said to the young jäger. 'Go you to the
+castle. Find Herr Greswold, bring him; do not alarm the Countess, and
+say nothing to the household.'
+
+The huntsman went, fleet as a roe. Vàsàrhely remained alone with
+Sabran, who only heard the sound of the rushing water magnified a
+million times on his dulled ear.
+
+Vàsàrhely tore the shirt in shreds, and laved and bathed the wounds,
+and then began to bind them with the skill of a soldier who had often
+aided his own wounded troopers. But first of all, when he had washed
+the blood away, he searched with keen and eager eyes for a scar on the
+white skin--and found it.
+
+On the right shoulder was a small triangular mark; the mark of what,
+to a soldier's eyes, told of an old wound. When he saw it he smiled a
+cruel smile, and went on with his work of healing.
+
+Sabran leaned against the rock behind him; his eyes were still closed,
+the pulsations of his heart were irregular. He had lost a great
+quantity of blood, and the pool at his feet was red. They were but
+flesh wounds, and there was no danger in them themselves, but great
+veins had been severed, and the stream of life had hurried forth in
+torrents. Vàsàrhely thrust the flask between his lips, but he could not
+swallow.
+
+All had been done that could be for the immediate moment. The stillness
+of the deep woods was around them; the body of the brown bear lay on
+the soaked grass; a vulture scenting death, was circling above against
+the blue sky. Over the mind of his foe swept at the sight of them one
+of those hideous temptations which assail the noblest natures in an
+hour of hatred. If he tore the bandages he had placed there off the
+rent veins of the unconscious man whom he watched, the blood would
+leap out again in floods, and so weaken the labouring heart that in
+ten minutes more its powers would fall so low that all aid would be
+useless. Never more would the lips of Sabran meet his wife! Never
+more would his dreams be dreamed upon her breast! For the moment the
+temptation seemed to curl about him like a flame; he shuddered, and
+crossed himself. Was he a soldier to slay in cold blood by treachery a
+powerless rival?
+
+He leaned over Sabran again, and again tried to force the mouthpiece
+of his wine-flask through his teeth. A few drops passed them, and
+he revived a little, and swallowed a few drops more. The blood was
+arrested in its escape, and the pulsations of the heart were returning
+to their normal measure; after a while he unclosed his eyes, and looked
+up at the green leaves, at the blue sky.
+
+'Do not alarm Wanda,' he said feebly. 'It is a scratch; it will be
+nothing. Take me home.'
+
+With his left hand he felt for the hair bracelet on his right arm,
+between the shoulder and the wrist. It was stiff with his own blood.
+
+Then Vàsàrhely leaned over him and met his upward gaze, and said in his
+ear, that seemed still filled with the rushing of many waters, 'You are
+Vassia Kazán!'
+
+When a little later the huntsman returned, bringing the physician, whom
+he had met a mile nearer the house in the woods, and some peasants
+bearing a litter made out of pine branches and wood moss, they found
+Sabran stretched insensible beside the water-pool; and Egon Vàsàrhely,
+who stood erect beside him, said in a strange tone:
+
+'I have stanched the blood, and he has swooned, you see. I commit him
+to your hands. I am not needed.'
+
+And, to their surprise, he turned and walked away with swift steps into
+the green gloom of the dense forest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+Sabran was still insensible when he was carried to the house.
+
+When he regained consciousness he was on his own bed, and his wife was
+bending over him. A convulsion of grief crossed his face as he lifted
+his eyelids and looked at her.
+
+'Wanda,' he murmured feebly, 'Wanda, you will forgive----'
+
+She kissed him passionately, while her tears fell like rain upon his
+forehead. She did not hear his words distinctly; she was only alive to
+the intense joy of his recovered consciousness, of the sound of his
+voice, of the sense of his safety. She kneeled by his bed, covering his
+hands with caresses, prodigal of a thousand names of love, given up to
+an abandonment of terror and of hope which broke down all the serenity
+and self-command of her habitual temper. She was not even aware of the
+presence of others. The over-mastering emotions of anguish and of joy
+filled her soul, and made her seem deaf, indifferent to all living
+things save one.
+
+Sabran lay motionless. He felt her lips, he heard her voice; he did not
+look up again, nor did he speak again. He shut his eyes, and slowly
+remembered all that had passed. Greswold approached him and held his
+fingers on his wrist, and held a little glass to his mouth. Sabran put
+it away. 'It is an opiate,' he said feebly; 'I will not have it.'
+
+He was resolute; he closed his teeth, he thrust the calming draught
+away.
+
+He was thinking to himself: 'Sometimes in unconsciousness one speaks.'
+
+'You are not in great pain?' asked the physician. He made a negative
+movement of his head. What were the fire and the smart of his lacerated
+flesh, of his torn muscles, to the torments of his fears, to the agony
+of his long stifled conscience?
+
+'Do not torment him, let him be still,' she said to the physician; she
+held his hand in both her own and pressed it to her heart. His languid
+eyes thanked her, then closed again.
+
+Herr Greswold withdrew to a little distance and waited. It seemed to
+him strange that a man of the high courage and strong constitution of
+Sabran should be thus utterly broken down by any wound that was not
+mortal; should be thus sunk into dejection and apathy, making no effort
+to raise himself, even to console and reassure his wife. It was not
+like his careless and gallant temper, his virile and healthful strength.
+
+It was true, the doctor reflected, that he had lost a great amount of
+blood. Such a loss he knew sometimes affects the heart and shatters the
+nervous system in many unlooked-for ways. Yet, he thought, there was
+something beyond this; the attitude and the regard of Egon Vàsàrhely
+had been unnatural at such an hour of peril. 'When he said just now
+"forgive," what did he mean?' reflected the old man, whose ear had
+caught the word which had escaped that of Wanda, who had been only
+alive to the voice she adored.
+
+The next four days were anxious and terrible. Sabran did not recover as
+the physician expected that he would, seeing the nature of his wounds
+and the naturally elastic and sanguine temperament he possessed. He
+slept little, had considerable fever, woke from the little rest he
+had, startled, alarmed, bathed in cold sweats; at other times he lay
+still in an apathy almost comatose, from which all the caresses and
+entreaties of his wife failed to rouse him. They began to fear that the
+discharge from the arteries had in some subtle and dangerous manner
+affected the action of the heart, the composition of the blood, and
+produced aneurism or pyæmia. 'The hero of Idrac to be prostrated by a
+mere flesh wound!' thought Herr Greswold in sore perplexity. He sent
+for a great man of science from Vienna, who, when he came, declared the
+treatment admirable, the wounds healthy, the heart in a normal state,
+but added it was evident the nervous system had received a severe
+shock, the effects of which still remained.
+
+'But it is that which I cannot understand,' said the old man in
+despair. 'If you only knew the Marquis de Sabran as I know him; the
+most courageous, the most gay, the most resolute of men! A man to laugh
+at death in its face! A man absolutely without fear!'
+
+The other assented.
+
+'Every one knows what he did in the floods at Idrac,' he answered; 'but
+he has a sensitive temperament for all that. If you did not tell me it
+is impossible, I should say that he had had some mental shock, some
+great grief. The prostration seems to me more of the mind than the
+body. But you have assured me it is impossible?'
+
+'Impossible! There does not live on earth a man so happy, so fortunate,
+so blessed in all the world as he.'
+
+'Men have a past that troubles them sometimes,' said the Vienna
+physician. 'Nay, I mean nothing, but I believe that M. de Sabran was a
+man of pleasure. The cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must
+drink long afterwards. I do not mean anything; I merely suggest. The
+prostration has to my view its most probable origin in mental trouble;
+but it would do him more harm than good to excite him by any effort to
+certify this. To the Countess von Szalras I have merely said, that his
+state is the result of the large loss of blood, and, indeed, after all
+it may be so.'
+
+On the fifth day, Sabran, still lying in that almost comatose silence
+which had been scarcely broken since his accident, said in a scarce
+audible voice to his wife:
+
+'Is your cousin here?'
+
+She stooped towards him and answered:
+
+'Yes; he is here, love. All the others went immediately, but Egon
+remained. I suppose he thought it looked kinder to do so. I have
+scarcely seen him, of course.'
+
+The pallor of his face grew greyer; he turned his head away restlessly.
+
+'Why does he not go?' he muttered in his throat. 'Does he wait for my
+death?'
+
+'Oh, Réné! hush, hush!' she said, with horror and amaze. 'My love, how
+can you say such things? You are in no danger; the doctor assures me
+so. In a week or two you will be well, you will be yourself.'
+
+'Send your cousin away.'
+
+She hesitated; troubled by his unreasoning, restless jealousy, which
+seemed to be the only consciousness of life remaining with him. 'I will
+obey you, love; you are lord here,' she said softly; 'but will it not
+look strange? No guest can well be told to go.'
+
+'A guest!--he is an enemy!'
+
+She sighed, knowing how hopelessly reason can struggle against the
+delusions of a sick bed. 'I will tell him to go to-morrow,' she said,
+to soothe him. 'To-night it is too late.'
+
+'Write to him--do not leave me.'
+
+There was a childlike appeal in his voice, that from a man so strong
+had a piteous pathos. Her eyes swam with tears as she heard.
+
+'Oh, my dearest, I will not leave you!' she said passionately, 'not for
+one moment whilst I live; and oh, my beloved! what could death ever
+change in _me_? Have you so little faith?'
+
+'You do not know,' he said, so low that his breath scarcely stirred the
+air.
+
+She thought that he was tormented by a doubt that she would not be
+faithful to him if he died. She stooped and kissed him.
+
+'My own, I would sooner be faithless to you in your life than after
+death. Surely you know me well enough to know that at the least?'
+
+He was silent. A great sigh struggled from his breast and escaped his
+pale lips like a parting breath.
+
+'Kiss me again,' he murmured; 'kiss me again, whilst----That gives me
+life,' he said, as he drew her head down upon his bosom, where his
+heart throbbed labouredly. A little while later he fell asleep. He
+slept some hours. When he awoke he was consumed by a nameless fear.
+
+'Is your cousin gone?' he asked.
+
+She told him that it was one o'clock in the same night; she had not
+written yet.
+
+'Let him stay,' he said feverishly. 'He shall not think I fear him. Do
+you hear me? Let him stay.'
+
+The words seemed to her the causeless caprice of a jealousy magnified
+and distorted by the weakness of fever. She strove to answer him
+calmly. 'He shall go or stay as you please,' she assured him. 'What
+does it matter, dear, what Egon does? You always speak of Egon. You
+have never spoken of the children once.'
+
+She wanted to distract his thoughts. She was pained to think how deep,
+though unspoken, his antagonism to her cousin must have been, that now
+in his feebleness it--was the one paramount absorbing thought.
+
+A great sadness came upon his face as she spoke; his lips trembled a
+little.
+
+'Ah! the children,' he repeated. 'Yes, bring them to me to-morrow. Bela
+is too like me. Poor Bela, it will be his curse.'
+
+'It is my joy of joys,' she murmured, afraid to see how his mind seemed
+astray.
+
+A shudder that was almost a spasm passed over him. He did not reply. He
+turned his face away from her, and seemed to sleep.
+
+The day following he was somewhat calmer, somewhat stronger, though his
+fever was high.
+
+The species of paralysis that had seemed to; fall on all his faculties
+had in a great measure left him. 'You wish, me to recover,' he said to
+her. 'I will do so, though perhaps it were, better not?'
+
+'He says strange things,' she said to Greswold. 'I cannot think why he
+has such thoughts.'
+
+'It is not he, himself, that has them, it is his fever,' answered the
+doctor. 'Why, in fever, do people often hate what they most adore when
+they are in health?'
+
+She was reassured, but not contented.
+
+The children were brought to see him. Bela had with him an ivory
+air-gun, with which he was accustomed to blow down his metal soldiers;
+he looked at his father with awed, dilated eyes, and said that he would
+go out with the gun and kill the brothers of the bear that had done the
+harm.
+
+'The bear was quite right,' said Sabran. 'It was I who was wrong to
+take a life not my own.'
+
+'That is beyond Bela,' said his wife. 'But I will translate it to him
+into language he shall understand, though I fear very much, say what I
+will, he will be a hunter and a soldier one day.'
+
+Bela looked from one to the other, knitting, his fair brows as he sat
+on the edge of the bed.
+
+'Bela will be like Egon,' he said, 'with all gold and fur to dress up
+in, and a big jewelled sword, and ten hundred men and horses, and Bela
+will be a great killer of things!'
+
+Sabran smiled languidly, but she saw that he flinched at her cousin's
+name.
+
+'I shall not love you, Bela, if you are a killer of things that are
+God's dear creatures,' she said, as she sent the child away.
+
+His blue eyes grew dark with anger.
+
+'God only cares about Bela,' he said in innocent profanity, with
+a profound sense of his own vastness in the sight of heaven, 'and
+Gela,' he added, with the condescending tenderness wherewith he always
+associated his brother and himself.
+
+'Where could he get all that overwhelming pride?' she said, as he was
+led away. 'I have tried to rear him so simply. Do what I may he will
+grow arrogant and selfish.'
+
+'My dear,' said Sabran, very bitterly, 'what avails that he was borne
+in your bosom? He is my son!'
+
+'Gela is your son, and he is so different,' she answered, not seeking
+to combat the self-censure to which she was accustomed in him, and
+which she attributed to faults or follies of a past life, magnified by
+a conscience too sensitive.
+
+'He is all yours then,' he said, with a wan smile. 'You have prevailed
+over evil.'
+
+In a few days later his recovery had progressed so far that he had
+regained his usual tone and look; his wounds were healing, and his
+strength was returning. He seemed to the keen eyes of Greswold to have
+made a supreme effort to conquer the moral depression into which he had
+sunk, and to have thrust away his malady almost by force of will. As he
+grew better he never spoke of Egon Vàsàrhely.
+
+On the fifteenth day from his accident he was restored enough to health
+for apprehension to cease. He passed some hours seated at an open
+window in his own room. He never asked if Vàsàrhely were still there or
+not.
+
+Wanda, who never left him, wondered at that silence, but she forbore to
+bring forward a name which had had such power to agitate him. She was
+troubled at the nervousness which still remained to him. The opening of
+a door, the sound of a step, the entrance of a servant made him start
+and turn pale. When she spoke of it with anxiety to Herr Joachim, he
+said vague sentences as to the nervousness which was consequent on
+great loss of blood, and brought forward instances of soldiers who had
+lost their nerve from the same cause. It did not satisfy her. She was
+the descendant of a long line of warriors; she could not easily believe
+that her husband's intrepid and careless courage could have been
+shattered by a flesh wound.
+
+'Did you really mean,' he said abruptly to her that afternoon, as he
+sat for the first time beside the open panes of the oriel; 'did you
+really mean that were I to die you would never forget me for any other?'
+
+She rose quickly as if she had been stung, and her face flushed.
+
+'Do I merit that doubt from you? she said. 'I think not.'
+
+She spoke rather in sadness than in anger. He had hurt her, he could
+not anger her. He felt the rebuke.
+
+'Even if I were dead, should I have all your life?' he murmured, in
+wonder at that priceless gift.
+
+'You and your children,' she said gravely. 'Ah! what can death do
+against great love? Make its bands stronger perhaps, its power purer.
+Nothing else.'
+
+'I thank you,' he said very low, with great humility, with intense
+emotion. For a moment he thought----should he tell her, should he trust
+this deep tenderness which could brave death; and might brave even
+shame unblenching? He looked at her from under his drooped eyelids, and
+then--he dared not. He knew the pride which was in her better than she
+did----her pride, which was inherited by her firstborn, and had been
+the sign manual of all her imperious race.
+
+He looked at her where she stood with the light falling on her through
+the amber hues of painted glass; worn, wan, and tired by so many days
+and nights of anxious vigil, she yet looked a woman whom a nation
+might salute with the _pro rege nostro!_ that Maria Theresa heard. All
+that a great race possesses and rejoices in of valour, of tradition,
+of dignity, of high honour, and of blameless truth were expressed in
+her; every movement, attitude, and gesture spoke of the aristocracy of
+blood. All that potent and subtle sense of patrician descent which had
+most allured and intoxicated him in other days now awed and daunted
+him. He dared not tell her of his treason. He dared not. He was as a
+false conspirator before a great queen he has betrayed.
+
+'Are you faint, my love?' she asked him, alarmed to see the change upon
+his face and the exhaustion with which he sunk, backward against the
+cushions of his chair.
+
+'Mere weakness; it will pass,' he said, smiling as best he might, to
+reassure her. He felt like a man who slides down a crevasse, and has
+time and consciousness enough to see the treacherous ice go by him,
+the black abyss yawning below him, the cold, dark death awaiting him
+beyond, whilst on the heights the sun is shining.
+
+That night he entreated her to leave him and rest. He assured her he
+felt well; he feigned a need of sleep. For fifteen nights she had not
+herself lain down. To please him she obeyed, and the deep slumber of
+tired nature soon fell upon her. When he thought she slept, he rose
+noiselessly and threw on a long velvet coat, sable-lined, that was by
+his bedside, and looked at his watch. It was midnight.
+
+He crossed the threshold of the open door into his wife's chamber and
+stood beside her bed for a moment, gazing at her as she slept. She
+seemed like the marble statue of some sleeping saint; she lay in the
+attitude of S. Cecilia on her bier at Home. The faint lamplight made
+her fair skin white as snow. Bound her arm was a bracelet of his hair
+like the one which he wore of hers. He stood and gazed on her, then
+slowly turned away. Great tears fell down his cheeks as he left her
+chamber. He opened the door of his own room, the outer one which led
+into the corridor, and walked down the long tapestry-hung gallery
+leading to the guest-chambers. It was the first time that he had walked
+without assistance; his limbs felt strange and broken, but he held on,
+leaning now and then to rest against the arras. The whole house was
+still.
+
+He took his way straight to the apartments set aside for guests. All
+was dark. The little lamp he carried shed a circle of light about his
+steps but none beyond him. When he reached the chamber which he knew
+was Egon Vàsàrhely's he did not pause. He struck on its panels with a
+firm hand.
+
+The voice of Vàsàrhely asked from within, 'Who is there? Is there
+anything wrong?'
+
+'It is I! Open,' answered Sabran.
+
+In a moment more the door unclosed. Vàsàrhely stood within it; he was
+not undressed. There were a dozen wax candles burning in silver sconces
+on the table within. The tapestried figures on the walls grew pale and
+colossal in their light. He did not speak, but waited.
+
+Sabran entered and closed the door behind him. His face was bloodless,
+but he carried himself erect despite the sense of faintness which
+assailed him.
+
+'You know who I am?' he said simply, without preface or supplication.
+
+Vàsàrhely gave a gesture of assent.
+
+'How did you know it?'
+
+'I remembered,' answered the other.
+
+There was a moment's silence. If Vàsàrhely could have withered to the
+earth by a gaze of scorn the man before him, Sabran would have fallen
+dead. As it was his eyes dropped beneath the look, but the courage and
+the dignity of his attitude did not alter. He had played his part of
+a great noble for so long that it had ceased to be assumption and had
+become his nature.
+
+'You will tell her?' he said, and his voice did not tremble, though his
+very soul seemed to swoon within him.
+
+'I shall not tell her!'
+
+Vàsàrhely spoke with effort; his words were hoarse and stern.
+
+'You will not?'
+
+An immense joy, unlooked for, undreamed of, sprang up in him, checked
+as it rose by incredulity.
+
+'But you loved her!' he said, on an impulse which he regretted even
+as the exclamation escaped him. Vàsàrhely threw his head back with a
+gesture of fine anger.
+
+'If I loved' her what is that to you?' he said, with a restrained
+violence vibrating in his words. 'It is, perhaps, because I once loved
+her that your foul secret is safe with me now. I shall not tell her. I
+waited to say this to you. I could not write it lest it should meet her
+eyes. You came to ask me this? Be satisfied and go.'
+
+'I came to ask you this because, had you said otherwise, I would have
+shot myself ere she could have heard.'
+
+Vàsàrhely said nothing; a great scorn was still set like the grimness
+of death upon his face. He looked far away at the dim figures on the
+tapestries; he shrunk from the sight of his boyhood's enemy as from
+some loathly unclean thing he must not kill.
+
+'Suicide!' he thought, 'the Slav's courage, the serf's refuge!
+
+Before the sight of Sabran the room went round, the lights grew dull,
+the figures on the walls became, fantastic and unreal. His heart beat
+with painful effort, yet his ears, his throat, his brain seemed full
+of blood. The nerves of his whole body seemed to shrink and thrill and
+quiver, but the force of habit kept him composed and erect before this
+man who was his foe, yet did for him what few friends would have done.
+
+'I do not thank you,' he said at last. 'I understand; you spare me for
+her sake, not mine.'
+
+'But for her, I would treat you so.'
+
+As he spoke he broke in two a slender agate ruler which lay on the
+writing-table at his elbow.
+
+'Go,' he added, 'you have had my word; though we live fifty years you
+are safe from me, because----because----God forgive you! you are hers.'
+
+He made a gesture towards the door. Sabran shivered under the insult
+which his conscience could not resent, his hand dared not avenge.
+
+Hearing this there fell away from him the arrogance that had been his
+mask, the courage that had been his shield. He saw himself for the
+first time as this man saw him, as all the world would see him if once
+it knew his secret. For the first time his past offences rose up like
+ghosts naked from their graves. The calmness, the indifference, the
+cynicism, the pride which had been so long in his manner and in his
+nature deserted him. He felt base-born before a noble, a liar before a
+gentleman, a coward before a man of honour.
+
+Where he stood, leaning on a high caned chair to support himself
+against the sickly weakness which still came on him from his scarce
+healed wounds, he felt for the first time to cower and shrink before
+this man who was his judge, and might become his accuser did he choose.
+Something in the last words of Egon Vàsàrhely suddenly brought home
+to him the enormity of his own sin, the immensity of the other's
+forbearance. He suddenly realised all the offence to honour, all the
+outrage to pride, all the ineffaceable indignity which he had brought
+upon a great race: all that he had done, never to be undone by any
+expiation of his own, in making Wanda von Szalras the mother of his
+sons. Submissive, he turned without a word of gesture or of pleading,
+and felt his way out of the chamber through the dusky mists of the
+faintness stealing on him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against
+the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his
+clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.
+
+She was still asleep.
+
+When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever.
+He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a
+moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his
+desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.
+
+But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.
+
+Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned
+to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had
+left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person,
+as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no
+importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said
+nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental
+impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian
+mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use
+to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife
+attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial
+always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength
+returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a
+gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened
+upon her with a strange appeal.
+
+One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was
+certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following
+words to his foe and his judge:
+
+'Sir,----You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I
+send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical
+weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time
+or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof
+absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that
+the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue
+it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but
+shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of
+action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present
+permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have
+governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or
+chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern
+both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse
+at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia
+Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to
+nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the
+great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was
+taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never
+saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years
+old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I
+remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you,
+and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then
+returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him.
+One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the
+Prince Zabaroff was dead--my protector, as they termed him--and that
+I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make
+you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always
+been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family,
+could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts,
+the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then,
+thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father.
+I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my
+fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother
+Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year
+after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You
+see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things
+or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had
+a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices,
+like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the
+love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit
+which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of
+me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive
+tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in
+my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those
+three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me
+with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be
+rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did
+me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a
+word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis
+with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold
+some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque
+going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down
+with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone
+reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe,
+and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread,
+fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I
+neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me
+popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name
+of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went
+there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the
+moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I
+liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely
+more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his
+fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior.
+Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left
+for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his
+hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the
+Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the
+solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts
+the hiss of an Indian's arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he
+lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of
+him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows
+of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher
+in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been
+subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having
+wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died
+of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to
+think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life
+with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed
+me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the
+dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history
+of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was
+glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike
+as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on
+the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the
+steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men
+I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I
+loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican _ranch_ near,
+within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us
+and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost
+inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps
+covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it
+all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be
+gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies
+which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight
+whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector
+and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose
+heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he
+died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything
+he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would
+collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France.
+For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss.
+I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and
+his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of
+cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave.
+I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the
+temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all
+those which had been brought with him from France by his Jesuit tutors,
+and the certificates of his own and his father's births and marriages,
+with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper
+containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and
+patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden
+in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had
+desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great
+sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine:
+he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human
+being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed
+to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots
+not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had
+the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was
+born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible
+reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years
+I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and
+purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris,
+yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in
+many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong
+which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that
+I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it
+seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had
+deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and
+had given me all he held most dear----the fruits of his researches.
+To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation.
+I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as
+the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew
+that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke
+no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was
+recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned
+to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance
+with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to
+me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not
+having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I
+went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had
+been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The
+priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the
+name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing----Bretons
+never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead
+men who had gone down when the _Estelle_ had foundered off the Pinos.
+I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so
+much during my seven years' absence from Paris that I did not suppose
+anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran.
+And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known
+me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred
+of me as your cousin's husband; and had you even had suspicions you
+could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in
+the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down
+the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me
+take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune
+involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have
+done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and
+some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What
+was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over
+with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is
+my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious
+and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense
+perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it
+as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying
+ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to
+justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware
+that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true
+that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed
+me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to
+me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I
+had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely
+closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became
+almost by necessity a _fainéant_, and fate smiled upon me more than I
+merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all
+his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me.
+I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I
+can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so
+natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made
+me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to
+act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and
+irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call
+_flair._ I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on
+the Bourse. I was also, famous for _la main heureuse_ in all forms of
+gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept
+always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed
+to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded
+the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should
+not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was
+a man of honour until----I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to
+defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware
+of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied
+your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her.
+You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It
+is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions
+of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to
+me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia,
+but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am
+base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting
+elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and
+mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten
+by a great lord's momentary _ennui_ and caprice! But if you will stoop
+so far----if you will consider me ennobled by _her_ enough to meet
+you as an equal would do----we can find with facility some pretext
+of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me.
+You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are
+the only male champion--what her brothers would surely have taken had
+they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have
+passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your
+commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to
+their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet
+you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother's
+than their father's, and she will rear them in all noble ways.'
+
+Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return
+of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace
+with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his
+own cowardice and shame.
+
+It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of
+Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief:----
+
+'I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for
+she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.
+
+(Signed) 'PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.'
+
+To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:
+
+'Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did
+not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has
+seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return.
+It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a
+prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go
+to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If
+ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope
+this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen
+you.' Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to
+be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name.
+Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your
+husband, and give me a remembrance in your prayers.
+
+(Signed) 'EGON.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn
+shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and
+to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of
+her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to
+play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and
+eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this
+unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it
+plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian
+world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it
+was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman,
+which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon
+her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and
+what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at
+Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of
+it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation.
+If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again
+paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and
+her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.
+
+'Wanda has ruined him!' she always thought angrily. 'He always expects
+every other woman to have a soul above _chiffons_ and to bury herself
+in the country with children and horses.'
+
+Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which
+his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to
+her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the
+pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him.
+Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed
+measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to
+entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and
+was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law.
+She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only
+came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild
+forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely,
+and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope,
+which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for
+her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the
+post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and
+soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was
+called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish
+literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race
+of Vàsàrhely.
+
+What was in that letter?
+
+She attended to none of her own, so absorbed was she in the impression
+which gained upon her that the packet which had brought so much
+surprise and even emotion upon his face came from the hand of Wanda.
+'If even she should be no saint at all?' she thought, with a malicious
+amusement. She did not see Egon Vàsàrhely for many hours, but she
+did not lose her curiosity nor cease to cast about for a method of
+gratifying it. At the close of the day when she came back from hunting
+she went into the library, which was then empty. She did not seriously
+expect to see anything that would reward her enterprise, but she knew
+he read his letters there and wrote the few he was obliged to write:
+like most soldiers he disliked using pen and ink. It was dusk, and
+there were a few lights burning in the old silver sconces fixed upon
+the horns of forest animals against the walls. With a quick, calm
+touch, she moved all the litter of papers lying on the huge table
+where he was wont to do such business as he was compelled to transact.
+She found nothing that gratified her inquisitiveness. She was about
+to leave the room in baffled impatience----impatience of she knew not
+what----when her eyes fell upon a pile of charred paper lying on the
+stove.
+
+It was one of those monumental polychrome stoves of fifteenth-century
+work in which the country-houses of Central Europe are so rich; a
+grand pile of fretted pottery, towering half way to the ceiling, with
+the crown and arms of the Vàsàrhely princes on its summit. There was
+no fire in it, for the weather was not cold, and Vàsàrhely, who alone
+used the room, was an ascetic in such matters; but upon its jutting
+step, which was guarded by lions of gilded bronze, there had been some
+paper burned: the ashes lay there in a little heap. Almost all of
+it was ash, but a few torn pieces were only blackened and coloured.
+With the eager curiosity of a woman who is longing to find another
+woman at fault, she kneeled down by the stove and patiently examined
+these pieces. Only one was so little burned that it had a word or two
+legible upon it; two of those words were Vassia Kazán. Nothing else was
+traceable; she recognised the handwriting of Sabran. She attached no
+importance to it, yet she slipped the little scrap, burnt and black as
+it was, within one of her gauntlets; then, as quickly as she had come
+there, she retreated and in another half hour, smiling and radiant,
+covered with jewels, and with no trace of fatigue or of weather, she
+descended the great banqueting-hall, clad as though the heart of the
+Greater Karpathians was the centre of the Boulevard S. Germain.
+
+Who was Vassia Kazán?
+
+The question floated above all her thoughts all that evening. Who was
+he, she, or it, and what could Sabran have to say of him, or her, or
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely? A less wise woman might have asked straightway
+what the unknown name might mean, but straight ways are not those
+which commend themselves to temperaments like hers. The pleasure and
+the purpose of her life was intrigue. In great things she deemed
+it necessity; in trifles it was an amusement; without it life was
+flavourless.
+
+The next day her brother-in-law abandoned Taróc, to join his hussars
+and prepare for the autumn manœuvres in the plains, and left her and
+Stefan in possession of the great place, half palace, half fortress,
+which had withstood more than one siege of Ottoman armies, where it
+stood across a deep gorge with the water foaming black below. But she
+kept the charred, torn, triangular scrap of paper; and she treasured
+in her memory the two words Vassia Kazán; and she said again and again
+and again to herself: 'Why should he write to Egon? Why should Egon
+burn what he writes?' Deep down in her mind there was always at work
+a bitter jealousy of Wanda von Szalras; jealousy of her regular and
+perfect beauty, of her vast possessions, of her influence at the Court,
+of her serene and unspotted repute, and now of her ascendency over the
+lives of Sabran and of Vàsàrhely.
+
+'Why should they both love that woman so much?' she thought very often.
+'She is always alike. She has no temptations. She goes over life as if
+it were frozen snow. She did one senseless thing, but then she was rich
+enough to do it with impunity. She is so habitually fortunate that she
+is utterly uninteresting; and yet they are both her slaves!'
+
+She went home and wrote to a cousin of her own who had been a member
+of the famous Third Section at Petersburg. She said in her letter: 'Is
+there anyone known in Russia as Vassia Kazán? I want you to learn for
+me to what or to whom this name belongs. It is certainly Russian, and
+appears to me to have been taken by some one who has been named _more
+hebrœo_ from the city of Kazán. You, who know everything past,
+present, and to come, will be able to know this.'
+
+In a few days she received an answer from Petersburg. Her cousin wrote:
+'I cannot give you the information you desire. It must be a thing of
+the past. But I will keep it in mind, and sooner or later you shall
+have the knowledge you wish. You will do us the justice to admit that
+we are not easily baffled.'
+
+She was not satisfied, but knew how to be patient.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+Strangely enough the consciousness that one person lived who knew
+his secret unnerved him. He had said truly that so much were all his
+instincts and temper those of an aristocrat that he had long ceased to
+remember that he was not the true Marquis de Sabran. The admiration men
+frankly gave him, and the ascendency he exercised over women, had alike
+concurred in fostering his self-delusion. Since his recognition by the
+foe of his boyhood a vivid sense of his own shamefulness, however, had
+come upon him; a morbid consciousness that he was not what he seemed,
+and what all the world believed him, had returned to him. Egon would
+never speak, but he himself could never forget. He said to himself in
+his solitude, 'I am Vassia Kazán! and what he had done appeared to him
+intolerable, infamous, beyond all expiation.
+
+It was like an impalpable but impassable wall built up between himself
+and her. Nothing was changed except that one man knew his secret, but
+this one fact seemed to change the face of the world. For the first
+time all the deference, all the homage with which the people of the
+Tauern treated him seemed to him a derision. Naturally of proud temper,
+and of an intellect which gave him ascendency over others, he had from
+the first moment he had assumed the marquisate of Sabran received
+all the acknowledgments of his rank with an honest unconsciousness
+of imposture. After all he had in his veins blood as patrician as
+that of the Sabrans; but now that Egon Vàsàrhely knew the truth he
+was perpetually conscious of not being what he seemed. The mere sense
+that about the world there was another living being who knew what he
+knew, shook down all the self-possession and philosophy which had so
+long made him assure himself that the assumption of a name was an
+immaterial circumstance, which, harming no one, could concern no one.
+Egon Vàsàrhely seemed to have seized his sophisms in a rude grasp, and
+shaken them down as blossoms fall in wind. He thought with bitter
+self-contempt how true the cynic was who said that no sin exists so
+long as it is not found out; that discovery is the sole form which
+remorse takes.
+
+At times his remorse made him almost afraid of Wanda, almost shrink
+from her, almost tremble at her regard; at other times it intensified
+his passion and infused into his embraces a kind of ferocity of
+triumph. He would show an almost brutal ardour in his caresses, and
+would think with an almost cruel exultation, 'I was born a serf, and I
+am her lover, her lord! Strangely enough, she began to lose something
+of her high influence upon him, of her spiritual superiority in his
+sight. She was so entirely, so perpetually his, that she became in a
+manner tainted with his own degradation. She could no longer check him
+with a word, calm him with a gesture of restraint. She was conscious of
+a change in him which she could not explain to herself. His sweetness
+of temper was broken by occasional irritability that she had never seen
+before. He was at times melancholy and absorbed; he at times displayed
+a jealousy which appeared unworthy of herself and him; at other moments
+he adored her, submitted to her with too great a humility. They were
+still happy, but their happiness was more uncertain, more disturbed by
+passing shadows. She told herself that it was always so in marriage,
+that in the old trite phrase nothing mortal was ever perfect long. But
+this philosophy failed to reconcile her. She found herself continually
+pondering on the alteration that she perceived in him, without being
+able to explain it to herself in any satisfactory manner.
+
+One day he announced to her without preface that he had decided to
+renounce the name of Sabran; that he preferred to any other the title
+which she had given him in the Countship of Idrac. She was astonished,
+but on reflection only saw, in his choice, devotion and deference to
+herself. Perhaps, too, she reflected with a pang, he desired some
+foreign mission such as she had once proposed to him; perhaps the life
+at Hohenszalras was monotonous and too quiet for a man so long used
+to the movement and excitation of Paris. She suggested the invitation
+of a circle of guests more often, but he rejected the idea with some
+impatience. He, who had previously amused himself so well with the
+part of host to a brilliant society, now professed that he saw nothing
+but trouble and _ennui_ in a house full of people, who changed every
+week, and of royal personages who exacted ceremonious observances
+that were tedious and burdensome. So they remained alone, for even
+the Princess Ottilie had gone away to Lilienslust. For her own part
+she asked nothing better. Her people, her lands, her occupations, her
+responsibilities, were always interest enough. She loved the stately,
+serene tread of Time in these mountain solitudes. Life always seemed
+to her a purer, graver, more august thing when no echo of the world
+without jarred on the solemnity of the woods and hills. She wanted her
+children to grow up to love Hohenszalras, as she had always done, far
+above all pomps and pleasures of courts and cities.
+
+The winter went by, and he spent most of the days out of doors in
+violent exercise, sledging, skating, wolf hunting. In the evenings he
+made music for her in the white room: beautiful, dreamy music, that
+carried her soul from earth. He played for hours and hours far into the
+night; he seemed more willing to do anything than to converse. When he
+talked to her she was sensible of an effort of constraint; it was no
+longer the careless, happy, spontaneous conversation of a man certain
+of receiving sympathy in all his opinions, indulgence in all his
+errors, comprehension in even his vaguest or most eccentric ideas: a
+certain charm was gone out of their intercourse. She thought sometimes
+humbly enough, was it because a man always wearies of a woman? Yet
+she could scarcely think that, for his reverential deference to her
+alternated with a passion that had lost nothing of its voluptuous
+intensity.
+
+So the winter passed away. Madame Ottilie was in the South for her
+health, with her relatives of Lilienhöhe; they invited no one, and so
+no one could approach them. The children grew and throve. Bela and his
+brother had a little sledge of their own, drawn by two Spanish donkeys,
+white as the snows that wrapped the Iselthal in their serenity and
+silence. In their little sable coats and their sable-lined hoods the
+two little boys looked like rosebuds wrapped in brown moss. They were a
+pretty spectacle upon the ice, with their stately Heiduck, wrapped in
+his scarlet and black cloak, walking by the gilded shell-shaped sledge.
+
+'Bela loves the ice best. Bela wishes the summer never was!' said the
+little heir of the Counts of Szalras one day, as he leaped out from
+under the bearskin of his snow-carriage. His father heard him, and
+smiled a little bitterly.
+
+'You have the snow in your blood,' he thought. 'I, too, know how I
+loved the winter with all its privations, how I skimmed like a swallow
+down the frozen Volga, how I breasted the wind of the North Sea, sad
+with the dying cries of the swans! But I had an empty stomach and
+naked limbs under my rough goatskin, and you ride there in your sables
+and velvets, a proud little prince, and yet you are my son!'
+
+Was he almost angered against his own child for the great heirship to
+which he was born, as kings are often of their dauphins? Bela looked up
+at him a little timidly, always being in a certain awe of his father.
+
+'May Bela go with you some day with the big black horses, one day when
+you go very far?'
+
+'Ask your mother,' said Sabran.
+
+'She will like it,' said the child. 'Yesterday she said you never do
+think of Bela. She did not say it _to_ Bela, but he heard.'
+
+'I will think of him,' said Sabran, with some emotion: he had a certain
+antagonism to the child, of which he was vaguely ashamed; he was sorry
+that she should have noticed it. He disliked him because Bela so
+visibly resembled himself that he was a perpetual reproach; a living
+sign of how the blood of a Russian lord and of a Persian peasant had
+been infused into the blood of the Austrian nobles.
+
+The next day he took the child with him on a drive of many leagues,
+through the frozen highways winding through the frosted forests under
+the huge snow-covered range of the Glöckner mountains. Bela was in
+raptures; the grand black Russian horses, whose speed was as the wind,
+were much more to his taste than the sedate and solemn Spanish asses.
+When they returned, and Sabran lifted him out of the sledge in the
+twilight, the child kissed his hand.
+
+'Bela loves you,' he said timidly.
+
+'Why do you?' said his father, surprised and touched. 'Because you are
+your mother's child?'
+
+Bela did not understand. He said, after a moment of reflection:
+
+'Bela is afraid, when you are angry; very afraid. But Bela does love
+you.'
+
+Sabran laid his hand on the child's shoulder. 'I shall never be angry
+if Bela obey his mother, and never pain her. Remember that.'
+
+'He will remember,' said Bela. 'And may he go with the big black horses
+very soon again?'
+
+'Your mother's horses are just as big, and just as black. Is it not the
+same thing to go with her?'
+
+'No. Because she takes Bela often; you never.'
+
+'You are ungrateful,' said Sabran, in the tone which always alarmed and
+awed the bold, bright spirit of his child. 'Your mother's love beside
+mine is like the great mountain beside the speck of dust. Can you
+understand? You will when you are a man. Obey her and adore her. So you
+will best please me.'
+
+Bela looked at him with troubled suffused eyes; he went within doors a
+little sadly, led away by Hubert, and when he reached his nursery and
+had his furs taken from off him he was still serious, and for once he
+did not tell his thoughts to Gela, for they were too many for him to
+be able to master them in words. His father was a beautiful, august,
+terrible, magnificent figure in his eyes; with the confused fancies
+of a child's scarce-opened mind he blended together in his admiration
+Sabran and the great marble form of S. Johann of Prague which stretched
+its arm towards the lake from the doors of the great entrance, and, as
+Bela always understood, controlled the waters and the storms at will.
+Bela feared no one else in all the world, but he feared his father,
+and for that reason loved him as he loved nothing else in his somewhat
+selfish and imperious little life.
+
+'It is so good of you to have given Bela that pleasure,' his wife said
+to him when he entered the white room. 'I know you cannot care to hear
+a child chatter as I do. It can only be tiresome to you.'
+
+'I will drive him every day if it please _you_,' said Sabran.
+
+'No, no; that would be too much to exact from you. Besides, he would
+soon despise his donkeys, and desert poor Gela. I take him but seldom
+myself for that reason. He has an idea that he is immeasurably older
+than Gela. It is true a year at their ages is more difference than are
+ten years at ours.'
+
+'The child said something to me, as if he had heard you say I do not
+care for him?'
+
+'You do not, very much. Surely you are inclined to be harsh to him?'
+
+'If I be so, it is only because I see so much of myself in him.'
+
+He looked at her, assailed once more by the longing which at times came
+over him to tell her the truth of himself, to risk everything rather
+than deceive her longer, to throw himself upon her mercy, and cut short
+this life which had so much of duplicity, so much of concealment, that
+every year added to it was a stone added to the mountain of his sins.
+But when he looked at her he dared not. The very grace and serenity
+of her daunted him; all the signs of nobility in her, from the repose
+of her manner to the very beauty of her hands, with their great rings
+gleaming on the long and slender fingers, seemed to awe him into
+silence. She was so proud a woman, so great a lady, so patrician in
+all her prejudices, her habits, her hereditary qualities, he dared not
+tell her that he had betrayed her thus. An infidelity, a folly, even
+any other crime he thought he could have summoned courage to confess
+to her; but to say to her, the daughter of a line of princes: 'I, who
+have made you the mother of my children, I was born a bastard and a
+serf!' How could he dare say that? Anything else she might forgive,
+he thought, since love is great, but never that. Nay, a cold sickness
+stole over him as he thought again that she came of great lords who had
+meted justice out over whole provinces for a thousand years; and he
+had wronged her so deeply that the human tongue scarcely held any word
+of infamy enough to name his crime. The law would set her free, if she
+chose, from a man who had so betrayed her, and his children would be
+bastards like himself.
+
+He had stretched himself on a great couch, covered with white
+bear-skins. He was in shadow; she was in the light that came from the
+fire on the wide hearth, and from the oriel window near, a red warm
+dusky light, that fell on the jewels on her hands, the furs on her
+skirts, the very pearls about her throat.
+
+She glanced at him anxiously, seeing how motionless he lay there, with
+his head turned backward on the cushions.
+
+'I am afraid you are weak still from that wound,' she said, as she rose
+and approached him. 'Greswold assures me it has left no trace, but I am
+always afraid. And you look often so pale. Perhaps you exert yourself
+too much? Let the wolves be. Perhaps it is too cold for you? Would you
+like to go to the south? Do not think of me; my only happiness is to do
+whatever you wish.'
+
+He kissed her hand with deep unfeigned emotion. 'I believe in angels
+since I knew you,' he murmured. 'No; I will not take you away from the
+winter and the people that you love. I am well enough. Greswold is
+right. I could not master those horses if I were not strong; be sure of
+that.'
+
+'But I always fear that it is dull here for you?'
+
+'Dull! with you? "Custom cannot stale her infinite variety." That was
+written in prophecy of your charm for me.'
+
+'You will always flatter me! And I am not "various" at all; I am too
+grave to be entertaining. I am just the German house-mother who cares
+for the children and for you.'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Is that your portrait of yourself? I think Carolus Duran's is truer,
+my grand châtelaine. When you are at Court the whole circle seems to
+fade to nothing before your presence. Though there are so many women
+high-born and beautiful there, you eclipse them all.'
+
+'Only in your eyes! And you know I care nothing for courts. What I like
+is the life here, where one quiet day is the pattern of all the other
+days. If I were sure that you were content in it----'
+
+'Why should you think of that?'
+
+'My love, tell me honestly, do you never miss the world?'
+
+He rose and walked to the hearth. He, whose life was a long lie, never
+lied to her if he could avoid it; and he knew very well that he did
+miss the world with all its folly, stimulant, and sin. Sometimes the
+moral air here seemed to him too pure, too clear.
+
+'Did I do so I should be thankless indeed--thankless as madmen are who
+do not know the good done to them. I am like a ship that has anchored
+in a fair haven after press of weather. I infinitely prefer to see
+none but yourself: when others are here we are of necessity so much
+apart. If the weather,' he added more lightly, 'did not so very often
+wear Milton's grey sandals, there would be nothing one could ever
+wish changed in the life here. For such great riders as we are, that
+is a matter of regret. Wet saddles are too often our fate, but in
+compensation our forests are so green.'
+
+She did not press the question.
+
+But the next day she wrote a letter to a relative who was a great
+minister and had preponderating influence in the council chamber of the
+Austrian Empire. She did not speak to Sabran of the letter that she
+sent.
+
+She had not known any of that disillusion which befalls most women in
+their love. Her husband had remained her lover, passionately, ardently,
+jealously; and the sincerity of his devotion to her had spared her
+all that terrible consciousness of the man's satiety which usually
+confronts a woman in the earliest years of union. She shrank now with
+horror from the fear which came to her that this passion might, like so
+many others, alter and fade under the dulness of habit. She had high
+courage and clear vision; she met half-way the evil that she dreaded.
+
+In the spring a Foreign Office despatch from Vienna came to him and
+surprised and moved him strongly. With it in his hand he sought her at
+once.
+
+'You did this!' he said quickly. 'They offer me the Russian mission.'
+
+She grew a little pale, but had courage to smile. She had seen by a
+glance at his face the pleasure the offer gave him.
+
+'I only told my cousin Kunst that I thought you might be persuaded to
+try public life, if he proposed it to you.'
+
+'When did you say that?'
+
+'One day in the winter, when I asked you if you did not miss the world.'
+
+'I never thought I betrayed that I did so.'
+
+'You were only over eager to deny it. And I know your generosity, my
+love. You miss the world; we will go back to it for a little. It will
+only make our life here dearer--I hope.'
+
+He was silent; emotion mastered him. 'You have the most unselfish
+nature that was!' he said brokenly. 'It will be a cruel sacrifice to
+you, and yet you urge it for my sake.'
+
+'Dear, will you not understand? What is for your sake is what is most
+for mine. I see you long, despite yourself, to be amidst men once more,
+and use your rare talents as you cannot use them here. It is only right
+that you should have the power to do so. If our life here has taken
+the hold on your heart then, I think you will come back to it all the
+more gladly. And then I too have my vanity; I shall be proud for the
+world to see how you can fill a great station, conduct a difficult
+negotiation, distinguish yourself in every way. When they praise you,
+I shall be repaid a thousand times for any sacrifice of my own tastes
+that there may be.'
+
+He heard her with many conflicting emotions, of which a passionate
+gratitude was the first and highest.
+
+'You make me ashamed,' he said in a low voice. 'No man can be worthy of
+such goodness as yours; and I----'
+
+Once more the avowal of the truth rose to his lips, but stayed
+unuttered. His want of courage took refuge in procrastination.
+
+'We need not decide for a day or two,' he added; 'they give me time; we
+will think well. When do you think I must reply?'
+
+'Surely soon; your delay would seem disrespect. You know we Austrians
+are very ceremonious.'
+
+'And if I accept, it will not make you unhappy?'
+
+'My love, no, a thousand times, no; your choice is always mine.'
+
+He stooped and kissed her hand.
+
+'You are ever the same,' he murmured. 'The noblest, the most
+generous----'
+
+She smiled bravely. 'I am quite sure you have decided already. Go to my
+table yonder, and write a graceful acceptance to my cousin Kunst. You
+will be happier when it is posted.'
+
+'No, I will think a little. It is not a thing to be done in haste. It
+will be irrevocable.'
+
+'Irrevocable? A diplomatic mission? You can throw it up when you
+please. You are not bound to serve longer than you choose.'
+
+He was silent: what he had thought himself had been of the irrevocable
+insult he would be held to have offered to the emperor, the nation, and
+the world, if ever they knew.
+
+'It will not be liked if I accept for a mere caprice. One must never
+treat a State as Bela treats his playthings,' he said as he rang, and
+when the servant answered the summons ordered them to saddle his horse.
+
+'No; there is no haste. Glearemberg is not definitely recalled, I
+think.'
+
+But as she spoke she knew very well that, unknown to himself, he had
+already decided; that the joy and triumph the offer had brought to him
+were both too great for him eventually to resist them. He sat down and
+re-read the letter.
+
+She had said the truth to him, but she had not said all the truth. She
+had a certain desire that he should justify her marriage in the eyes of
+the world by some political career brilliantly followed; but this was
+not her chief motive in wishing him to return to the life of cities.
+She had seen that he was in a manner disquieted, discontented, and
+attributed it to discontent at the even routine of their lives. The
+change in his moods and tempers, the arbitrary violence of his love
+for her, vaguely alarmed and troubled her; she seemed to see the germ
+of much that might render their lives far less happy. She realised
+that she had given herself to one who had the capacity of becoming a
+tyrannical possessor, and retained, even after six years of marriage,
+the irritable ardour of a lover. She knew that it was better for them
+both that the distraction and the restraint of the life of the world
+should occupy some of his thoughts, and check the over-indulgence of
+a passion which in solitude grew feverish and morbid. She had not the
+secret of the change in him, of which the result alone was apparent to
+her, and she could only act according to her light. If he grew morose,
+tyrannical, violent, all the joy of their life would be gone. She knew
+that men alter curiously under the sense of possession. She felt that
+her influence, though strong, was not paramount as it had been, and she
+perceived that he no longer took much interest in the administration
+of the estates, in which he had shown great ability in the first years
+of their marriage. She had been forced to resume her old governance
+of all those matters, and she knew that it was not good for him to
+live without occupation. She feared that the sameness of the days, to
+her so delightful, to him grew tiresome. To ride constantly, to hunt
+sometimes, to make music in the evenings----this was scarcely enough to
+fill up the life of a man who had been a _viveur_ on the bitumen of the
+boulevards for so long.
+
+A woman of a lesser nature would have been too vain to doubt the
+all-sufficiency of her own presence to enthral and to content him; but
+she was without vanity, and had more wisdom than most women. It did
+not even once occur to her, as it would have done incessantly to most,
+that the magnificence of all her gifts to him were title-deeds to his
+content for life.
+
+Public life would be her enemy, would take her from the solitudes she
+loved, would change her plans for her children's education, would bring
+the world continually betwixt herself and her husband; but since he
+wished it that was all she thought of, all her law.
+
+'Surely he will accept?' said Mdme. Ottilie, who had returned from the
+south of France.
+
+'Yes, he will accept,' said his wife. 'He does not know it, but he
+will.'
+
+'I cannot imagine why he should affect to hesitate. It is the career
+he is made for, with his talents, his social graces.'
+
+'He does not affect; he hesitates for my sake. He knows I am never
+happy away from Hohenszalras.'
+
+'Why did you write then to Kunst?'
+
+'Because it will be better for him; he is neither a poet nor a
+philosopher, to be able to live away from the world.'
+
+'Which are you?'
+
+'Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the
+people she----'
+
+'Reigns over,' added the Princess. 'Admit, my beloved, that a part of
+your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be
+quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!'
+
+Wanda von Szalras smiled. 'Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed
+with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.'
+
+'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural
+life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.'
+
+At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great
+avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before
+coming into his wife's presence. He would no more have gone to her with
+the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in
+such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.
+
+When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with
+vivacity:
+
+'Well! you accept, of course?
+
+'I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.'
+
+The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the
+carpet.
+
+'Wanda is a hermit,' she said; 'she should have dwelt in a cave, and
+lived on berries with S. Scholastica. What is the use of leaving it to
+her? She will say No. She loves her mountains.'
+
+'Then she shall stay amidst her mountains.'
+
+'And you will throw all your future away?'
+
+'Dear mother, I have no future----should have had none but for her.'
+
+'All that is very pretty, but after nearly six years of marriage it is
+not necessary to _faire des madrigaux._'
+
+The Princess sat a little more erect, angrily, and continued to tap her
+foot upon the floor. His wife was silent for a little while; then she
+went over to her writing-table, and wrote with a firm hand a few lines
+in German. She rose and gave the sheet to Sabran.
+
+'Copy that,' she said, 'or give it as many graces of style as you like.'
+
+His heart beat, his sight seemed dim as he read what she had written.
+
+It was an acceptance.
+
+'See, my dear Réné!' said the Princess, when she understood;
+'never combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon--
+unselfishness! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort.'
+
+The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her----
+
+'Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of
+_faisant des madrigaux!_'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna,
+and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called
+her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who
+showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and
+welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the
+most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the
+prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified
+and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware
+that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands
+for _finesse_ and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make
+upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his
+wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and
+splendour it required.
+
+He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when
+the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his
+nerve, his self-command, his _insouciance_; he was once more capable of
+honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman
+he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of
+his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates
+a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must
+always exist, _sub rosa_, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance
+with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for
+every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul
+Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen
+politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The
+prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of
+a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff
+as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle
+projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social
+honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the
+minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in
+all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the
+purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of
+Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked _moujik_ in the
+_isba_ of a Persian peasant.
+
+Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like
+all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify
+his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort
+that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and
+perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men
+was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public
+career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to
+be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor
+had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.
+
+'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition
+that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which
+had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from
+circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of
+his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the
+social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better
+moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess
+von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;'
+and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless
+and ill at ease.
+
+He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold
+by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more
+prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if
+ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate,
+dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him
+with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed
+to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he
+been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his
+own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have
+always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion
+of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his
+own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any
+such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly,
+that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a
+suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always
+reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.
+
+This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life;
+not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a
+jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his
+ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it
+touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the
+felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the
+contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and
+witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and
+too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on
+his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed
+of constancy.
+
+'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of
+dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly
+degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is
+always hers and my love.'
+
+Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of
+her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty
+life led there under the show summits of her hills.
+
+He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's
+caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not
+infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most
+use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the
+daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.
+
+As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the
+Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and
+a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour
+and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he
+had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world
+beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had
+beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He
+went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now
+and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some
+portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some
+quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.
+
+On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:
+
+'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.
+
+(Signed) 'WANDA.'
+
+No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches
+could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful
+affection.
+
+'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.
+
+The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the
+season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the
+sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and
+the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and
+magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present
+at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation,
+as the ambassador-designate to Russia.
+
+Court dress became him, and his great height and elegance of manner
+made him noticeable even in that brilliant crowd of notables. All the
+greatest ladies distinguished him with their smiles, but he gave them
+no more than courtesy. He saw only before the 'eye of memory' his wife
+as he had seen her at the last court ball, with the famous pearls about
+her throat, and her train of silver tissue sown with pearls and looped
+up with white lilac.
+
+'It is the flower I like best,' she had said to him. 'It brought me
+your first love-message in Paris, do you remember? It said little; it
+was very discreet, but it said enough!'
+
+'You are always thinking of Wanda!' said the Countess Brancka to him
+now, with a tinge of impatience in her tone.
+
+He coloured a little, and said with that hauteur with which he always
+repressed any passing jest at his love for his wife:
+
+'When both one's duty and joy point the same way it is easy to follow
+them in thought.'
+
+'I hope you follow them in action too,' said Mdme. Brancka.
+
+'If I do not, I am at least only responsible to Wanda.'
+
+'Who would be a lenient judge you mean? said the Countess, with a
+certain smile that displeased him. 'Do not be too sure; she is a von
+Szalras. They are not agreeable persons when they are angered.'
+
+'I have not been so unhappy as to see her so,' said Sabran coldly,
+with a vague sense of uneasiness. As much as it is possible for a man
+to dislike a woman who is very lovely, and young enough to be still
+charming in the eyes of the world, he disliked Olga Brancka. He had
+known her for many years in Paris, not intimately, but by force of
+being in the same society, and, like many men who do not lead very
+decent lives themselves, he frankly detested _cocodettes._
+
+'If we want these manners we have our _lionnes_,' he was wont to say,
+at a time when Cochonette was seen every day behind his horses by the
+Cascade, and it had been the height of the Countess Olga's ambition at
+that time to be called like Cochonette. A certain resemblance there
+was between the great lady and the wicked one; they had the same small
+delicate sarcastic features, the same red gold curls, the same perfect
+colourless complexion; but where Cochonette had eyes of the slightest
+blue, the wife of Count Stefan had the luminous piercing black eyes of
+the Muscovite physiognomy. Still the likeness was there, and it made
+the sight of Mdme. Brancka distasteful to him, since his memories of
+the other were far from welcome. It was for Cochonette that he had
+broken the bank at Monte Carlo, and into her lap that he had thrown
+all the gold rouleaux at a time when in his soul he had already adored
+Wanda von Szalras, and had despised himself for returning to the slough
+of his old pleasures. It was Cochonette who had sold his secrets to
+the Prussians, and brought them down upon him in the farmhouse amongst
+the orchards of the Orléannais, whilst she passed safely through, the
+German lines and across the frontier, laden with her jewels and her
+_valeurs_ of all kinds, saying in her teeth as she went: 'He will
+never see that Austrian woman again!' That had been the end of all he
+had known of Cochonette, and a presentiment of perfidy, of danger, of
+animosity always came over him whenever he saw the _joli petit minois_
+which in profile was so like Cochonette's, looking up from under the
+loose auburn curls that Mdme. Olga had copied from her.
+
+Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more
+admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds;
+and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette
+would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels
+flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams.
+There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her
+breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.
+
+Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an _étourdissement_
+that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.
+
+'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda,
+_mon beau_ cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are
+really going to Russia?'
+
+'I believe so.'
+
+'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in
+paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'
+
+'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'
+
+'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy
+enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money
+that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'
+
+'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played
+since my marriage.'
+
+'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A
+saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature,
+though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by
+marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean
+nothing.'
+
+'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he
+was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.
+
+'Call me at least _cousinette_,' said Mdme. Olga; 'we are cousins, you
+know, thanks to Wanda. Oh! she will be very unhappy in St. Petersburg;
+she will not amuse herself, she never does. She is incapable of a
+flirtation; she never touches a card. When she dances it is only
+because she must, and then it is only a quadrille or a contre-dance.
+She always reminds me of Marie Thérèse's "In our position nothing is a
+trifle." You remember the Empress's letters to Versailles?'
+
+Sabran was very much angered, but he was afraid to express his anger
+lest it should seem to make him absurd.
+
+'Madame,' he said, with ill-repressed irritation, 'I know you speak
+only in jest, but I must take the liberty to tell you----however
+bourgeois it appear----that I do not allow a jest even from you upon my
+wife. Anything she does is perfect in my sight, and if she be imbued
+with the old traditions of gentle blood, too many ladies desert them in
+these days for me not to be grateful to her for her loyalty.'
+
+She listened, with her bright black eyes fixed on him; then she leaned
+a little more closely on his arm.
+
+'Do you know that you said that very well? Most men are ridiculous
+when they are in love with their wives, but it becomes you, Wanda is
+perfect, we all know that; you are not alone in thinking so. Ask Egon!'
+
+The face of Sabran changed as he heard that name. As she saw the
+change she thought: 'Can it be possible that he is jealous?'
+
+Aloud she said with a little laugh: 'I almost wonder Egon did not
+run you through the heart before you married. Now, of course, he
+is reconciled to the inevitable; or, if not reconciled, he has to
+submit to it as we all have to do. He grows very _farouche_; he lives
+between his troopers and his castle of Taróc, like a barbaric lord
+of the Middle Ages. Were you ever at Taróc? It is worth seeing----a
+huge fortress, old as the days of Ottokar, in the very heart of the
+Karpathians. He leads a wild, fierce life enough there. If he keep the
+memory of Wanda with him it is as some men keep an idolatry for what is
+dead.'
+
+Sabran listened with a sombre irritation. 'Suppose we leave my wife's
+name in peace,' he said coldly. 'The _grosser cotillon_ is about to
+begin; may I aspire to the honour?'
+
+As he led her out, and the light fell on her red gold curls, on her
+dazzling butterflies, her armour of diamonds, her snow-white skin, a
+thousand memories of Cochonette came over him, though the scene around
+him was the ball-room of the Hofburg, and the woman whose great bouquet
+of _rêve d'or_ roses touched his hand was a great lady who had been the
+wife of Gela von Szalras, and the daughter of the Prince Serriatine.
+He distrusted her, he despised her, he disliked her so strongly that
+he was almost ashamed of his own antagonism; and yet her contact, her
+grace of movement, the mere scent of the bouquet of roses had a sort of
+painful and unwilling intoxication for the moment for him.
+
+He was glad when the long and gorgeous figures of the cotillon had
+tired out even her steel-like nerves, and he was free to leave the
+palace and go home to sleep. He looked at a miniature of his wife as
+he undressed; the face of it, with its tenderness and its nobility,
+seemed to him, after the face of this other woman, like the pure high
+air of the Iselthal after the heated and unhealthy atmosphere of a
+gambling-room.
+
+The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence
+was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which
+had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was
+brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural
+gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the
+sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some
+with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the
+empire.
+
+As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way
+slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through
+the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and
+odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After
+all, I may do her some honour before I die.'
+
+When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached
+him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said
+that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought
+it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.
+
+Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the
+staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants
+away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.
+
+There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:
+
+'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to
+him, under secrecy, what I know.'
+
+They were fully signed----'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a
+courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph.
+They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the
+Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+As the carriage of the Countess Olga rolled home through the Graben
+after the military spectacle, she stopped it suddenly, and signed to an
+old man in the crowd who was waiting to cross the road until a regiment
+of cuirassiers had rolled by. He was eyeing them critically, as only an
+old soldier does look at troops.
+
+'Is it you, Georg?' said Madame Olga. 'What brings you here?'
+
+'I came from Taróc with a letter from the Prince, my master,' answered
+the man, an old hussar who had carried Vàsàrhely in his arms off the
+field of Königsgrätz, after dragging him from under a heap of dead men
+and horses.
+
+'A letter! To whom?' asked Olga, who always was curious and persistent
+in investigation of all her brother-in-law's movements and actions.
+
+Vàsàrhely had not laid any injunction as to secrecy, only as to speed,
+upon his faithful servant; so that Georg replied, unwitting of harm,
+'To the Markgraf von Sabran, my Countess.'
+
+'A letter that could not go by post--how strange! And from Egon to
+Wanda's husband!' she thought, with her inquisitive eagerness awakened.
+Aloud she bade the old trooper call at her palace for a packet for
+Taróc, to make excuse for having stopped and questioned him, and drove
+onward lost in thought.
+
+'Perhaps it is a challenge late in the day!' she thought, with a laugh;
+but she was astonished and perplexed that any communication should take
+place between these men; she perplexed her mind in vain in the effort
+to imagine what tie could connect them, what mystery mutually affecting
+them could lie beneath the secret of Vassia Kazán.
+
+When, on the morrow, she heard at Court that the Emperor was deeply
+incensed at the caprice and disrespect of the Count von Idrac, as
+he was called at Court, who, at the eleventh hour, had declined a
+mission already accepted by him, and of which the offer had been in
+itself an unprecedented mark of honour and confidence, her swift
+sagacity instantly associated the action, apparently so excuseless and
+inexcusable, with the letter sent up from Taróc. It was still as great
+a mystery to her as it had been before what the contents of the letter
+could have been, but she had no doubt that in some way or another it
+had brought about the resignation of the appointment. It awakened a
+still more intense curiosity in her, but she was too wise to whisper
+her suspicion to anyone. To her friends at the Court she said, with
+laughter: 'A night or two ago I chanced to tell Sabran that his wife
+would be wretched at St. Petersburg. That is sure to have been enough
+for him. He is such a devoted husband.'
+
+No one of course believed her, but they received the impression that
+she knew the real cause of his resignation, though she could not be
+induced to say it.
+
+What did it matter to her? Nothing, indeed. But the sense of a secret
+withheld from her was to Mdme. Olga like the slot of the fox to a young
+hound. She might have a thousand secrets of her own if it pleased her,
+but she could not endure anyone else to guard one. Besides, in a vague,
+feverish, angry way, she was almost in love with the man who was so
+faithful to his wife that he had looked away from her as from some
+unclean thing when she had wished to dazzle him. She had no perception
+that the secret could concern him himself very nearly, but she thought
+it was probably one which he and Egon Vàsàrhely, for reasons of their
+own, chose to share and keep hidden. And if it were a secret that
+prevented Sabran from going to the Court of Russia? Then, surely, it
+was one worth knowing? And if she gained a knowledge of it, and his
+wife had none?----what a superiority would be hers, what a weapon
+always to hand!
+
+She did not intend any especial cruelty or compass any especial end:
+she was actuated by a vague desire to interrupt a current of happiness
+that flowed on smoothly without her, to interfere where she had no
+earthly title or reason to do so, merely because she was disregarded
+by persons content with each other. It is not always definite motives
+which have the most influence; the subtlest poisons are those which
+enter the system we know not how, and penetrate it ere we are aware.
+The only thing which had ever held her back from any extremes of evil
+had been the mere habit of good-breeding and an absolute egotism which
+had saved her from all strong passions. Now something that was like
+passion had touched her under the sting of Sabran's indifference, and
+with it she became tenacious, malignant, and unsparing: adroit she had
+always been. Instinct is seldom at fault when we are conscious of an
+enemy, and Sabran's had not erred when it had warned him against the
+wife of Stefan Brancka as the serpent who would bring woe and disaster
+to his paradise.
+
+In some three months' time she received a more explicit answer from her
+cousin in St. Petersburg. Giving the precise dates, he told her that
+Vassia Kazán was the name given to the son of Count Paul Ivanovitch
+Zabaroff by a wayside amour with one of his own serfs at a village
+near the border line of Astrachan. He narrated the early history of
+the youth, and said that he had been amongst the passengers on board a
+Havre ship, which had foundered with all hands. So far the brief record
+of Vassia Kazán was clear and complete. But it told her nothing. She
+was unreasonably enraged, and looked at the little piece of burnt paper
+as though she would wrench the secret out of it.
+
+'There must be so much more to know,' she thought. 'What would a mere
+drowned boy be to either of those men----a boy dead too all these years
+before?'
+
+She wrote insolently to her cousin, that the Third Section, with
+its eyes of Argus and its limbs of Vishnoo, had always been but an
+overgrown imbecile, and set her woman's wits to accomplish what the
+Third Section had failed to do for her. So much she thought of it that
+the name seemed forced into her very brain; she seemed to hear every
+one saying----'Vassia Kazán.' It was a word to conjure with, at least:
+she could at the least try the effect of its utterance any day upon
+either of those who had made it the key of their correspondence. Russia
+had written down Vassia Kazán as dead, and the mystery which enveloped
+the name would not open to her. She knew her country too well not to
+know that this bold statement might cover some political secret, some
+story wholly unlike that which was given her. Vassia Kazán might have
+lived and have incurred the suspicions of the police, and be dwelling
+far away in the death in life of Siberian mines, or deep sunk in some
+fortress, like a stone at the bottom of a well. The reply not only
+did not beget her belief in it, but gave her range for the widest and
+wildest conjectures of imagination. 'It is some fault, some folly, some
+crime, who can tell? And Vassia Kazán is the victim or the associate,
+or the confidant of it. But what is it? And how does Egon know of it?'
+
+She passed the summer in pleasures of all kinds, but the subject did
+not lose its power over her, nor did she forget the face of Sabran as
+he had turned it away from her in the ball-room of the Hofburg.
+
+He himself had left the capital, after affirming to the minister that
+private reasons, which he could not enter into, had induced him to
+entreat the Imperial pardon for so sudden a change of resolve, and to
+solicit permission to decline the high honour that had been vouchsafed
+to him.
+
+'What shall I say to Wanda?' he asked himself incessantly, as the
+express train swung through the grand green country towards Salzburg.
+
+She was sitting on the lake terrace with the Princess, when a telegram
+from her cousin Kunst was brought to her. Bela and Gela were playing
+near with squadrons of painted cuirassiers, and the great dogs were
+lying on the marble pavement at her feet. It was a golden close to a
+sunless but fine day; the snow peaks were growing rosy as the sun shone
+for an instant behind the Venediger range, and the lake was calm and
+still and green, one little boat going noiselessly across it from the
+Holy Isle to the further side.
+
+'What a pity to leave it all!' she thought as she took the telegram.
+
+The Minister's message was curt and angered:
+
+'Your husband has resigned; he makes himself and me ridiculous. Unable
+to guess his motive, I am troubled and embarrassed beyond expression.'
+
+The other, from Sabran, said simply: 'I am coming home. I give up
+Russia.'
+
+'Any bad news?' the Princess asked, seeing the seriousness of her face.
+Her niece rose and gave her the papers.
+
+'Is Réné mad!' she exclaimed as she read. His wife, who was startled
+and dismayed at the affront to her cousin and to her sovereign, yet had
+been unable to repress a movement of personal gladness, hastened to say
+in his defence:
+
+'Be sure he has some grave, good reason, dear mother. He knows the
+world too well to commit a folly. Unexplained, it looks strange,
+certainly; but he will be home to-night or in the early morning; then
+we shall know; and be sure we shall find him right.'
+
+'Right!' echoed the Princess, lifting the little girl who was her
+namesake off her knee, a child white as a snowdrop, with golden curls,
+who looked as if she had come out of a band of Correggio's baby angels.
+
+'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who
+had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard
+suspended in the air.
+
+'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme
+displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when
+through him you are probably _brouillée_ with your Sovereign for life.'
+
+She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a
+caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon.
+I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible
+excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such
+vast importance.'
+
+'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would
+condemn Réné unheard?'
+
+'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'
+
+'Perhaps none. I know it is a very grave offence that he has committed,
+and yet I cannot help being happy,' said his wife with a smile, as she
+lifted up the little Ottilie, and murmured over the child's fair curls,
+'Ah, my dear little dove! We are not going to Russia after all. You
+little birds will not leave your nest!'
+
+'Bela is not going to the snow palace?' said he, whose ears were very
+quick, and to whom his attendants had told marvellous narratives of an
+utterly imaginary Russia.
+
+'No; are not you glad, my dear?'
+
+He thought very gravely for a moment.
+
+'Bela is not sure. Marc says Bela would have slaves in Russia, and
+might beat them.'
+
+'Bela would be beaten himself if he did, and by my own hand, said his
+mother very gravely. 'Oh, child! where did you get your cruelty?'
+
+'He is not cruel,' said the Princess. 'He is only masterful.'
+
+'Alas! it is the same thing.'
+
+She sent the children indoors, and remained after the sun-glow had all
+faded, and Mdme. Ottilie had gone away to her own rooms, and paced
+to and fro the length of the terrace, troubled by an anxiety which
+she would have owned to no one. What could have happened to make
+him so offend alike the State and the Court? She tormented herself
+with wondering again and again whether she had used any incautious
+expression in her letters which could have betrayed to him the poignant
+regret the coming exile gave her. No! she was sure she had not done
+so. She had only written twice, preferring telegrams as quicker, and,
+to a man, less troublesome than letters. She knew courts and cabinets
+too well not to know that the step her husband had taken was one which
+would wholly ruin the favour he enjoyed with the former, and wholly
+take away all chance of his being ever called again to serve the
+latter. Personally she was indifferent to that kind of ambition; but
+her attachment to the Imperial house was too strong, and her loyalty
+to it too hereditary, for her not to be alarmed at the idea of losing
+its good-will. Disquieted and afraid of all kinds of formless unknown
+ills, she went with a heavy heart into the Rittersaal to a dinner for
+which she could find no appetite. The Princess also, so talkative and
+vivacious at other times, was silent and pre-occupied. The evening
+passed tediously. He did not come.
+
+It was past midnight, and she had given up all hope of his arrival,
+when she heard the returning trot of the horses, who had been sent over
+to Matrey in the evening on the chance of his being there. She was in
+her own chamber, having dismissed her women, and was trying in vain to
+keep her thoughts to nightly prayer. At the sound of the horses' feet
+without, she threw on a _négligé_ of white satin and lace, and went,
+out on to the staircase to meet him. As he came up the broad stairs,
+with Donau and Neva gladly leaping on him, he looked up and saw her
+against the background of oak and tapestry and old armour, with the
+light of a great Persian lamp in metal that swung above shed full upon
+her. She had never looked more lovely to him than as she stood so, her
+eyes eagerly searching the dim shadow for him, and the loose white
+folds embroidered in silk with pale roses flowing downward from her
+throat to her feet. He drew her within her chamber, and took her in his
+arms with a passionate gesture.
+
+'Let us forget everything,' he murmured, 'except that we have been
+parted nearly a month!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+In the morning, after breakfast in the little Saxe room, she said to
+him with gentle firmness: 'Réné, you must tell me now--why have you
+refused Russia?'
+
+He had known that the question must come, and all the way on his
+homeward journey he had been revolving in his mind the answer he would
+give to it. He was very pale, but otherwise he betrayed no agitation as
+he turned and looked at her.
+
+'That is what I cannot tell you,' he replied.
+
+She could not believe she heard aright.
+
+'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'I have had a message from Kunst;
+he is deeply angered. I understand that, after all was arranged, you
+abruptly resigned the Russian mission. I ask your reasons. It is a very
+grave step to have taken. I suppose your motives must be very strong
+ones?'
+
+'They are so,' said Sabran; and he continued in the forced and measured
+tone of one who recites what he has taught himself to say: 'It is quite
+natural that your cousin Kunst should be offended; the Emperor also.
+You perhaps will be the same when I say to you that I cannot tell you,
+as I cannot tell them, the grounds of my withdrawal. Perhaps you, like
+them, will not forgive it.'
+
+Her nostrils dilated and her breast heaved: she was startled,
+mortified, amazed. 'You do not choose to tell _me_!' she said in
+stupefaction.
+
+'I cannot tell you.'
+
+'She gazed at him with the first bitterness of wrath that he had ever
+seen upon her face. She had been used to perfect submission of others
+all her life. She had the blood in her of stern princes, who had meted
+out rule and justice against which there had been no appeal. She was
+accustomed even in him to deference, homage, consideration, to be
+consulted always, deferred to often. His answer for the moment seemed
+to her an unwarrantable insult.
+
+Her influence, her relatives, her sovereign, had given him one of the
+highest honours conceivable, and he did not choose to even say why he
+was thankless for it! Passionate and withering words rose to her lips,
+but she restrained their utterance. Not even in that moment could she
+bring herself to speak what might seem to rebuke him with the weight
+of all his debt to her. She remained silent, but he understood all the
+intense indignation that held her speechless there. He approached her
+more nearly, and spoke with emotion, but with a certain sternness in
+his voice----
+
+'I know very well that I must offend and even outrage you. But I
+cannot tell you my motives. It is the first time that I have ever
+acted independently of you or failed to consult your wishes. I only
+venture to remind you that marriage does give to the man the right to
+do so, though I have never availed myself of it. Nay, even now, I owe
+you too much to be ingrate enough to take refuge in my authority as
+your husband. I prefer to owe more, as I have owed so much, to your
+tenderness. I prefer to ask of you, by your love for me, not to press
+me for an answer that I am not in a position to make; to be content
+with what I say--that I have relinquished the Russian mission because I
+have no choice but to do so.'
+
+He spoke firmly, because he spoke only the truth, although not all the
+truth.
+
+A great anger rose up in her, the first that she had ever been moved to
+by him. All the pride of her temper and all her dignity were outraged
+by this refusal to have confidence in her. It seemed incredible
+to her. She still thought herself the prey of some dream, of some
+hallucination. Her lips parted to speak, but again she withheld the
+words she was about to utter. Her strong justice compelled her to admit
+that he was but within his rights, and her sense of duty was stronger
+than her sense of self-love.
+
+She did not look at him, nor could she trust her voice. She turned
+from him without a syllable, and left the room. She was afraid of the
+violence of the anger that she felt.
+
+'If it had been only to myself I would pardon it,' she thought; 'but an
+insult to my people, to my country, to my sovereign!--an insult without
+excuse, or explanation, or apology----'
+
+She shut herself alone within her oratory and passed the most bitter
+hour of her life. The imperious and violent temper of the Szalras
+was dormant in her character, though she had chastened and tamed it,
+and the natural sweetness and serenity of her disposition had been a
+counterpoise to it so strong that the latter had become the only thing
+visible in her. But all the wrath of her race was now aroused and in
+arms against what she loved best on earth.
+
+'If it had been anything else,' she thought; 'but a public act like
+this--an ingratitude to the Crown itself! A caprice for all the world
+to chatter of and blame!'
+
+It would have been hard enough to bear, difficult enough to explain
+away to others, if he had told her his reasons, however captious,
+unwise, or selfish they might be; but to have the door of his soul
+thus shut upon her, his thoughts thus closed to her, hurt her with
+intolerable pain, and filled her with a deep and burning indignation.
+
+She passed all the early morning hours alone in her little temple of
+prayer, striving in vain against the bitterness of her heart; above
+her the great ivory Crucifixion, the work of Angermayer, beneath which
+so many generations of the women of the House of Szalras had knelt in
+their hours of tribulation or bereavement.
+
+When she left the oratory she had conquered herself. Though she could
+not extinguish the human passions that smarted and throbbed within her,
+she knew her duty well enough to know that it must lie in submission
+and in silence.
+
+She sought for him at once. She found him in the library: he was
+playing to himself a long dreamy concerto of Schubert's, to soothe the
+irritation of his own nerves and pass away a time of keen suspense. He
+rose as she came into the room, and awaited her approach with a timid
+anxiety in his eyes, which she was too absorbed by her own emotions to
+observe. He had assumed a boldness that he had not, and had used his
+power to dominate her rather in desperation than in any sense of actual
+mastery. In his heart it was he who feared her.
+
+'You were quite right,' she said simply to him. 'Of course, you are
+master of your own actions, and owe no account of them to me. We will
+say no more about it. For myself, you know I am content enough to
+escape exile to any embassy.'
+
+He kissed her hand with an unfeigned reverence and humility.
+
+'You are as merciful as you are great,' he murmured. 'If I be silent it
+is my misfortune.' He paused abruptly.
+
+A sudden thought came over her as he spoke.
+
+'It is some State secret that he knows and cannot speak of, and that
+has made him unwilling to go. Why did I never think of that before?'
+
+An explanation that had its root in honour, a reticence that sprang
+from conscience, were so welcome to her, and to her appeared so
+natural, that they now consoled her at once, and healed the wounds to
+her own pride.
+
+'Of course, if it be so, he is right not to speak even to me,' she
+mused, and her only desire was now to save him from the insistence and
+the indignation of the Princess, and the examination which these were
+sure to entail upon him when he should meet her at the noon breakfast
+now at hand.
+
+To that end she sought out her aunt in her own apartments, taking
+with her the tiny Ottilie, who always disarmed all irritation in her
+godmother by the mere presence of her little flower-like face.
+
+'Dear mother,' she said softly, when the child had made her morning
+obeisance, 'I am come to ask of you a great favour and kindness to me.
+Réné returned last night. He has done what he thought right. I do not
+even ask his reasons. He has acted from _force majeure_ by dictate of
+his own honour. Will you do as I mean to do? Will you spare him any
+interrogation? I shall be so grateful to you, and so will he.'
+
+Mdme. Ottilie, opening her bonbonnière for her namesake, drew up her
+fragile figure with a severity unusual to her.
+
+'Do I hear you aright? You do not even know the reasons of the insult
+M. de Sabran has passed upon the Crown and Cabinet, and you do not even
+mean to ask them?'
+
+'I do mean that; and what I do not ask I feel sure you will admit no
+one else has any right to ask of him.'
+
+'No one certainly except His Majesty.'
+
+'I presume His Majesty has had all information due to him as our
+Imperial master. All I entreat of you, dearest mother, is to do as
+I have done; assume, as we are bound to assume, that Réné has acted
+wisely and rightly, and not weary him with questions to which it will
+be painful to him not to respond.'
+
+'Questions! I never yet indulged in anything so vulgar as curiosity,
+that you should imagine I shall be capable of subjecting your husband
+to a cross-examination. If you be satisfied, I can have no right to
+be more exacting than yourself. The occurrence is to me lamentable,
+inexcusable, unintelligible; but if explanation be not offered me you
+may rest assured I shall not intrude my request for it.'
+
+'Of that I am sure; but I am not contented only with that. I want you
+to feel no dissatisfaction, no doubt, no anger against him. You may be
+sure that he has acted from conviction, because he was most desirous to
+go to Russia, as you saw when you urged him to accept the mission.'
+
+'I have said the utmost that I can say,' replied the Princess, with a
+chill light in her blue eyes. 'This little child is no more likely to
+ask questions than I am, after what you have stated. But you must not
+regard my silence as any condonation of what must always appear to me a
+step disrespectful to the Crown, contrary to all usages of etiquette,
+and injurious to his own future and that of his children. His scruples
+of conscience came too late.'
+
+'I did not say they were exactly that. I believe he learned something
+which made him consider that his honour required him to withdraw.'
+
+'That may be,' said the Princess, frigidly. 'As I observed, it came
+lamentably late. You will excuse me if I breakfast in my own rooms this
+morning.'
+
+Wanda left her, gave the child to a nurse who waited without, and
+returned to the library. She had offended and pained Mdme. Ottilie,
+but she had saved her husband from annoyance. She knew that though
+the Princess was by no means as free from curiosity as she declared
+herself, she was too high-bred and too proud to solicit a confidence
+withheld from her.
+
+Sabran was seated at the piano where she had left him, but his forehead
+rested on the woodwork of it, and his whole attitude was suggestive
+of sad and absorbed thought and abandonment to regrets that were
+unavailing.
+
+'It has cost him so much,' she reflected as she looked at him. 'Perhaps
+it has been a self-sacrifice, a heroism even; and I, from mere wounded
+feeling, have been angered against him and almost cruel!'
+
+With the exaggeration in self-censure of all generous natures, she was
+full of remorse at having added any pain to the disappointment which
+had been his portion; a disappointment none the less poignant, as she
+saw, because it had been voluntarily, as she imagined, accepted.
+
+As he heard her approach he started and rose, and the expression of his
+face startled her for a moment; it was so full of pain, of melancholy,
+almost (could she have believed it) of despair. What could this matter
+be to affect him thus, since being of the State it could be at its
+worst only some painful and compromising secret of political life which
+could have no personal meaning for him? It was surely impossible that
+mere disappointment----a disappointment self-inflicted----could bring
+upon him such suffering? But she threw these thoughts away. In her
+great loyalty she had told herself that she must not even think of this
+thing, lest she should let it come between them once again and tempt
+her from her duty and obedience. Her trust in him was perfect.
+
+The abandonment of a coveted distinction was in itself a bitter
+disappointment, but it seemed to him as nothing beside the sense of
+submission and obedience compelled from him to Vàsàrhely. He felt as
+though an iron hand, invisible, weighed on his life, and forced it into
+subjection. When he had almost grown secure that his enemy's knowledge
+was a buried harmless thing, it had risen and barred his way, speaking
+with an authority which it was not possible to disobey. With all his
+errors he was a man of high courage, who had always held his own with
+all men. How the old forgotten humiliation of his earliest years
+revived, and enforced from him the servile timidity of the Slav blood
+which he had abjured. He had never for an instant conceived it possible
+to disregard the mandate he received; that an apparently voluntary
+resignation was permitted to him was, his conscience acknowledged, more
+mercy than he could have expected. That Vàsàrhely would act thus had
+not occurred to him; but before the act he could not do otherwise than
+admit its justice and obey.
+
+But the consciousness of that superior will compelling him, left in him
+a chill tremor of constant fear, of perpetual self-abasement. What was
+natural to him was the reckless daring which many Russians, such as
+Skobeleff, have shown in a thousand ways of peril. He was here forced
+only to crouch and to submit; it was more galling, more cruel to him
+than utter exposure would have been. The sense of coercion was always
+upon him like a dragging chain. It produced on him a despondency, which
+not even the presence of his wife or the elasticity of his own nature
+could dispel.
+
+He had to play a part to her, and to do this was unfamiliar and hateful
+to him. In all the years before he had concealed a fact from her, but
+he had never been otherwise false. Though to his knowledge there had
+been always between them the shadow of a secret untold, there had
+never been any sense upon him of obligation to measure his words, to
+feign sentiments he had not, to hide behind a carefully constructed
+screen of untruth. Now, though he had indeed not lied with his lips,
+he had to sustain a concealment which was a thousand times more trying
+to him than that concealment of his birth and station to which he had
+been so long accustomed that he hardly realised it as any error. The
+very nobility with which she had accepted his silence, and given it,
+unasked, a worthy construction, smote him with a deeper sense of shame
+than even that which galled him when he remembered the yoke laid on him
+by the will of Egon Vàsàrhely.
+
+He roused himself to meet her with composure.
+
+She rested her hand caressingly on his.
+
+'We will never speak of Russia any more. I should be sorry were the
+Kaiser to think you capricious or disloyal, but you have too much
+ability to have incurred this risk. Let it all be as though there had
+never arisen any question of public life for you. I have explained
+to Aunt Ottilie; she will not weary you with interrogation; she
+understands that you have acted as your honour bade you. That is enough
+for those who love you as do she and I.'
+
+Every word she spoke entered his very soul with the cruellest irony,
+the sharpest reproach. But of these he let her see nothing. Yet he
+was none the less abjectly ashamed, less passionately self-condemned,
+because he had to consume his pain in silence, and had the self-control
+to answer, still with a smile, as he touched a chord or two of music:
+
+'When the Israelites were free they hankered after the flesh-pots of
+Egypt. They deserved eternal exile, eternal bondage. So do I, for
+having ever been ingrate enough to dream of leaving Hohenszalras for
+the world of men!'
+
+Then he turned wholly towards the Erard keyboard, and with splendour
+and might there rolled forth under his touch the military march of
+Rákóczi: he was glad of the majesty and passion of the music which
+supplanted and silenced speech.
+
+'That is very grand,' she said, when the last notes had died away.
+'One seems to hear the _Eljén!_ of the whole nation in it. But play me
+something more tender, more pathetic----some _lieder_ half sorrow and
+half gladness, you know so many of all countries.'
+
+He paused a moment; then his hands wandered lightly across the notes,
+and called up the mournful folk-songs that he had heard so long, so
+long, before; songs of the Russian peasants, of the maidens borne off
+by the Tartar in war, of the blue-eyed children carried away to be
+slaves, of the homeless villagers beholding their straw-roofed huts
+licked up by the hungry hurrying flame lit by the Kossack or the Kurd;
+songs of a people without joy, that he had heard in his childish days,
+when the great rafts had drifted slowly down the Volga water, and
+across the plains the lines of chained prisoners had crept as slowly
+through the dust; or songs that he had sung to himself, not knowing
+why, where the winter was white on all the land, and the bay of the
+famished wolves afar off had blent with the shrill sad cry of the wild
+swans dying of cold and of hunger and of thirst on the frozen rivers,
+and the reeds were grown hard as spears of iron, and the waves were
+changed to stone.
+
+The intense melancholy penetrated her very heart. She listened with
+the tears in her eyes, and her whole being stirred and thrilled by a
+pain not her own. A kind of consciousness came to her, borne on that
+melancholy melody, of some unspoken sorrow which lived in this heart
+which beat so near her own, and whose every throb she had thought she
+knew. A sudden terror seized her lest all this while she who believed
+his whole life hers was in truth a stranger to his deepest grief, his
+dearest memories.
+
+When the last sigh of those plaintive songs without words had died
+away, she signed to him to approach her.
+
+'Tell me,' she said very gently, 'tell me the truth. Réné, did you ever
+care for any woman, dead or lost, more than, or as much as, you care
+for me? I do not ask you if you loved others. I know all men have many
+caprices, but was any one of them so dear to you that you regret her
+still? Tell me the truth; I will be strong to bear it.'
+
+He, relieved beyond expression that she but asked him that on which his
+conscience was clear and his answer could be wholly sincere, sat down
+at her feet and leaned his head against her knee.
+
+'Never, so hear me God!' he said simply. 'I have loved no woman as I
+love you.'
+
+'And there is not one that you regret?'
+
+'There is not one.'
+
+'Then what is it that you do regret? Something more weighs on you than
+the mere loss of diplomatic life, which; after all, to you is no more
+than the loss of a toy to Bela.'
+
+'If I do regret,' he said, with a smile, 'it is foolish and thankless.
+The happiness you give me here is worth all the fret and fever of
+the world's ambitions. You are so great and good to be so little
+angered with me for my reticence. All my life, such as it is, shall be
+dedicated to my gratitude.'
+
+Once more an impulse to tell her all passed over him----a sense that
+he might trust her absolutely for all tenderness and all pity came
+upon him; but with the weakness which so constantly holds back human
+souls from their own deliverance, his courage once again failed him.
+He once more looking at her thought: 'Nay! I dare not. She would never
+understand, she would never pardon, she would never listen. At the
+first word she would abhor me.'
+
+He did not dare; he bent his face down on her knees as any child might
+have done.
+
+'What I ever must regret is not to be worthy of you!' he murmured; and
+the subterfuge was also a truth.
+
+She looked down at him wistfully with doubt and confusion mingled. She
+sighed, for she understood that buried in his heart there was some pain
+he would not share, perchance some half involuntary unfaithfulness he
+did not dare confess. She thrust this latter thought away quickly; it
+hurt her as the touch of a hot iron hurts tender flesh; she would not
+harbour it. It might well be, she knew.
+
+She was silent some little time, then she said calmly:
+
+'I think you worthy. Is not that enough? Never say to me what you do
+not wish to say. But----but----if there be anything you believe that I
+should blame, be sure of this, love: I am no fair weather friend. Try
+me in deep water, in dark storm!'
+
+And still he did not speak.
+
+His evil angel held him back and said to him, 'Nay! she would never
+forgive.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+One day in this winter time she sat alone in her octagon-room whilst he
+was out driving in the teeth of a strong wind blowing from the north
+and frequent bursts of snowstorm. Rapid exercise, eager movements, were
+necessary to him at once as tonic and as anodyne, and the northern
+blood that was in him made the bitter cold, the keen and angry air, the
+conflict with the frantic horses tearing at their curbs welcome and
+wholesome to him. Paul Zabaroff had many a day driven so over the hard
+snows of Russian plains.
+
+She sat at home as the twilight drew on, her feet buried in the furs
+before her chair, the fragrance shed about her from a basket of forced
+narcissus and bowls full of orange flowers and of violets, the light
+of the burning wood shining on the variegated and mellow hues of the
+tiles of the hearth. The last poems of Coppée were on her lap, but
+her thoughts had wandered away from those to Sabran, to her children,
+to a thousand happy trifles connected with one or the other. She was
+dreaming idly in that vague reverie which suits the last hour of the
+reclining day in the grey still winter of a mountain-land. She was
+almost sorry when Hubert entered and brought her the mail-bag, which
+had just come through the gloomy defiles and the frosted woods which
+stretched between them and Matrey.
+
+'It grows late,' she said to him. 'I fear it will be a stormy night.
+Have you heard the Marquis return?
+
+He told her that Sabran had not yet driven in, and ventured to add
+his hope that his master would not be out long; then he asked if she
+desired the lamps lit, and on being told she did not, withdrew, leaving
+the leather bag on a table close to one of the Saxe bowls of violets.
+There was plenty of light from the fire, and even from the windows, to
+read her letters by; she went first to one of the casements and looked
+at the night, which was growing very wild and dark. Though day still
+lingered, she could hear the wind go screaming down the lake, and
+the rush of the swollen water swirling against the terrace buttresses
+below. All beyond, woods, hills, mountains, were invisible under the
+grey mist.
+
+'I hope he will not be late,' she thought, but she was too keen a
+mountaineer to be apprehensive. Sabran now knew every road and path
+through all the Tauern as well as she did. She returned to her seat and
+unlocked the leather bag; there were several newspapers, two letters
+for the Princess, three or four for Sabran, and one only for herself.
+She laid his aside for him, sent those of the Princess to her room,
+and opened her own. The writing of it she did not recognise; it was
+anonymous, and was very brief.
+
+
+'If you wish to know why the Marquis de Sabran did not go to Russia,
+ask Egon Vàsàrhely.'
+
+
+That was all: so asps are little.
+
+She sat quite still, and felt as if a bolt had fallen on her from the
+leaden skies without. Vàsàrhely knew, the writer of the letter knew,
+and she----_she----_ did not know! That was her first distinct thought.
+
+If Sabran had entered the room at that instant she would have held to
+him this letter, and would have said, 'I ask you, not him.' He was
+absent, and she sat motionless, keeping the unsigned note in her hand,
+and staring down on it. Then she turned and looked at the post-mark.
+It was 'Vienna,' A city of a million souls! What clue to the writer
+was there? She read it again and again, as even the wisest will read
+such poisonous things, as though by repeated study that mystery would
+be compelled to stand out clearly revealed. It did not say enough to
+have been the mere invention of the sender; it was not worded as an
+insinuation, but as a fact. For that reason it took a hold upon her
+mind which would at once have rejected a fouler or a darker suggestion.
+Although free from any baseness of suspicion there was yet that in the
+name of her cousin, in juxtaposition with her husband's, which could
+not do otherwise than startle and carry with it a corroboration of the
+statement made. A wave of the deep anger which had moved her on her
+husband's first refusal swept over her again. Her hand clenched, her
+eyes hashed, where she sat alone in the gathering shadows.
+
+There came a sound at the door of the room and a small golden head came
+from behind the tapestry.
+
+'May we come in?' said Bela; it was the children's hour.
+
+She rose, and put him backward.
+
+'Not now, my darling; I am occupied. Go away for a little while.'
+
+The women who were with them took the children back to their
+apartments. She sat down with the note still in her hand. What could
+it mean? No good thing was ever said thus. She pondered long, and was
+unable to imagine any sense or meaning it could have, though all the
+while memories thronged upon, her of words, and looks, and many trifles
+which had told her of the enmity that was existent between her cousin
+and Sabran. That she saw; but there her knowledge ceased, her vision
+failed. She could go no further, conjecture nothing more.
+
+'Ask Egon!' Did they think she would ask him or any living being that
+which Sabran had refused to confide in her? Whoever wrote this knew her
+little, she thought. Perhaps there were women who would have done so.
+She was not one of them.
+
+With a sudden impulse of scorn she cast the sheet of paper into the
+fire before her. Then she went to her writing-table and enclosed the
+envelope in another, which she addressed to her lawyers in Salzburg.
+She wrote with it: 'This is the cover to an anonymous letter which I
+have received. Try your uttermost to discover the sender.'
+
+Then she sat down again and thought long, and wearily, and vainly. She
+could make nothing of it. She could see no more than a wayfarer whom a
+blank wall faces as he goes. The violets and orange blossoms were close
+at her elbow; she never in after time smelt their perfume without a
+sick memory of the stunned, stupefied bewilderment of that hour.
+
+The door unclosed again, a voice again spoke behind as a hand drew back
+the folds of the tapestry.
+
+'What, are you in darkness here? I am very cold. Have you no tea for
+me?' said Sabran, as he entered, his eyes brilliant; his cheeks warm,
+from the long gallop against the wind. He had changed his clothes, and
+wore a loose suit of velvet; the servants, entering behind him, lit the
+candelabra, and brought in the lamps; warmth, and gladness, and light
+seemed to come with him; she looked up and thought, 'Ah! what does any
+thing matter? He is home in safety!'
+
+The impulse to ask of him what she had been bidden to ask of Egon
+Vàsàrhely had passed with the intense surprise of the first moment. She
+could not ask of him what she had promised never to seek to know; she
+could not reopen a long-closed wound. But neither could she forget the
+letter lying burnt there amongst the flames of the wood. He noticed
+that her usual perfect calm was broken as she welcomed him, gave him
+his letters, and bade the servants bring tea; but he thought it mere
+anxiety, and his belated drive; and being tired with a pleasant fatigue
+which made rest sweet, he stretched his limbs out on a low couch beside
+the hearth, and gave himself up to that delicious dreamy sense of
+_bien-être_ which a beautiful woman, a beautiful room, tempered warmth
+and light, and welcome repose, bring to any man after some hours effort
+and exposure in wild weather and intense cold and increasing darkness.
+
+'I almost began to think I should not see you to-night,' he said
+happily, as he took from her hand the little cup of Frankenthal china
+which sparkled like a jewel in the light. 'I had fairly lost my way,
+and Josef knew it no better than I; the snow fell with incredible
+rapidity, and it seemed to grow night in an instant. I let the horses
+take their road, and they brought us home; but if there be any poor
+pedlars or carriers on the hills to-night I fear they will go to their
+last sleep.'
+
+She shuddered and looked at him with dim, fond eyes, 'He is here; he is
+mine,' she thought; 'what else matters?'
+
+Sabran stretched out his fingers and took some of the violets from the
+Saxe bowl and fastened them in his coat as he went on speaking of the
+weather, of the perils of the roads whose tracks were obliterated, and
+of the prowess and intelligence of his horses, who had found the way
+home when he and his groom, a man born and bred in the Tauern, had both
+been utterly at a loss. The octagon-room had never looked lovelier and
+gayer to him, and his wife had never looked more beautiful than both
+did now as he came to them out of the darkness and the snowstorm and
+the anxiety of the last hour.
+
+'Do not run those risks,' she murmured. 'You know all that your life is
+to me.'
+
+The letter which lay burnt in the fire, and the dusky night of ice
+and wind without, had made him dearer to her than ever. And yet the
+startled, shocked sense of some mystery, of some evil, was heavy upon
+her, and did not leave her that evening nor for many a day after.
+
+'You are not well?' he said to her anxiously later, as they left the
+dinner-table. She answered evasively.
+
+'You know I am not always quite well now. It is nothing. It will pass.'
+
+'I was wrong to alarm you by being out so late in such weather,' he
+said with self-reproach. 'I will go out earlier in future.'
+
+'Do not wear those violets,' she said, with a trivial caprice wholly
+unlike her, as she took them from his coat. 'They are Bonapartist
+emblems--_fleurs de malheur_.'
+
+He smiled, but he was surprised, for he had never seen in her any one
+of those fanciful whims and vagaries that are common to women.
+
+'Give me any others instead,' he said; 'I wear but your symbol, O my
+lady!'
+
+She took some myrtle and lilies of the valley from one of the large
+porcelain jars in the Rittersaal.
+
+'These are our flowers,' she said as she gave them to him. 'They mean
+love and peace.'
+
+He turned from her slightly as he fastened them where the others had
+been.
+
+All the evening she was pre-occupied and nervous. She could not forget
+the intimation she had received. It was intolerable to her to have
+anything of which she could not speak to her husband. Though they had
+their own affairs apart one from the other, there had been nothing
+of moment in hers that she had ever concealed from him. But here it
+was impossible for her to speak to him, since she had pledged herself
+never to seek to know the reason of an action which, however plausibly
+she explained it to herself, remained practically inexplicable and
+unintelligible. It was terrible to her, too, to feel that the lines
+of a coward who dared not sign them had sunk so deeply into her mind
+that she did not question their veracity. They had at once carried
+conviction to her that Egon Vàsàrhely did know what they said he did.
+She could not have told why this was, but it was so. It was what hurt
+her most----others knew; she did not.
+
+She felt that if she could have spoken to Sabran of it, the matter
+would have become wholly indifferent to her; but the obligation of
+reticence, the sense of separation which it involved, oppressed her
+greatly. She was also haunted by the memory of the enmity which existed
+between these men, whose names were so strangely coupled in the
+anonymous counsel given her.
+
+She stayed long in her oratory that night, seeking vainly for calmness
+and patience under this temptation; seeking beyond all things for
+strength to put the poison of it wholly from her mind. She dreaded lest
+it should render her irritable and suspicious. She reproached herself
+for having been guilty of even so much insinuation of rebuke to him
+as her words with the flower had carried in them. She had ideas of
+the duties of a woman to her husband widely different to those which
+prevail in the world. She allowed herself neither irritation nor irony
+against him. 'When the thoughts rebel, the acts soon revolt,' she was
+wont to say to herself, and even in her thoughts she would never blame
+him.
+
+Prayer, even if it have no other issue or effect, rarely fails to
+tranquillise and fortify the heart which is lifted up ever so vaguely
+in search of a superhuman aid. She left her oratory strengthened and
+calmed, resolved in no way to allow such partial success to their
+unknown foe as would be given if the treacherous warning brought any
+suspicion or bitterness to her mind. She passed through the open
+archway in the wall which divided his rooms from hers, and looked at
+him where he lay already asleep upon his bed, early fatigued by the
+long cold drive from which he had returned at nightfall. He was never
+more handsome than sleeping calmly thus, with the mellow light of a
+distant lamp reaching the fairness of his face. She looked at him with
+all her heart in her eyes; then stooped and kissed him without awaking
+him.
+
+'Ah! my love,' she thought, 'what should ever come between us? Hardly
+even death, I think, for if I lost you I should not live long without
+you.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+The Salzburg lawyers employed all the resources of the Viennese police
+to discover the sender of the envelope, but vainly; nothing was
+learned by all the efforts made. But the letter constantly haunted her
+thoughts. It produced in her an uneasiness and an apprehensiveness
+wholly foreign to her temper. The impossibility also of saying anything
+about it increased the weight of it on her memory. Yet she never once
+thought of asking Vàsàrhely. She wrote to him now and then, as she had
+always done, to give him tidings of her health or of her movements,
+but she never once alluded in the most distant terms to the anonymous
+information she had received. If he had been there beside her she would
+not have spoken of it. Of the two, she would sooner have reopened the
+subject to her husband. But she never did so. She had promised him
+to be silent, and to her creed a promise was inviolate, never to be
+retracted, be the pressure or the desire to do so what it would.
+
+It was these grand lines on which her character and her habits were
+cast that awed him, and made him afraid to tell her his true history.
+Had he revered her less he would probably have deceived her less. Had
+she been of a less noble temperament she would also probably have been
+much less easy to deceive.
+
+Her health was at this time languid, and more uncertain than usual,
+and the two lines of the letter were often present to her thoughts,
+tormenting her with idle conjecture, painful doubt, none the less
+painful because it could take no definite shape. Sometimes when she
+was not well enough to accompany him out of doors or drive her own
+sleigh through the keen clear winter air, she sat doing nothing, and
+thinking only of this thing, in the same room, with the same smell of
+violets about her, musing on what it might by any possibility mean. Any
+secret was safe with Egon, but then since the anonymous writer was in
+possession of it the secret was not only his. She wondered sometimes in
+terror whether it could be anything that might in after years affect
+her children's future, and then as rapidly discarded the bare thought
+as so much dishonour to their father. 'It is only because I am now
+nervous and impressionable,' she said to herself,'that this folly takes
+such a hold upon me. When I am well again I shall not think of it. Who
+is it says of anonymous letters that they are like "_les immondices des
+rues: il faut boucher le nez, tourner la tête et passer outre?_"'
+
+But '_les immondices_' spoiled the odours of the new year violets to
+her.
+
+In the early spring of the year she gave birth to another son. She
+suffered more than she had ever done before, and recovered less
+quickly. The child was like all the others, fair, vigorous, and full
+of health. She wished to give him her husband's name, but Sabran so
+strenuously opposed the idea that she yielded, and named him after her
+brother Victor, who had fallen at Magenta.
+
+There were the usual rejoicings throughout the estates, rejoicings
+that were the outcome of genuine affection and fealty to the race of
+Szalras, whose hold on the people of the Tauern had resisted all the
+revolutionary movements of the earlier part of the century, and had
+fast root in the hearts of the staunch and conservative mountaineers.
+But for the first time as she heard the hearty '_Hoch!_' of the
+assembled peasantry echoing beneath her windows, and the salvos fired
+from the old culverins on the keep, a certain fear mingled with her
+maternal pride, and she thought: 'Will the people love them as well
+twenty years hence, fifty years hence, when I shall be no more? Will my
+memory be any shield to them? Will the traditions of our race outlast
+the devouring changes of the world?'
+
+Meantime the Princess, happy and smiling, showed the little new-born
+noble to the stalwart chamois hunters, the comely farmers and
+fishermen, the clear-eyed stout-limbed shepherds and labourers gathered
+bareheaded round the Schloss.
+
+Bela stood by contemplating the crowd he knew so well; he did not see
+why they should cheer any other child beside himself. He stood with his
+little velvet cap in his hand, because he was always told to do so, but
+he felt very inclined to put it on; if his father had not been present
+there he would have done so.
+
+'If I have ever so many brothers,' he said at last thoughtfully to
+Greswold, who was by his side, 'it will not make any difference, will
+it? I shall always be _the_ one?'
+
+'What do you mean?' asked the physician.
+
+'They will none of them be like me? They will none of them be as great
+as I am? Not if I have twenty?'
+
+'You will be always the eldest son, of course,' said the old man,
+repressing a smile. 'Yes; you will be their head, their chief, their
+leading spirit; but for that reason you will have much more expected of
+you than will be expected of them; you will have to learn much more,
+and try to be always good. Do you follow me, Count Bela?'
+
+Bela's little rosy mouth shut itself up contemptuously. 'I shall be
+always the eldest, and I shall do whatever I like. I do not see why
+they want any others than me.'
+
+'You will not do always what you like, Count Bela.'
+
+'Who shall prevent me?'
+
+'The law, which you will have to obey like everyone else.'
+
+'I shall make the laws when I am a little older,' said Bela. 'And they
+will be for my brothers and all the people, but not for me. I shall do
+what I like.'
+
+'That will be very ungenerous,' said Greswold, quietly. 'Your mother,
+the Countess, is very different. She is stern to herself, and indulgent
+to all others. That is why she is beloved. If you will think of
+yourself so much when you are grown up, you will be hated.'
+
+Bela flushed a little guiltily and angrily.
+
+'That will not matter,' he said sturdily. 'I shall please myself
+always.'
+
+'And be unkind to your brothers?'
+
+'Not if they do what I tell them; I will be very kind if they are good.
+Gela always does what I tell him,' he added after a little pause; 'I do
+not want any but Gela.'
+
+'It is natural you should be fondest of Gela, as he is nearest your
+age, but you must love all the brothers you may have, or you will
+distress your mother very greatly.'
+
+'Why does she want any but me?' said Bela, clinging to his sense of
+personal wrong. And he was not to be turned from that.
+
+'She wants others beside you,' said the physician, adroitly, 'because
+to be happy she needs children who are tender-hearted, unselfish, and
+obedient. You are none of those things, my Count Bela, so Heavens ends
+her consolation.'
+
+Bela opened his blue eyes very wide, and he coloured with mortification.
+
+'She always loves me best!' he said haughtily. 'She always will!'
+
+'That will depend on yourself, my little lord,' said Greswold, with a
+significance which was not lost on the quick intelligence of the child;
+and he never forgot this day when his brother Victor was shown to the
+people.
+
+'There will be no lack of heirs to Hohenszalras,' said the Princess
+meanwhile to his father.
+
+He thought as he heard:
+
+'And if ever she know she can break her marriage like a rotten thread!
+Those boys can all be made as nameless as I was! Would she do it?
+Perhaps not, for the children's sake. God knows----she might change
+even to them; she might hate them as she loves them now, because they
+are mine.'
+
+Even as he sat beside her couch with her hand in his these thoughts
+pursued and haunted him. Remorse and fear consumed him. When she looked
+at the blue eyes of her new-born son, and said to him with a happy
+smile: 'He will be just as much like you as the others are,' he could
+only think with a burning sense of shame, 'Like me! like a traitor!
+like a liar! like a thief!'----and the faces of these children seemed
+to him like those of avenging angels.
+
+He thought with irrepressible agony of the fact that her country's
+laws would divorce her from him if she chose, did ever the truth come
+to her ear. He had always known this indeed, as he had known all the
+other risks he ran in doing what he did. Put it had been far away,
+indistinct, unasserted; whenever the memory of it had passed over him
+he had thrust it away. Now when another knew his secret, he could
+not do so. He had a strange sensation of having fallen from some
+great height; of having all his life slide away like melting ice out
+of his hands. He never once doubted for an instant the good faith of
+Egon Vàsàrhely. He knew that his lips would no more unclose to tell
+his secret than the glaciers yonder would find human voice. But the
+consciousness that one man lived, moved, breathed, rose with each day,
+and went amongst other men, bearing with him that fatal knowledge,
+made it now impossible for himself ever to forget it. A dull remorse,
+a sharp apprehension, were for ever his companions, and never left him
+for long even in his sweetest hours. He did justice to the magnificent
+generosity of the one who spared him. Egon Vàsàrhely knew, as he knew,
+that she, hearing the truth, could annul the marriage if she chose.
+His children would have no rights, no name, if their mother chose to
+separate herself from him. The law would make her once more as free
+as though she had never wedded him. He knew that, and the other man
+who loved her knew it too. He could measure the force of Vàsàrhely's
+temptation as that simple and heroic soldier could not stoop to measure
+his.
+
+He was deeply unhappy, but he concealed it from her. Even when his
+heart beat against hers it seemed to him always that there was an
+invisible wall between himself and her. He longed to tell the whole
+truth to her, but he was afraid; if the whole pain and shame had been
+his own that the confession would have caused, he would have dared it;
+but he had not the heart to inflict on her such suffering, not the
+courage to destroy their happiness with his own hand. Egon Vàsàrhely
+alone knew, and he for her sake would never speak. As for the reproach
+of his own conscience, as for the remorse that the words of his
+children might at any moment call up in him, these lie must bear. He
+was a man of cool judgment and of ready resource, and though he had
+never foreseen the sharp repentance which his better nature now felt,
+he knew that he would be able to live it down as he had crushed out so
+many other scruples. He vowed to himself that as far as in him lay he
+would atone for his act. The moral influence of his wife had not been
+without effect on him. Not altogether, but partially, he had grown to
+believe in what she believed in, of the duty of human life to other
+lives; he had not her sympathy for others, but he had admired it, and
+in his own way followed it, though without her faith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+Life went on in its old pathways at Hohenszalras. Nothing more, was
+said by him, or to him, as to his rejection of the Russian mission. She
+was niggard in nothing, and when she offered her faith or pledged her
+silence, gave both entirely and ungrudgingly. Sabran to her showed an
+increase of devotion, an absolute adoration which would in themselves
+have sufficed to console any woman; and if the most observant member
+of their household, Greswold, perceived in him a preoccupation, a
+languor, a gloom, which boded ill for their future peace, the old man
+was too loyal in his attachment not to endeavour to shake off his own
+suspicions and discredit his own penetration.
+
+The Princess had been favoured by a note from Olga Brancka, in which
+that lady wrote: 'Have you discovered the nature of his refusal of
+Russia? Myself, I believe that I was to blame. I hinted to him that
+he would be tempted to his old sins in St. Petersburg, and that Wanda
+would be very miserable there. It seems that this was enough for the
+tender heart of this devoted lover, and too much for his wisdom and
+his judgment; he rejected the mission after accepting it. I believe
+the Court is furious. I am not _de service_ now, so that I have no
+opportunity of endeavouring to restore him to favour; but I imagine the
+Emperor will not quarrel for ever with the Hohenszalrasburg.
+
+The letter restored him at least to the favour of Mdme. Ottilie.
+Exaggerated as such a scruple appeared it did not seem to her
+impossible in a man whose devotion to his wife she daily witnessed,
+shown in a hundred traits. She blamed him still severely in her own
+thoughts for what she held an inexcusable disrespect to the Crown, but
+she kept her word scrupulously and never spoke to him on the subject.
+
+'Where else in the wide world would any man have found such
+forbearance?' he thought with gratitude, and he knew that nowhere
+would such delicate sentiment have existed outside the pale of that
+fine patrician dignity which is as incapable of the vulgarity of
+inquisitiveness and interrogation as was the Spartan of lament.
+
+The months went by. They did not leave home; he seemed to have lost
+all wish for any absence, and even repulsed the idea of inviting the
+usual house parties of the year. She supposed that he was averse to
+meeting people who might recur to his rejection of the post he had
+once accepted. The summer passed and the autumn came; he spent his
+time in occasional sport, the keen and perilous sport of the Austrian
+mountains, and more often and more faithfully beguiled himself with
+those arts of which he was a brilliant master, though he would call
+himself no more than a mere amateur. From the administration of the
+estates he had altogether withdrawn himself.
+
+'You are so much wiser than I,' he always said to her; and when she
+would have referred to him, replied: 'You have your lawyers; they are
+all honest men. Consult them rather than me.'
+
+With the affairs of Idrac only he continued to concern himself a
+little, and was persistent in setting aside all its revenues to
+accumulate for his second son.
+
+'I wish you cared more about all these things,' she said to him one
+day, when she had in her hand the reports from the mines of Galicia.
+He answered angrily, 'I have no right to them. They are not mine. If
+you chose to give them all away to the Crown I should say nothing.'
+
+'Not even for the children's sake?'
+
+'No: you would be entirely justified if you liked to give the children
+nothing.'
+
+'I really do not understand you,' she said in great surprise.
+
+'Everything is yours,' he said abruptly.
+
+'And the children too, surely!' she said, with a smile: but the
+strangeness of the remark disquieted her. 'It is over-sensitiveness,'
+she thought; 'he can never altogether forget that he was poor. It is
+for that reason public life would have been so good for him; dignities
+which he enjoyed of his own, honours that he arrived at through his own
+attainments.'
+
+Chagrined to have lost, the opportunity of winning personal honours
+in a field congenial to him, the sense that everything was hers could
+hardly fail to gall him sometimes constantly, though she strove to
+efface any remembrance or reminder that it was so.
+
+In the midsummer of that year, whilst they were quite alone, they were
+surprised by another letter from Mdme. Brancka, in which she proposed
+to take Hohenszalras on her way from France to Tsarköe Selo, where she
+was about to pay a visit which could not be declined by her.
+
+When in the spring he had written with formality to her to announce the
+birth of his son Victor, she had answered with a witty coquettish reply
+such as might well have been provocative of further correspondence.
+But he had not taken up the invitation. Mortified and irritated, she
+had compared his writing with the piece of burnt paper, and been more
+satisfied than ever that he had penned the name of Vassia Kazán. But
+even were it so, what, she wondered, had it to do with Russia? He
+and Egon Vàsàrhely were not friends so intimate that they had any
+common interests one with the other. The mystery had interested her
+intensely when her rapid intuition had connected the resignation of
+Sabran's appointment with the messenger sent to him from Taróc. Her
+impatience to be again in his presence grew intense. She imagined a
+thousand stories, to cast each aside in derision as impossible. All her
+suppositions were built upon no better basis than a fragment of charred
+paper; but her shrewd intuition bore her into the region of truth,
+though the actual truth of course never suggested itself to her even in
+her most fantastic and dramatic visions. Finally she thus proposed to
+visit Hohenszalras in the midsummer months.
+
+'Last year you had such a crowd about you,' she wrote, 'that I
+positively saw nothing of you, _liebe_ Wanda. You are alone now, and
+I venture to propose myself for a fortnight. You cannot exactly be
+said to be in the way to anywhere, but I shall make you so. When one
+is going to Russia, a matter of another five hundred miles or so is a
+bagatelle.'
+
+'We must let her come,' said Wanda, as she gave the letter to Sabran,
+who, having read it, said with much sincerity----
+
+'For heaven's sake, do not. A fortnight of Madame Olga! as well
+have----a century of "Madame Angot!"'
+
+'Can I prevent her?'
+
+'You can make some excuse. I do not like Mdme. Brancka.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+He hesitated; he could not tell her what he had felt at the ball of
+the Hofburg. 'She reminds me of a woman who drew me into a thousand
+follies, and to cap her good deeds betrayed me to the Prussians. If you
+must let her come I will go away. I will go and see your haras on the
+Pusztas.'
+
+'Are you serious?'
+
+'Quite serious. Were I not ashamed of such a weakness, I should use a
+feminine expression. I should say "_elle me donne des nerfs._"'
+
+'I think she has a great admiration for you, and she does not conceal
+it.'
+
+'Merely because she is sensible that I do not like her. Such women as
+she are discontented if only one person fail to admit their charm. She
+is accustomed to admiration, and she is not scrupulous as to how she
+obtains it.'
+
+'My dear! pray remember that she is our guest, and doubly our relative.'
+
+'I will try and remember it; but, believe me, all honour is wholly
+wasted upon Mdme. Olga. You offer her a coin of which the person and
+the superscription are alike unknown to her.'
+
+'You are very severe,' said his wife.
+
+She looked at him, and perceived that he was not jesting, that he
+was on the contrary disturbed and annoyed, and she remembered the
+persistence with which Olga Brancka had sought his companionship and
+accompanied him on his sport in the summer of her visit there.
+
+'If she had not married first my brother and then my cousin, she would
+never have been an intimate friend of mine,' she continued. 'She is of
+a world wholly opposed to all my tastes. For you to be absent, if she
+came, would be too marked, I think; but we can both leave, if you like.
+I am well enough for any movement now, and I can leave the child with
+his nurse. Shall we make a tour in Hungary? The haras will interest
+you. There are the mines, too, that one ought to visit.'
+
+He received her assent with gratitude and delight. He felt that he
+would have gone to the uttermost ends of the earth rather than run the
+risk of spending long lonely summer days in the excitation of Mdme.
+Brancka's presence. He detested her, he would always detest her; and
+yet when he shut his eyes he saw her so clearly, with the malicious
+light in her dusky glance, and the jewelled butterfly trembling about
+her breasts.
+
+'She shall never come under Wanda's roof if I can prevent it,' he
+thought, remembering her as she had been that night.
+
+A few days later the Countess Brancka, much to her rage, had a note
+from the Hohenszalrasburg, which said that they were on the point of
+leaving for Hungary and Galicia, but that if she would come there in
+their absence, the Princess Ottilie, who remained, would be charmed to
+receive her. Of course she excused herself, and did not go. A visit to
+the solitudes of the Iselthal, where she would, see no one but a lady
+of eighty years old and four little children, had few attractions for
+the adventurous and vivacious wife of Stefan Brancka.
+
+'It is only Wanda's jealousy,' she thought, and was furious; but she
+looked at herself in the mirror, and was almost consoled as she thought
+also, 'He avoids me. Therefore he is afraid of me!'
+
+She went to her god, _le monde_, and worshipped at all its shrines and
+in all its fashions; but in the midst of the turmoil and the triumphs,
+the worries and the intoxications of her life, she did not lose her
+hold on her purpose, nor forget that he had slighted her. His beautiful
+face, serene and scornful, was always before her. He might have been at
+her feet, and he chose to dwell beside his wife under those solitary
+forests, amongst those solitary mountains of the High Tauern!
+
+'With a woman he has lived with all these eight years!' she thought,
+with furious impatience. 'With a woman who has grafted the Lady of La
+Garaye on Libussa, who never gives him a moment's jealousy, who is
+as flawless as an ivory statue or a marble throne, who suckles her
+children and could spin their clothes if she wanted, who never cares
+to go outside the hills of her own home----the Teuton _Hausfrau_ to
+her finger-tips.' And she was all the more bitter and the more angered
+because, always as she tried to think thus, the image of Wanda rose up
+before her, as she had seen her so often at Vienna or Hohenszalras,
+with the great pearls on her hair and on her breast.
+
+/$
+A planet at whose passing, lo!
+All lesser stars recede, and night
+Grows clear as day thus lighted up
+By all her loveliness, which burns
+With pure white flame of chastity;
+And fires of fair thought....
+$/
+
+
+END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Ouida
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52136 ***
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-

-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Ouida

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most

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-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

-

-Title: Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3)

-

-Author: Ouida

-

-Release Date: May 23, 2016 [EBook #52136]

-

-Language: English

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-Character set encoding: UTF-8

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDA, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by Wanda Lee, Laura Natal Rodriguez and Marc

-D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org (Images

-generouslly made available by the Internet Archive.)

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-</pre>

-

-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">

-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" />

-</div>

-<h1>WANDA</h1>

-

-<h3>BY</h3>

-

-<h2>OUIDA</h2>

-

-

-<p class="center">

-<i>'Doch!&mdash;alles was dazu mich trieb;</i><br />

-<i>Gott!&mdash;war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'</i><br />

-<span style="margin-left: 20%;">Goethe</span><br />

-</p>

-

-

-<h4>IN THREE VOLUMES</h4>

-

-<h4>VOL. II.</h4>

-

-

-<h5>London</h5>

-

-<h5>CHATTO &amp; WINDUS, PICCADILLY</h5>

-

-<h5>1883</h5>

-

-<hr class="full" />

-

-<h3><a name="WANDA" id="WANDA">WANDA.</a></h3>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>On her return she spoke of her royal friends, of her cousins, of

-society, of her fears for the peace of Europe, and her doubts as to

-the strength of the empire; but she did not speak of the one person of

-whom, beyond all others, Mdme. Ottilie was desirous to hear. When some

-hours had passed, and still she had never alluded to the existence of,

-the Princess could bear silence no longer, and casting prudence to the

-winds, said boldly and with impatience:</p>

-

-<p>'And your late guest? Have you nothing to tell me? Surely you have seen

-him?'</p>

-

-<p>'He called once,' she answered, 'and I heard him speak at the Chamber.'</p>

-

-<p>'And was that all?' cried the Princess, disappointed.</p>

-

-<p>'He speaks very well in public,' added Wanda, 'and he said many tender

-and grateful things of you, and sent you many messages&mdash;such grateful

-ones that my memory is too clumsy a tray to hold such eggshell china.'</p>

-

-<p>She was angered with herself as she spoke, but the fragrance of the

-white lilac and the remembrance of its donor pursued her&mdash;angered

-with herself, too, because Hohenszalras seemed for the moment sombre,

-solitary, still, almost melancholy, wrapped in that winter whiteness

-and stillness which she had always loved so well.</p>

-

-<p>The next morning she saw all her people, visited her schools and her

-stables, and tried to persuade herself that she was as contented as

-ever.</p>

-

-<p>The aurist came from Paris shortly after her, and consoled the Princess

-by assuring her that the slight deafness she suffered from occasionally

-was due to cold.</p>

-

-<p>'Of course!' she said, with some triumph. 'These mountains, all this

-water, rain whenever there is not snow, snow whenever there is not

-rain; it is a miracle, and the mercy of Heaven, if one saves any of

-one's five senses uninjured in a residence here.'</p>

-

-<p>She had her satin hood trebly wadded, and pronounced the aurist a

-charming person. Herr Greswold in an incautious moment had said to her

-that deafness was one of the penalties of age and did not depend upon

-climate. A Paris doctor would not have earned his fee of two hundred

-napoleons if he had only produced so ungallant a truism. She heard a

-little worse after his visit, perhaps, but if so, she said that was

-caused by the additional wadding in her hood. He had told her to use a

-rose-water syringe, and Herr Greswold was forbidden her presence for a

-week because he averred that you might as well try to melt the glacier

-with a lighted pastille.</p>

-

-<p>The aurist gone, life at Hohenszalras resumed its even tenor; and

-except for, the post, the tea-cups, and the kind of dishes served at

-dinner, hardly differed from what life had been there in the sixteenth

-century, save that there were no saucy pages playing in the court, and

-no destriers stamping in the stalls, and no culverins loaded on the

-bastions.</p>

-

-<p>'It is like living between the illuminated leaves of one of the Hours,'

-thought the Princess, and though her conscience told her that to dwell

-so in a holy book like a pressed flower was the most desirable life

-that could be granted by Heaven to erring mortality, still she felt it

-was dull. A little gossip, a little movement, a little rolling of other

-carriage-wheels than her own, had always seemed desirable to her.</p>

-

-<p>Life here was laid down on broad lines. It was stately, austere,

-tranquil; one day was a mirror of all the rest. The Princess fretted

-for some little <i>frou-frou</i> of the world to break its solemn silence.</p>

-

-<p>When Wanda returned from her ride one forenoon she said a little

-abruptly to her aunt:</p>

-

-<p>'I suppose you will be glad to hear you have convinced me. I have

-telegraphed to Ludwig to open and air the house in Vienna; we will go

-there for three months. It is, perhaps, time I should be seen at Court.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is a very sudden decision!' said Madame Ottilie, doubting that she

-could hear aright.</p>

-

-<p>'It is the fruit of your persuasions, dear mother mine! The only

-advantage in having houses in half a dozen different places is to be

-able to go to them without consideration. You think me obstinate,

-whimsical, barbaric; the Kaiserin thinks so too. I will endeavour to

-conquer my stubbornness. We will go to Vienna next week. You will see

-all your old friends, and I all my old jewels.'</p>

-

-<p>The determination once made, she adhered to it. She had felt a vague

-annoyance at the constancy and the persistency with which regret for

-the lost society of Sabran recurred to her. She had attributed it to

-the solitude in which she lived: that solitude which is the begetter

-and the nurse of thought may also be the hotbed of unwise fancies.

-It was indeed a solitude filled with grave duties, careful labours,

-high desires and endeavours; but perhaps, she thought, the world for a

-while, even in its folly, might be healthier, might preserve her from

-the undue share which the memory of a stranger had in her musings.</p>

-

-<p>Her people, her lands, her animals, would none of them suffer by

-a brief absence; and perhaps there were duties due as well to her

-position as to her order. She was the only representative of the great

-Counts of Szalras. With the whimsical ingratitude to fate common

-to human nature, she thought she would sooner have been obscure,

-unnoticed, free. Her rank began to drag on her with something like the

-sense of a chain. She felt that she was growing irritable, fanciful,

-thankless; so she ordered the huge old palace in the Herrengasse to be

-got ready, and sought the world as others sought the cloister.</p>

-

-<p>In a week's time she was installed in Vienna, with a score of horses,

-two score of servants, and all the stir and pomp that attend a great

-establishment in the most aristocratic city of Europe, and she made her

-first appearance at a ball at the Residenz covered with jewels from

-head to foot; the wonderful old jewels that for many seasons had lain

-unseen in their iron coffers&mdash;opals given by Rurik, sapphires taken

-from Kara Mustafa, pearls worn by her people at the wedding of Mary of

-Burgundy, diamonds that had been old when Maria Theresa had been young.</p>

-

-<p>She had three months of continual homage, of continual flattery, of

-what others called pleasure, and what none could have denied was

-splendour. Great nobles laid their heart and homage before her feet,

-and all the city looked after her for her beauty as she drove her

-horses round the Ringstrasse. It left her all very cold and unamused

-and indifferent.</p>

-

-<p>She was impatient to be back at Hohenszalras, amidst the stillness of

-the woods, the sound of the waters.</p>

-

-<p>'You cannot say now that I do not care for the world, because I have

-forgotten what it was like,' she observed to her aunt.</p>

-

-<p>'I wish you cared more,' said the Princess. 'Position has its duties.'</p>

-

-<p>'I never dispute that; only I do not see that being wearied by society

-constitutes one of them. I cannot understand why people are so afraid

-of solitude; the routine of the world is quite as monotonous.'</p>

-

-<p>'If you only appreciated the homage that you receive&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'Surely one's mind is something like one's conscience: if one can be

-not too utterly discontented with what it says one does not need the

-verdict of others.'</p>

-

-<p>'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with

-your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your

-overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the

-one I possess.'</p>

-

-<p>'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be

-pride&mdash;the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely

-better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'</p>

-

-<p>'They are not all simpletons.'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very

-stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well

-as of the Wurstel-Prater.'</p>

-

-<p>The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the

-Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw

-the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she

-was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something

-wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up,

-nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.</p>

-

-<p>The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain,

-and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging

-primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of

-the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging

-with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass

-was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale

-sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras,

-and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she

-returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.</p>

-

-<p>'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold,

-as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the

-Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias

-and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between

-the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of

-their stalls.</p>

-

-<p>'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert,

-as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with

-tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with

-'<i>Willkommen</i>' written on it.</p>

-

-<p>She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single

-word.</p>

-

-<p>How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that

-day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been

-sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.</p>

-

-<p>'That is the Stanhopea tigrina,' said Herr Greswold, touching one with

-reverent fingers; 'they are all very rare. It is a welcome worthy of

-you, my lady.'</p>

-

-<p>'A very extravagant one,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a certain

-displeasure that mingled with a softened emotion. 'Who brought it?'</p>

-

-<p>'The Marquis de Sabran, by <i>extra-poste</i>, himself this morning,'

-answered Hubert&mdash;an answer she did not expect. 'But he would not wait;

-he would not even take a glass of tokayer, or let his horses stay for a

-feed of corn.'</p>

-

-<p>'What knight-errantry!' said the Princess well pleased.</p>

-

-<p>'What folly!' said Wanda, but she had the basket of orchids taken to

-her own octagon room.</p>

-

-<p>It seemed as if he had divined how much of late she had thought of him.

-She was touched, and yet she was angered a little.</p>

-

-<p>'Surely she will write to him,' thought the Princess wistfully very

-often: but she did not write. To a very proud woman the dawning

-consciousness of love is always an irritation, an offence, a failure, a

-weakness: the mistress of Hohenszalras could not quickly pardon herself

-for taking with pleasure the message of the orchids.</p>

-

-<p>A little while later she received a letter from Olga Brancka. In it she

-wrote from Paris:</p>

-

-<p>'Parsifal is doing wonders in the Chamber, that is, he is making Paris

-talk; his party will forbid him doing anything else. You certainly

-worked a miracle. I hear he never plays, never looks at an actress,

-never does anything wrong, and when a grand heiress was offered to

-him by her people refused her hand blandly but firmly. What is one to

-think? That he washed his soul white in the Szalrassee?'</p>

-

-<p>It was the subtlest flattery of all, the only flattery to which she

-would have been accessible, this entire alteration in the current

-of a man's whole life; this change in habit, inclination, temper,

-and circumstance. If he had approached her its charm would have been

-weakened, its motive suspected; but aloof and silent as he remained,

-his abandonment of all old ways, his adoption of a sterner and worthier

-career, moved her with its marked, mute homage of herself.</p>

-

-<p>When she read his discourses in the French papers she felt a glow

-of triumph, as if she had achieved some personal success; she felt

-a warmth at her heart as of something near and dear to her, which

-was doing well and wisely in the sight of men. His cause did not,

-indeed, as Olga Brancka had said, render tangible, practical, victory

-impossible for him, but he had the victories of eloquence, of

-patriotism, of high culture, of pure and noble language, and these

-blameless laurels seemed to her half of her own gathering.</p>

-

-<p>'Will you never reward him?' the Princess ventured to say at last,

-overcome by her own impatience to rashness. 'Never? Not even by a word?'</p>

-

-<p>'Hear mother,' said Wanda, with a smile which perplexed and baffled the

-Princess, 'if your hero wanted reward he would not be the leader of a

-lost cause. Pray do not suggest to me a doubt of his disinterestedness.

-You will do him very ill service.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess was mute, vaguely conscious that she had said something

-ill-timed or ill-advised.</p>

-

-<p>Time passed on and brought beautiful weather in the month of June,

-which here in the High Tauern means what April does in the south.

-Millions of song-birds were shouting in the woods, and thousands of

-nests were suspended on the high branches of the forest trees, or

-hidden in the greenery of the undergrowth; water-birds perched and

-swung in the tall reeds where the brimming streams tumbled; the purple,

-the white, and the grey herons were all there, and the storks lately

-flown home from Asia or Africa were settling in bands by the more

-marshy grounds beside the northern shores of the Szalrassee.</p>

-

-<p>One afternoon she had been riding far and fast, and on her return a

-telegram from Vienna had been brought to her, sent on from Lienz.

-Having opened it, she approached her aunt and said with an unsteady

-voice:</p>

-

-<p>'War is declared between France and Prussia!'</p>

-

-<p>'We expected it; we are ready for it,' said the Princess, with all

-her Teutonic pride in her eyes. 'We shall show her that we cannot be

-insulted with impunity.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is a terrible calamity for the world,' said Wanda, and her face was

-very pale.</p>

-

-<p>The thought which was present to her was that Sabran would be foremost

-amidst volunteers. She did not hear a word of all the political

-exultation with which Princess Ottilie continued to make her militant

-prophecies. She shivered as with cold in the warmth of the midsummer

-sunset.</p>

-

-<p>'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her

-house.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess demurred.</p>

-

-<p>'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all

-the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial.

-You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the

-especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge

-Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'</p>

-

-<p>'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.</p>

-

-<p>She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from

-her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.</p>

-

-<p>In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War

-is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss

-of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I

-shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw

-bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every

-sword she has.'</p>

-

-<p>Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:</p>

-

-<p>'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her

-soil is bound to arm.'</p>

-

-<p>More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her

-grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.</p>

-

-<p>But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,'

-written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were

-filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that

-was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a

-child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian

-campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made

-her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal

-conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she

-became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had

-at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from

-the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the

-shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the

-command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their

-own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was

-congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of

-his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally,

-in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name

-mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That

-was all.</p>

-

-<p>The autumn began to deepen into winter, and complete silence covered

-all his life. She thought with a great remorse&mdash;if he were dead?

-Perhaps he was dead? Why had she been always so cold to him? She

-suffered intensely; all the more intensely because it was not a sorrow

-which she could not confess even to herself. When she ceased altogether

-to hear anything of or from him, she realised the hold which he had

-taken on her life.</p>

-

-<p>These months of suspense did more to attach her to him than years

-of assiduous and ardent homage could have done. She, a daughter of

-soldiers, had always felt any man almost unmanly who had not received

-the baptism of fire.</p>

-

-<p>Mdme. Ottilie talked of him constantly, wondered frequently if he were

-wounded, slain, or in prison; she never spoke his name, and dreaded to

-hear it.</p>

-

-<p>Greswold, who perceived an anxiety in her that, he did not dare to

-allude to, ransacked every journal that was published in German to find

-some trace of Sabran's name. At the first he saw often some mention of

-the Cuirassiers d'Orléans, and of their intrepid Colonel Commandant:

-some raid, skirmish, or charge in which they had been conspicuous for

-reckless gallantry. But after the month of November he could find

-nothing. The whole regiment seemed to have been obliterated from

-existence.</p>

-

-<p>Winter settled down on Central Austria with cold silence, with roads

-blocked and mountains impassable. The dumbness, the solitude around

-her, which she had always loved so well, now grew to her intolerable.

-It seemed like death.</p>

-

-<p>Paris capitulated. The news reached her at the hour of a violent

-snowstorm; the postillion of her post-sledge bringing it had his feet

-frozen.</p>

-

-<p>Though her cousins of Lilienhöhe were amongst those who entered the

-city as conquerors, the fate of Paris smote her with a heavy blow. She

-felt as if the cold of the outer world had chilled her very bones, her

-very soul. The Princess, looking at her, was afraid to rejoice.</p>

-

-<p>On the following day she wrote to her cousin Hugo of Lilienhöhe, who

-was in Paris with the Imperial Guard. She asked him to inquire for and

-tell her the fate of a friend, the Marquis de Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>In due time Prince Hugo answered:</p>

-

-<p>'The gentleman you asked for was one of the most dangerous of our

-enemies. He commanded a volunteer cavalry regiment, which was almost

-cut to pieces by the Bavarian horse in an engagement before Orleans.

-Two or three alone escaped; their Colonel was severely wounded in

-the thigh, and had his charger shot dead under him. He was taken

-prisoner by the Bavarians after a desperate resistance. Whilst he

-lay on the ground he shot three of our men with his revolver. He was

-sent to a fortress, I think Ehrenbreitstein, but I will inquire more

-particularly. I am sorry to think that you have any French friends.</p>

-

-<p>By-and-by she heard that he had been confined not at Ehrenbreitstein

-but at a more obscure and distant fortress on the Elbe; that his wounds

-had been cured, and that he would shortly be set free like other

-prisoners of war. In the month of March in effect she received a brief

-letter from his own hand, gloomy and profoundly dejected.</p>

-

-<p>'Our plans were betrayed,' he wrote. 'We were surprised and surrounded

-just as we had hobbled our horses and lain down to rest, after being

-the whole day in the saddle. Bavarian cavalry, outnumbering us four to

-one, attacked us almost ere we could mount our worn-out beasts. My

-poor troopers were cut to pieces. They hunted me down when my charger

-dropped, and I was made a prisoner. When they could they despatched

-me to one of their places on the Elbe. I have been here December and

-January. I am well. I suppose I must be very strong; nothing kills

-me. They are now about to send me back to the frontier. My beautiful

-Paris! What a fate! But I forget, I cannot hope for your sympathy; your

-kinsmen are our conquerors. I know not whether the house I lived in

-there exists, but if you will write me a word at Romaris, you will be

-merciful, and show me that you do not utterly despise a lost cause and

-a vanquished soldier.'</p>

-

-<p>She wrote to him at Romaris, and the paper she wrote on felt her tears.

-In conclusion she said:</p>

-

-<p>'Whenever you will, come and make sure for yourself that both the

-Princess Ottilie and I honour courage and heroism none the less because

-it is companioned by misfortune.'</p>

-

-<p>But he did not come.</p>

-

-<p>She understood why he did not. An infinite pity for him overflowed her

-heart. His public career interrupted, his country ruined, his future

-empty, what remained to him? Sometimes she thought, with a blush on her

-face, though she was all alone: 'I do.' But then, if he never came to

-hear that?</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>The little hamlet of Romaris, on the coast of Finisterre, was very dull

-and dark and silent. A few grave peasant women knitted as they walked

-down the beach or sat at their doors; a few children did the same. Out

-on the <i>landes</i> some cows were driven through the heather and broom;

-out on the sea some fishing-boats with rough, red sails were rocking to

-and fro. All was melancholy, silent, poor; life was hard at Romaris for

-all. The weatherbeaten church looked grey and naked on a black rock;

-the ruins of the old <i>manoir</i> faced it amidst sands and surfs; the only

-thing of beauty was the bay, and that for the folk of Romaris had no

-beauty; they had seen it kill so many.</p>

-

-<p>There was never any change at Romaris, unless it were a change in the

-weather, a marriage, a birth, or a death. Therefore the women and

-children who were knitting had lifted up their heads as a stranger,

-accompanied by their priest, had come down over the black rocks, on

-which the church stood, towards the narrow lane that parted the houses

-where they clustered together face to face on the edge of the shore.</p>

-

-<p>Their priest, an old man much loved by them, came slowly towards them,

-conversing in low tones with the stranger, who had been young and

-handsome, and a welcome sight, since a traveller to Romaris always

-needed a sailing-boat or a rowing-boat, a guide over the moors, or a

-drive in an ox-waggon through the deep-cut lanes of the country.</p>

-

-<p>But they had ceased to think of such things as these when the curate,

-with his hands extended as when he blessed them, had said in <i>bas</i>

-Breton as he stood beside them:</p>

-

-<p>'My children, this is the last of the Sabrans of Romaris, come back to

-us from the far west that lies in the setting of the sun. Salute him,

-and show him that in Brittany we do not forget&mdash;nay, not in a hundred

-years.'</p>

-

-<p>Many years had gone by since then, and of the last of the old race,

-Romaris had scarcely seen more than when he had been hidden from

-their sight on the other side of the heaving ocean. Sabran rarely came

-thither. There was nothing to attract a man who loved the world and

-who was sought by it, in the stormy sea coast, the strip of sea-lashed

-oak forest, that one tall tower with its gaunt walls of stone which

-was all that was left of what had once been the fortress of his race.

-Now and then they saw him, chiefly when he had heard that there was

-wild weather on the western coast, and at such times he would go out

-in their boats to distressed vessels, or steer through churning waters

-to reach a fishing-smack in trouble, with a wild courage and an almost

-fierce energy which made him for the moment one of themselves. But

-such times had been few, and all that Romaris really knew of the last

-marquis was that he was a gay gentleman away there in distant Paris.</p>

-

-<p>He had been a mere name to them. Now and then he had sent fifty

-napoleons, or a hundred, to the old priest for such as were poor or

-sick amongst them. That was all. Now after the war he came hither.

-Paris had become hateful to him; his political career was ended, at

-all events for the time; the whole country groaned in anguish; the

-vices and follies that had accompanied his past life disgusted him

-in remembrance. He had been wounded and a prisoner; he had suffered

-betrayal at unworthy hands; Cochonette had sold him to the Prussians,

-in revenge of his desertion of her.</p>

-

-<p>He was further removed from the Countess von Szalras than ever. In the

-crash with which the Second Empire had fallen and sunk out of sight for

-evermore, his own hopes had gone down like a ship that sinks suddenly

-in a dark night. All his old associations were broken, half his old

-friends were dead or ruined; gay châteaux that he had ever been welcome

-at were smoking ruins or melancholy hospitals; the past had been

-felled to the ground like the poor avenues of the Bois. It affected

-him profoundly. As far as he was capable of an impersonal sentiment

-he loved France, which had been for so many years his home, and which

-had always seemed to smile at him with indulgent kindness. Her vices,

-her disgrace, her feebleness, her fall, hurt him with an intense pain

-that was not altogether selfish, but had in it a nobler indignation, a

-nobler regret.</p>

-

-<p>When he was released by the Prussians and sent across the frontier, he

-went at once to this sad sea village of Romaris, to collect as best

-he might the shattered fragments of his life, which seemed to him as

-though it had been thrown down by an earthquake. He had resigned his

-place as deputy when he had offered his sword to France; he had now no

-career, no outlet for ambition, no occupation. Many of his old friends

-were dead or ruined; although such moderate means as he possessed were

-safe, they were too slender to give him any position adequate to his

-rank. His old life in Paris, even if Paris arose from her tribulations,

-gay and glorious once more, seemed to him altogether impossible. He had

-lost taste for those pleasures and distractions which had before the

-war&mdash;or before his sojourn on the Holy Isle&mdash;seemed to him the Alpha

-and Omega of a man's existence. '<i>Que faire?</i>' he asked himself wearily

-again and again. He did not even know whether his rooms in Paris had

-been destroyed or spared; a few thousands of francs which he had

-made by a successful speculation years before, and placed in foreign

-funds, were all he had to live on. His keen sense told him that the

-opportunity which might have replaced the Bourbon throne had been lost

-through fatal hesitation. His own future appeared to him like a blank

-dead wall that rose up in front of him barring all progress; he was no

-longer young enough to select a career and commence it. With passionate

-self-reproach he lamented all the lost irrevocable years that he had

-wasted.</p>

-

-<p>Romaris was not a place to cheer a disappointed and dejected soldier

-who had borne the burning pain of bodily wounds and the intolerable

-shame of captivity in a hostile land. Its loneliness, its darkness,

-its storms, its poverty, had nothing in them with which to restore his

-spirit to hope or his sinews to ambition. In these cold, bleak, windy

-days of a dreary and joyless spring-time, the dusky moors and the

-gruesome sea were desolate, without compensating grandeur. The people

-around him were all taciturn, dull, stupid; they had not suffered by

-the war, but they understood that, poor as they were, they would have

-to bear their share in the burden of the nation's ransom. They barred

-their doors and counted their hoarded gains in the dark with throbbing

-hearts, and stole out in the raw, wet, gusty dawns to kneel at the

-bleeding feet of their Christ. He envied them their faith; he could not

-comfort them, they could not comfort him; they were too far asunder.</p>

-

-<p>The only solace he had was the knowledge that he had done his duty by

-France, and to the memory of those whose name he bore; that he had

-rendered what service he could; that he had not fled from pain and

-peril; that he had at least worn his sword well and blamelessly; that

-he had not abandoned his discrowned city of pleasure in the day of

-humiliation and martyrdom. The only solace he had was that he felt

-Wanda von Szalras herself could have commanded him to do no more than

-he had done in this the Année Terrible.</p>

-

-<p>But, though his character had been purified and strengthened by the

-baptism of fire, and though his egotism had been destroyed by the

-endless scenes of suffering and of heroism which he had witnessed, he

-could not in a year change so greatly that he could be content with the

-mere barren sense of duty done and honour redeemed. He was deeply and

-restlessly miserable. He knew not where to turn, either for occupation

-or for consolation. Time hung on his hands like a wearisome wallet of

-stones.</p>

-

-<p>When all the habits of life are suddenly rent asunder, they are like a

-rope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or they may be

-thrown altogether aside and a new strand woven, but they will never be

-the same thing again.</p>

-

-<p>Romaris, with its few wind-tortured trees and its leaden-hued dangerous

-seas, seemed to him, indeed, a <i>champ des trépassés</i>, as it was called,

-a field of death. The naked, ugly, half-ruined towers, which no ivy

-shrouded and no broken marble ennobled, as one or the other would have

-done had it been in England or in Italy, was a dreary residence for

-a man who was used to all the elegant and luxurious habits of a man

-of the world, who was also a lover of art and a collector of choice

-trifles. His rooms had been the envy of his friends, with all their

-eighteenth century furniture, and their innumerable and unclassified

-treasures; when he had opened his eyes of a morning a pastel of La

-Tour had smiled at him, rose-coloured windows had made even a grey

-sky smile. Without, there had been the sound of wheels going down

-the gay Boulevard Haussmann. All Paris had passed by, tripping and

-talking, careless and mirthful, beneath his gilded balconies bright

-with canariensis and volubilis; and on a little table, heaped in

-their hundreds, had been cards that bade him to all the best and most

-agreeable houses, whilst, betwixt them, slipped coyly in many an

-amorous note, many an unlooked-for declaration, many an eagerly-desired

-appointment.</p>

-

-<p>'<i>Quel beau temps!</i>' he thought, as he awoke in the chill, bare,

-unlively chamber of the old tower by the sea; and it seemed to him

-that he must be dreaming: that all the months of the war had been

-a nightmare; that if he fully awakened he would find himself once

-more with the April sunshine shining through the rose glass, and

-the carriages rolling beneath over the asphalt road. But it was no

-nightmare, it was a terrible, ghastly reality to him, as to so many

-thousands. There were the scars on his breast and his loins where

-the Prussian steel had hacked and the Prussian shot had pierced him;

-there was his sword in a corner all dinted, notched, stained; there

-was a crowd of hideous ineffaceable tumultuous memories; it was all

-true enough, only too true, and he was alone at Romaris, with all his

-dreams and ambitions faded into thin air, vanished like the blown burst

-bubbles of a child's sport.</p>

-

-<p>In time to come he might recover power and nerve to recommence his

-struggle for distinction, but at present it seemed to him that all was

-over. His imprisonment had shaken and depressed him as nothing else

-in the trials of war could have done. He had been shut up for months

-alone, with his own desperation. To a man of high courage and impatient

-appetite for action there is no injury so great and in its effect so

-lasting as captivity. Joined to this he had the fever of a strong, and

-now perfectly hopeless, passion.</p>

-

-<p>Pacing to and fro the brick floor of the tower looking down on the

-sands and rocks of the coast, his thoughts were incessantly with Wanda

-von Szalras in her stately ancient house, built so high up amidst the

-mountains and walled in by the great forests and the ice slopes of the

-glaciers. In the heat and stench of carnage he had longed for a breath

-of that mountain breeze, for a glance from those serene eyes; he longed

-for them still.</p>

-

-<p>As he passed to and fro in the wild wintry weather, his heart was sick

-with hope deferred, with unavailing regret and repentance, with useless

-longings.</p>

-

-<p>It was near noonday; there was no sun; a heavy wrack of cloud was

-sweeping up from the west; on the air the odour of rotting fish and

-of fish-oil, and of sewage trickling uncovered to the beach, were too

-strong to be driven away by the pungency of the sea.</p>

-

-<p>The sea was high and moaning loud; the dusk was full of rain; the

-wind-tormented trees groaned and seemed to sigh; their boughs were

-still scarce in bud though May had come. He felt cold, weary, hopeless.

-His walk brought no warmth to his veins, and his thoughts none to

-his heart. The moisture of the air seemed to chill him to the bone,

-and he went within and mounted the broken granite stairs to his

-solitary chamber, bare of all save the simplest necessaries, gloomy

-and cheerless with the winds and the bats beating together at the high

-iron-barred casement. He wearily lighted a little oil lamp, and threw

-a log or two of drift-wood on the hearth and set fire to them with a

-faggot of dried ling.</p>

-

-<p>He dreaded his long lonely evening.</p>

-

-<p>He had set the lamp on a table while he had set fire to the wood; its

-light fell palely on a small white square thing. It was a letter. He

-took it up eagerly; he, who in Paris had often tossed aside, with a

-passing glance, the social invitations of the highest personages and

-the flattering words of the loveliest women.</p>

-

-<p>Here, any letter seemed a friend, and as he took up this his pulse

-quickened; he saw that it was sealed with armorial bearings which he

-knew&mdash;a shield bearing three vultures with two knights as supporters,

-and with the motto '<i>Gott und mein Schwert</i>;' the same arms, the same

-motto as were borne upon the great red and gold banner floating from

-the keep on the north winds at the Hohenszalrasburg. He opened it with

-a hand which shook a little and a quick throb of pleasure at his heart.

-He had scarcely hoped that she would write again to him. The sight of

-her writing filled him with a boundless joy, the purest he had ever

-known called forth by the hand of woman.</p>

-

-<p>The letter was brief, grave, kind. As he read he seemed to hear the

-calm harmonious voice of the lady of Hohenszalras speaking to him in

-her mellowed and softened German tongue.</p>

-

-<p>She sent him words of consolation, of sympathy, of congratulation, on

-the course of action he had taken in a time of tribulation, which had

-been the touchstone of character to so many.</p>

-

-<p>'Tell me something of Romaris,' she said in conclusion. 'I am sure

-you will grow to care for the place and the people, now that you seek

-both in the hour of the martyrdom of France. Have you any friends near

-you? Have you books? How do your days pass? How do you fill up time,

-which must seem so dull and blank to you after the fierce excitations

-and the rapid changes of war? Tell me all about your present life, and

-remember that we at Hohenszalras know how to honour courage and heroic

-misfortune.'</p>

-

-<p>He laid the letter down after twice reading it. Life seemed no longer

-all over for him. He had earned her praise and her sympathy. It was

-doubtful if years of the most brilliant political successes would have

-done as much as his adversity, his misadventure, and his daring had

-done for him in her esteem. She had the blood of twenty generations of

-warriors in her, and nothing appealed so forcibly to her sympathies and

-her instincts as the heroism of the sword. Those few lines too were

-a permission to write to her. He replied at once, with a gratitude

-somewhat guardedly expressed, and with details almost wholly impersonal.</p>

-

-<p>She was disappointed that he said so little of himself, but she did

-justice to the delicacy of the carefully guarded words from a man

-whose passion appealed to her by its silence, where it would only have

-alienated her by any eloquence. Of Romaris he said nothing, save that,

-had Dante ever been upon their coast, he would have added another canto

-to the 'Purgatorio,' more desolate and more unrelieved in gloom than

-any other.</p>

-

-<p>'Does he regret Cochonette?' she thought, with a jealous

-contemptuousness of which she was ashamed as soon as she felt it.</p>

-

-<p>Having once written to her, however, he thought himself privileged

-to write again, and did so several times. He wrote with ease, grace,

-and elegance: he wrote as he spoke, which gives this charm to

-correspondence, seem close at hand to the reader in intimate communion.

-The high culture of his mind displayed itself without effort, and he

-had that ability of polished expression which is in our day too often

-a neglected one. His letters became welcome to her: she answered them

-briefly, but she let him see that they were agreeable to her. There

-was in them the note of a profound depression, of an unuttered, but

-suggested hopelessness which touched her. If he had expressed it in

-plain words, it would not have appealed to her one half so forcibly.</p>

-

-<p>They remained only the letters of a man of culture to a woman capable

-of comprehending the intellectual movement of the time, but it

-was because of this limitation that she allowed them. Any show of

-tenderness would have both alarmed and alienated her. There was no

-reason after all, she thought, why a frank friendship should not exist

-between them.</p>

-

-<p>Sometimes she was surprised at herself for having conceded so much,

-and angry that she had done so. Happily he had the good taste to take

-no advantage of it. Interesting as his letters were they might have

-been read from the housetops. With that inconsistency of her sex from

-which hitherto she had always flattered herself she had been free, she

-occasionally felt a passing disappointment that they were not more

-personal as regarded himself. Reticence is a fine quality; it is the

-marble of human nature. But sometimes it provokes the impatience that

-the marble awoke in Pygmalion.</p>

-

-<p>Once only he spoke of his own aims. Then he wrote:</p>

-

-<p>'You bade me do good at Romaris. Candidly, I see no way to do it

-except in saving a crew off a wreck, which is not an occasion that

-presents itself every week. I cannot benefit these people materially,

-since I am poor; I cannot benefit them morally, because I have not

-their faith in the things unseen, and I have not their morality in the

-things tangible. They are God-fearing, infinitely patient, faithful

-in their daily lives, and they reproach no one for their hard lot,

-cast on an iron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at risk

-of their lives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What

-should I say to them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience,

-one petulant mutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only

-take them what the world always takes into solitude&mdash;discontent. It

-would be a cruel gift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any

-other. It is a homely saying that no blood comes out of a stone; so,

-out of a life saturated with the ironies, the contempt, the disbelief,

-the frivolous philosophies, the hopeless negations of what we call

-society, there can be drawn no water of hope and charity, for the

-well-head&mdash;belief&mdash;is dried up at its source. Some pretend, indeed,

-to find in humanity what they deny to exist as deity, but I should

-be incapable of the illogical exchange. It is to deny that the seed

-sprang from a root; it is to replace a grand and illimitable theism by

-a finite and vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased

-mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the

-poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a <i>vibrion</i>,

-a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere

-bundle of phosphorus and carbon? how can it contain the elements of

-worship; what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the

-weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty.

-It becomes ridiculous. The <i>carpe diem</i> of the classic sensualists, the

-morality of the "Satyricon" or the "Decamerone," are its only natural

-concomitants and outcome; but as yet it is not honest enough to say

-this. It affects the soothsayer's long robe, the sacerdotal frown, and

-is a hypocrite.'</p>

-

-<p>In answer she wrote back to him:</p>

-

-<p>'I do not urge you to have my faith: what is the use? Goethe was

-right. It is a question between a man and his own heart. No one should

-venture to intrude there. But taking life even as you do, it is surely

-a casket of mysteries. May we not trust that at the bottom of it, as

-at the bottom of Pandora's, there may be hope? I wish again to think

-with Goethe that immortality is not an inheritance, but a greatness

-to be achieved like any other greatness, by courage, self-denial, and

-purity of purpose&mdash;a reward allotted to the just. This is fanciful, may

-be, but it is not illogical. And without being either a Christian or a

-Materialist, without beholding either majesty or divinity in humanity,

-surely the best emotion that our natures know&mdash;pity&mdash;must be large

-enough to draw us to console where we can, and sustain where we can, in

-view of the endless suffering, the continual injustice, the appalling

-contrasts, with which the world is full. Whether man be the <i>vibrion</i>

-or the heir to immortality, the bundle of carbon or the care of angels,

-one fact is indisputable: he suffers agonies, mental and physical,

-that are wholly out of proportion to the brevity of his life, while he

-is too often weighted from infancy with hereditary maladies, both of

-body and of character. This is reason enough, I think, for us all to

-help each other, even though we feel, as you feel, that we are as lost

-children wandering in a great darkness, with no thread or clue to guide

-us to the end.'</p>

-

-<p>When Sabran read this answer, he mused to himself:</p>

-

-<p>'Pity! how far would her pity reach? How great offences would it cover?

-She has compassion for the evil-doers, but it is easy, since the evil

-does not touch her. She sits on the high white throne of her honour and

-purity, and surveys the world with beautiful but serene compassion.

-If the mud of its miry labyrinths reached and soiled her, would her

-theories prevail? They are noble, but they are the theories of one who

-sits in safety behind a gate of ivory and jasper, whilst outside, far

-below, the bitter tide of the human sea surges and moans too far off,

-too low down, for its sound to reach within. <i>Tout comprendre, c'est

-tout pardonner.</i> But since she would never understand, how could she

-ever pardon? There are things that the nature must understand rather

-than the mind; and her nature is as high, as calm, as pure as the snows

-of her high hills.'</p>

-

-<p>And then the impulse came over him for a passing moment to tell her

-what he had never told any living creature; to make confession to

-her and abide her judgment, even though he should never see her face

-again. But the impulse shrank and died away before the remembrance

-of her clear, proud eyes. He could not humiliate himself before her.

-He would have risked her anger; he could not brave her disdain.

-Moreover, straight and open ways were hot natural to him, though he was

-physically brave to folly. There was a subtlety and a reticence in him

-which were the enemies of candour.</p>

-

-<p>To her he was more frank than to any other because her influence

-was great on him, and a strong reverence was awakened in him that

-was touched by a timid fear quite alien to a character naturally

-contemptuously cynical and essentially proud. But even to her he could

-not bring himself to be entirely truthful in revelation of his past.

-Truthfulness is in much a habit, and he had never acquired its habit.

-When he was most sincere there was always some reserve lying behind

-it. This was perhaps one of the causes of the attraction he exercised

-on all women. All women are allured by the shadows and the suggestions

-of what is but imperfectly revealed. Even on the clear, strong nature

-of Wanda von Szalras it had its unconscious and intangible charm. She

-herself was like daylight, but the subtle vague charm of the shadows

-had their seduction for her; Night holds dreams and passions that fade

-and flee before the lucid noon, and who, at noonday wishes not for

-night?</p>

-

-<p>For himself, the letters he received from her seemed the only things

-that bound him to life at all.</p>

-

-<p>The betrayal of him by a base and mercenary woman had hurt him more

-than it was worthy to do; it had stung his pride and saddened him in

-this period of adversity with a sense of degradation. He had been sold

-by a courtezan; it seemed to him to make him ridiculous as Samson was

-ridiculous, and he had no gates of Gaza to pull down upon himself and

-her. He could only be idle, and stare at an unoccupied and valueless

-future. The summer went on, and he remained at Romaris. An old servant

-had sent him word that all his possessions were safe in Paris, and his

-apartments unharmed; but he felt no inclination to go there: he felt no

-sympathy with Communists or Versaillists, with Gambetta or Gallifet. He

-stayed on at the old storm-beaten sea-washed tower, counting his days

-chiefly by the coming to him of any line from the castle by the lake.</p>

-

-<p>She seemed to understand that and pity it, for each week brought him

-some tidings.</p>

-

-<p>At midsummer she wrote him word that she was about to be honoured again

-by a two days' visit of her Imperial friends.</p>

-

-<p>'We shall have, perforce, a large house party,' she said. 'Will you

-be inclined this time to join it? It is natural that you should

-sorrow without hope for your country, but the fault of her disasters

-lies not with you. It is, perhaps, time that you should enter the

-world again; will you commence with what for two days only will be

-worldly&mdash;Hohenszalras? Your old friends the monks will welcome you

-willingly and lovingly on the Holy Isle?'</p>

-

-<p>He replied with gratitude, but he refused. He did not make any plea or

-excuse; he thought it best to let the simple denial stand by itself.

-She would understand it.</p>

-

-<p>'Do not think, however,' he wrote, 'that I am the less profoundly

-touched by your admirable goodness to a worsted and disarmed combatant

-in a lost cause.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is the causes that are lost which are generally the noble ones,'

-she said in answer. 'I do not see why you should deem your life at an

-end because a sham empire, which you always despised, has fallen to

-pieces. If it had not perished by a blow from without, it would have

-crumbled to pieces from its own internal putrefaction.'</p>

-

-<p>'The visit has passed off very well,' she continued. 'Every one was

-content, which shows their kindness, for these things are all of

-necessity so much alike that it is difficult to make them entertaining.

-The weather was fortunately fine, and the old house looked bright.

-You did rightly not to be present, if you felt festivity out of tone

-with your thoughts. If, however, you are ever inclined for another

-self-imprisonment upon the island, you know that your friends, both at

-the monastery and at the burg, will be glad to see you, and the monks

-bid me salute you with affection.'</p>

-

-<p>A message from Mdme. Ottilie, a little news of the horses, a few

-phrases on the politics of the hour, and the letter was done. But,

-simple as it was, it seemed to him to be like a ray of sunshine amidst

-the gloom of his empty chamber.</p>

-

-<p>From her the permission to return to the monastery when he would

-seemed to say so much. He wrote her back calm and grateful words of

-congratulation and cordiality; he commenced with the German formality,

-'Most High Lady,' and ended them with the equally formal 'devoted and

-obedient servant;' but it seemed to him as if under that cover of

-ceremony she must see his heart beating, his blood throbbing; she must

-know very well, and if knowing, she suffered him to return to the Holy

-Isle, why then&mdash;he was all alone, but he felt the colour rise to his

-face.</p>

-

-<p>'And I must not go! I must not go!' he thought, and looked at his

-pistols.</p>

-

-<p>He ought sooner to blow his brains out, and leave a written confession

-for her.</p>

-

-<p>The hoarse sound of the sea surging amongst the rocks at the base of

-the tower was all that stirred the stillness; evening was spreading

-over all the monotonous inland country; a west wind was blowing and

-rustling amidst the gorse; a woman led a cow between the dolmen,

-stopping for it to crop grass here and there; the fishing-boats were

-far out to sea, hidden under the vapours and the shadows. It was all

-melancholy, sad-coloured, chill, lonesome. As he leaned against the

-embrasure of the window and looked down, other familiar scenes, long

-lost, rose up to his memory. He saw a wide green rolling river, long

-lines of willows and of larches bending under a steel-hued sky, a vast

-dim plain stretching away to touch blue mountains, a great solitude,

-a silence filled at intervals with the pathetic song of the swans,

-chanting sorrowfully because the nights grew cold, the ice began to

-gather, the food became scanty, and they were many in number.</p>

-

-<p>'I must not go!' he said to himself; 'I must never see Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>And he lit his study lamp, and held her letter to it and burnt it.

-It was his best way to do it honour, to keep it holy. He had the

-letters of so many worthless women locked in his drawers and caskets

-in his rooms in Paris. He held himself unworthy to retain hers. He

-had burned each written by her as it had come to him, in that sort

-of exaggeration of respect with which it seemed to him she was most

-fittingly treated by him. There are less worthy offerings than the

-first scruple of an unscrupulous life. It is like the first pure drops

-that fall from a long turbid and dust-choked fountain.</p>

-

-<p>As he walked the next day upon the windblown, rock-strewn strip of sand

-that parted the old oak wood from the sea, he thought restlessly of her

-in those days of stately ceremony which suited her so well. What did he

-do here, what chance had he to be remembered by her? He chafed at his

-absence, yet it seemed to him impossible that he could ever go to her.

-What had been at first keen calculation with him had now become a finer

-instinct, was now due to a more delicate sentiment, a truer and loftier

-emotion. What could he ever look to her if he sought her but a mere

-base fortune-seeker, a mere liar, with no pride and no manhood in him?

-And what else was he? he thought, with bitterness, as he paced to and

-fro the rough strip of beach, with the dusky heaving waves trembling

-under a cloudy sky, where a red glow told the place of the setting sun.</p>

-

-<p>There were few bolder men living than He, and he was cynical and

-reckless before many things that most men reverence; but at the thought

-of her possible scorn he felt himself tremble like a child. He thought

-he would rather never see her face again than risk her disdain; there

-was in him a vague romantic wishfulness rather to die, so that she

-might think well of his memory, than live in her love through any

-baseness that would be unworthy of her.</p>

-

-<p>Sin had always seemed a mere superstitious name to him, and if he had

-abstained from its coarser forms it had been rather from the revolt

-of the fine taste of a man of culture than from any principle or

-persuasion of duty. Men he believed were but ephemera, sporting their

-small hours, weaving their frail webs, and swept away by the great

-broom of destiny as spiders by the housewife. In the spineless doctrine

-of altruism he had had too robust a temperament, too clear a reason,

-to seek a guide for conduct. He had lived for himself, and had seen

-no cause to do otherwise. That he had not been more criminal had been

-due partly to indolence, partly to pride. In his love for Wanda von

-Szalras, a love with which considerable acrimony had mingled at the

-first, he yet, through all the envy and the impatience which alloyed

-it, reached a moral height which he had never touched before. Between

-her and him a great gulf yawned. He abstained from any effort to pass

-it. It was the sole act of self-denial of a selfish life, the sole

-obedience to conscience in a character which obeyed no moral laws, but

-was ruled by a divided tyranny of natural instinct and conventional

-honour.</p>

-

-<p>The long silent hours of thought in the willow-shaded cloisters of

-the Holy Isle had not been wholly without fruit. He desired, with

-passion and sincerity, that she should think well of him, but he did

-not dare to wish for more; love offered from him to her seemed to him

-as if it would be a kind of blasphemy. He remembered in his far-off

-childhood, which at times still seemed so near to him, nearer than all

-that was around him, the vague, awed, wistful reverence with which

-he had kneeled in solitary hours before the old dim picture of the

-Madonna with the lamp burning above it, a little golden flame in the

-midst of the gloom; he remembered so well how his fierce young soul and

-his ignorant yearning child's heart had gone out in a half-conscious

-supplication, how it had seemed to him that if he only knelt long

-enough, prayed well enough, she would come down to him and lay her

-hands on him. It was all so long ago, yet, when he thought of Wanda

-von Szalras, something of that same emotion rose up in him, something

-of the old instinctive worship awoke in him. In thought he prostrated

-himself once more whenever the memory of her came to him. He had no

-religion; she became one to him.</p>

-

-<p>Meanwhile, he was constantly thinking restlessly to himself, 'Did I do

-ill not to go?'</p>

-

-<p>His bodily life was at Romaris, but his mental life was at

-Hohenszalras. He was always thinking of her as she would look in those

-days of the Imperial visit; he could see the stately ceremonies of

-welcome, the long magnificence of the banquets, the great Rittersaal

-with cressets of light blazing on its pointed emblazoned roofs; he

-could see her as she would move down the first quadrille which she

-would dance with her Kaiser: she would wear her favourite ivory-white

-velvet most probably, and her wonderful old jewels, and all her orders.

-She would look as if she had stepped down off a canvas of Velasquez

-or Vandyck, and she would be a little tired, a little contemptuous, a

-little indifferent, despite her loyalty; she would be glad, he knew,

-when the brilliant gathering was broken up, and the old house, and the

-yew terrace, and the green lake were all once more quiet beneath the

-rays of the watery moon. She was so unlike other women. She would not

-care about a greatness, a compliment, a success more or less. Such

-triumphs were for the people risen yesterday, not for a Countess von

-Szalras.</p>

-

-<p>He knew the simplicity of her life and the pride of her temper,

-and they moved him to the stronger admiration because he knew also

-that those mere externals which she held in contempt had for him an

-exaggerated value. He was scarcely conscious himself of how great a

-share the splendour of her position, united to her great indifference

-to it, had in the hold she had taken on his imagination and his

-passions. He did know that there were so much greater nobilities in

-her that he was vaguely ashamed of the ascendency which her mere rank

-took in his thoughts of her. Yet he could not divest her of it, and

-it seemed to enhance both her bodily and spiritual beauty, as the

-golden calyx of the lily makes its whiteness seem the whiter by its

-neighbourhood.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>In the Iselthal the summer was more brilliant and warm than usual. The

-rains were less frequent, and the roses on the great sloping lawns

-beneath the buttresses and terraces of Hohenszalras were blooming

-freely.</p>

-

-<p>Their mistress did not for once give them much heed. She rode long and

-fast through the still summer woods, and came back after nightfall. Her

-men of business, during their interviews with her, found her attention

-less perfect, her interest less keen. In stormy days she sat in the

-library, and read Heine and Schiller often, and all the philosophers

-and men of science rarely. A great teacher has said that the Humanities

-must outweigh the Sciences at all times, and he is unquestionably

-true, if it were only for the reason that in the sweet wise lore of

-ages every human heart in pain and perplexity finds a refuge; whilst in

-love or in sorrow the sciences seem the poorest and chilliest of mortal

-vanities that ever strove to measure the universe with a foot-rule.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess watched her with wistful, inquisitive eyes, but dared

-not name the person of whom they both thought most. Wanda was herself

-intolerant of the sense of impatience with which she awaited the coming

-of the sturdy pony that brought the post-bag from Windisch-Matrey.

-He in his loneliness and emptiness of life on the barren sea-shore

-of Romaris did not more anxiously await her letters than did the

-châtelaine of Hohenszalras, amidst all her state, her wealth, and her

-innumerable occupations, await his. She pitied him intensely; there was

-something pathetic to her in the earnestness with which he had striven

-to amend his ways of life, only to have his whole career shattered by

-an insensate and unlooked-for national war. She understood that his

-poverty stood in the path of his ambition, and she divined that his

-unhappiness had broken that spring of manhood in him which would have

-enabled him to construct a new career for himself out of the ruins of

-the old. She understood why he was listless and exhausted.</p>

-

-<p>There were moments when she was inclined to send him some invitation

-more cordial, some bidding more clear; but she hesitated to take a step

-which would bind her in her own honour to so much more. She knew that

-she ought not to suggest a hope to him to which she was not prepared

-to give full fruition. And again, how could he respond? It would be

-impossible for him to accept. She was one of the great alliances of

-Europe, and he was without fortune, without career, without a future.

-Even friendship was only possible whilst they were far asunder.</p>

-

-<p>Two years had gone by since he had come across from the monastery in

-the green and gold of a summer afternoon. The monks had not forgotten

-him; throughout the French war they had prayed for him. When their

-Prior saw her, he said anxiously sometimes: 'And the Markgraf von

-Sabran, will he never come to us again? Were we too dull for him?

-Will your Excellency remember us to him, if ever you can?' And she

-had answered with a strange emotion at her heart: 'His country is

-in trouble, holy father; a good son cannot leave his land in her

-adversity. No: I do not think he was dull with you; he was quite happy,

-I believe. Perhaps he may come again some day, who knows? He shall be

-told what you say.'</p>

-

-<p>Then a vision would rise up to her of herself and him, as they would

-be perhaps when they should be quite old. Perhaps he would retire into

-this holy retreat of the Augustines, and she would be a grave sombre

-woman, not gay and pretty and witty, as the Princess was. The picture

-was gloomy; she chased it away, and galloped her horse long and far

-through the forests.</p>

-

-<p>The summer had been so brilliant that the autumn which followed was

-cold and severe, earlier than usual, and heavy storms swept over the

-Tauern, almost ere the wheat harvest could be reaped. Many days were

-cheerless and filled only with the sound of incessant rains. In the

-Pinzgau and the Salzkammergut floods were frequent. The Ache and the

-Szalzach, with all their tributary streams and wide and lonely lakes,

-were carrying desolation and terror into many parts of the land which

-in summer they made beautiful. Almost every day brought her some

-tidings of some misfortunes in the villages on the farms belonging to

-her in the more distant parts of Austria; a mill washed away, a bridge

-down, a dam burst, a road destroyed, a harvest swept into the water,

-some damage or other done by the swollen river and torrents, she heard

-of by nearly every communication that her stewards and her lawyers made

-to her at this season.</p>

-

-<p>'Our foes the rivers are more insidious than your mighty enemy the

-salt water,' she wrote to Romaris. 'The sea deals open blows, and men

-know what they must expect if they go out on the vasty deep. But here

-a little brook that laughed and chirped at noon-day as innocently as

-a child may become at nightfall or dawn a roaring giant, devouring

-all that surrounds him. We pay heavily for the glory of our mountain

-waters.'</p>

-

-<p>These autumn weeks seemed very dreary to her. She visited her horses

-chafing at inaction in their roomy stalls, and attended to her affairs,

-and sat in the library or the octagon room hearing the rain beat

-against the emblazoned leaded panes, and felt the days, and above all

-the evenings, intolerably dull and melancholy. She had never heeded

-rain before, or minded the change of season.</p>

-

-<p>One Sunday a messenger rode through the drenching storm, and brought

-her a telegram from her lawyer in Salzburg. It said: 'Idrac flooded:

-many lives lost: great distress: fear town wholly destroyed. Please

-send instructions.'</p>

-

-<p>The call for action roused her as a trumpet sounding rouses a cavalry

-charger.</p>

-

-<p>'Instructions!' she echoed as she read. 'They write as if I could bid

-the Danube subside, or the Drave shrink in its bed!'</p>

-

-<p>She penned a hasty answer.</p>

-

-<p>'I will go to Idrac myself.'</p>

-

-<p>Then she sent a message also to S. Johann im Wald for a special train

-to be got in readiness for her, and told one of her women and a trusty

-servant to be ready to go with her to Vienna in an hour. It was still

-early in the forenoon.</p>

-

-<p>'Are you mad?' cried Madame Ottilie, when she was informed of the

-intended journey.</p>

-

-<p>Wanda kissed her hand.</p>

-

-<p>'There is no madness in what I shall do, dear mother, and Bela surely

-would have gone.'</p>

-

-<p>'Can you stay the torrents of heaven? Can you arrest a river in its

-wrath?'</p>

-

-<p>'No; but lives are often lost because poor people lose their senses in

-fright. I shall be calmer than anyone there. Besides, the place belongs

-to us; we are bound to share its danger. If only Egon were not away

-from Hungary!'</p>

-

-<p>'But he is away. You have driven him away.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do not dissuade me, dearest mother. It would be cowardice not to go.'</p>

-

-<p>'What can women do in such extremities?'</p>

-

-<p>'But we of Hohenszalras must not be mere women when we are wanted in

-any danger. Remember Luitgarde von Szalras, the <i>kuttengeier.</i>'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess sighed, prayed, even wept, but Wanda was gently

-inflexible. The Princess could not see why a precious life should be

-endangered for the sake of a little half barbaric, half Jewish town,

-which was remarkable for nothing except for shipping timber and selling

-<i>salbling.</i> The population was scarcely Christian, so many Hebrews were

-there, and so benighted were the Sclavonian poor, who between them made

-up the two thousand odd souls that peopled Idrac. To send a special

-messenger there, and to give any quantity of money that the distress

-of the moment might demand, would be all right and proper; indeed,

-an obligation on the owner of the little feudal river-side town. But

-to go! A Countess von Szalras to go in person where not one out of a

-hundred of the citizens had been properly baptized or confirmed! The

-Princess could not view this Quixotism in any other light than that of

-an absolute insanity.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela lost his life in just such a foolish manner!' she pleaded.</p>

-

-<p>'So did the saints, dear mother,' said his sister, gently.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess coloured and coughed.</p>

-

-<p>'Of course, I am aware that many holy lives have been&mdash;have been&mdash;what

-appears to our finite senses wasted,' she said, with a little asperity.

-'But I am also aware, Wanda, that the duties most neglected are those

-which lie nearest home and have the least display; consideration for

-<i>me</i> might be better, though less magnificent, than so much heroism for

-Idrac.'</p>

-

-<p>'It pains me that you should put it in that light, dearest mother,'

-said Wanda, with inexhaustible patience. 'Were you in any danger I

-would stay by you first, of course; but you are in none. These poor,

-forlorn, ignorant, cowardly creatures are in the very greatest. I

-draw large revenues from the place; I am in honour bound to share

-its troubles. Pray do not seek to dissuade me. It is a matter not of

-caprice but of conscience. I shall be in no possible peril myself. I

-shall go down the river in my own vessel, and I will telegraph to you

-from every town at which I touch.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess ceased not to lament, to oppose, to bemoan her own

-powerlessness to check intolerable follies. Sitting in her easy chair

-in her warm blue-room, sipping her chocolate, the woes of a distant

-little place on the Danube, whose population was chiefly Semitic, were

-very bearable and altogether failed to appeal to her.</p>

-

-<p>Wanda kissed her, asked her blessing humbly, and took her way in the

-worst of a blinding storm along the unsafe and precipitous road which

-went over the hills to Windisch-Matrey.</p>

-

-<p>'What false sentiment it all is!' thought the Princess, left alone.

-'She has not seen this town since she was ten years old. She knows that

-they are nearly all Jews, or quite heathenish Sclavonians. She can do

-nothing at all&mdash;what should a woman do?&mdash;and yet she is so full of her

-conscience that she goes almost to the Iron Gates in quest of a duty in

-the wettest of weather, while she leaves a man like Egon and a man like

-Sabran wretched for want of a word! I must say,' thought the Princess,

-'false sentiment is almost worse than none at all!'</p>

-

-<p>The rains were pouring down from leaden skies, hiding all the sides of

-the mountains and filling the valleys with masses of vapour. The road

-was barely passable; the hill torrents dashed across it; the little

-brooks were swollen to water-courses; the protecting wall on more than

-one giddy height had been swept away; the gallop of the horses shook

-the frail swaying galleries and hurled the loosened stones over the

-precipice with loud resounding noise. The drive to Matrey and thence

-with post-horses to S. Johann im Wald, the nearest railway station, was

-in itself no little peril, but it was accomplished before the day had

-closed in, and the special train she had ordered being in readiness

-left at once for Vienna, running through the low portions of the

-Pinzgau, which were for the most part under water.</p>

-

-<p>All the way was dim and watery, and full of the sound of running

-or of falling water. The Ache and the Szalsach, both always deep

-and turbulent rivers, were swollen and boisterous, and swirled and

-thundered in their rocky beds; in the grand Pass of Lueg the gloom,

-always great, was dense as at midnight, and when they reached Salzburg

-the setting sun was bursting through ink-black clouds, and shed a

-momentary glow as of fire upon the dark sides of the Untersberg, and

-flamed behind the towers of the great castle on its rocky throne. All

-travellers know the grandeur of that scene; familiar as it was to her

-she looked upward at it with awe and pleasure commingled. Salzburg in

-the evening light needs Salvator Rosa and Rembrandt together to portray

-it.</p>

-

-<p>The train only paused to take in water; the station was crowded as

-usual, set as it is between the frontiers of empire and kingdom, but in

-the brief interval she saw one whom she recognised amongst the throng,

-and she felt the colour come into her own face as she did so.</p>

-

-<p>She saw Sabran; he did not see her. Her train moved out of the station

-rapidly, to make room for the express from Munich; the sun dropped down

-into the ink-black clouds; the golden and crimson pomp of Untersberg

-changed to black and grey; the ivory and amber and crystal of the

-castle became stone and brick and iron, that frowned sombrely over a

-city sunk in river-mists and in rain-vapours. She felt angrily that

-there was an affinity between the landscape and herself; that so, at

-sight of him, a light had come into her life which had no reality in

-fact, prismatic colours baseless as a dream.</p>

-

-<p>She had longed to speak to him; to stretch out her hand to him; to

-say at least how her thoughts and her sympathies had been with him

-throughout the war. But her carriage was already in full onward

-movement, and in another moment had passed at high speed out of the

-station into that grand valley of the Szalzach where Hohensalzburg

-seems to tower as though Friederich Barbarossa did indeed sleep there.

-With a sigh she sank backward amongst her furs and cushions, and saw

-the soaring fortress pass, into the clouds.</p>

-

-<p>The night had now closed in; the rain fell heavily. As the little

-train, oscillating greatly from its lightness, swung over the iron

-rails, there was a continual sound of splashing water audible above

-the noise of the wheels and the throb of the engine. She had often

-travelled at night and had always slept soundly; this evening she could

-not sleep. She remained wide awake watching the swaying of the lamp,

-listening to the shrill shriek of the wheels as they rushed through

-water where some hillside brook had broken bounds and spread out in a

-shallow lagoon. The skies were overcast in every direction; the rain

-was everywhere unceasing; the night seemed to her very long.</p>

-

-<p>She pondered perpetually on his presence at Salzburg, and wondered if

-he were going to the Holy Isle. Three months had gone by since she had

-sent him the semi-invitation to her country.</p>

-

-<p>The train sped on; the day dawned; she began to get glimpses of the

-grand blue river, now grey and ochre-coloured and thick with mud, its

-turbid waves heaving sullenly under the stormy October skies. She had

-always loved the great Donau; she knew its cradle well in the north

-land of the Teutons. She had often watched the baby-stream rippling

-over the stones, and felt the charm, as of some magical transformation,

-as she thought of the same stream stretching broadly under the monastic

-walls of Klosterneuberg, rolling in tempest by the Iron Gates, and

-gathering its mighty volume higher and deeper to burst at last into

-the sunlight of the eastern sea. Amidst the levelled monotony of

-modern Europe the Danube keeps something of savage grandeur, something

-of legendary power, something of oriental charm; it is still often

-tameless, a half-barbaric thing, still a Tamerlane amidst rivers: and

-yet yonder at its birthplace it is such a slender thread of rippling

-water! She and Bela had crossed it with bare feet to get forget-me-nots

-in Taunus, talking together of Chriemhilde and her pilgrimage to the

-land of the Huns.</p>

-

-<p>The little train swung on steadily through the water above and below,

-and after a night of no little danger came safely to Vienna as the dawn

-broke. She went straight to her yacht, which was in readiness off the

-Lobau and weighed anchor as the pale and watery morning broadened into

-day above the shores that had seen Aspern and Wagram. The yacht was

-a yawl, strongly built and drawing little water, made on purpose for

-the ascent and descent of the Danube, from Passau up in the north to

-as far south as the Bosphorus if needed. The voyage had been of the

-greatest joys of hers and of Bela's childhood; they had read on deck

-alternately the 'Nibelungen-Lied' and the 'Arabian Nights,' clinging

-together in delighted awe as they passed through the darkness of the

-defile of Kasan.</p>

-

-<p>Idrac was situated between Pesth and Peterwardein, lying low on marshy

-ground that was covered with willows and intersected by small streams

-flowing from the interior to the Danube.</p>

-

-<p>The little town gave its name and its seigneurie to the owner of its

-burg; an ancient place built on a steep rock that rose sheer out of

-the fast-running waves, and dominated the passage of the stream. The

-Counts of Idrac had been exceeding powerful in the old times, when

-they had stopped at their will the right of way of the river; and

-their appanages with their title had come by marriage into the House

-of Szalras some four centuries before, and although the dominion over

-the river was gone, the fortress and the little town and all that

-appertained thereto still formed a considerable possession; it had

-usually been given with its Countship to the second son of the Szalras.</p>

-

-<p>Making the passage to Pesth in fourteen hours, the yacht dropped

-anchor before the Franz Josef Quai as the first stars came out above

-the Blocksburg, for by this time the skies had lightened and the rains

-had ceased. Here she stayed the night perforce, as an accident had

-occurred to the machinery of the vessel. She did not leave the yacht,

-but sent into the inner city for stores of provisions and of the local

-cordial, the <i>slibowitza</i>, to distribute to the half-drowned people

-amongst whom she was about to go. It was noonday before the yawl got

-under weigh and left the twin-towns behind her. A little way further

-down the stream they passed a great castle, standing amidst beech woods

-on a rock that rose up from fields covered with the Carlowitz vine. She

-looked at it with a sigh: it was the fortress of Kohacs, one of the

-many possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>The weather had now cleared, but the skies were overcast, and the

-plains, which began to spread away monotonously from either shore,

-were covered with white fog. Soon the fog spread also over the river,

-and the yacht was compelled to advance cautiously and slowly, so that

-the voyage was several hours longer than usual. When the light of the

-next day broke they had come in sight of the flooded districts on their

-right: the immense flat fields that bore the flax and grain which make

-the commerce of Baja, of Neusatz, and of other riverain towns, were

-all changed to shallow estuaries. The Theiss, the Drave, and many

-minor streams, swollen by the long autumnal rains, had burst their

-boundaries and laid all the country under water for hundreds of square

-leagues. The granaries, freshly filled with the late abundant harvest,

-had at many places been flooded or destroyed: thousands of stacks of

-grain were floating like shapeless, dismasted vessels. Timber and the

-thatched roofs of the one-storied houses were in many places drifting

-too, like the flotsam and the hulls of wrecked ships.</p>

-

-<p>There are few scenes more dreary, more sad, more monotonous than those

-of a flat country swamped by flood: the sky above them was leaden

-and heavy, the Danube beneath them was turgid and discoloured; the

-shrill winds whistled through the brakes of willow, the water-birds,

-frightened, flew from their osier-beds on the islands, the bells of

-churches and watch-towers tolled dismally.</p>

-

-<p>It was late in the afternoon when she came within sight of her little

-town on the Sclavonian shore, which Ernst von Szalras had fired on

-August 29, 1526, to save it from the shame of violation by the Turks.

-Though he had perished, and most of the soldiers and townsfolk with

-him, the fortress, the <i>têtes du pont</i>, and the old water-gates and

-walls had been too strong for the flames to devour, and the town had

-been built up again by the Turks and subsequently by the Hungarians.</p>

-

-<p>The slender minarets of the Ottomans' two mosques still raised

-themselves amidst the old Gothic architecture of the mediæval

-buildings, and the straw-covered roofs and the white-plastered walls

-of the modern houses. As they steamed near it the minarets and the

-castle towers rose above what looked a world of waters, all else seemed

-swallowed in the flood; the orchards, which had surrounded all save the

-river-side of the town; were immersed almost to the summits of their

-trees. The larger vessels could never approach Idrac in ordinary times,

-the creek being too shallow on which it stood; but now the water was

-so high that though it would be too imprudent to anchor there, the

-yacht easily passed in, and hove-to underneath the water-walls, a pilot

-taking careful soundings as they steered. It was about three in the

-afternoon. The short, grey day was near its end; a shout of welcome

-rose from some people on the walls as they recognised the build and the

-ensign of the yawl. Some crowded boats were pulling away from the town,

-laden with fugitives and their goods.</p>

-

-<p>'How soon people run away! They are like rats,' she thought. 'I would

-sooner be like the stork, and not quit my nest if it were in flames.'</p>

-

-<p>She landed at the water-stairs of the castle. Men, women, and children

-came scrambling along the walls, where they were huddled together out

-of temporary reach of the flood, and threw themselves down at her

-feet and kissed her skirts with abject servility. They were half mad

-with terror, and amongst the population there were many hundreds of

-Jews, the most cowardly people in all the world. The boats were quite

-inadequate in number to the work they had to do; the great steamers

-passing up and down did not pause to help them; the flood was so

-general below Pesth that on the right shore of the river each separate

-village and township was busy with its own case and had no help for

-neighbours: the only aid came from those on the opposite shore, but

-that was scanty and unwisely ministered. The chief citizens of Idrac

-had lost their wits, as she had foreseen they would do. To ring the

-bells madly night and day, and fire off the old culverins from the

-water-gate, was all they seemed to know how to do. They told her that

-many lives had been lost, as the inland waters had risen in the night,

-and most of the houses were of only one storey. In the outlying

-flax-farms it was supposed that whole households had perished. In the

-town itself there were six feet of water everywhere, and many of the

-inhabitants were huddled together in the two mosques, which were now

-granaries, in the towers, and in the fortress itself; but several

-families had been enabled to escape, and had climbed upon the roofs,

-clinging to the chimneys for bare life.</p>

-

-<p>Her mere presence brought reviving hope and energy to the primitive

-population. Their Lady had a romantic legendary reputation amongst

-them, and they were ready to cling round the pennon of the yacht as

-their ancestors had rallied round the standard of Ernst von Szalras.</p>

-

-<p>She ascended to the Rittersaal of the fortress, and assembled a few of

-the men about her, who had the most influence and energy in the little

-place. She soon introduced some kind of system and method into the

-efforts made, promised largesse to those who should be the most active,

-and had the provisions she had brought distributed amongst those who

-most needed them. The boats of the yawl took many away to a temporary

-refuge on the opposite shore. Many others were brought in to the

-state-room of the castle for shelter. Houses were constantly falling,

-undermined by the water, and there were dead and wounded to be attended

-to, as well as the hungry and terrified living creatures. Once before,

-Idrac had been thus devastated by flood, but it had been far away in

-the previous century, and the example was too distant to have been a

-warning to the present generation.</p>

-

-<p>She passed a fatiguing and anxious night. It was impossible to

-think of sleep with so much misery around. The yacht was obliged to

-descend, the river for safe anchorage, but the boats remained. She

-went herself, now in one, now in another, to endeavour to inspire the

-paralysed people with some courage and animation. A little wine, a

-little bread, were all she took; food was very scarce. The victuals of

-the yacht's provisioning did not last long amongst so many famishing

-souls. She ordered her skipper at dawn to go down as far as Neusatz

-and purchase largely. There were five thousand people, counting those

-of the neighbourhood, or more, homeless and bereft of all shelter. The

-telegraph was broken, the poles had been snapped by the force of the

-water in many places.</p>

-

-<p>With dawn a furious storm gathered and broke, and renewed rains added

-their quota to the inundation and their discomfort to the exposed

-sufferers. The cold was great, and the chill that made them shudder

-from head to foot was past all cure by cordials. She regretted not

-to have brought Greswold with her. She was indifferent to danger,

-indefatigable in exertion, and strong as Libussa, brave as Chriemhilde.

-Because the place belonged to her in almost a feudal manner, she held

-herself bound to give her life for it if need be. Bela would have done

-what she was doing.</p>

-

-<p>Twice or thrice during the two following days she heard the people

-speak of a stranger who had arrived fifteen hours before her, and had

-wrought miracles of deliverance. Unless the stories told her were

-greatly exaggerated, this foreigner had shown a courage and devotion

-quite unequalled. He had thrown himself into the work at once on his

-arrival there in a boat from Neusatz, and had toiled night and day,

-enduring extreme fatigue and running almost every hour some dire peril

-of his life. He had saved whole families of the poorest and most

-wretched quarter; he had sprung on to roofs that were splitting and

-sinking, on to walls that were trembling and tottering, and had borne

-away in safety men, women, and children, the old, and the sick, and the

-very animals; he had infused some of his own daring and devotedness

-into the selfish and paralysed Hebrew population; priests and rabbis

-were alike unanimous in his praise, and she, as she heard, felt that

-he who had fought for France had been here for her sake. They told

-her that he was now out amongst the more distant orchards and fields,

-amidst the flooded farms where the danger was even greater than in the

-town itself. Some Czechs said that he was S. John of Nepomuc himself.

-She bade them bring him to her, that she might thank him, whenever he

-should enter the town again, and then thought of him no more.</p>

-

-<p>Her whole mind and feeling were engrossed by the spectacle of a misery

-that even all her wealth could not do very much to alleviate. The

-waters as yet showed no sign of abatement. The crash of falling houses

-sounded heavily ever and again through the gloom. The melancholy sight

-of humble household things, of drowned cattle, of dead dogs, borne down

-the discoloured flood out to the Danube renewed itself every hour.

-The lamentations of the ruined people went up in an almost continuous

-wail like the moaning of a winter wind. There was nothing grand,

-nothing picturesque, nothing exciting to redeem the dreariness and the

-desolation. It was all ugly, miserable, dull. It was more trying than

-war, which even in its hideous senselessness lends a kind of brutal

-intoxication to all whom it surrounds.</p>

-

-<p>She was incessantly occupied and greatly fatigued, so that the time

-passed without her counting it. She sent a message each day to the

-Princess at home, and promised to return as soon as the waters had

-subsided and the peril passed. For the first time in her life she

-experienced real discomfort, real privation; she had surrendered nearly

-all the rooms in the burg to the sick people, and food ran short and

-there was none of good quality, though she knew that supplies would

-soon come from the steward at Kohacs and by the yacht.</p>

-

-<p>On the fourth day the waters had sunk an inch. As she heard the good

-tidings she was looking out inland over the waste of grey and yellow

-flood; a Jewish rabbi was beside her speaking of the exertions of the

-stranger, in whom the superstitious of the townsfolk saw a saint from

-heaven.</p>

-

-<p>'And does no one even know who he is?' she asked.</p>

-

-<p>'No one has asked,' answered the Jew. 'He has been always out where the

-peril was greatest.'</p>

-

-<p>'How came he here?'</p>

-

-<p>'He came by one of the big steamers that go to Turkey. He pulled

-himself here in a little boat that he had bought; the boat in which he

-has done such good service.'</p>

-

-<p>'What is he like in appearance?'</p>

-

-<p>'He is very tall, very fair, and handsome; I should think he is

-northern.'</p>

-

-<p>Her pulse beat quicker for a moment; then she rejected the idea as

-absurd, though indeed, she reflected, she had seen him at Salzburg.</p>

-

-<p>'He must at least be a brave man,' she said quietly. 'If you see him

-bring him to me that I may thank him. Is he in the town now?'</p>

-

-<p>'No; he is yonder, where the Rathwand farms are, or were; where your

-Excellency sees those dark, long islands which are not islands at all,

-but only the summits of cherry orchards. He has carried the people

-away, carried them down to Peterwardein; and he is now about to try and

-rescue some cattle which were driven up on to the roof of a tower, poor

-beasts&mdash;that tower to the east there, very far away: it is five miles

-as the crow flies.'</p>

-

-<p>'I suppose he will come into the town again?'</p>

-

-<p>'He was here last night; he had heard of your Excellency, and asked for

-her health.'</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! I will see and thank him if he come again.'</p>

-

-<p>But no one that day saw the stranger in Idrac.</p>

-

-<p>The rains fell again and the waters again rose. The maladies which

-come of damp and of bad exhalations spread amongst the people; they

-could not all be taken to other villages or towns, for there was no

-room for them. She had quinine, wines, good food ordered by the great

-steamers, but they were not yet arrived. What could be got at Neusatz

-or Peterwardein the yacht brought, but it was not enough for so many

-sick and starving people. The air began to grow fœtid from the many

-carcases of animals, though as they floated the vultures from the hills

-fed on them. She had a vessel turned into a floating hospital, and

-the most delicate of the sick folk carried to it, and had it anchored

-off the nearest port. Her patience, her calmness, and her courage did

-more to revive the sinking hearts of the homeless creatures than the

-cordials and the food. She was all day long out in her boat, being

-steered from one spot to another. At night she rested little and passed

-from one sick bed to another. She had never been so near to hopeless

-human misery before. At Hohenszalras no one was destitute.</p>

-

-<p>One twilight hour on the ninth day, as she was rowed back to the castle

-stairs, she passed another boat in which were two lads and a man. The

-man was rowing, a dusky shadow in the gloom of the wet evening and the

-uncouthness of his waterproof pilot's dress; but she had a lantern

-beside her, and she flashed its light full on the boat as it passed

-her. When she reached the burg, she said to her servant Anton: 'Herr

-von Sabran is in Idrac; go and say that I desire to see him.'</p>

-

-<p>Anton, who remembered him well, returned in an hour, and said he could

-neither find him nor hear of him.</p>

-

-<p>All the night long, a cheerless tedious night, with the rain falling

-without and the storm that was raging in the Bosphorus sending its

-shrill echoes up the Danube, she sat by the beds of the sick women

-or paced up and down the dimly-lit Rittersaal in an impatience which

-it humiliated her to feel. It touched her that he should be here,

-so silently, so sedulously avoiding her, and doing so much for the

-people of Idrac, because they were her people. The old misgiving that

-she had been ungenerous in her treatment of him returned to her. He

-seemed always to have the finer part&mdash;the <i>beau rôle.</i> To her, royal

-in giving, imperious in conduct, it brought a sense of failure, of

-inferiority. As she read the psalms in Hungarian to the sick Magyar

-women, her mind perpetually wandered away to him.</p>

-

-<p>She did not see Sabran again, but she heard often of him. The fair

-stranger, as the people called him, was always conspicuous wherever

-the greatest danger was to be encountered. There was always peril in

-almost every movement where the undermined houses, the tottering walls,

-the stagnant water, the fever-reeking marshes presented at every turn a

-perpetual menace to life. 'He is not vainly <i>un fils des preux</i>,' she

-thought, with a thrill of personal pride, as if someone near and dear

-to her were praised, as she listened to the stories of his intrepidity

-and his endurance. Whole nights spent in soaked clothes, in half

-swamped boats; whole days lost in impotent conflict with the ignorance

-or the poltroonery of an obstinate populace, continual risk encountered

-without counting its cost to rescue some poor man's sick beast, or pull

-a cripple from beneath falling beams, or a lad from choking mud; hour

-on hour of steady laborious rowing, of passage to and fro the sullen

-river with a freight of moaning, screaming peasantry&mdash;this was not

-child's play, nor had it any of the animation and excitation which in

-war or in adventure make of danger a strong wine that goes merrily and

-voluptuously to the head. It was all dull, stupid, unlovely, and he

-had come to it for her sake. For her sake certainly, though he never

-approached her; though when Anton at last found and took her message

-to him he excused himself from obedience to it by a plea that he was

-at that moment wet and weary, and had come from a hut where typhoid

-raged. She understood the excuse; she knew that he knew well she was no

-more afraid than he of that contagion. She admired him the more for his

-isolation; in these grey, rainy, tedious, melancholy days his figure

-seemed to grow into a luminous heroic shape like one of the heroes of

-the olden time. If he had once seemed to seek a guerdon for it the

-spell would have been broken. But he never did. She began to believe

-that such a knight deserved any recompense which she could give.</p>

-

-<p>'Egon himself could have done no more,' she said in her own thoughts,

-and it was the highest praise that she could give to any man, for

-her Magyar cousin was the embodiment of all martial daring, of all

-chivalrous ardour, and had led his glittering hussars down on to the

-French bayonets, as on to the Prussian Krupp guns, with a fury that

-bore all before it, impetuous and irresistible as a stream of fired

-naphtha.</p>

-

-<p>On the twelfth morning the river had sunk so much lower that the yacht

-arriving with medicines and stores of food from Neusatz signalled that

-she could not enter the creek on which Idrac stood, and waited orders.

-It had ceased to rain, but the winds were still strong and the skies

-heavy. She descended to her boat at the water-gate, and told the men to

-take her out to the yacht. It was early, the sun behind the clouds had

-barely climbed above the distant Wallachian woods, and the scene had

-lost nothing of its melancholy. A man was standing on the water-stairs

-as she descended them, and turned rapidly away, but she had seen him

-and stretched out her long staff and touched him lightly.</p>

-

-<p>'Why do you avoid me?' she said, as he uncovered his head; 'my men

-sought you in all directions; I wished to thank you.'</p>

-

-<p>He bowed low over the hand she held out to him. 'I ventured to be near

-at hand to be of use,' he answered. 'I was afraid the exposure, and,

-the damp, and all this pestilence would make you ill: you are not ill?'</p>

-

-<p>'No; I am quite well. I have heard of all your courage and endurance.

-Idrac owes you a great debt.'</p>

-

-<p>'I only pay my debt to Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>They were both silent; a certain constraint was upon them both.</p>

-

-<p>'How did you know of the inundation? It was unkind of you not to come

-to me,' she said, and her voice was unsteady as she spoke. 'I want so

-much to tell you, better than letters can do, all that we felt for you

-throughout that awful war.'</p>

-

-<p>He turned away slightly with a shudder. 'You are too good. Thousands of

-men much better than I suffered much more.'</p>

-

-<p>The tears rose to her eyes as she glanced at him. He was looking pale

-and worn. He had lost the graceful <i>insouciance</i> of his earlier manner.

-He looked grave, weary, melancholy, like a man who had passed through

-dire disaster, unspeakable pain, and had seen his career snapped in

-two like a broken wand. But there was about him instead something

-soldierlike, proven, war-worn, which became him in her eyes, daughter

-of a race of warriors as she was.</p>

-

-<p>'You have much to tell me, and I have much to hear,' she said, after

-a pause. 'You should have come to the monastery to be cured of your

-wounds. Why were you so mistrustful of our friendship?'</p>

-

-<p>He coloured and was silent.</p>

-

-<p>'Indeed,' she said gravely, 'we can honour brave men in the Tauern and

-in Idrac too. You are very brave. I do not know how to thank you for my

-people or for myself.'</p>

-

-<p>'Pray do not speak so,' he said, in a very low voice. 'To see you again

-would be recompense for much worthier things than any I have done.'</p>

-

-<p>'But you might have seen me long ago,' she said, with a certain

-nervousness new to her, 'had you only chosen to come to the Isle. I

-asked you twice.'</p>

-

-<p>He looked at her with eyes of longing and pathetic appeal.</p>

-

-<p>'Do not tempt me,' he murmured. 'If I yielded, and if you despised

-me&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'How could I despise one who has so nobly saved the lives of my people?'</p>

-

-<p>'You would do so.'</p>

-

-<p>He spoke very low: he was silent a little while, then he said very

-softly:</p>

-

-<p>'One evening, when we spoke together on the terrace at Hohenszalras,

-you leant your hand upon the ivy there. I plucked the leaf you touched;

-you did not see. I had the leaf with me all through the war. It was

-a talisman. It was like a holy thing. When your cousin's soldiers

-stripped me in their ambulance, they took it from me.'</p>

-

-<p>His voice faltered. She listened and was moved to a profound emotion.</p>

-

-<p>'I will give you something better,' she said very gravely. He did not

-ask her what she would give.</p>

-

-<p>She looked away from him awhile, and her face flushed a little. She was

-thinking of what she would give him; a gift so great that the world

-would deem her mad to bestow it, and perhaps would deem him dishonoured

-to take it.</p>

-

-<p>'How did you hear of these floods along the Danube?' she asked him,

-recovering her wonted composure.</p>

-

-<p>'I read about them in telegrams in Paris,' he made answer. 'I had

-mustered courage to revisit my poor Paris; all I possess is there.

-Nothing has been injured; a shell burst quite close by but did not

-harm my apartments. I went to make arrangements for the sale of my

-collections, and on the second day that I arrived there I saw the news

-of the inundations of Idrac and the lower Danubian plains. I remembered

-the name of the town; I remembered it was yours. I remembered your

-saying once that where you had feudal rights you had feudal duties, so

-I came on the chance of being of service.'</p>

-

-<p>'You have been most devoted to the people.'</p>

-

-<p>'The people! What should I care though the whole town perished? Do not

-attribute to me a humanity that is not in my nature.'</p>

-

-<p>'Be as cynical as you like in words so long as you are heroic in

-action. I am going out to the yacht; will you come with me?'</p>

-

-<p>He hesitated. 'I merely came to hear from the warder of your health. I

-am going to catch the express steamer at Neusatz; all danger is over.'</p>

-

-<p>'The yacht can take you to Neusatz. Come with me.'</p>

-

-<p>He did not offer more opposition; he accompanied her to the boat and

-entered it.</p>

-

-<p>The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing more, but she could not

-forget that scores of her own people here had owed their lives to his

-intrepidity and patience, and that he had never hesitated to throw his

-life into the balance when needed. And it had been done for her sake

-alone. The love of humanity might have been a nobler and purer motive,

-but it would not have touched her so nearly as the self-abandonment of

-a man by nature selfish and cold.</p>

-

-<p>In a few moments they were taken to the yawl. He ascended the deck with

-her.</p>

-

-<p>The tidings the skipper brought, the examination of the stores, the

-discussion of ways and means, the arrangements for the general relief,

-were air dull, practical matters that claimed careful attention and

-thought. She sat in the little cabin that was brave with marqueterie

-work and blue satin and Dresden mirrors, and made memoranda and

-calculations, and consulted him, and asked his advice on this, on

-that. The government official, sent to make official estimates of the

-losses in the township, had come on board to salute and take counsel

-with her. The whole forenoon passed in these details. He wrote, and

-calculated, and drew up reports for her. No more tender or personal

-word was spoken between them; but there was a certain charm for them

-both in this intimate intercourse, even though it took no other shape

-than the study of how many boatloads of wheat were needed for so many

-hundred people, of how many florins a day might be passed to the head

-of each family, of how many of the flooded houses would still be

-serviceable with restoration, of how many had been entirely destroyed,

-of how the town would best be rebuilt, and of how the inland rivers

-could best be restrained in the future.</p>

-

-<p>To rebuild it she estimated that she would have to surrender for five

-years the revenues from her Galician and Hungarian mines, and she

-resolved to do it altogether at her own cost. She had no wish to see

-the town figure in public prints as the object of public subscription.</p>

-

-<p>'I am sure all my woman friends,' she said, 'would kindly make it

-occasion for a fancy fair or a lottery (with new costumes) in Vienna,

-but I do not care for that sort of thing, and I can very well do what

-is needed alone.'</p>

-

-<p>He was silent. He had always known that her riches were great, but

-he had never realised them as fully as he now did when she spoke of

-rebuilding an entire town as she might have spoken of building a

-carriage.</p>

-

-<p>'You would make a good prime minister,' she said, smiling; 'you have

-the knowledge of a specialist on so many subjects.'</p>

-

-<p>At noon they served her a little plain breakfast of Danubian

-<i>salbling</i>, with Carlowitzer wine and fruit sent by the steward of

-Mohacs. She bade him join her in it.</p>

-

-<p>'Had Egon himself been here he could not have done more for Idrac than

-you have done,' she said.</p>

-

-<p>'Is this Prince Egon's wine?' he said abruptly, and on hearing that it

-was so, he set the glass down untasted.</p>

-

-<p>She looked surprised, but she did not ask him his reason, for she

-divined it. There was an exaggeration in the unspoken hostility more

-like the days of Arthur and Lancelot than their own, but it did not

-displease her.</p>

-

-<p>They were both little disposed to converse during their meal; after the

-dreary and terrible scenes they had been witness of, the atmosphere

-of life seems grave and dark even to those whom the calamity had not

-touched. The most careless spirit is oppressed by a sense of the

-precariousness and the cruelty of existence.</p>

-

-<p>When they ascended to the deck the skies were lighter than they had

-been for many weeks; the fog had cleared, so that, in the distance, the

-towers of Neusatz and the fortress of Peterwardein were visible; vapour

-still hung over the vast Hungarian plain, but the Danube was clear and

-the affluents of it had sunk to their usual level.</p>

-

-<p>'You really go to-night?' she said, as they looked down the river.</p>

-

-<p>'There is no need for me to stay; the town is safe, and you are well,

-you say. If there be anything I can still do, command me.'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled a little and let her eye meet his for a moment.</p>

-

-<p>'Well, if I command you to remain then, will you do so as my viceroy?

-I want to return home; Aunt Ottilie grows daily more anxious, more

-alarmed, but I cannot leave these poor souls all alone with their

-priests, and their rabbi, who are all as timid as sheep and as stupid.

-Will you stay in the castle and govern them, and help them till they

-recover from their fright? It is much to ask, I know, but you have

-already done so much for Idrac that I am bold to ask you to do more?'</p>

-

-<p>He coloured with a mingled emotion.</p>

-

-<p>'You could ask me nothing that I would not do,' he said in a low tone.

-'I could wish you asked me something harder.'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, it will be very hard,' she said, with an indifference she did not

-feel. 'It will be very dull, and you will have no one to speak to that

-knows anything save how to grow flax and cherries. You will have to

-talk the Magyar tongue all day, and you will have nothing to eat save

-<i>kartoffeln</i> and <i>salbling</i>; and I do not know that I am even right,'

-she added, more gravely, 'to ask you to incur the risks that come from

-all that soaked, ground, which will be damp so long.'</p>

-

-<p>'The risks that you have borne yourself! Pray do not wound me by any

-such scruple as that. I shall be glad, I shall be proud, to be for ever

-so short or so long a time as you command, your representative, your

-servant.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are very good.'</p>

-

-<p>'No.'</p>

-

-<p>His eyes looked at hers with a quick flash, in which all the passion

-he dared not express was spoken. She averted her glance and continued

-calmly: 'You are very good indeed to Idrac. It will be a great

-assistance and comfort to me to know that you are here. The poor people

-already love you, and you will write to me and tell me all that may

-need to be done. I will leave you the yacht and Anton. I shall return

-by land with my woman; and when I reach home I will send you Herr

-Greswold. He is a good companion, and has a great admiration for you,

-though he wishes that you had not forsaken the science of botany.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is like all other dissection or vivisection; it spoils the artistic

-appreciation of the whole. I am yet unsophisticated enough to feel the

-charm of a bank of violets, of a cliff covered with alpen-roses. I may

-write to you?'</p>

-

-<p>'You must write to me! It is you who will know all the needs of Idrac.

-But are you sure that to remain here will not interfere with your own

-projects, your own wishes, your own duties?'</p>

-

-<p>'I have none. If I had any I would throw them away, with pleasure, to

-be of use to one of your dogs, to one of your birds.'</p>

-

-<p>She moved from his side a little.</p>

-

-<p>'Look how the sun has come out. I can see the sparkle of the brass on

-the cannon down yonder at Neusatz. We had better go now. I must see my

-sick people and then leave as soon as I can. The yacht must take me to

-Mohacs; from there I will send her back to you.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do as you will. I can have no greater happiness than to obey you.'</p>

-

-<p>'I am sure that I thank you in the way that you like best, when I say

-that I believe you.'</p>

-

-<p>She said the words in a very low tone, but so calmly that the calmness

-of them checked any other words he might have uttered. It was a royal

-acceptance of a loyal service; nothing more. The boat took them back

-to the fortress. Whilst she was occupied in her farewell to the sick

-people, and her instructions to those who attended on them, he, left

-to himself in the apartment she had made her own, instinctively went

-to an old harpsichord that stood there and touched the keys. It had a

-beautiful case, rich with the varnish of the Martins. He played with

-it awhile for its external beauty, and then let his fingers stray over

-its limited keyboard. It had still sweetness in it, like the spinet

-of Hohenszalras. It suited certain pathetic quaint old German airs he

-knew, and which he half unconsciously reproduced upon it, singing them

-as he did so in a low tone. The melody, very soft and subdued, suited

-to the place where death had been so busy and nature so unsparing, and

-where a resigned exhaustion had now succeeded to the madness of terror,

-reached the ears of the sick women in the Rittersaal and of Wanda von

-Szalras seated beside their beds.</p>

-

-<p>'It is like the saints in Heaven sighing in pity for us here,' said one

-of the women who was very feeble and old, and she smiled as she heard.

-The notes, tremulous from age but penetrating in their sweetness, came

-in slow calm movements of harmony through the stillness of the chamber;

-his voice, very low also, but clear, ascended with them. Wanda sat

-quite still, and listened with a strange pleasure. 'He alone,' she

-thought, 'can make the dumb strings speak.</p>

-

-<p>It was almost dusk when she descended to the room which she had made

-her own. In the passages of the castle oil wicks were lighted in the

-iron lamps and wall sconces, but here it was without any light, and

-in the gloom she saw the dim outline of his form as he sat by the

-harpsichord. He had ceased playing; his head was bent down and rested

-on the instrument; he was lost in thought, and his whole attitude was

-dejected. He did not hear her approach, and she looked at him some

-moments, herself unseen. A great tenderness came over her: he was

-unhappy, and he had been very brave, very generous, very loyal: she

-felt almost ashamed. She went nearer, and he raised himself abruptly.</p>

-

-<p>'I am going,' she said to him. 'Will you come with me to the yacht?'</p>

-

-<p>He rose, and though it was dusk, and in this chamber so dark that his

-face was indistinct to her, she was sure that tears had been in his

-eyes.</p>

-

-<p>'Your old harpsichord has the vernis Martin,' he said, with effort.

-'You should not leave it buried here. It has a melody in it too, faint

-and simple and full of the past, like the smell of dead rose-leaves.

-Yes, I will have the honour to come with you. I wish there were a full

-moon. It will be a dark night on the Danube.'</p>

-

-<p>'My men know the soundings of the river well. As for the harpsichord,

-you alone have found its voice. It shall go to your rooms in Paris.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are too good, but I would not take it. Let it go to Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>'Why would you not take it?</p>

-

-<p>'I would take nothing from you.'</p>

-

-<p>He spoke abruptly, and with some sternness.</p>

-

-<p>'I think there is such a thing as being too proud? she said, with

-hesitation.</p>

-

-<p>'Your ancestors would not say so,' he answered, with an effort; she

-understood the meaning that underlay the words. He turned away and

-closed the lid of the harpsichord, where little painted cupids wantoned

-in a border of metal scroll-work.</p>

-

-<p>All the men and women well enough to stand crowded on the water-stairs

-to see her departure; little children were held up in their mother's

-arms and bidden remember her for evermore; all feeble creatures lifted

-up their voices to praise her; Jew and Christian blessed her; the

-water-gate was cumbered with sobbing people, trying to see her face,

-to kiss her skirt for the last time. She could not be wholly unmoved

-before that unaffected, irrepressible emotion. Their poor lives were

-not worth much, but such as they were she, under Heaven, had saved them.</p>

-

-<p>'I will return and see you again,' she said to them, as she made a slow

-way through the eager crowd. 'Thank Heaven, my people, not me. And I

-leave my friend with you, who did much more for you than I. Respect him

-and obey him.'</p>

-

-<p>They raised with their thin trembling voices a loud <i>Eljén</i>! of homage

-and promise, and she passed away from their sight into the evening

-shadows on the wide river.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran accompanied her to the vessel, which was to take her to the town

-of Mohacs, thence to make her journey home by railway.</p>

-

-<p>'I shall not leave until you bid me, even though you should forget to

-call me all in my life!' he said, as the boat slipped through the dark

-water.</p>

-

-<p>'Such oblivion would be a poor reward.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have had reward enough. You have called me your friend.'</p>

-

-<p>She was silent. The boat ran through the dusk and the rippling rays of

-light streaming from the sides of the yacht, and they went on board. He

-stood a moment with uncovered head before her on the deck, and she gave

-him her hand.</p>

-

-<p>'You will come to the Holy Isle?' she said, as she did so.</p>

-

-<p>'If you bid me,' he said, as he bowed and kissed her hand. His lips

-trembled as he did so, and by the lamplight she saw that he was very

-pale.</p>

-

-<p>'I shall bid you,' she said, very softly, by-and-by. Farewell!'</p>

-

-<p>He bowed very low once more, then he dropped over the yacht's side into

-the boat waiting below; the splash of the oars told her he was gone

-back to Idrac. The yawl weighed anchor and began to go up the river,

-a troublesome and tedious passage at all seasons. She sat on deck

-watching the strong current of the Danube as it rolled on under the bow

-of the schooner. For more than a league she could see the beacon that

-burned by the water-gate of the fortress. When the curve of the stream

-hid it from her eyes she felt a pang of painful separation, of wistful

-attachment to the old dreary walls where she had seen so much suffering

-and so much courage, and where she had learned to read her own heart

-without any possibility of ignoring its secrets. A smile came on her

-mouth and a moisture in her eyes as she sat alone in the dark autumn

-night, while the schooner made her slow ascent through the swell that

-accompanies the influx of the Drave.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>In two days' time Hohenszalras received its mistress home.</p>

-

-<p>She was not in any way harmed by the perils she had encountered, and

-the chills and fever to which she had been exposed. On the contrary,

-her eyes had a light and her face had a bloom which for many months had

-not been there.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess heard a brief sketch of what had passed in almost

-total silence. She had disapproved strongly, and she said that her

-disapproval could not change, though a merciful heavenly host had

-spared her the realisation of her worst fears.</p>

-

-<p>The name of Sabran was not spoken. Wanda was of a most truthful temper,

-but she could not bring herself to speak of his presence at Idrac; the

-facts would reveal themselves inevitably soon enough.</p>

-

-<p>She sent Greswold to the Danube laden with stores and medicines.

-She received a letter every morning from her delegate; but he wrote

-briefly, and with scrupulous care, the statements of facts connected

-with the town and reports of what had been done. Her engineer had

-arrived from the mines by Kremnitz, and the builders estimated that

-the waters would have subsided and settled enough, if no fresh rising

-took place, for them to begin the reconstruction of the town with the

-beginning of the new month. Ague and fever were still very common, and

-fresh cases were brought in every hour to the hospital in the fortress.

-He wrote on the arrival of Herr Greswold, that, with her permission, he

-himself would still stay on, for the people had grown used to him, and

-having some knowledge of hydraulics he would be interested to see the

-plans proposed by her engineers for preserving the town from similar

-calamities.</p>

-

-<p>Three weeks passed; all that time she spoke but little either of him or

-of any other subject. She took endless rides, and she sat many hours

-doing nothing in the white room, absorbed in thought. The Princess,

-who had learned what had passed, with admirable exercise of tact and

-self-restraint made neither suggestion nor innuendo, and accepted the

-presence of a French Marquis at a little obscure town in Sclavonia as

-if it were the most natural circumstance in the world.</p>

-

-<p>'All the Szalras have been imperious, arrogant, and of complicated

-character,' she thought; 'she has the same temper, though it is

-mitigated in her by great natural nobility of disposition and strong

-purity of motives. She will do as she chooses, let all the world do

-what it may to change her. If I say a word either way it may take

-effect in some wholly unforeseen manner that I should regret. It is

-better to abstain. In doubt do nothing, is the soundest of axioms.'</p>

-

-<p>And Princess Ottilie, who on occasion had the wisdom of the serpent

-with the sweetness of the dove, preserved a discreet silence, and

-devoured her really absorbing curiosity in her own heart.</p>

-

-<p>At the end of the fourth week she heard that all was well at Idrac,

-so far as it could be so in a place almost wholly destroyed. There

-was no sign of renewed rising of the inland streams. The illness was

-diminished, almost conquered; the people had begun to take heart and

-hope, and, being aided, wished to aid themselves. The works for new

-embankments, water-gates, and streets were already planned, though

-they could not be begun until the spring. Meanwhile, strong wooden

-houses were being erected on dry places, which which could shelter

-<i>ad interim</i> many hundreds of families; the farmers were gradually

-venturing to return to their flooded lands. The town had suffered

-grievously and in much irreparably, but it began to resume its trade

-and its normal life.</p>

-

-<p>She hesitated a whole day when she heard this. Though Sabran did not

-hint at any desire of his own to leave the place, she knew it, was

-impossible to bid him remain longer, and that a moment of irrevocable

-decision was come. She hesitated all the day, slept little all the

-night, then sent him a brief telegram: 'Come to the Island.'</p>

-

-<p>Obey the summons as rapidly as he might, he could not travel by Vienna

-and Salzburg more quickly than in some thirty hours or more. The time

-passed to her in a curious confusion and anxiety. Outwardly she was

-calm enough; she visited the schools, wrote some letters, and took her

-usual long ride in the now leafless woods, but at heart she was unquiet

-and ill at ease, troubled more than by anything else at the force of

-the desire she felt to meet him once more. It was but a month since

-they had parted on the deck, and it seemed ten years. She had known

-what he had meant when he had said that he would come if she bade him;

-she had known that she would only do the sheerest cruelty and treachery

-if she called him thither only to dismiss him. It had not been a visit

-of the moment, but all his life that she had consented to take when she

-had written 'Come to the Island.'</p>

-

-<p>She would never have written it unless she had been prepared to fulfil

-all to which it tacitly pledged her. She was incapable of wantonly

-playing with any passion that moved another, least of all with his. The

-very difference of their position would have made indecision or coyness

-in her seem cruelty, humiliation. The decision hurt her curiously with

-a sense of abdication, mortification, and almost shame. To a very proud

-woman in whom the senses have never asserted their empire, there is

-inevitably an emotion of almost shame, of self-surrender, of loss of

-self-respect, in the first impulses of love. It made her abashed and

-humiliated to feel the excitation that the mere touch of his hand, the

-mere gaze of his eyes, had power to cause her. 'If this be love,' she

-thought, 'no wonder the world is lost for it.'</p>

-

-<p>Do what she would, the time seemed very long; the two evenings that

-passed were very tedious and oppressive. The Princess seemed to

-observe nothing of what she was perfectly conscious of, and her

-flute-like voice murmured on in an unending stream of commonplaces to

-which her niece replied much at random.</p>

-

-<p>In the afternoon of the third day she stood on the terrace looking down

-the lake and towards the Holy Isle, with an impatience of which she was

-in turn impatient. She was dressed in white woollen stuff with silver

-threads in it; she had about her throat an old necklace of the Golden

-Fleece, of golden shells enamelled, which had been a gift from Charles

-the Fifth to one of her house; over her shoulders, for the approach

-of evening was cold, she had thrown a cloak of black Russian sables.

-She made a figure beautiful, stately, patrician, in keeping with the

-background of the great donjon tower, and the pinnacled roofs, and the

-bronze warriors in their Gothic niches.</p>

-

-<p>When she had stood there a few minutes looking down the lake towards

-the willows of the monastery island, a boat came out from the willow

-thickets, and came over the mile-and-half of green shadowy water. There

-was only one person in it. She recognised him whilst he was still far

-off, and a smile came on her mouth that it was a pity he could not see.</p>

-

-<p>He was a bold man, but his heart stood still with awe of her, and his

-soul trembled within him at this supreme moment of his fate. For he

-believed that she would not have bidden him there unless her hand were

-ready to hold out destiny to him&mdash;the destiny of his maddest, of his

-sweetest, dreams.</p>

-

-<p>She came forward a few paces to meet him; her face was grave and pale,

-but her eyes had a soft suppressed light.</p>

-

-<p>'I have much for which to thank you,' she said, as she held out her

-hand to him. Her voice was tremulous though calm.</p>

-

-<p>He kissed her hand, then stood silent. It seemed to him that there was

-nothing to say. She knew what he would have said if he had been king,

-or hero, or meet mate for her. His pulses were beating feverishly, his

-self-possession was gone, his eyes did not dare to meet hers. He felt

-as if the green woods, the shining waters, the rain-burdened skies were

-wheeling round him. That dumbness, that weakness, in a man so facile

-of eloquence, so hardy and even cynical in courage, touched her to a

-wondering pitifulness.</p>

-

-<p>'After all,' she thought once more, 'if we love one another what is it

-to anyone else? We are both free.'</p>

-

-<p>If the gift she would give would be so great that the world would blame

-him for accepting it, what would that matter so long as she knew him

-blameless?</p>

-

-<p>They were both mute: he did not even look at her, and she might have

-heard the beating of his heart. She looked at him and the colour came

-back into her face, the smile back upon her mouth.</p>

-

-<p>'My friend,' she said very gently,'did never you think that I also&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>She paused: it was very hard to her to say what she must say, and he

-could not help her, dared not help her, to utter it.</p>

-

-<p>They stood thus another moment mute, with the sunset glow upon the

-shining water, and upon the feudal majesty of the great castle.</p>

-

-<p>Then she looked at him with a straight, clear, noble glance, and with

-the rich blood mounting in her face, stretched out her hand to him with

-a royal gesture.</p>

-

-<p>'They robbed you of your ivy leaf, my cruel Prussian cousins. Will

-you&mdash;take&mdash;this&mdash;instead?'</p>

-

-<p>Then Heaven itself opened to his eyes. He did not take her hand. He

-fell at her feet and kissed them.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>Is it wisest after all to be very unwise, dear mother mine?' she said a

-little later, with a smile that was tender and happy.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess looked up quickly, and so looking understood.</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, my beloved, is it indeed so? Yes, you are wise to listen to your

-heart; God speaks in it!'</p>

-

-<p>With tears in her eyes she stretched out her pretty hands in solemn

-benediction.</p>

-

-<p>'Be His Spirit for ever with you,' she said with great emotion. 'I

-shall be so content to know that I leave you not alone when our Father

-calls me, for I think your very greatness and dominion, my dear, but

-make you the more lonely, as sovereigns are, and it is not well to be

-alone, Wanda; it is well to have human love close about us.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is to lean on a reed, perhaps,'murmured Wanda, in that persistent

-misgiving which possessed her. 'And when the reed breaks, then though

-it has been so weak before, it becomes of iron, barbed and poisoned.'</p>

-

-<p>'What gloomy thoughts! And you have made me so happy, and surely you

-are happy yourself?'</p>

-

-<p>'Yes. My reed is in full flower, but&mdash;but&mdash;yes, I am happy; I hope that

-Bela knows.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess kissed her once again.</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! he loves you so well.'</p>

-

-<p>'That I am sure of; yet I might never have known it but for you.'</p>

-

-<p>'I did for the best.'</p>

-

-<p>'I will send him to you. I want to be alone a little. Dear mother, he

-cares for you as tenderly as though he were your son.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have been his friend always,' said the Princess, with a smile,

-whilst the tears still stood in her eyes. 'You cannot say so much,

-Wanda; you were very harsh.'</p>

-

-<p>'I know it. I will atone to him.'</p>

-

-<p>The eyes of the Princess followed her tenderly.'</p>

-

-<p>'And she will make her atonement generously, grandly,' she thought.

-'She is a woman of few protestations, but of fine impulses and of

-unerring magnanimity. She will be incapable of reminding him that

-their kingdom is hers. I have done this thing; may Heaven be with it!

-If she had loved no one, life would have grown so pale, so chill, so

-monotonous to her; she would have tired of herself, having nothing

-but herself for contemplation. Solitude has been only grand to her

-hitherto because she has been young, but as the years rolled on she

-would have died without ever having lived; now she will live. She may

-have to bear pains, griefs, infidelities, calamities that she would

-have escaped; but even so, how much better the summer day, even with

-the summer storm, than the dull, grey, quiet, windless weather! Of

-course, if she could have found sanctuary in the Church&mdash;&mdash;But her

-faith is not absolute and unwavering enough for that; she has read too

-many philosophies; she requires, too, open-air and vigorous life; the

-cloister would have been to her a prison. She is one of those whose

-religion lies in activity; she will worship God through her children.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran entered as she mused, and knelt down before her.</p>

-

-<p>'You have been my good angel, always,' he murmured. 'How can I thank

-you? I think she would never have let her eyes rest on me but for you.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess smiled.</p>

-

-<p>'My friend, you are one of those on whom the eyes of women willingly

-rest, perhaps too willingly. But you&mdash;you will have no eyes for any

-other now? You must deserve my faith in you. Is it not so?'</p>

-

-<p>'Ah, madame,' he answered with deep emotion, 'all words seem so trite

-and empty; any fool can make phrases, but when I say that my life

-shall be consecrated to her, I mean it, in the uttermost royalty, the

-uttermost gratitude.'</p>

-

-<p>'I believe you,' said the Princess, as she laid her hand lightly

-on his bent head. 'Perhaps no man can understand entirely all that

-she surrenders in admitting that she loves you; for a proud woman

-to confess so much of weakness is very hard: but I think you will

-comprehend her better than any other would. I think you will not force

-her to pass the door of disillusion; and remember that though she will

-leave you free as air&mdash;for she is not made of that poor stuff which

-would enslave what it loves&mdash;she would not soon forgive too great abuse

-of freedom. I mean if you were ever&mdash;ever unfaithful&mdash;&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'For what do you take me?' he cried, with indignant passion. 'Is there

-another woman in the world who could sit beside her, and not be

-dwarfed, paled, killed, as a candle by the sun?'</p>

-

-<p>'You are only her betrothed,' said the Princess, with a little sigh.

-'Men see their wives with different eyes; so I have been told, at

-least. Familiarity is no courtier, and time is always cruel.'</p>

-

-<p>'Nay, time shall be our dearest friend,' said Sabran, with a tenderness

-in his voice that spoke more constancy than a thousand oaths. 'She will

-be beautiful when she is old, as you are; age will neither alarm nor

-steal from her; her bodily beauty is like her spiritual, it is cast

-in lines too pure and clear not to defy the years. Oh, mother mine!

-(let me call you that) fear nothing; I will love her so well that, all

-unworthy now, I will grow worthy her, and cause her no moment's pain

-that human love can spare her.'</p>

-

-<p>'Her people shall be your people, and her God your God,' murmured the

-Princess, with her hand still lying lightly on his head, obediently

-bent.</p>

-

-<p>When late that night he went across the lake the monks were at their

-midnight orisons; their voices murmured as one man's the Latin words of

-praise and prayer, and made a sound like that of a great sea rolling

-slowly on a lonely shore.</p>

-

-<p>He believed naught that they believed. Deity was but a phrase to him;

-faith and a future life were empty syllables to him. Yet, in the

-fulness of his joy and the humiliation of his spirit, he felt his heart

-swell, his pride sink subdued. He knelt down in the hush and twilight

-of that humble place of prayer, and for the first moment in many years

-he also praised God.</p>

-

-<p>No one heeded him; he knelt behind them in the gloom unnoticed; he rose

-refreshed as men in barren lands in drought are soothed by hearing the

-glad fall of welcome rain. He had no place there, and in another hour

-would have smiled at his own weakness; but now he remembered nothing

-except that he, utterly beyond his deserts, was blessed. As the monks

-rose to their feet and their loud chanting began to vibrate in the air,

-he went out unheard, as he had entered, and stood on the narrow strip

-of land that parted the chapel from the lake. The green waters were

-rolling freshly in under a strong wind, the shadows of coming night

-were stealing on; in the south-west a pale yellow moonlight stretched

-broadly in a light serene as dawn, and against it there rose squarely

-and darkly with its many turrets the great keep of Hohenszalras.</p>

-

-<p>He looked, but it was not of that great pile and all which it

-represented and symbolised that he thought now.</p>

-

-<p>It was of the woman he loved as a woman, not as a great possessor of

-wealth and lands.</p>

-

-<p>'Almost I wish that she were poor as the saints she resembles!' he

-thought, with a tender passion that for the hour was true. It seemed

-to him that had he seen her standing in her shift in the snow, like

-our Lady of Hungary, discrowned and homeless, he would have been glad.

-He was honest with the honesty of passion. It was not the mistress of

-Hohenszalras that he loved, but his own wife.</p>

-

-<p>Such a marriage could not do otherwise than arouse by its announcement

-the most angry amazement, the most indignant protests from all the

-mighty houses with which for so many centuries the house of Szalras

-had allied itself. In a few tranquil sentences she made known her

-intentions to those of her relations whom she felt bound thus to

-honour; but she gave them clearly to understand that it was a formula

-of respect not an act of consultation. When they received her letters

-they knew that her marriage was already quite as irrevocable as though

-it had already taken place in the Hof-Kapelle of Vienna.</p>

-

-<p>All her relatives and all her order were opposed to her betrothal;

-a cold sufferance was the uttermost which any of them extended to

-Sabran. A foreigner and poor, and, with a troubled and uncertain

-past behind him, he was bitterly unwelcome to the haughty Prussian,

-Austrian, and Hungarian nobilities to which she belonged; neither his

-ancient name nor his recent political brilliancy and military service

-could place him on an equality with them in their eyes. Her trustees,

-the Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe and the Cardinal Vàsàrhely, with her

-cousin Kaulnitz, hurried in person as swiftly as special trains could

-bring them to the Iselthal, but they were too late to avert the blow.</p>

-

-<p>'It is not a marriage for her,' said Kaulnitz, angrily.</p>

-

-<p>'Why not? It is a very old family,' said the Princess, with no less

-irritation.</p>

-

-<p>'But quite decayed, long ruined,' he returned. 'This man was himself

-born in exile.'</p>

-

-<p>'As they exile everybody twice in every ten years in France!</p>

-

-<p>'And there have been stories&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'Of whom are there not stories? Calumny is the parasite of character;

-the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler.'</p>

-

-<p>'I never heard him accused of any strength, except of the wrist in

-<i>l'escrime!</i>'</p>

-

-<p>'Do you know anything dishonourable of him? If you do you are bound to

-say it.'</p>

-

-<p>'Dishonourable is a grave word. No, I cannot say that I do; the society

-he frequents is a guarantee against that; but his life has been

-indifferent, complicated, uncertain, not a life to be allied with that

-of such a woman as Wanda. My dear Princess, it has been a life <i>dans le

-milieu parisien</i>; what more would you have me say?'</p>

-

-<p>'Prince Archambaud's has been that. Yet three years since you earnestly

-pressed his suit on Wanda.'</p>

-

-<p>'Archambaud! He is one of the first alliances in Europe; he is of blood

-royal, and he has not been more vicious than other men.'</p>

-

-<p>'It would be better he should have been less so, since he lives so near

-'the fierce light that beats upon the throne;' an electric light which

-blackens while it illumines! My good Kaulnitz, you wander very far

-afield. If you know anything serious against M. de Sabran it is your

-duty to say it.'</p>

-

-<p>'He is a gambler.'</p>

-

-<p>'He has renounced gambling.'</p>

-

-<p>'He is a duellist.'</p>

-

-<p>'Society was of much better constitution when the duel was its habitual

-phlebotomy.'</p>

-

-<p>'He has been the lover of many women.'</p>

-

-<p>'I am afraid that is nothing singular.'</p>

-

-<p>'He is hardly more than an adventurer.'</p>

-

-<p>'He counts his ancestry in unbroken succession from the clays of

-Dagobert.</p>

-

-<p>'He has nothing but a <i>pignon sur rue</i> in Paris, and a league or two of

-rocks and sand in Brittany; yet, though so poor, he made money enough

-by cards and speculation to be for three years the <i>amant en titre</i> of

-Cochonette.'</p>

-

-<p>Madame Ottilie rose with a little frown.</p>

-

-<p>'I think we will say no more, my dear Baron; the matter is, after all,

-not yours or mine to decide. Wanda will assuredly do as she likes.'</p>

-

-<p>'But you have so much influence with her.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have none; no one has any: and I think you do not understand her in

-the least. It may cost her very much to avow to him that she loves him,

-but once having done that, it will cost her nothing at all to avow it

-to the world. She is much too proud a woman to care for the world.'</p>

-

-<p>'He is <i>gentilhomme de race</i>, I grant,' admitted with reluctance the

-Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe.</p>

-

-<p>'When has a noble of Brittany been otherwise?' asked the Princess

-Ottilie.</p>

-

-<p>'I know,' said the Prince; 'but you will admit that he occupies a

-difficult position&mdash;an invidious one.'</p>

-

-<p>'And he carries himself well through it. It is a difficult position

-which is the test of breeding,' said the Princess, triumphantly, 'and

-I deny entirely that it is what you call an invidious one. It is you

-who have the idea of the crowd when you lay so much stress on the mere

-absence of money.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is the idea of the crowd that dominates in this age.'</p>

-

-<p>'The more reason for us to resist it, if it be so.'</p>

-

-<p>'I think you are in love with him yourself, my sister!'</p>

-

-<p>'I should be were I forty years younger.'</p>

-

-<p>The Countess Brancka alone wrote with any sort of sympathy and pleasure

-to congratulate them both.</p>

-

-<p>'I was sure that Parsifal would win soon or late,' she said. 'Only

-remember that he is a Parsifal <i>doublé</i> by a de Morny.'</p>

-

-<p>Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than

-the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of

-the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied.

-De Morny!&mdash;a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The

-comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!</p>

-

-<p>She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or

-remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had

-so much of the '<i>éternel féminin</i>' in her that she was only the more

-resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and

-exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was

-natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All

-the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those

-who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances

-produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as

-Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again

-Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had

-no power of persuasion.</p>

-

-<p>The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more

-graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as

-might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were

-present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that

-he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The

-sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man,

-whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of

-many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had

-they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her

-hand.</p>

-

-<p>'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of

-this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of

-birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere

-difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or

-the inches of one's stature.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess shook her head.</p>

-

-<p>'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he

-is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always

-be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at

-large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'</p>

-

-<p>'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what

-matters the opinion of others?'</p>

-

-<p>'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt

-those motives?'</p>

-

-<p>Wanda did not reply.</p>

-

-<p>'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has

-been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him

-as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to

-him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the

-power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'</p>

-

-<p>As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was

-listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ

-within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of

-grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous

-years to come.</p>

-

-<p>When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:</p>

-

-<p>'I want you to promise me one thing.'</p>

-

-<p>'I promise you all things. What is this one?'</p>

-

-<p>'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those

-great fortunes which form the <i>acte d'accusation</i> of socialists against

-society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of

-Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It

-is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed

-by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious

-barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one

-of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!&mdash;Promise me that

-you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may

-enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'</p>

-

-<p>He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to

-speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still

-remained silent.</p>

-

-<p>'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is

-too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against

-me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a

-few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too

-much!'</p>

-

-<p>He stooped and kissed her hand.</p>

-

-<p>'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with

-passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that

-I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be

-right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away

-from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'</p>

-

-<p>A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her

-hands as he held them clasped in his.</p>

-

-<p>'We will drink that wafer together, and as long as we are together it

-will never be bitter, I think,' she said very softly.</p>

-

-<p>Her voice seemed to sink into his very soul, so much it said of faith,

-so much it aroused of remorse.</p>

-

-<p>Then the great joy which had entered his life, like a great dazzling

-flood of light suddenly let loose into a darkened chamber, so blinded

-consumed, and intoxicated him, that he forgot all else; all else save

-this one fact&mdash;she would be his, body and soul, night and day, in life

-and in death for ever; his children borne by her, his life spent with

-her, her whole existence surrendered to him.</p>

-

-<p>For some days after that she mused upon the possibility of rendering

-him entirely independent of herself, without insulting him by a direct

-offer of a share in her possessions. At last a solution occurred

-to her. The whole of the fiefs of Idrac constituted a considerable

-appanage apart; its title went with it. When it had come into the

-Szalras family by marriage, as far back as the fifteenth century, it

-had been a principality; it was still a seigneurie, and many curious

-feudal privileges and distinctions went with it.</p>

-

-<p>It was Idrac now that she determined to abandon to her lover.</p>

-

-<p>'He will be seigneur of Idrac,' she thought, 'and I shall be so glad

-for him to bear an Austrian name.'</p>

-

-<p>'She herself would always retain her own name, and would take no other.</p>

-

-<p>'We will go and revisit it together,' she thought, and though she

-was all alone' at that moment, a soft warmth came into her face, and

-a throb of emotion to her heart, as she remembered all that would lie

-in that one word 'together,' all the tender and intimate union of the

-years to come.</p>

-

-<p>Her trustees were furious, and sought the aid of the men of law to

-enable them to step in and arrest her in what they deemed a course

-of self-destruction, but the law could not give them so much power;

-she was her own mistress, and as sole inheritrix had received her

-possessions singularly untrammelled by restrictions. In vain Prince

-Lilienhöhe spent his severe and chilly anger, Kaulnitz his fine

-sarcasm and delicate insinuations, and the Cardinal his stately and

-authoritative wrath. She was not to be altered in her decision.</p>

-

-<p>Austrian law allowed her to give away an estate to her husband if she

-chose, and there was nothing in the private settlements of her property

-to prevent her availing herself of the law.</p>

-

-<p>Strenuous opposition was encountered by her to this project, by every

-one of her relatives, hardly excluding the Princess Ottilie; 'for,'

-said that sagacious recluse, 'your horses may show you, my dear, the

-dangers of a rein too loose.'</p>

-

-<p>'I want no rein at all,' said Wanda. 'You forget that, to my thinking,

-marriage should never be bondage; two people with independent wills,

-tastes, and habits should mutually concede a perfect independence of

-action to each other. When one must yield, it must be the woman.'</p>

-

-<p>'Those are very fine theories,' the Princess remarked with caution.</p>

-

-<p>'I hope we shall put them in practice,' said Wanda, with unruffled good

-humour. 'Dear mother, I am sure you can understand that I want him

-to feel he is wholly independent of me. To what I love best on earth

-shall I dole out a niggard largesse from my wealth? If I were capable

-of doing so he would grow in time to hate me, and his hatred would be

-justified.'</p>

-

-<p>'I never should have supposed you would become so romantic,' said the

-Princess.</p>

-

-<p>'It will make him independent of you,' objected Prince Lilienhöhe.</p>

-

-<p>'That is what, beyond all, I desire him to be,' she answered.</p>

-

-<p>'It is an infatuation,' sighed Cardinal Vàsàrhely, out of her hearing,

-'when Egon would have brought to her a fortune as large as her own.'</p>

-

-<p>'You think water should always run to the sea,' said Princess Ottilie;

-'surely that is great waste sometimes?'</p>

-

-<p>'I think you are as infatuated as she is,' murmured the Cardinal. 'You

-forget that had she not been inspired with this unhappy sentiment she

-would have most probably left Hohenszalras to the Church.'</p>

-

-<p>'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,'

-answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else,

-had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'</p>

-

-<p>That would have been better than to an adventurer.'</p>

-

-<p>'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest

-aristocracies of the world, if poor.'</p>

-

-<p>'<i>Ce que femme veut</i>,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the

-Church had been worsted by women.</p>

-

-<p>The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the

-marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any

-possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband,

-and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of

-action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the

-deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself,

-as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud

-to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your

-hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he

-will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always

-will. If not&mdash;if not&mdash;well, he must go!'</p>

-

-<p>One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment

-emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She

-spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He

-looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush

-that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow

-tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires.

-She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of

-the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before

-him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.</p>

-

-<p>'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you

-to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of

-Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their

-feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been

-lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the

-reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary

-passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'</p>

-

-<p>'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with

-those roses.'</p>

-

-<p>'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced

-flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment.

-It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'</p>

-

-<p>'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your

-coronet, to which I can add none!'</p>

-

-<p>But to please her he bent over the crabbed black letter and the antique

-blazonings of the great roll to which the great dead men had set their

-sign and seal. She watched him as he read it, then after a little time

-she put her hand with a caressing movement on his shoulder.</p>

-

-<p>'My love, I can do just as I will with Idrac. The lawyers are agreed on

-that, and the Kaiser will confirm whatever I do. Now I want to give you

-Idrac, make you wholly lord of it; indeed, the thing is already done. I

-have signed all the documents needful, and, as I say, the Emperor will

-confirm any part of them that needs his assent. My Réné, you are a very

-proud man, but you will not be too proud to take Idrac and its title

-from your wife. But for that town who can say that our lives might not

-have been passed for ever apart? Why do you look so grave? The Kaiser

-and I both want you to be Austrian. When I transfer to you the fief of

-Idrac you are its Count for evermore.'</p>

-

-<p>He drew a quick deep breath as if he had been struck a blow, and stood

-gazing at her. He did not speak, his eyes darkened as with pain. For

-the moment she was afraid that she had wounded him. With exquisite

-softness of tone and touch she took his hand and said to him tenderly:</p>

-

-<p>'Why will you be so proud? After all, what are these things? Since

-we love one another, what is mine is yours; a formula more or less

-is no offence. It is my fancy that you should have the title and the

-fief. The people know you there, and your heroic courage will be for

-ever amongst their best traditions. Dear! once I read that it needs a

-greater soul to take generously than to give. Be great so, now, for my

-sake!'</p>

-

-<p>'Great!' he echoed the word hoarsely, and a smile of bitter irony

-passed for a moment over his features. But he controlled the passionate

-self-contempt that rose in him. He knew that whatever else he was,

-he was her lover, and her hero in her sight. If the magnitude and

-magnanimity of her gifts overwhelmed and oppressed him, he was recalled

-to self-control by the sense of her absolute faith in him. He pressed

-her hands against his heavily-beating heart.</p>

-

-<p>'All the greatness is with you, my beloved,' he said with effort.

-'Since you delight to honour me, I can but strive my utmost to deserve

-your honour. It is like your beautiful and lavish nature to be prodigal

-of gifts. But when you give yourself, what need is there for aught

-else?'</p>

-

-<p>'But Idrac is my caprice. You must gratify it.'</p>

-

-<p>'I will take the title gladly at your hands then. The revenues&mdash;No.'</p>

-

-<p>'You must take it all, the town and the title, and all they bring,' she

-insisted. 'In truth, but for you there would possibly be no town at

-all. Nay, my dear, you must do me this little pleasure; it will become

-you so well that Countship of Idrac: it is as old a place as Vindobona

-itself.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do you not understand?' she added, with a flush on her face. 'I want

-you to feel that it is wholly yours; that if I die, or if you leave me,

-it remains yours still. Oh, I do not doubt you; not for one moment. But

-liberty is always good. And Idrac will make you an Austrian noble in

-your own right. If you persist in refusing it I will assign it to the

-Crown; you will pain me and mortify me.'</p>

-

-<p>'That is enough! Never wittingly in my life will I hurt you. But if you

-wish me to be lord of Idrac, invest me with the title, my Empress. I

-will take it and be proud of it; and as for the revenues&mdash;well, we will

-not quarrel for them. They shall go to make new dykes and new bastions

-for the town, or pile themselves one on another in waiting for your

-children.'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled and her face grew warm as she turned aside and took up one

-of the great swords with jewelled hilts and damascened scabbards, which

-were ranged along the wall of the Rittersaal with other stands of arms.</p>

-

-<p>She drew the sword, and as he fell on his knee before her smote him

-lightly on the shoulder with its blade.</p>

-

-<p>'Rise, Graf von Idrac!' she said, stooping and touching his forehead

-with the bouquet that she wore at her breast. He loosened one of the

-roses and held it to his lips.</p>

-

-<p>'I swear my fealty now and for ever,' he said with emotion, and his

-face was paler and his tone was graver than the playfulness of the

-moment seemed to call for in him.</p>

-

-<p>'Would to Heaven I had had no other name than this one you give me,'

-he murmured as he rose. 'Oh, my love, my lady, my guardian angel!

-Forget that ever I lived before, forget all my life when I was unworthy

-you; let me live only from the day that will make me your vassal and

-your&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'That will make you my lord!' she said softly; then she stooped, and

-for the first time kissed him.</p>

-

-<p>What caused her the only pain that disturbed the tranquillity of these

-cloudless days was the refusal of her cousin Egon to be present at

-her marriage. He sent her, with some great jewels that had come from

-Persia, a few words of sad and wistful affection.</p>

-

-<p>'My presence,' he added in conclusion, 'is no more needed for your

-happiness than are these poor diamonds and pearls needed in your

-crowded jewel-cases. You will spare me a trial, which it could be of no

-benefit to you for me to suffer. I pray that the Marquis de Sabran may

-all his life be worthy of the immense trust and honour which you have

-seen fit to give to him. For myself, I have been very little always in

-your life. Henceforth I shall be nothing. But if ever you call on me

-for any service&mdash;which it is most unlikely you ever will do&mdash;I entreat

-you to remember that there is no one living who will more gladly or

-more humbly do your bidding at all cost than I, your cousin Egon.'</p>

-

-<p>The short letter brought tears to her eyes. She said nothing of it to

-Sabran. He had understood from Mdme. Ottilie that Prince Vàsàrhely had

-loved his cousin hopelessly for many years, and could not be expected

-to be present at her marriage.</p>

-

-<p>In a week from that time their nuptials were celebrated in the Court

-Chapel of the Hofburg at Vienna, with all the pomp and splendour that

-a brilliant and ceremonious Court could lend to the espousal of one of

-the greatest ladies of the old Duchy of Austria.</p>

-

-<p>Immediately after the ceremony they left the capital for Hohenszalras.</p>

-

-<p>At the signing of the contract on the previous night, when he had taken

-up the pen he had grown very pale; he had hesitated a moment, and

-glanced around him on the magnificent crowd, headed by the Emperor and

-Empress, with a gleam of fear and of anxiety in his eyes, which Baron

-Kaulnitz, who was intently watching him, had alone perceived.</p>

-

-<p>'There is something. What is it?' had mused the astute German.</p>

-

-<p>It was too late to seek to know. Sabran had bent down over the

-parchment, and with a firm hand had signed his name and title.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>It was midsummer once more in the Iselthal, five years and a half after

-the celebration at the Imperial palace of those nuptials which had been

-so splendid that their magnificence had been noticeable even at that

-magnificent Court. The time had seemed to her like one long, happy,

-cloudless day, and if to him there had come any fatigue, any satiety,

-any unrest, such as almost always come to the man in the fruition of

-his passion, he suffered her to see none of them.</p>

-

-<p>It was one of those rare marriages in which no gall of a chain is felt,

-but a quick and perfect sympathy insures that harmony which passion

-alone is insufficient to sustain. He devoted himself with ardour to the

-care of the immense properties that belonged to his wife; he brought

-to their administration a judgment and a precision that none had looked

-for in a man of pleasure; he entered cordially into all her schemes for

-the well-being of her people dependent on her, and carried them out

-with skill and firmness. The revenues of Idrac he never touched; he

-left them to accumulate for his younger son, or expended them on the

-township itself, where he was adored.</p>

-

-<p>If he were still the same man who had been the lover of Cochonette,

-the terror of Monte Carlo, the hero of night-long baccara and frontier

-duels, he had at least so banished the old Adam that it appeared wholly

-dead. Nor was the death of it feigned. He had flung away the slough

-of his old life with a firm hand, and the peace, the dignity of his

-present existence were very precious to him. He was glad to steep

-himself in them, as a tired and fevered wayfarer was glad to bathe his

-dusty and heated limbs in the cool, clear waters of the Szalrassee. And

-he loved his wife with a great love, in which reverence, and gratitude,

-and passion were all blent. Possession had not dulled, nor familiarity

-blunted it. She was still to him a sovereign, a saint, a half divine

-creature, who had stooped to become mortal for his sake, and his

-children's.</p>

-

-<p>The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls

-and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the

-Szalrassee.</p>

-

-<p>'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath

-the great yews beside the keep.</p>

-

-<p>'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but

-watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as

-ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty

-amphitheatre.</p>

-

-<p>She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of

-whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy

-with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The

-other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months

-of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were

-all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.</p>

-

-<p>'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the

-world called so proud.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near

-her wicker chair.</p>

-

-<p>'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it,

-at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you

-it will be he who will be dearest to me.'</p>

-

-<p>As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.</p>

-

-<p>She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.</p>

-

-<p>'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that

-we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all

-the world who have passed five years and more together without once

-disagreeing?'</p>

-

-<p>'In all the world there is not another Countess Wanda!'</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! that is your only defect; you will always avoid argument by

-escaping through the side-door of compliment. It is true, to be sure,

-that your flattery is a very high and subtle art.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is like all high art then, based on what is eternally true.'</p>

-

-<p>'You will always have the last word, and it is always so graceful a

-one that it is impossible to quarrel with it. But, Réné, I want you

-to speak without compliment to me for once. Tell me, are you indeed

-never&mdash;never&mdash;a little weary of being here?'</p>

-

-<p>He hesitated a moment and a slight flush came on his face.</p>

-

-<p>She observed both signs, slight as they were, and sighed; it was the

-first sigh she had ever breathed since her marriage.</p>

-

-<p>'Of course you are, of course you must be,' she said quickly. 'It has

-been selfish and blameable of me never to think of it before. It is

-paradise to me, but no doubt to you, used as you have been to the stir

-of the world, there, must be some tedium, some dulness in this mountain

-isolation. I ought to have remembered that before.'</p>

-

-<p>'You need do nothing of the kind, now,' he said. 'Who has been talking

-to you? Who has brought this little snake into our Eden?'</p>

-

-<p>'No one; and it is not a snake at all, but a natural reflection.

-Hohenszalras and you are the world to me, but I cannot expect that

-Hohenszalras and I can be quite as much to yourself. It is always the

-difference between the woman and the man. You have great talents; you

-are ambitious.'</p>

-

-<p>'Were I as ambitious as Alexander, surely I have gained wherewithal to

-be content!'</p>

-

-<p>'That is only compliment again, or if truth it is only a side of the

-truth. Nay, love, I do not think for a moment you are tired of me;

-I am too self-satisfied for that! But I think it is possible that

-this solitude may have grown, or may grow, wearisome to you; that you

-desire, perhaps without knowing it, to be more amidst the strife,

-the movement, and the pleasures of men. Aunt Ottilie calls this

-"confinement to a fortress;" now that is a mere pleasantry, but if ever

-you should feel tempted to feel what she feels, have confidence enough

-in my good sense and in my affection to say so to me, and then&mdash;&mdash;.'</p>

-

-<p>'And then? We will suppose I have this ingratitude and bad taste, what

-then?'</p>

-

-<p>'Why then, my own wishes should not stand for one instant in the way

-of yours, or rather I would make yours mine. And do not use the word

-ingratitude, my dearest; there can be no question of that betwixt you

-and me.'</p>

-

-<p>'Yes,' said Sabran, as he stooped towards her and touched her hair

-with his lips. 'When you gave me yourself, you made me your debtor

-for all time; would have made me so had you been as poor as you are

-rich. When I speak of gratitude it is of <i>that</i> gift, I think, not of

-Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>A warmth of pleasure flushed her cheek for a moment, and she smiled

-happily.</p>

-

-<p>'You shall not beg the question so,' she said, with gentle insistence

-after a moment's pause. 'I have not forgotten your eloquence in the

-French Chamber.' You are that rare thing a born orator. You are

-not perhaps fitted to be a statesman, for I doubt if you would have

-the application or bear the tedium necessary, but you have every

-qualification for a diplomatist, a foreign minister.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have not the first qualification, I have no country!'</p>

-

-<p>She looked at him, in surprise&mdash;he spoke with bitterness and

-self-contempt; but in a moment he had added quickly:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'France is nothing to me now, and though I am Austrian by all ties and

-affections, I am not an Austrian before the law.'</p>

-

-<p>'That is hardly true,' she answered, satisfied with the explanation.

-'Since France is little to you you could be naturalised here whenever

-you chose, even if Idrac have not made you a Croat noble, as I believe

-the lawyers would say it had; and the Emperor, who knows and admires

-you, would, I think, at once give you gladly any mission you preferred;

-you would make so graceful, so perfect, so envied an ambassador!

-Diplomacy has indeed little force now, yet tact still tells wherever

-it be found, and it is as rare as blue roses in the unweeded garden of

-the world. I do not speak for myself, dear; that you know. Hohenszalras

-is my beloved home, and it was enough for me before I knew you, and

-nowhere else could life ever seem to me so true, so high, so simple,

-and so near to God as here. But I do remember that men weary even of

-happiness when it is unwitnessed, and require the press and stir of

-emulation and excitation; and, if you feel that want, say so. Have

-confidence enough in me to believe that your welfare will be ever my

-highest law. Promise me this.'</p>

-

-<p>He changed colour slightly at her generous and trustful words, but he

-answered without a moment's pause:</p>

-

-<p>'Whenever I am so thankless to fate I will confess it. No; the world

-and I never valued one another much. I am far better here in the heart

-of your mountains. Here only have I known peace and rest.'</p>

-

-<p>He spoke with a certain effort and emotion, and he stooped over his

-little son and raised him on her knees.</p>

-

-<p>'These children shall grow up at Hohenszalras,' he continued, 'and you

-shall teach them your love of the open air, the mountain solitudes, the

-simple people, the forest creatures, the influences and the ways of

-nature. You care for all those things, and they make up true wisdom,

-true contentment. As for myself, if you always love me I shall ask no

-more of fate.'</p>

-

-<p>'If! Can you be afraid?'</p>

-

-<p>'Sometimes. One always fears to lose what one has never merited.'</p>

-

-<p>'Ah, my love, do not be so humble! If you saw yourself as I see you,

-you would be very proud.'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled as she spoke, and stretched her hand out to him over the

-golden head of her child.</p>

-

-<p>He took it and held it against his heart, clasped in both his own.

-Bela, impatient, slipped off his mother's lap to pursue his capture of

-the daisies; the butterflies were forbidden joys, and he was obedient,

-though in his own little way he was proud and imperious. But there

-was a blue butterfly just in front of him, a Lycœna Adonis, like a

-little bit of the sky come down and dancing about; he could not resist,

-he darted at it. As he was about to seize it she caught his fingers.</p>

-

-<p>'I have told you, Bela, you are never to touch anything that flies or

-moves. You are cruel.'</p>

-

-<p>He tried to get away, and his face grew very warm and passionate.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela will be cruel, if he like,' he said, knitting his pretty brows.</p>

-

-<p>Though he was not more than four years old he knew very well that he

-was the Count Bela, to whom all the people gave homage, crowding to

-kiss his tiny hand after Mass on holy-days. He was a very beautiful

-child, and all the prettier for his air of pride and resolution; he had

-been early put on a little mountain pony, and could ride fearlessly

-down the forest glades with Otto. All the imperiousness of the great

-race which had dealt out life and death so many centuries at their

-caprice through the Hohe Tauern seemed to have been inherited by him,

-coupled with a waywardness and a vanity that were not traits of the

-house of Szalras. It was impossible, even though those immediately

-about him were wise and prudent, to wholly prevent the effects of the

-adulation with which the whole household was eager to wait on every

-whim of the little heir.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his

-desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that

-to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it

-his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition,

-and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very

-affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.</p>

-

-<p>With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he

-said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'</p>

-

-<p>Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very

-frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been

-four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.</p>

-

-<p>'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'</p>

-

-<p>Then he burst into tears.</p>

-

-<p>'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his

-father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his

-nurse, who came for him.</p>

-

-<p>'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him

-more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give

-you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'</p>

-

-<p>It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil

-qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son,

-and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was

-unworthy to beget <i>her</i> children,' he thought, with the self-reproach

-that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his

-satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what

-trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years

-to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his

-blood?</p>

-

-<p>'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to

-see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It

-hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own

-little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill;

-do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is

-your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud

-of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows

-older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to

-enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy

-that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry

-passions, of my degraded humanity?'</p>

-

-<p>'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think

-me.'</p>

-

-<p>'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'</p>

-

-<p>'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a <i>beau défaut</i>,

-and I would not have you lose it.'</p>

-

-<p>'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and

-passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'</p>

-

-<p>She looked at him surprised, and vaguely troubled at the self-reproach

-and the self-scorn of his passionate utterance. Seeing that surprise

-and trouble in her glance, he controlled the emotion that for the

-moment mastered him.</p>

-

-<p>'Ah, love!' he said quickly and truly, 'if you could but guess how

-gross and base a man's life seems to him contrasted with the life of

-a pure and noble woman! Being born of you, those children, I think,

-should be as faultless and as soilless as those pearls that lie on your

-breast. But then they are mine also; so already on that boy's face one

-sees the sins of revolt, of self-will, of cruelty&mdash;being mine also,

-your living pearls are dulled and stained!'</p>

-

-<p>A greater remorse than she dreamed of made his heart ache as he said

-these words; but she heard in them only the utterance of that extreme

-and unwavering devotion to her which he had shown in all his acts and

-thoughts from the first hours of their union.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>The Princess Ottilie was scarcely less happy than they in the

-realisation of her dreams and prophecies. Those who had been most

-bitterly opposed to her alliance with him could find no fault in his

-actions and his affections.</p>

-

-<p>'I always said that Wanda ought to marry, since she had plainly no

-vocation for the cloister,' she said a hundred times a year. 'And I was

-certain that M. de Sabran was the person above all others to attract

-and to content her. She has much more imagination than she would be

-willing to allow and he is capable at once of fascinating her fancy

-and of satisfying her intellect. No one can be dull where he is; he is

-one of those who make <i>la pluie et le beau temps</i> by his absence or

-presence; and, besides that, no commonplace affection would have ever

-been enough for her. And he loves her like a poet, which he is at once

-whenever he leaves the world for Beethoven and Bach. I cannot imagine

-why you should have opposed the marriage, merely because he had not two

-millions in the Bank of France.'</p>

-

-<p>'Not for that,' answered the Grand Duke; 'rather because he broke the

-bank of Monte Carlo, and other similar reasons. A great player of

-baccara is scarcely the person to endow with the wealth of the Szalras.'</p>

-

-<p>'The wealth is tied up tightly enough at the least, and you will admit

-that he was yet more eager than you that it should be so.'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, yes! he behaved very well. I never denied it. But she has placed

-it in his power to make away with the whole of Idrac, if he should ever

-choose. That was very unwise, but we had no power to oppose.'</p>

-

-<p>'You may be quite sure that Idrac will go intact to the second son, as

-it has always done; and I believe but for his own exertions Idrac would

-now be beneath the Danube waters. Perhaps you never heard all that

-story of the flood?'</p>

-

-<p>'I only hope that if I have detractors you will defend me from them,'

-said Prince Lilienhöhe, giving up argument.</p>

-

-<p>Fair weather is always especially fair in the eyes of those who have

-foretold at sunset that the morrow would be fine; and so the married

-life of Wanda von Szalras was especially delightful as an object of

-contemplation, as a theme of exultation, to the Princess, who alone had

-been clear-sighted enough to foresee the future. She really also loved

-Sabran like a son, and took pride and pleasure in the filial tenderness

-he showed her, and in his children, with the beautiful blue eyes that

-had gleams of light in them like sapphires. The children themselves

-adored her; and even the bold and wilful Bela was as quiet as a

-startled fawn beside this lovely little lady, with her snow-white hair

-and her delicate smile, whose cascades of lace always concealed such

-wonderful bon-bon boxes, and gilded cosaques, and illuminated stories

-of the saints.</p>

-

-<p>Almost all their time was spent at Hohenszalras. A few winter months

-in Vienna was all they had ever passed away from it, except one visit

-to Idrac and the Hungarian estates. The children never left it for

-a day. He shared her affection for the place, and for the hardy and

-frank mountain people around them. He seemed to her to entirely forget

-Romaris, and beyond the transmission of moneys to its priest, he

-took no heed of it. She hesitated to recall it to him, since to do

-so might have seemed to remind him that it was she, not he, who was

-suzerain in the Hohe Tauern. Romaris was but a bleak rock, a strip of

-sea-swept sand; it was natural that it should have no great hold on his

-affections, only recalling as it did all that its lords had lost.</p>

-

-<p>'I hate its name,' he said impetuously once; and seeing the surprise

-upon her face, he added: 'I was very lonely and wretched there; I

-tried to take interest in it because you bade me, but I failed; all

-I saw, all I thought of, was yourself, and I believed you as far and

-for ever removed from me as though you had dwelt in some other planet.

-No! perhaps I am superstitious: I do not wish you to go to Romaris. I

-believe it would bring us misfortune. The sea is full of treachery, the

-sands are full of graves.'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled.</p>

-

-<p>'Superstition is a sort of parody of faith; I am sure you are not

-superstitious. I do not care to go to Romaris; I like to cheat myself

-into the belief that you were born and bred in the Iselthal. Otto said

-to me the other day, "My lord must be a son of the soil, or how could

-he know our mountains so well as he does, and how could he anywhere

-have learned to shoot like that?"'</p>

-

-<p>'I am very glad that Otto does me so much honour. When he first met

-me, he would have shot me like a fox, if you had given the word. Ah, my

-love! how often I think of you that day, in your white serge, with your

-girdle of gold, and your long gold-headed staff, and your little ivory

-horn. You were truly a châtelaine of the old mystical German days.

-You had some <i>Schlüsselblumen</i> in your hand. They were indeed the key

-flower to my soul, though, alas! treasures, I fear, you found none on

-your entrance there.'</p>

-

-<p>'I shall not answer you, since to answer would be to flatter you, and

-Aunt Ottilie already, does that more than is good for you,' she said

-smiling, as she passed her fingers over the waves of his hair. 'By the

-way, whom shall we invite to meet the Lilienhöhe? Will you make out a

-list?'</p>

-

-<p>'The Grand Duke does not share Frau Ottilie's goodness for me.'</p>

-

-<p>'What would you? He has been made of buckram and parchment; besides

-which; nothing that is not German has, to his mind, any right to exist.

-By the way, Egon wrote to me this morning; he will be here at last.'</p>

-

-<p>He looked up quickly in unspoken alarm: 'Your cousin Egon? Here?'</p>

-

-<p>'Why are you so surprised? I was sure that sooner or later he would

-conquer that feeling of being unable to meet you. I begged him to come

-now; it is eight whole years since I have seen him. When once you have

-met you will be friends&mdash;for my sake.'</p>

-

-<p>He was silent; a look of trouble and alarm was still upon his face.</p>

-

-<p>'Why should you suppose it any easier to him now than then?' he said at

-length. 'Men who love <i>you</i> do not change. There are women who compel

-constancy, <i>sans le vouloir</i>. The meeting can but be painful to Prince

-Vàsàrhely.'</p>

-

-<p>'Dear Réné,' she answered in some surprise, 'my nearest male relative

-and I cannot go on for ever without seeing each other. Even these years

-have done Egon a great deal of harm. He has been absent from the Court

-for fear of meeting us. He has lived with his hussars, or voluntarily

-confined to his estates, until he grows morose and solitary. I am

-deeply attached to him. I do not wish to have the remorse upon me of

-having caused the ruin of his gallant and brilliant life. When he

-has been once here he will like you: men who are brave have always

-a certain sympathy. When he has seen you here he will realise that

-destiny is unchangeable, and grow reconciled to the knowledge that I am

-your wife.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran gave an impatient gesture of denial, and began to write the list

-of invitations for the autumn circle of guests who were to meet the

-Prince and Princess of Lilienhöhe.</p>

-

-<p>Once every summer and every autumn Hohenszalras was filled with a

-brilliant house-party, for she sacrificed her own personal preferences

-to what she believed to be for the good of her husband. She knew that

-men cannot always live alone; that contact with the world is needful to

-their minds and bracing for it. She had a great dread lest the ghost

-<i>ennui</i> should show his pale face over her husband's shoulder, for

-she realised that from the life of the asphalte of the Champs-Élysées

-to the life amidst the pine forests of the Iselthal was an abrupt

-transition that might easily bring tedium in its train. And tedium is

-the most terrible and the most powerful foe love ever encounters.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran completed the list, and when he had corrected it into due

-accordance with all Lilienhöhe's personal and political sympathies and

-antipathies, despatched the invitations, 'for eight days,' written on

-cards that bore the joint arms of the Counts of Idrac and the Counts of

-Szalras. He had adopted the armorial bearings of the countship of Idrac

-as his own, and seemed disposed to abandon altogether those of the

-Sabrans of Romaris.</p>

-

-<p>When they were written he went out by himself and rode long and fast

-through the mists of a chilly afternoon, through dripping forest ways

-and over roads where little water-courses spread in shining shallows.

-The coming of Egon Vàsàrhely troubled him and alarmed him. He had

-always dreaded his first meeting with the Magyar noble; and as the

-years had dropped by one after another, and her cousin had failed

-to find courage to see her again, he had begun to believe that they

-and Vàsàrhely would remain always strangers. His wish had begotten

-his thought. He knew that she wrote at intervals to her cousin, and

-he to her; he knew that at the birth of each of their children some

-magnificent gift, with a formal letter of felicitation, had come from

-the Colonel of the White Hussars; but as time had gone on and Prince

-Egon had avoided all possibility of meeting them, he had grown to

-suppose that the wound given her rejected lover was too profound ever

-to close; nor did he wonder that it was so: it seemed to him that any

-man who loved her must do so for all eternity, if eternity there should

-be. To learn suddenly that within another month Vàsàrhely would be his

-guest, distressed and alarmed him in a manner she never dreamed. They

-had been so happy. On their cloud less heaven there seemed to him to

-rise a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but bearing with it disaster

-and a moonless night.</p>

-

-<p>'Perhaps he will have forgotten,' he thought, as he strove to shake off

-his forebodings. 'We were so young then. He was not even as old as I!'</p>

-

-<p>And he rode fast and furiously homewards as the day drew in, and the

-lighted windows of the great castle seemed to smile at him as lie saw

-it high up above the darkness of the woods and of the evening mists,

-his home, beloved, sacred, infinitely dear to him; dear as the soil of

-the mother country which the wrecked mariner reaches after facing death

-on the deep sea.</p>

-

-<p>'God save her from suffering by me!' he said, in an unconscious prayer,

-as he drew rein before the terrace of Hohenszalras. Almost he believed

-in God through her.</p>

-

-<p>When, after dressing, he went into, the Saxe room, the peace and

-beauty of the scene had never struck him so strongly as it did now,

-coming out of the shadows of the wet woods and the gloom of his own

-anxieties; anxieties the heavier and the more wearing because they

-could be shared by no one. The soft, full light of the wax candles fell

-on the Louis Seize embroideries and the white woodwork of the panelling

-and the china borders of the mirrors. The Princess Ottilie sat making

-silk-netting for the children's balls; his wife was reading, and Bela

-and Gela, who were there for their privileged half-hour before dinner,

-were fitting together on a white bearskin, playing with the coloured

-balls of the game of solitaire. The soft light from the chandeliers

-and sconces of the Saxe Royale china fell on the golden heads and the

-velvet frocks of the children, on the old laces and the tawny-coloured

-plush of their mothers skirts, on the great masses of flowers in the

-Saxe bowls, and on the sleeping forms of the big dogs Donau and Neva.

-It was an interior that would have charmed Chardin, that would have

-been worthy of Vandyck.</p>

-

-<p>As he looked at it he thought with a sort of ecstasy, 'All that is

-mine;' and then his heartstrings tightened as he thought again, 'If she

-knew&mdash;&mdash;?'</p>

-

-<p>She looked up at his entrance with a welcome on her face that needed no

-words.</p>

-

-<p>'Where have you been in the rain all this long afternoon?' You see we

-have a fire, even though it is midsummer. Bela, rise, and make your

-obeisance, and push that chair nearer the hearth.'</p>

-

-<p>The two little boys stood up and kissed his hand, one after another,

-with the pretty formality; of greeting on which she always insisted;

-then they went back to their coloured glass balls, and he sank into a

-low chair beside his wife with a sigh half of fatigue, half of content.</p>

-

-<p>'Yes, I have been riding all the time,' he said to her. 'I am not sure

-that Siegfried approved it. But it does one good sometimes, and after

-the blackness and the wetness of that forest how charming it is to come

-home!'</p>

-

-<p>She looked at him with wistfulness.</p>

-

-<p>'I wish you were not vexed that Egon is coming! I am sure you have been

-thinking of it as you rode.'</p>

-

-<p>'Yes, I have; but I am ashamed of doing so. He is your cousin, that

-shall be enough for me. I will do my best to make him welcome. Only

-there is this difficulty; a welcome from me to him will seem in itself

-an insult.'</p>

-

-<p>'An insult! when you are my husband? One would think you were my

-<i>jägermeister.</i> Dear mother mine, help me to scold him.'</p>

-

-<p>'I am a stranger,' he said, under his breath.</p>

-

-<p>She smiled a little, but she said with a certain hauteur:</p>

-

-<p>'You are master of Hohenszalras, as your son will be when our places

-shall know us no more. Do not let the phantom of Egon come between us,

-I beseech you. His real presence never will do so, that is certain.'</p>

-

-<p>'Nothing shall come between us,' said Sabran, as his hand took and

-closed upon hers. 'Forgive me if I have brought some gloomy <i>nix</i> out

-of the dark woods with me; he will flee away in, the light of this

-beloved white-room. No evil spirits could dare stay by your hearth.'</p>

-

-<p>'There are <i>nixes</i> in the forests,' said Bela in a whisper to his

-brother.</p>

-

-<p>'Ja!' said Gela, not comprehending.</p>

-

-<p>'We will kill them all when we are big,' said Bela.</p>

-

-<p>'Ja! ja!' said Gela.</p>

-

-<p>Bela knew very well what a <i>nix</i> was. Otto had told him all about

-kobolds and sprites, as his pony trotted down the drives.</p>

-

-<p>'Or we will take them prisoners,' he added, remembering that his mother

-never allowed anything to be killed, not even butterflies.</p>

-

-<p>'Ja!' said Gela again, rolling the pretty blue and pink and amber balls

-about in the white fur of the bearskin.</p>

-

-<p>Gela's views of life were simplified by the disciple's law of

-imitation; they were restricted to doing whatever Bela did, when that

-was possible, when it was not possible he remained still adoring Bela,

-with his little serious face as calm as a god's.</p>

-

-<p>She used to think that when they should grow up Bela would be a great

-soldier like Wallenstein or Condé, and Gela would stay at home and

-take care of his people here in the green, lone, happy Iselthal.</p>

-

-<p>Time ran on and the later summer made the blooming hay grow brown on

-all the alpine meadows, and made the garden of Hohenszalras blossom

-with a million autumnal glories; it brought also the season of the

-first house-party. Egon Vàsàrhely was to arrive one day before the

-Lilienhöhe and the other guests.</p>

-

-<p>'I want Egon so much to see Bela!' she said, with the thoughtless

-cruelty of a happy mother forgetful of the pain of a rejected lover.</p>

-

-<p>'I fear Bela will find little favor in your cousin's eyes, since he is

-mine too,' said Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, Egon is content to be only our cousin by this&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'You think so? You do not know yourself if you imagine that.'</p>

-

-<p>'Egon is very loyal. He would not come here if he could not greet you

-honestly.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran's face flushed a little, and he turned away. He vaguely dreaded

-the advent of Egon Vàsàrhely, and there were so many innocent words

-uttered in the carelessness of intimate intercourse which stabbed him

-to the quick; she had so wounded him all unconscious of her act.</p>

-

-<p>'Shall we have a game of billiards?' he asked her as they stood in the

-Rittersaal, whilst the rain fell fast without. She played billiards

-well, and could hold her own against him, though his game was one that

-had often been watched by a crowded <i>galerie</i> in Paris with eager

-speculation and heavy wager. An hour afterwards they were still playing

-when the clang of a great bell announced the approach of the carriage

-which had been sent to Windisch-Matrey.</p>

-

-<p>'Come!' she said joyously, as she put back her cue in its rest; but

-Sabran drew back.</p>

-

-<p>'Receive your cousin first alone,' he said. 'He must resent my presence

-here. I will not force it on him on the threshold of your house.'</p>

-

-<p>'Of our house! Why will you use wrong pronouns? Believe me, dear, Egon

-is too generous to bear you the animosity you think.'</p>

-

-<p>'Then he never loved you,' said Sabran, somewhat impatiently, as he

-sent one ball against another with a sharp collision. 'I will come if

-you wish it,' he added; 'but I think it is not in the best taste to so

-assert myself.'</p>

-

-<p>'Egon is only my cousin and your guest. You are the master of

-Hohenszalras. Come! you were not so difficult when you received the

-Emperor.'</p>

-

-<p>'I had done the Emperor no wrong,' said Sabran, controlling the

-impatience and the reluctance he still felt.</p>

-

-<p>'You have done Egon none. I should not have been his wife had I never

-been yours.'</p>

-

-<p>'Who knows?' murmured Sabran, as he followed her into the entrance

-hall. The stately figure of Egon Vàsàrhely enveloped in furs was just

-passing through the arched doorway.</p>

-

-<p>She went towards him with a glad welcome and both hands outstretched.</p>

-

-<p>Prince Egon bowed to the ground: then took both her hands in his and

-kissed her on the cheek.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran, who grew very pale, advanced and greeted him with ceremonious

-grace.</p>

-

-<p>'My wife has bade me welcome you, Prince, but it would be presumptuous

-in me, a stranger, to do that. All her kindred must be dear and sacred

-here.'</p>

-

-<p>Egon Vàsàrhely, with an effort to which he had for years been vainly

-schooling himself, stretched out his hand to take her husband's; but

-as he did so, and his glance for the first time dwelt on Sabran, a

-look surprised and indefinitely perplexed came on his own features.

-Unconsciously he hesitated a moment; then, controlling himself, he

-replied with a few fitting words of courtesy and friendship. That

-there should be some embarrassment, some constraint, was almost

-inevitable, and did not surprise her: she saw both, but she also saw

-that both were hidden under the serenity of high breeding and worldly

-habit. The most difficult moment had passed: they went together into

-the Rittersaal, talked together a little on a few indifferent topics,

-and in a little space Prince Egon withdrew to his own apartments to

-change his travelling clothes. Sabran left him on the threshold of his

-chamber.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely locked the doors, locking out even his servant, threw off

-his furs and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. The meeting had

-cost him even more than he had feared that it would do. For five years

-he had dreaded this moment, and its pain was as sharp and as fresh to

-him as though it had been unforeseen. To sleep under the same roof

-with the husband of Wanda von Szalras! He had overrated his power of

-self-control, underrated his power of suffering, when to please her he

-had consented after five years to visit Hohenszalras. What were five

-years?&mdash;half a century would not have changed him.</p>

-

-<p>Under the plea of fatigue, he, who had sat in his saddle eighteen hours

-at a stretch, and was braced to every form of endurance in the forest

-chase and in the tented field, sent excuses to his host for remaining

-in his own rooms until the Ave Maria rung. When he at length went

-down to the blue-room where she was, he had recovered, outwardly at

-least, his tranquillity and his self-possession, though here, in this

-familiar, once beloved chamber, where every object had been dear to him

-from his boyhood, a keener trial than any he had passed through awaited

-him, as she led forward to meet him a little boy clad in white velvet,

-with a cloud of light golden hair above deep blue luminous eyes, and

-said to him:</p>

-

-<p>'Egon, this is my Bela. You will love him a little, for my sake?'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely felt a chill run through him like the cold of death as he

-stooped towards the child; but he smiled and touched the boy's forehead

-with his lips.</p>

-

-<p>'May the spirit of our lost Bela be with him and dwell in his heart,'

-he murmured; 'better I cannot wish him.'</p>

-

-<p>With an effort he turned to Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'Your little son is a noble child; you may with reason be proud of him.

-He is very like you in feature. I see no trace of the Szalras.'</p>

-

-<p>'The other boy is more like Wanda,' replied Sabran, sensible of a

-certain tenacity of observation with which Vàsàrhely was gazing at

-him. 'As for my daughter, she is too young for anyone to say whom she

-will resemble. All I desire is that she should be like her mother,

-physically and spiritually.'</p>

-

-<p>'Of course,' said the Prince, absently, still looking from Sabran to

-the child, as if in the endeavour to follow some remembrance that

-eluded-him. The little face of Bela was a miniature of his father's,

-they were as alike as it is possible for a child and a man to be so,

-and Egon Vàsàrhely perplexedly mused and wondered at vague memories

-which rose up to him as he gazed on each.</p>

-

-<p>'And what do you like best to do, my little one?' he asked of Bela, who

-was regarding him with curious and hostile eyes.</p>

-

-<p>'To ride,' answered Bela at once, in his pretty uncertain German.</p>

-

-<p>'There you are a true Szalras at least. And your brother Gela, can he

-ride yet? Where is Gela, by the way?'</p>

-

-<p>'He is asleep,' said Bela, with some contempt. 'He is a little thing.

-Yes; he rides, but it is in a chair-saddle. It is not real riding.'</p>

-

-<p>'I see. Well, when you come and see me you shall have some real riding,

-on wild horses if you like;' and he told the child stories of the great

-Magyar steppes, and the herds of young horses, and the infinite delight

-of the unending gallop over the wide hushed plain; and all the while

-his heart ached bitterly, and the sight of the child&mdash;who was her

-child, yet had that stranger's face&mdash;was to him like a jagged steel

-being turned and twisted inside a bleeding wound. Bela, however, was

-captivated by the new visions that rose before him.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela will come to Hungary,' he said with condescension, and then with

-an added thought, continued: 'I think Bela has great lands there. Otto

-said so.'</p>

-

-<p>'Bela has nothing at all,' said Sabran, sternly. 'Bela talks great

-nonsense sometimes, and it would be better he should go to sleep with

-his brother.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela looked up shyly under his golden cloud of hair. 'Folko is Bela's,'

-he said under his breath. Folko was his pony.</p>

-

-<p>'No,' said Sabran; 'Folko belongs to your mother. She only allows you

-to have him so long as you are good to him.'</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is always good to him,' he said decidedly.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is faultless in his own estimation,' said his mother, with a

-smile. 'He is too little to be wise enough to see himself as he is.'</p>

-

-<p>This view made Bela's blue eyes open very wide and fill very

-sorrowfully. It was humiliating. He longed to get back to Gela, who

-always listened to him dutifully, and never said anything in answer

-except an entirely acquiescent 'Ja! ja!' which was indeed about the

-limitation of Gela's lingual powers. In a few moments, indeed, his

-governess came for him and took him away, a little dainty figure in his

-ivory velvet and his blue silk stockings, with his long golden curls

-hanging to his waist.</p>

-

-<p>'It is so difficult to keep him from being spoilt,' she said, as the

-door closed on him. 'The people make a little prince, a little god, of

-him. He believes himself to be something wonderful. Gela, who is so

-gentle and quiet, is left quite in the shade.'</p>

-

-<p>'I suppose Gela takes your title?' said Vàsàrhely to his host. 'It

-is usual with the Austrian families for the second son to have some

-distant appellation?'</p>

-

-<p>'They are babies,' said Sabran, impatiently.</p>

-

-<p>'It will be time enough to settle those matters when they are old

-enough to be court-pages or cadets. They are Bela and Gela at present.

-The only real republic is childhood.'</p>

-

-<p>'I am afraid Bela is the <i>tyrannus</i> to which all republics succumb,'

-said Wanda, with a smile. He is extremely autocratic in his notions,

-and in his family. In all his "make believe" games he is crowned.'</p>

-

-<p>'He is a beautiful child,' said her cousin, and she answered, still

-smiling:</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, yes: he is so like Réné!'</p>

-

-<p>Egon Vàsàrhely turned his face from her. The dinner was somewhat dull,

-and the evening seemed tedious, despite the efforts of Sabran to

-promote conversation, and the <i>écarté</i> which he and his guest played

-together. They, were all sensible that some chord was out of tune, and

-glad that on the morrow a large house-party would be there to spare

-them a continuation of this difficult intercourse.</p>

-

-<p>'Your cousin will never forgive me,' said Sabran to her when they were

-alone. 'I think, beside his feeling that I stand for ever between you

-and him there is an impatience of me as a stranger and one unworthy

-you.'</p>

-

-<p>'You do yourself and him injustice,' she answered. 'I shall be unhappy

-if you and he be not friends.'</p>

-

-<p>'Then unhappy you will be, my beloved. We both adore you.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do not say that. He would not be here if it were so.'</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! look at him when he looks at Bela!'</p>

-

-<p>She sighed; she had felt a strong emotion on the sight of her cousin,

-for Egon Vàsàrhely was much changed by these years of pain. His grand

-carriage and his martial beauty were unaltered, but all the fire and

-the light of earlier years were gone out of his face, and a certain

-gloom and austerity had come there. To all other women he would have

-been the more attractive for the melancholy which was in such apt

-contrast with the heroic adventures of his life, but to her the change

-in him was a mute reproach which filled her with remorse though she had

-done no wrong.</p>

-

-<p>Meantime Prince Egon, throwing open his window, leaned out into the

-cold rainy night, as though a hand were at his throat and suffocating

-him. And amidst all the tumult of his pain and revolt, one dim thought

-was incessantly intruding itself; he was always thinking, as he

-recalled the face of Sabran and of Sabran's little son, 'Where have I

-seen those blue eyes, those level brows, those delicate curved lips?'</p>

-

-<p>They were so familiar, yet so strange to him. When he would have given

-a name to them they receded into the shadows of some far away past of

-his own, so far away he could not follow them. He sat up half the night

-letting the wind beat and the rain fall on him. He could not sleep.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>In the morrow thirty or forty people arrived, amongst them Baron

-Kaulnitz <i>en congé</i> from his embassy.</p>

-

-<p>'What think you of Sabran?' he asked of Egon Vàsàrhely, who answered:</p>

-

-<p>'He is a perfect gentleman. He is a charming companion. He plays

-admirably at <i>écarté.</i></p>

-

-<p>'<i>Écarté</i>! I spoke of his moral worth: what is your impression of that?'</p>

-

-<p>'If he had not satisfied her as to that, Wanda would not be his wife,'

-answered the Prince gravely. 'He has given her beautiful children, and

-it seems to me that he renders her perfectly happy. We should all be

-grateful to him.'</p>

-

-<p>'The children are certainly very beautiful,' said Baron Kaulnitz, and

-said no more.</p>

-

-<p>'The people all around are unfeignedly attached to him,' Vàsàrhely

-continued with generous effort. 'I hear nothing but his praise. Nor do

-I think it the conventional compliment which loyalty leads them to pay

-the husband of their Countess; it is very genuine attachment. The men

-of the old Archduchy are not easily won; it is only qualities of daring

-and manliness which appeal to their sympathies. That he has gained

-their affections is as great testimony to his character in one way as

-that he has gained Wanda's is in another. At Idrac also the people

-adore him, and Croats are usually slow to see merit in strangers.'</p>

-

-<p>'In short, he is a paragon,' said the ambassador, with a little dubious

-smile. 'So much the better, since he is irrevocably connected with us.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran was at no time seen to greater advantage than when he was

-required to receive and entertain a large house-party. Always graceful,

-easily witty, endowed with that winning tact which is to society as

-cream is to the palate, the charm he possessed for women and the

-ascendency he could, at times, exercise over men&mdash;even men who were

-opposed to him&mdash;were never more admirably displayed than when he was

-the master of Hohenszalras, with crowned heads, and princes, and

-diplomatists, and beauties gathered beneath his roof. His mastery,

-moreover, of all field sports, and his skill at all games that demanded

-either intelligence or audacity, made him popular with a hardy and

-brilliant nobility; his daring in a boar hunt at noon was equalled by

-his science at whist in the evening. Strongly prejudiced against him at

-the onset, the great nobles who were his guests had long ceased to feel

-anything for him except respect and regard; whilst the women admired

-him none the less for that unwavering devotion to his wife which made

-even the conventionalities of ordinary flirtation wholly impossible to

-him. With all his easy gallantry and his elegant homage to them, they

-all knew that, at heart, he was as cold as the rocks to all women save

-one.</p>

-

-<p>'It is really the knight's love for his lady,' said the Countess

-Brancka once; and Sabran, overhearing, said: 'Yes, and, I think that if

-there were more like my lady on earth, knighthood might revive on other

-scenes than Wagner's.'</p>

-

-<p>Between him and the Countess Brancka there was a vague intangible

-enmity, veiled under the perfection of courtesy. They could ill have

-told why they disliked each other; but they did so. Beneath their

-polite or trivial or careless speech they often aimed at each other's

-feelings or foibles with accuracy and malice. She had stayed at

-Hohenszalras more or less time each year in the course of her flight

-between France and Vienna, and was there now. He admired his wife's

-equanimity and patience under the trial of Mdme. Olga's frivolities,

-but he did not himself forbear from as much sarcasm as was possible

-in a man of the world to one who was his guest, and by marriage his

-relative, and he was sensible of her enmity to himself, though she

-paid him many compliments, and sometimes too assiduously sought his

-companionship. '<i>Elle fait le ronron, mais gare à ses pattes!</i>' he said

-once to his wife concerning her.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran appraised her indeed with unflattering accuracy. He knew

-by heart all the wiles and wisdom of such a woman as she was. Her

-affectations did not blind him to her real danger, and her exterior

-frivolity did not conceal from him the keen and subtle self-interest

-and the strong passions which laboured beneath it.</p>

-

-<p>She felt that she had an enemy in him, and partly in self-protection,

-partly in malice, she set herself to convert a foe into a friend,

-perhaps, without altogether confessing it to herself, into a lover as

-well.</p>

-

-<p>The happiness that prevailed at Hohenszalrasburg annoyed her for

-no other reason than that it wearied her to witness it. She did

-not envy it, because she did not want happiness at all; she wanted

-perpetual change, distraction, temptation, passion, triumph&mdash;in a word,

-excitement, which becomes the drug most unobtainable to those who have

-early exhausted all the experiences and varieties of pleasure.</p>

-

-<p>Mdme. Brancka had always an unacknowledged resentment against her

-sister-in-law, for being the owner of all the vast possessions of the

-Szalras. 'If Gela had lived!' she thought constantly. 'If I had only

-had a son by him before he died, this woman would have had her dower

-and nothing more.' That his sister should possess all, whilst she had

-by her later marriage lost her right even to a share in that vast

-wealth, was a perpetual bitterness to her.</p>

-

-<p>Stefan Brancka was indeed rich, but he was an insensate gambler. She

-was extravagant to the last degree, with all the costly caprices of

-a <i>cocodette</i> who reigned in the two most brilliant capitals of the

-world. They were often troubled by their own folly, and again and again

-the generosity of his elder brother had rescued them from humiliating

-embarrassments. At such moments she had almost hated Wanda von Szalras

-for these large possessions, of which, according to her own views,

-her sister-in-law made no use whatever. Meantime, she wished Egon

-Vàsàrhely to die childless, and to that end had not been unwilling

-for the woman he loved to marry anyone else. She had reasoned that the

-Szalras estates would go to the Crown or the Church if Wanda did not

-marry; whilst all the power and possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely must, if

-he had no sons, pass in due course to his brother. She had the subtle

-acuteness of her race, and she had the double power of being able at

-once to wait very patiently and to spring with swift rage on what she

-needed. To her sister-in-law she always appeared a mere flutterer on

-the breath of fashion. The grave and candid nature of the one could not

-follow or perceive the intricacies of the other.</p>

-

-<p>'She is a cruel woman and a perilous one,' Sabran said one day to his

-wife's surprise.</p>

-

-<p>She answered him that Olga Brancka had always seemed to her a mere

-frivolous <i>mondaine</i>, like so many others of their world.</p>

-

-<p>'No,' he persisted. 'You are wrong; she is not a butterfly. She has too

-much energy. She is a profoundly immoral woman also. Look at her eyes.'</p>

-

-<p>'That is Stefan's affair,' she answered, 'not ours. He is indifferent.'</p>

-

-<p>'Or unsuspicious? Did your brother care for her?'</p>

-

-<p>'He was madly in love with her. She was only sixteen when he married

-her. He fell at Solferino half a year later. When she married my

-cousin it shocked and disgusted me. Perhaps I was foolish to take it

-thus, but it seemed such a sin against Gela. To die <i>so</i>, and not to be

-even remembered!'</p>

-

-<p>'Did your cousin Egon approve this second marriage?'</p>

-

-<p>'No,' he opposed it; he had our feeling about it. But Stefan, though

-very young, was beyond any control. He had the fortune as he had the

-title of his mother, the Countess Brancka, and Olga bewitched him as

-she had done my brother.'</p>

-

-<p>'She <i>is</i> a witch, a wicked witch,' said Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>The great autumn party was brilliant and agreeable. All things went

-well, and the days were never monotonous. The people were well

-assorted, and the social talent of their host made their outdoor sports

-and their indoor pastimes constantly varied, whilst Hungarian musicians

-and Viennese comedians played waltzes that would have made a statue

-dance, and represented the little comedies for which he himself had

-been famous at the Mirlitons.</p>

-

-<p>He was not conscious of it, but he was passionately eager for Egon

-Vàsàrhely to be witness, not only of his entire happiness, but of his

-social powers. To Vàsàrhely he seemed to put forward the perfection

-of his life with almost insolence; with almost exaggeration to exhibit

-the joys and the gifts with which nature and chance had so liberally

-dowered him. The stately Magyar soldier, sitting silent and melancholy

-apart, watched him with a curious pang, that in a lesser nature would

-have been a consuming envy. Now and then, though Sabran and his wife

-spoke rarely to each other in the presence of others, a glance, a

-smile, a word passed between them that told of absolute unuttered

-tenderness, profound and inexhaustible as the deep seas; in the very

-sound of their laughter, in the mere accent of their voices, in a

-careless caress to one of their children, in a light touch of the hand

-to one another as they rode, or as they met in a room, there was the

-expression of a perfect joy, of a perfect faith between them, which

-pierced the heart of the watcher of it. Yet would he not have had it

-otherwise at her cost.</p>

-

-<p>'Since she has chosen him as the companion of her life, it is well

-that he should be what she can take pride in, and what all men can

-praise,' he thought, and yet the happiness of this man seemed to him an

-audacity, an insolence. What human lover could merit her?</p>

-

-<p>Between himself and Sabran there was the most perfect courtesy, but no

-intimacy. They both knew that if for fifty years they met continually

-they would never be friends. All her endeavours to produce sympathy

-between them failed. Sabran was conscious of a constant observation of

-him by her cousin, which seemed to him to have a hostile motive, and

-which irritated him extremely, though he did not allow his irritation

-any visible vent. Olga Brancka perceived, and with the objectless

-malice of women of her temperament, amused herself with fanning, the

-slumbering enmity, as children play at fire.</p>

-

-<p>'You cannot expect Egon to love you,' she said once to her host. 'You

-know he was the betrothed of Wanda from her childhood&mdash;at least in his

-own hopes, and in the future sketched for them by their families.'</p>

-

-<p>'I was quite aware of that before I married,' he answered her

-indifferently. 'But those family arrangements are tranquil disposals of

-destiny which, if they be disturbed, leave no great trace of trouble.

-The Prince is young still, and a famous soldier as well as a great

-noble. He has no lack of consolation if he need it, and I cannot

-believe that he does.'</p>

-

-<p>Mdme. Olga laughed.</p>

-

-<p>'You know as well as I do that Egon adores the very stirrup your wife's

-foot touches!'</p>

-

-<p>'I know he is her much beloved cousin,' said Sabran, in a tone which

-admitted of no reply.</p>

-

-<p>To Vàsàrhely his sister-in-law said confidentially:</p>

-

-<p>'Dear Egon, why did you not stay on the <i>pusztas</i> or remain with your

-hussars? You make <i>le beau</i> Sabran jealous.'</p>

-

-<p>'Jealous!' asked Vàsàrhely, with a bitter smile. 'He has much cause,

-when she has neither eye nor ear, neither memory nor thought of any

-kind for any living thing except himself and those children who are

-all his very portraits! Why do you say these follies, Olga? You know

-that my cousin Wanda chose her lord out of all the world, and loves

-him as no one would have supposed she had it in her to love any mortal

-creature.'</p>

-

-<p>He spoke imperiously, harshly, and she was silenced.</p>

-

-<p>'What do you think of him?' she said with hesitation.</p>

-

-<p>'Everyone asks me that question. I am not his keeper!'</p>

-

-<p>'But you must form some opinion. He is virtual lord of Hohenszalras,

-and I believe she has made over to him all the appanages of Idrac, and

-his children will have everything.'</p>

-

-<p>'Are they not her natural heirs? Who should inherit from her if not her

-sons?'</p>

-

-<p>'Of course, of course they will inherit, only they inherit nothing

-from him. It was certainly a great stroke of fortune for a landless

-gentleman to make. Why does the <i>gentilhomme pauvre</i> always so

-captivate women?'</p>

-

-<p>'What do you mean to insinuate, Olga?' he asked her, with a stern

-glance of his great black eyes.'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, nothing; only his history was peculiar. I remember his arrival

-in France, his first appearance in society; it is many years ago now.

-All the Faubourg received him, but some said at the time that it was

-too romantic to be true&mdash;those Mexican forests, that long exile of the

-Sabran, the sudden appearance of this beautiful young marquis; you

-will grant it was romantic. I suppose it was the romance that made

-even Wanda's clear head turn a little. It is a <i>vin capiteux</i> for many

-women. And then such a life in Paris after it&mdash;duels, baccara, bonnes

-fortunes, clever comedies, a touch like Liszt's, a sudden success in

-the Chamber&mdash;it was all so romantic; it was bound to bring him at

-last to his haven, the Prince Charmant of an enchanted castle! Only

-enchanted castles sometimes grow dull, and Princes Charmants are not

-always amusable by the same châtelaine!'</p>

-

-<p>Egon Vàsàrhely, with his eyes sombre under their long black lashes,

-listened to the easy bantering phrases with the vague suspicion of an

-honest and slow-witted man that a woman is trying to drop poison into

-his ear which she wishes to pass as <i>eau sucrée.</i> He did not altogether

-follow her insinuation, but he understood something of her drift. They

-were alone in a corner of the ball-room, whilst the cotillon was at its

-height, conducted by Sabran, who had been famous for its leadership in

-Paris and Vienna. He stooped his head and looked her full in her eyes.</p>

-

-<p>'Look here, Olga. I am not sure what you mean, but I believe you are

-tired of seeing my cousin's happiness, merely because it is something

-with which you cannot interfere. For myself I would protect her

-happiness as I would her honour if I thought either endangered. Whether

-you or I like the Marquis de Sabran is wholly beyond the question. She

-loves him, and she has made him one of us. His honour is now ours.

-For myself I would defend him in his absence as though he were my own

-brother. Not for his sake at all&mdash;for hers. I do not express myself

-very well, but you know what I mean. Here is Max returning to claim

-you.'</p>

-

-<p>Silenced and a little alarmed the Countess Brancka rose and went off to

-her place in the cotillon.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely, sitting where she had left him, watched the mazes of the

-cotillon, the rhythm of the tzigane musicians coming to his ear

-freighted with a thousand familiar memories of the czardas danced madly

-in the long Hungarian nights. Time had been when the throb of the

-tzigane strings had stirred all his pulses like magic, but now all his

-bold bright life seemed numb and frozen in him.</p>

-

-<p>His eyes rested on his cousin, where she stood conversing with a crown

-prince, who was her chief guest, and passed from her to follow the

-movements of Sabran, who with supreme ease and elegance was leading a

-new intricate measure down the ball-room.</p>

-

-<p>She was happy, that he could not doubt. Every action, every word, every

-glance said so with a meaning not to be doubted. He thought she had

-never looked so handsome as she did to-night since that far away day

-in her childhood when he had seen her with the red and white roses in

-her lap and the crown upon her curls. She had the look of her childhood

-in her eyes, that serene and glad light which had been dimmed by her

-brothers' death, but now shone there again tranquil, radiant, and pure

-as sunlight is. She wore white velvet and white brocade; her breast

-was hidden in white roses; she wore her famous pearls and the ribbons

-of the Starred Cross of Austria and of the Prussian Order of Merit;

-she held in her hand a large painted fan which had belonged to Maria

-Theresa. Every now and then, as she talked with her royal guest, her

-glance strayed down the room to where her husband was, and lingered

-there a moment with a little smile.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely watched her for awhile, then rose abruptly, and made his way

-out of the ball-room and the state apartments down the corridors of the

-old house he knew so well towards his own chamber. He thought he would

-write to her and leave upon the morrow. What need was there for him to

-stay on in this perpetual pain? He had done enough for the world, which

-had seen him under the roof of Hohenszalras.</p>

-

-<p>As he took his way through the long passages, tapestry-hung or

-oak-panelled, which led across the great building to his own set of

-rooms in the clock tower, he passed an open door out of which a light

-was streaming. As he glanced within he saw it was the children's

-sleeping apartment, of which the door was open because the night was

-warm, unusually warm for the heart of the Gross Glöckner mountains. An

-impulse he could not have explained made him pause and enter. The three

-little white beds of carved Indian work, with curtains of lace, looked

-very snowy and peaceful in the pale light from a hanging lamp. The

-children were all asleep; the one nearest the door was Bela.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely stood and looked at him. His head was thrown back on his

-pillow and his arms were above his head. His golden hair, which was

-cut straight and low over his forehead, had been pushed back in his

-slumber; he looked more like his father than in his waking hours,

-for as he dreamed there was a look of coldness and of scorn upon his

-childish face, which made him so resemble Sabran that the man who

-looked on him drew his breath hard with pain.</p>

-

-<p>The night-nurse rose from her seat, recognising Prince Egon, whom she

-had known from his childhood.</p>

-

-<p>'The little Count is so like the Marquis,' she said, approaching; 'so

-is Herr Gela. Ah, my Prince, you remember the noble gentlemen whose

-names they bear? God send they may be like them in their lives and not

-their deaths!'</p>

-

-<p>'An early death is good,' said Vàsàrhely, as he stood beside the

-child's bed. He thought how good it would have been if he had fallen

-at Sadowa or Königsgrätz, or earlier by the side of Gela and Victor,

-charging with his White Hussars.</p>

-

-<p>The old nurse rambled on, full of praise and stories of the children's

-beauty, and strength, and activity, and intelligence. Vàsàrhely did not

-hear her; he stood lost in thought looking down on the sleeping figure

-of Bela, who, as if conscious of strange eyes upon him, moved uneasily

-in his slumber, and ruffled his golden hair with his hands, and thrust

-off his coverings from his beautiful round white limbs.</p>

-

-<p>'Count Bela is not like our saint who died,' said the old nurse. 'He

-is always masterful, and loves his own way. My lady is strict with

-him, and wisely so, for he is a proud rebellious child. But he is very

-generous, and has noble ways. Count Gela is a little angel; he will be

-like the Heilige Graf.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely did not hear anything she said. His gaze was bent on the

-sleeping child, studying the lines of the delicate brows, of the

-curving lips, of the long black lashes. It was so familiar, so

-familiar! Suddenly as he gazed a light seemed to leap out of the

-darkness of long forgotten years, and the memory which had haunted him

-stood out clear before him.</p>

-

-<p>'He is like Vassia Kazán!' he cried, half aloud. The face of the child

-had recalled what in the face of the man had for ever eluded his

-remembrance.</p>

-

-<p>He thrust a gold coin in the nurse's hand, and hurried from the

-chamber. A sudden inconceivable, impossible suspicion had leaped up

-before him as he had gazed on the sleeping loveliness of Sabran's

-little son.</p>

-

-<p>The old woman saw his sudden pallor, his uncertain gesture, and

-thought, 'Poor gallant gentleman! He wishes these pretty boys were his

-own. Well, it might have been better if he had been master here, though

-there is nothing to say against the one who is so. Still, a stranger is

-always a stranger, and foreign blood is bad.'</p>

-

-<p>Then she drew the coverings over Bela's naked little limbs, and passed

-on to make sure that the little Ottilie, who had been born when the

-primroses where first out in the Iselthal woods, was sleeping soundly,

-and wanted nothing.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely made his way to his own chamber, and there sat down heavily,

-mechanically, like a man waking out from a bad dream.</p>

-

-<p>His memory went back to twenty years before, when he, a little lad, had

-accompanied his father on a summer visit to the house of a Russian,

-Prince Paul Zabaroff. It was a house, gay, magnificent, full of idle

-men and women of facile charm; it was not a house for youth; but

-both the Prince Vàsàrhely and the Prince Zabaroff were men of easy

-morals&mdash;<i>viveurs</i>, gamesters, and philosophers, who at fifteen years

-old themselves had been lovers and men of the world. At that house

-had been present a youth, some years older than he was, who was known

-as Vassia Kazán: a youth whose beauty and wit made him the delight of

-the women there, and whose skill at games and daring in sports won him

-the admiration of the men. It was understood without even being said

-openly that Vassia Kazán was a natural son of the Prince Zabaroff. The

-little Hungarian prince, child as he was, had wit enough and enough

-knowledge of life to understand that this brilliant companion, of his

-was base-born. His kind heart moved him to pity, but his intense pride

-curbed his pity with contempt. Vassia Kazán had resented the latter too

-bitterly to even be conscious of the first. The gentlemen assembled had

-diverted themselves by the unspoken feud that had soon risen between

-the boys, and the natural intelligence of the little Magyar noble had

-been no match for the subtle and cultured brain of the Parisian Lycéen.</p>

-

-<p>One day one of the lovely ladies there, who plundered Zabaroff and

-caressed his son, amused herself with a war of words between the lads,

-and so heated, stung, spurred and tormented the Hungarian boy that,

-exasperated by the sallies and satires of his foe, and by the presence

-of this lovely goddess of discord, he so far forgot his chivalry that

-he turned on Vassia with a taunt. 'You would be a serf if you were in

-Russia!' he said, with his great black eyes flashing the scorn of the

-noble on the bastard. Without a word, Vassia, who had come in from

-riding and had his whip in his hand, sprang on him, held him in a grip

-of steel, and thrashed him. The fiery Magyar, writhing under the blows

-of one who to him was as a slave, as a hound, freed his right arm,

-snatched from a table near an oriental dagger lying there with other

-things of value, and plunged it into the shoulder of his foe. The

-cries of the lady, alarmed at her own work, brought the men in from

-the adjoining room; the boys were forced apart and carried to their

-chambers.</p>

-

-<p>Prince Vàsàrhely left the house that evening with his son, still

-furious and unappeased. Vassia Kazán remained, made a hero of and

-nursed by the lovely woman who had thrown the apple of strife. His

-wound was healed in three weeks' time; soon after his father's

-house-party was scattered, and he himself returned to his college. Not

-a syllable passed between him and Zabaroff as to his quarrel with the

-little Hungarian magnate. To the woman who had wrought the mischief

-Zabaroff said: 'Almost I wish he were my lawful son. He is a true wolf

-of the steppes. Paris has only combed his hide and given him a silken

-coat; he is still a wolf, like all true Russians.'</p>

-

-<p>Looking on the sleeping child of Sabran, all that half-forgotten scene

-had risen up before the eyes of Egon Vàsàrhely. He seemed to see the

-beautiful fair face of Vassia Kazán, with the anger on the knitted

-brows, and the ferocity on the delicate stern lips as he had raised his

-arm to strike. Twenty years had gone by; he himself, whenever he had

-remembered the scene, had long grown ashamed of the taunt he had cast,

-not of the blow he had given, for the sole reproof his father had ever

-made him was to say: 'A noble, only insults his equals. To insult an

-inferior is ungenerous, it is derogatory; whom you offend you raise for

-the hour to a level with yourself. Remember to choose your foes not

-less carefully than you choose your friends.'</p>

-

-<p>Why with the regard, the voice, the air of Sabran had some vague

-intangible remembrance always come before him?'</p>

-

-<p>Why, as he had gazed on the sleeping child had the vague uncertainty

-suddenly resolved itself into distinct revelation?</p>

-

-<p>'He is Vassia Kazán! He is Vassia Kazán!' he said to himself a score

-of times stupidly, persistently, as one speaks in a dream. Yet he knew

-he must be a prey to delusion, to phantasy, to accidental resemblance.

-He told himself so. He resisted his own folly, and all the while a

-subtler inner consciousness seemed to be speaking in him, and saying to

-him:</p>

-

-<p>'That man is Vassia Kazán. Surely he is Vassia Kazán.'</p>

-

-<p>And then the loyal soul of him strengthened itself and made him think:</p>

-

-<p>'Even if he be Vassia Kazán he is her husband. He is what she loves; he

-is the father of those children that are hers.'</p>

-

-<p>He never went to his bed that night. When the music ceased at an hour

-before dawn, and the great house grew silent, he still sat there by

-the open casement, glad of the cold air that blew in from over the

-Szalrassee, as with daybreak a fine film of rain began to come down the

-mountain sides.</p>

-

-<p>Once he heard the voice of Sabran, who passed the door on his way to

-his own apartment. Sabran was saying in German with a little laugh:</p>

-

-<p>'My lady!' I am jealous of your crown prince. When I left him now in

-his chamber I was disposed to immortalise myself by regicide. He adores

-you!'</p>

-

-<p>Then he heard Wanda laugh in answer, with some words that did not

-reach his ear as they passed on further down the corridor. Vàsàrhely

-shivered, and instinctively rose to his feet. He felt as if he must

-seek him out and cry out to him:</p>

-

-<p>'Am I mad or is it true? Let me see your shoulder&mdash;have you the mark of

-the wound that I gave? Your little child has the face of Vassia Kazán.

-Are you Vassia Kazán? Are you the bastard of Zabaroff? Are you the wolf

-of the steppes?'</p>

-

-<p>He had desired to go from Hohenszalras, where every hour was pain to

-him, but now he felt an irresistible fascination in the vicinity of

-Sabran. His mind was in that dual state which at once rejects a fact as

-incredible, and believes in it absolutely. His reason told him that his

-suspicion was a folly; his instinct told him that it was a truth.</p>

-

-<p>When in the forenoon the castle again became animated, and the guests

-met to the mid-day breakfast in the hall of the knights, he descended,

-moved by an eagerness that made him for the first time in his life

-nervous. When Sabran addressed him he felt himself grow pale; he

-followed the movements, he watched the features, he studied the tones

-of his successful rival, with an intense absorption in them. Through

-the hunting breakfast, at which only men were present, he was conscious

-of nothing that was addressed to him; he only seemed to hear a voice in

-his ear saying perpetually&mdash;&mdash;'Yonder is Vassia Kazán.'</p>

-

-<p>The day was spent in sport, sport rough and real, that gave fair play

-to the beasts and perilous exposure to the hunters. For the first time

-in his life, Egon Vàsàrhely let a brown bear go by him untouched,

-and missed more than one roebuck. His eyes were continually seeking

-his host; a mile off down a forest glade the figure of Sabran seemed

-to fill his vision, a figure full of grace and dignity, clad in a

-hunting-dress of russet velvet, with a hunting-horn slung at his side

-on a broad chain of gold, the gift of his wife in memory of the fateful

-day when he had aimed at the <i>kuttengeier</i> in her woods.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran of necessity devoted himself to the crown prince throughout

-the day's sport; only in the twilight as they returned he spoke to

-Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>'Wanda is so full of regret that you wish to leave us,' he said, with

-graceful cordiality; 'if only I can persuade you to remain, I shall

-take her the most welcome of all tidings from the forest. Stay at the

-least another week, the weather has cleared.'</p>

-

-<p>As he spoke he thought that Vàsàrhely looked at him strangely; but

-he knew that he could not be much loved by his wife's cousin, and

-continued with good humour to persist in his request. Abruptly, the

-other answered him at last.</p>

-

-<p>'Wanda wishes me to stay? Well, I will stay then. It seems strange to

-hear a stranger invite <i>me</i> to Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran coloured; he said with hauteur:</p>

-

-<p>'That I am a stranger to Prince Vàsàrhely is not my fault. That I have

-the right to invite him to Hohenszalras is my happiness, due to his

-cousin's goodness, which has been far beyond my merit.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely's eyes dwelt on him gloomily; he was sensible of the dignity,

-the self-command, and the delicacy of reproof which were blent in the

-answer he had received; he felt humbled and convicted of ill-breeding.

-He said after a pause:</p>

-

-<p>'I should ask your pardon. My cousin would be the first to condemn my

-words; they sounded ill, but I meant them literally. Hohenszalras has

-been one of my homes from boyhood; it will be your son's when we are

-both dead. How like he is to you; he has nothing of his mother.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran, somewhat surprised, smiled as he answered:</p>

-

-<p>'He is very like me. I regret it; but you know the poets and the

-physiologists are for once agreed as to the cause of that. It is a

-truth proved a million times: <i>l'enfant de l'amour ressemble toujours

-au père.</i>'</p>

-

-<p>Egon Vàsàrhely grew white under the olive hue of his sun-bronzed

-cheek. The <i>riposte</i> had been made with a thrust that went home. Otto

-at that moment approached his master for orders for the morrow. They

-were no more alone. They entered the house; the long and ceremonious

-dinner succeeded. Vàsàrhely was silent and stern. Sabran was the most

-brilliant of hosts, the happiest of men; all the women present were in

-love with him, his wife the most of all.</p>

-

-<p>'Réné tells me you will stay, Egon. I am so very glad,' his cousin said

-to him during the evening, and she added with a little hesitation, 'If

-you would take time to know him well, you would find him so worthy of

-your regard; he has all the qualities that most men esteem in each

-other. It would make me so happy if you were friends at heart, not only

-in mere courtesy.'</p>

-

-<p>'You know that can never be,' said Vàsàrhely, almost rudely. 'Even you

-cannot work miracles. He is your husband. It is a reason that I should

-respect him, but it is also a reason why I shall for ever hate him.'</p>

-

-<p>He said the last words in a tone scarcely audible, but low as it was,

-there was a force in it that affected her painfully.</p>

-

-<p>'What you say there is quite unworthy of you,' she said with gentleness

-but coldness. 'He has done you no wrong. Long ere I met him I told you

-that what you wished was not what I wished, never would be so. You are

-too great a gentleman, Egon, to nourish an injustice in your heart.'</p>

-

-<p>He looked down; every fibre in him thrilled and burned under the sound

-of her voice, the sense of her presence.</p>

-

-<p>'I saw your children asleep last night,' he said abruptly. 'They have

-nothing of you in them; they are his image.'</p>

-

-<p>'Is it so unusual for children to resemble their father?' she said with

-a smile, whilst vaguely disquieted by his tone.</p>

-

-<p>'No, I suppose not; but the Szalras have always been of one type. How

-came your husband by that face? I have seen it amongst the Circassians,

-the Persians, the Georgians; but you say he is a Breton.'</p>

-

-<p>'The Sabrans of Romaris are Bretons; you have only to consult history.

-Very beautiful faces like his have seldom much impress of nationality;

-they always seem as though they followed the old Greek laws, and were

-cast in the divine heroic mould of another time than ours.'</p>

-

-<p>'Who was his mother?'</p>

-

-<p>'A Spanish Mexican.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely was silent.</p>

-

-<p>His cousin left him and went amongst her guests. A vague sense of

-uneasiness went with her at her consciousness of his hostility to

-Sabran. She wished she had not asked him to remain.</p>

-

-<p>'You have never offended Egon?' she asked Sabran anxiously that night.

-'You have always been forbearing and patient with him?'</p>

-

-<p>'I have obeyed you in that as all things, my angel,', he answered her

-lightly. 'What would you? He is in love with you still, and I have

-married you! It is even a crime in his eyes that my children resemble

-me! One can never argue with a passion that is unhappy. It is a kind of

-frenzy.'</p>

-

-<p>She heard with some impatience.</p>

-

-<p>'He has no right to cherish such a resentment. He keeps it alive by

-brooding on it. I had hoped that when he saw you here, saw how happy

-you render me, saw your children too, he would grow calmer, wiser, more

-reconciled to the inevitable.'</p>

-

-<p>'You did not know men, my love,' said Sabran, with a smile.</p>

-

-<p>To him the unhappiness and the ill-will of Egon Vàsàrhely were matters

-of supreme indifference; in a manner they gratified him, they even

-supplied that stimulant of rivalry which a man's passion needs to keep

-at its height in the calm of safe possession. That Egon Vàsàrhely saw

-his perfect happiness lent it pungency and a keener sense of victory.

-When he kissed his wife's hand in the sight of her cousin, the sense

-of the pain it dealt to the spectator gave the trivial action to him

-all the sweetness and the ardour of the first caresses of his accepted

-passion.</p>

-

-<p>Of that she knew nothing. It would have seemed to her ignoble, as so

-much that makes up men's desire always does seem to a woman of her

-temperament, even whilst it dominates and solicits her, and forces her

-to share something of its own intoxication.</p>

-

-<p>'Egon is very unreasonable,' said Mdme. Ottilie. 'He believes that

-if you had not met Réné you would have in time loved himself. It is

-foolish. Love is a destiny. Had you married him you would not have

-loved him. He would soon have perceived that and been miserable, much

-more miserable than he is now, for he would have been unable to release

-you. I think he should not have come here at all if he could not have

-met M. de Sabran with at least equanimity.'</p>

-

-<p>'I think so, too,' said Wanda, and an impatience against her cousin

-began to grow into anger; without being conscious of it, she had placed

-Sabran so high in her own esteem that she could forgive none who did

-not adore her own idol. It was a weakness in her that was lovely and

-touching in a character that had had before hardly enough of the usual

-foibles of humanity. Every error of love is lovable.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely could not dismiss from his mind the impression which haunted

-him.</p>

-

-<p>'I conclude you knew the Marquis de Sabran well in France?' he said one

-day to Baron Kaulnitz, who was still there.</p>

-

-<p>Kaulnitz demurred.</p>

-

-<p>'No, I cannot say that I did. I knew him by repute; that was not very

-pure. However, the Faubourg always received and sustained him; the

-Comte de Chambord did the same; they were the most interested. One

-cannot presume to think they could be deceived.'</p>

-

-<p>'Deceived!' echoed Prince Egon. 'What a singular word to use. Do you

-mean to imply the possibility of&mdash;of any falsity on his part&mdash;any

-intrigue to appear what he is not?'</p>

-

-<p>'No,' said Kaulnitz, with hesitation. 'Honestly, I cannot say so much.

-An impression was given me at the moment of his signing his marriage

-contract that he concealed something; but it was a mere suspicion. As I

-told you, the whole Legitimist world, the most difficult to enter, the

-most incredulous of assumption, received him with open arms. All his

-papers were of unimpeachable regularity. There was never a doubt hinted

-by anyone, and yet I will confess to you, my dear Egon, since we are

-speaking in confidence, that I have had always my own doubts as to his

-marquisate of Sabran.'</p>

-

-<p>'<i>Grosser Gott!</i>' exclaimed Vàsàrhely, as he started from his seat.

-'Why did you not stop the marriage?'</p>

-

-<p>'One does not stop a marriage by a mere baseless suspicion,' replied

-Kaulnitz. 'I have not one shadow of reason for my probably quite

-unwarranted conjecture. It merely came into my mind also at the

-signing of the contracts. I had already done all I could to oppose

-the marriage, but Wanda was inflexible&mdash;you are witness of the charm

-he still possesses for her&mdash;and even the Princess was scarcely

-less infatuated. Besides, it must be granted that few men are more

-attractive in every way; and as he <i>is</i> one of us, whatever else he be,

-his honour is now our honour, as you said yourself the other day.'</p>

-

-<p>'One could always kill him,' muttered Vàsàrhely, 'and set her free so,

-if one were sure.'</p>

-

-<p>'Sure of what?' said Kaulnitz, rather alarmed at the effect of his own

-words. 'You Magyar gentlemen always think that every knot can be cut

-with a sword. If he were a mere adventurer (which is hardly possible)

-it would not mend matters for you to run him through the heart; there

-are his children.'</p>

-

-<p>'Would the marriage be legal if his name were assumed?'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, no! She could have it annulled, of course, both by Church and Law.

-All those pretty children would have no rights and no name. But we are

-talking very wildly and in a theatrical fashion. He is as certainly

-Marquis de Sabran as I am Karl von Kaulnitz.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely said nothing; his mind was in tumult, his heart oppressed by

-a sense of secrecy and of a hope that was guilty and mean.</p>

-

-<p>He did not speak to his companion of Vassia Kazán, but his conjecture

-seemed to hover before his sight like a black cloud which grew bigger

-every hour.</p>

-

-<p>He remained at Hohenszalras throughout the autumnal festivities. He

-felt as if he could not go away with that doubt still unsolved, that

-suspicion either confirmed or uprooted. His cousin grew as uneasy at

-his presence there as she had before been uneasy at his absence. Her

-instinct told her that he was the foe of the one dearest to her on

-earth. She felt that the gallant and generous temper of him had changed

-and grown morose; he was taciturn, moody, solitary.</p>

-

-<p>He spent almost all his time out of doors, and devoted himself to the

-hardy sport of the mountains and forests with a sort of rage. Guests

-came and went at the castle; some were imperial, some royal people;

-there was always a brilliant circle of notable persons there, and

-Sabran played his part as their host, with admirable tact, talent, and

-good humour. His wit, his amiability, his many accomplishments, and

-his social charm were in striking contrast to the sombre indifference

-of Vàsàrhely, whom men had no power to amuse and women no power to

-interest. Prince Egon was like a magnificent picture by Rembrandt,

-as he sat in his superb uniform in a corner of a ball-room with the

-collars of his orders blazing with jewels, and his hands crossed on

-the diamond-studded hilt of his sword; but he was so mute, so gloomy,

-so austere, that the vainest, coquette there ceased to hope to please

-him, and his most cordial friends found his curt contemptuous replies

-destroy their desire for his companionship.</p>

-

-<p>Wanda, who was frankly and fondly attached to him, began to long for

-his departure. The gaze of his black eyes, fixed in their fire and

-gloom on the little gay figures of her children, filled her with a

-vague apprehension.</p>

-

-<p>'If he would only find some one and be happy,' she thought, with anger

-at this undesired and criminal love which clung to her so persistently.</p>

-

-<p>'Am I made of wax?' he said to her with scorn, when she ventured to

-hint at her wishes.</p>

-

-<p>'How I wish I had not asked him to remain here!' she said to herself

-many times. It was not possible for her to dismiss her cousin, who had

-been from his infancy accustomed to look on the Hohenszalrasburg as his

-second home. But as circle after circle of guests came, went, and were

-replaced by others, and Egon Vàsàrhely still retained the rooms in the

-west tower that had been his from boyhood, his continual presence grew

-irksome and irritating to her.</p>

-

-<p>'He forgets that it is now my husband's house!' she thought.</p>

-

-<p>There was only one living creature in all the place to whom Vàsàrhely

-unbent from his sullen and haughty reserve, and that one was the child

-Bela.</p>

-

-<p>Bela was as beautiful as the morning, with his shower of golden hair,

-and his eyes like sapphires, and his skin like a lily. With curious

-self-torture Vàsàrhely would attract the child to him by tales of

-daring and of sport, and would watch with intent eyes every line of

-the small face, trying therein to read the secret of the man by whom

-this child had been begotten. Bela, all unconscious, was proud of this

-interest displayed in him by this mighty soldier, of whose deeds in war

-Ulrich and Hubert and Otto told such Homeric tales.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela will fight with you when he is big,' he would say, trying to

-inclose the jewelled hilt of Vàsàrhely's sword in his tiny fingers, or

-trotting after him through the silence of the tapestried corridors.

-When she saw them thus together she felt that she could understand the

-superstitious fear of oriental women when their children are looked at

-fixedly.</p>

-

-<p>'You are very good to my boy,' she said once to Vàsàrhely, when he had

-let the child chatter by his side for hours.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely turned away abruptly.</p>

-

-<p>'There are times when I could kill your son, because he is his,' he

-muttered, 'and there are times when I could worship him, because he is

-yours.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do not talk so, Egon,'she said, gravely. 'If you will feel so, it is

-best&mdash;I must say it&mdash;it is best that you should see neither my child

-nor me.'</p>

-

-<p>He took no notice of her words.</p>

-

-<p>'The children would always be yours,' he muttered. 'You would never

-leave him, never disgrace him for their sake; even if one knew&mdash;it

-would be of no use.'</p>

-

-<p>'Dear Egon,' she said in real distress, 'what strange things are you

-saying? Are you mad? Whose disgrace do you mean?'</p>

-

-<p>'Let us suppose an extreme case,' he said, with a hard laugh. 'Suppose

-their father were base, or vile, or faithless, would you hate the

-children? Surely you would.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have not imagination enough to suppose any such thing,'she said very

-coldly. 'And you do not know what a mother's love is, my cousin.'</p>

-

-<p>He walked away, leaving her abruptly.</p>

-

-<p>'How strange he grows!' she thought. 'Surely his mind must be touched;

-jealousy is a sort of madness.'</p>

-

-<p>She bade the children's attendants keep Count Bela more in the

-nurseries; she told them that the child teased her guests, and must

-not be allowed to run so often at his will and whim over the house.'

-She never seriously feared that Egon would harm the child: his noble

-and chivalrous nature could not have changed so cruelly as that; but

-it hurt her to see his eyes fixed on the son of Sabran with such

-persistent interrogation and so strange an intensity of observation. It

-made her think of old Italian tales of the evil eye.</p>

-

-<p>She did not know that Vàsàrhely had come thither with a sincere and

-devout intention to conquer his jealous hatred of her husband, and

-to habituate himself to the sight of her in the new relations of her

-life. She did not know that he would probably have honestly tried to

-do his duty, and honestly striven to feel at least esteem for one so

-near to her, if the suspicion which had become almost certainty in his

-own mind had not made him believe that he saw in Sabran a traitor,

-a bastard, and a criminal whose offences were the deepest of all

-possible offences, and whose degradation was the lowest of all possible

-degradation, in the sight of the haughty magnate of Hungary, steeped

-to the lips in all the traditions and the convictions of an unsullied

-nobility. If what he believed were, indeed, the truth, he would hold

-Sabran lower than any beggar crouching at the gate of his palace in

-Buda, than any gipsy wandering in the woods of his mountain fortress

-of Taróc. If what he believed were the truth, no leper would seem to

-him so loathsome as this brilliant and courtly gentleman to whom his

-cousin had given her hand, her honour, and her life.</p>

-

-<p>'Doubt, like a raging tooth,' gnawed at his heart, and a hope, which

-he knew was dishonourable to his chivalry, sprang up in him, vague,

-timid, and ashamed. If, indeed, it were as he believed, would not such

-crime, proven on the sinner, part him for ever from the pure, proud

-life of Wanda von Szalras? And then, as he thought thus, he groaned in

-spirit, remembering the children&mdash;the children with their father's face

-and their father's taint in them, for ever living witnesses of their

-mother's surrender to a lying hound.</p>

-

-<p>'Your cousin cannot be said to contribute to the gaiety of your

-house parties, my love,' Sabran observed with a smile one day, when

-they received the announcement of an intended visit from one of the

-archdukes. Egon Vàsàrhely was still there, and even his cousin, much

-as she longed for his departure, could not openly urge it upon him;

-relationship and hospitality alike forbade.</p>

-

-<p>'He is sadly changed,' she answered. 'He was always silent, but he is

-now morose. Perhaps he lives too much at Taróc, where all is very wild

-and solitary.'</p>

-

-<p>'He lives too much in your memory,' said Sabran, with no compassion.

-'Could he determine to forgive my marriage with you, there would be a

-chance for him to recover his peace of mind. Only, my Wanda, it is not

-possible for any man to be consoled for the loss of you.'</p>

-

-<p>'But that is nothing new,' she answered, with impatience. 'If he felt

-so strongly against you, why did he come here? It was not like his

-high, chivalrous honour.'</p>

-

-<p>'Perhaps he came with the frank will to be reconciled to his fate,'

-said Sabran, not knowing how closely he struck the truth, 'and at the

-sight of you, of all that he lost and that I gained, he cannot keep his

-resolution.'</p>

-

-<p>'Then he should go away,' she said, with that indifference to all

-others save the one beloved which all love begets.</p>

-

-<p>'I think he should. But who can tell him so?'</p>

-

-<p>'I did myself the other day. I shall tell him so more plainly, if

-needful. Who cannot honour you shall be no friend of mine, no guest of

-ours.'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, my love!' said Sabran, whose conscience was touched. 'Do not have

-feud with your relatives for my sake. They are worthier than I.'</p>

-

-<p>The Archduke, with his wife, arrived there on the following day, and

-Hohenszalras was gorgeous in the September sun, with all the pomp with

-which the lords of it had always welcomed their Imperial friends.

-Vàsàrhely looked on as a spectator at a play when he watched its

-present master receive the Imperial Prince with that supreme ease,

-grace, and dignity which were so admirably blent in him.</p>

-

-<p>'Can he be but a marvellous comedian?' wondered the man, to whom a

-bastard was less even than a peasant.</p>

-

-<p>There was nothing of vanity, of effort, of assumption visible in the

-perfect manner of his host. He seemed to the backbone, in all the

-difficult subtleties of society, as in the simple, frank intercourse

-of man and man, that which even Kaulnitz had conceded that he was,

-<i>gentilhomme de race.</i> Could he have been born a serf&mdash;bred from the

-hour's caprice of a voluptuary for a serving-woman?</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely sat mute, sunk so deeply in his own thoughts that all the

-festivities round him went by like a pageantry on a stage, in which he

-had no part.</p>

-

-<p>'He looks like the statue of the Commendatore,' said Olga Brancka, who

-had returned for the archducal visit, as she glanced at the sombre,

-stately figure of her brother-in-law, Sabran, to whom she spoke,

-laughed with a little uneasiness. Would the hand of Egon Vàsàrhely ever

-seize him and drag him downward like the hand of the statue in <i>Don

-Giovanni?</i></p>

-

-<p>'What a pity that Wanda did not marry him, and that I did not marry

-you!' said Mdme. Brancka, saucily, but with a certain significance of

-meaning.</p>

-

-<p>'You do me infinite honour!' he answered. 'But, at the risk of seeming

-most ungallant, I must confess the truth. I am grateful that the gods

-arranged matters as they are. You are enchanting, Madame Olga, as a

-guest, but as a wife&mdash;alas! who can drink <i>kümmel</i> every day?'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled enchantingly, showing her pretty teeth, but she was bitterly

-angered. She had wished for a compliment at the least. 'What can these

-men see in Wanda?' she thought savagely. 'She is handsome, it is true;

-but she has no coquetry, no animation, no passion. She is dressed by

-Worth, and has a marvellous quantity of old jewels; but for that no one

-would say anything of her except that she was much too tall and had a

-German face!' And she persuaded herself that it was so; if the Venus

-de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her

-waist was large.</p>

-

-<p>Mdme. Olga was still very lovely, and took care to be never seen except

-at her loveliest. She always treated Sabran with a great familiarity,

-which his wife was annoyed by, though she did not display her

-annoyance. Mdme Brancka always called him <i>mon cousin</i> or <i>beau cousin</i>

-in the language she usually used, and affected much more previous

-knowledge of him than their acquaintance warranted, since it had been

-merely such slight intimacy as results from moving in the same society.

-She was small and slight, but of great spirit; she shot, fished, rode,

-and played billiards with equal skill; she affected an adoration of

-the most dangerous sports, and even made a point of sharing the bear

-and the boar hunt. Wanda, who, though a person of much greater real

-courage, abhorred all the cruelties and ferocities that perforce

-accompany sport, saw her with some irritation go out with Sabran on

-these expeditions.</p>

-

-<p>'Women are utterly out of place in such sport as that, Olga,' she urged

-to her; 'and indeed are very apt to bring the men into peril, for of

-course no man can take care of himself whilst he has the safety of a

-woman to attend to; she must of necessity distract and trouble him.'</p>

-

-<p>But the Countess Stefan only laughed, and slipped with affectation her

-jewelled hunting-knife into its place in her girdle.</p>

-

-<p>Throughout the Archduke's visit, and after the Prince's departure,

-Vàsàrhely continued to stay on, whilst a succession of other guests

-came and went, and the summer deepened into autumn. He felt that he

-could not leave his cousin's house with that doubt unsolved; yet he

-knew that he might stay on for ever with no more certainty to reward

-him and confirm his suspicions than he possessed now. His presence

-annoyed his host, but Sabran was too polished a gentleman to betray

-his irritation; sometimes Vàsàrhely shunned his presence and his

-conversation for days together, at other times he sought them and rode

-with him, shot with him, and played cards with him, in the vain hope of

-gathering from some chance admission or allusion some clue to Sabran's

-early days. But a perfectly happy man is not given at any time to

-retrospection, and Sabran less than most men loved his past. He would

-gladly have forgotten everything that he had ever done or said before

-his marriage at the Hofburg.</p>

-

-<p>The intellectual powers and accomplishments of Sabran dazzled Vàsàrhely

-with a saddened sense of inferiority. Like most great soldiers he

-had a genuine humility in his measurement of himself. He knew that he

-had no talents except as a leader of cavalry. 'It is natural that she

-never looked at me,' he thought, 'when she had once seen this man, with

-his wit, his grace, his facility.' He could not even regard the skill

-of Sabran in the arts, in the salon, in the theatre with the contempt

-which the 'Wild Boar of Taróc' might have felt for a mere maker of

-music, a squire of dames, a writer of sparkling little comedies, a

-painter of screens, because he knew that both at Idrac and in France

-Sabran had showed himself the possessor of those martial and virile

-qualities, by the presence or the absence of which the Hungarian noble

-measured all men. He himself could only love well and live well: he

-reflected sadly that honesty and honour are not alone enough to draw

-love in return.</p>

-

-<p>As the weeks passed on, his host grew so accustomed to his presence

-there that it ceased to give him offence or cause him anxiety.</p>

-

-<p>'He is not amusing, and he is not always polite,' he said to his

-wife, 'but if he likes to consume his soul in gazing at you, I am not

-jealous, my Wanda; and so taciturn a rival would hardly ever be a

-dangerous one.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do not jest about it,' she answered him, with some real pain. 'I

-should be very vexed at his remaining here, were it not that I feel

-sure he will in time learn to live down his regrets, and to esteem and

-appreciate you.'</p>

-

-<p>'Who knows but his estimation of me may not be the right one?' said

-Sabran, with a pang of sad self-knowledge. And although he did not

-attach any significance to the prolonged sojourn of the lord of Taróc

-and Mohacs, he began to desire once more that his guest would return

-to the solitudes of the Carlowitz vineyards, or of the Karpathian

-mountains and gorges of snow.</p>

-

-<p>When over seven weeks had passed by, Vàsàrhely himself began to think

-that to stay in the Iselthal was useless and impossible, and he had

-heard from Taróc tidings which annoyed him&mdash;that his brother Stefan

-and his wife, availing themselves of his general permission to visit

-any one of his places when they chose had so strained the meaning of

-the permission that they had gone to his castle, with a score of their

-Parisian friends, and were there keeping high holiday and festival,

-to the scandal of his grave old stewards, and their own exceeding

-diversion. Hospitable to excess as he was, the liberty displeased him,

-especially as his, men wrote him word that his favourite horses; were

-being ruined by over-driving, and in the list of the guests which they

-sent him were the names of more than one too notorious lady, against

-whose acquaintance he had repeatedly counselled Olga Brancka. He would

-not have cared much what they had done at any other of his houses, but

-at Taróc, his mother, whom he had adored, had lived and died, and the

-place was sacred to him.</p>

-

-<p>He determined to tear himself away from Hohenszalras, and go and

-scatter these gay unbidden revellers in the dusky Karpathian ravines.

-'I cannot stay here for ever,' he thought, 'and I might be here for

-years without acquiring any more certainty than my own conviction.

-Either I am wrong, or he has nothing to conceal, or if I be right he is

-too wary to betray himself. If only I could see his shoulder where I

-struck the dagger&mdash;but I cannot go into his bath-room and say to him,

-"You are Vassia Kazán!"'</p>

-

-<p>He resolved to leave on the day after the morrow. For the next day

-there was organised on a large scale a hunting party, to which the

-nobility of the Tauern had been bidden. There were only some half-dozen

-men then staying in the Burg, most of them Austrian soldiers. The delay

-gave him the chance he longed for, which but for an accident he might

-never have had, though he had tarried there half a century.</p>

-

-<p>Early in the morning there was a great breakfast in the Rittersaal,

-at which Wanda did not appear. Sabran received the nobles and gentry

-of the province, and did the honours of his table with his habitual

-courtliness and grace. He was not hospitable in Vàsàrhely's sense of

-the word: he was too easily wearied by others, and too contemptuous of

-ordinary humanity; but he was alive to the pleasure of being lord of

-Hohenszalras, and sensible of the favour with which he was looked upon

-by a nobility commonly so exclusive and intolerant of foreign invasion.</p>

-

-<p>Breakfast over, the whole party went out and up into the high woods.

-The sport at Hohenszalras always gave fair play to beast and bird. In

-deference to the wishes of his wife, Sabran would have none of those

-battues which make of the covert or the forest a slaughterhouse. He

-himself disdained that sort of sport, and liked danger and adventure

-to mingle with his out-of-door pastimes. Game fairly found by the

-spaniel or the pointer; the boar, the wolf, the bear, honestly started

-and given its fair chance of escape or revenge; the steinbock stalked

-in a long hard day with peril and effort&mdash;these were all delightful

-to him on occasion; but for the crowded drive, the horde of beaters,

-the terrified bewildered troop of forest denizens driven with sticks

-on to the very barrels of the gunners, for this he had the boundless

-contempt of a man who had chased the buffalo over the prairie, and

-lassoed the wild horse and the wild bull leaning down from the saddle

-of his mustang. The day passed off well, and his guests were all

-content: he alone was not, because a large brown bear which he had

-sighted and tired at twice had escaped him, and roused that blood-lust

-in him which is in the hearts of all men.</p>

-

-<p>'Will you come out alone with me to-morrow and try for that grand

-brute?' he said to Vàsàrhely, as the last of his guests took their

-departure.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely hesitated.</p>

-

-<p>'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since

-you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'</p>

-

-<p>He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught

-at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of

-Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had

-suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had

-intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving

-directions to the <i>jägermeister</i> for the next day.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is

-impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance

-resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a

-child.</p>

-

-<p>In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where

-the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a

-rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and

-mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in

-the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with

-no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their

-rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went

-through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a

-mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and

-capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big

-game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting

-and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and

-drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper

-woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian

-pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above

-some underground.</p>

-

-<p>'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper

-to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should

-be his host's.</p>

-

-<p>'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my

-guest.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him

-to contrive to sting and wound him.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not

-observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed

-upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both

-in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron,

-good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about

-a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low

-hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and

-would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached.

-The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.</p>

-

-<p>'Well done,' cried Sabran, but scarcely were the words off his lips

-when another bear burst through the boughs ahead of him by fifty yards.

-He levelled his rifle and received its approach with two bullets in

-rapid succession. But neither had entered a vital part, and the animal,

-only rendered furious by pain, reared and came towards him with

-deadliest intent, its great fangs grinning. He fired again, and this

-shot struck home. The poor brute fell with a crash, the blood pouring

-from its mouth. It was not dead and its agony was great.</p>

-

-<p>'I will give it the <i>coup de grâce</i>,' said Sabran, who, for his wife's

-sake', was as humane as any hunter ever can be to the beasts he slew.</p>

-

-<p>'Take care,' said Vàsàrhely. 'It is dangerous to touch a wounded bear.

-I have known one that looked stone dead rise up and kill a man.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran did not heed. He went up to the poor, panting, groaning mass of

-fur and flesh, and drew his hunting-knife to give it the only mercy

-that it was now possible for it to receive. But as he stooped to

-plunge the knife into its heart the bear verified the warning he had

-been given. Gathering all its oozing strength in one dying effort to

-avenge its murder, it leaped on him, dashed him to the earth, and clung

-to him with claw and tooth fast in his flesh. He freed his right arm

-from its ponderous weight, its horrible grip, and stabbed it with his

-knife as it clung to and lacerated him where he lay upon the grass.

-In an instant, Vàsàrhely and the jäger who was with them were by his

-side, freed him from the animal, and raised him from the ground. He

-was deluged with its blood and his own. Vàsàrhely, for one moment of

-terrible joy, for which he loathed himself afterwards, thought, 'Is he

-dead?' Men had died of lesser things than this.</p>

-

-<p>He stood erect and smiled, and said that it was nothing, but even as he

-spoke a faintness came over him, and his lips turned grey.</p>

-

-<p>The jäger supported him tenderly, and would have had him sit down upon

-a boulder of rock, but he resisted.</p>

-

-<p>'Let me get to that water, he said feebly, looking to a spot a few

-yards off, where one of the many torrents of the Hohe Tauern tumbled

-from the wooded cliff above through birch and beechwood, and rushing

-underground left a clear round brown pool amongst the ferns. He took a

-draught from the flask of brandy; tendered him by the lad, and leaning

-on the youth, and struggling against the sinking swoon that was coming

-on him, walked to the edge of the pool, and dropped down there on one

-of the mossy stones which served as a rough chair.</p>

-

-<p>'Strip me, and wash the blood away, he said to the huntsman, whilst the

-green wood and the daylight, and the face of the man grew dim to him,

-and seemed to recede further and further in a misty darkness. The youth

-obeyed, and cut away the velvet coat, the cambric shirt, till he was

-naked to his waist; then, making sponges of handkerchiefs, the jäger

-began to wash the blood from him and staunch it as best he could.</p>

-

-<p>Egon Vàsàrhely stood by, without offering any aid; his eyes were

-fastened on the magnificent bust of Sabran, as the sunlight fell on the

-fair blue-veined flesh, the firm muscles, the symmetrical throat, the

-slender, yet sinewy arms, round one of which was clasped a bracelet of

-fair hair. He had the chance he needed.</p>

-

-<p>He approached and told the lad roughly to leave the Marquis to him,

-he was doing him more harm than good; he himself had seen many

-battle-fields, and many men bleeding to death upon their mother earth.

-By this time Sabran's eyes were closed; he was hardly conscious of

-anything, a great numbness and infinite exhaustion had fallen upon him;

-his lips moved feebly. 'Wanda!' he said once or twice,'Wanda!'</p>

-

-<p>The face of the man who leaned above him grew dark as night; he gnashed

-his teeth as he begun his errand of mercy.</p>

-

-<p>Leave me with your lord,' he said to the young jäger. 'Go you to the

-castle. Find Herr Greswold, bring him; do not alarm the Countess, and

-say nothing to the household.'</p>

-

-<p>The huntsman went, fleet as a roe. Vàsàrhely remained alone with

-Sabran, who only heard the sound of the rushing water magnified a

-million times on his dulled ear.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely tore the shirt in shreds, and laved and bathed the wounds,

-and then began to bind them with the skill of a soldier who had often

-aided his own wounded troopers. But first of all, when he had washed

-the blood away, he searched with keen and eager eyes for a scar on the

-white skin&mdash;and found it.</p>

-

-<p>On the right shoulder was a small triangular mark; the mark of what,

-to a soldier's eyes, told of an old wound. When he saw it he smiled a

-cruel smile, and went on with his work of healing.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran leaned against the rock behind him; his eyes were still closed,

-the pulsations of his heart were irregular. He had lost a great

-quantity of blood, and the pool at his feet was red. They were but

-flesh wounds, and there was no danger in them themselves, but great

-veins had been severed, and the stream of life had hurried forth in

-torrents. Vàsàrhely thrust the flask between his lips, but he could not

-swallow.</p>

-

-<p>All had been done that could be for the immediate moment. The stillness

-of the deep woods was around them; the body of the brown bear lay on

-the soaked grass; a vulture scenting death, was circling above against

-the blue sky. Over the mind of his foe swept at the sight of them one

-of those hideous temptations which assail the noblest natures in an

-hour of hatred. If he tore the bandages he had placed there off the

-rent veins of the unconscious man whom he watched, the blood would

-leap out again in floods, and so weaken the labouring heart that in

-ten minutes more its powers would fall so low that all aid would be

-useless. Never more would the lips of Sabran meet his wife! Never

-more would his dreams be dreamed upon her breast! For the moment the

-temptation seemed to curl about him like a flame; he shuddered, and

-crossed himself. Was he a soldier to slay in cold blood by treachery a

-powerless rival?</p>

-

-<p>He leaned over Sabran again, and again tried to force the mouthpiece

-of his wine-flask through his teeth. A few drops passed them, and

-he revived a little, and swallowed a few drops more. The blood was

-arrested in its escape, and the pulsations of the heart were returning

-to their normal measure; after a while he unclosed his eyes, and looked

-up at the green leaves, at the blue sky.</p>

-

-<p>'Do not alarm Wanda,' he said feebly. 'It is a scratch; it will be

-nothing. Take me home.'</p>

-

-<p>With his left hand he felt for the hair bracelet on his right arm,

-between the shoulder and the wrist. It was stiff with his own blood.</p>

-

-<p>Then Vàsàrhely leaned over him and met his upward gaze, and said in his

-ear, that seemed still filled with the rushing of many waters, 'You are

-Vassia Kazán!'</p>

-

-<p>When a little later the huntsman returned, bringing the physician, whom

-he had met a mile nearer the house in the woods, and some peasants

-bearing a litter made out of pine branches and wood moss, they found

-Sabran stretched insensible beside the water-pool; and Egon Vàsàrhely,

-who stood erect beside him, said in a strange tone:</p>

-

-<p>'I have stanched the blood, and he has swooned, you see. I commit him

-to your hands. I am not needed.'</p>

-

-<p>And, to their surprise, he turned and walked away with swift steps into

-the green gloom of the dense forest.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>Sabran was still insensible when he was carried to the house.</p>

-

-<p>When he regained consciousness he was on his own bed, and his wife was

-bending over him. A convulsion of grief crossed his face as he lifted

-his eyelids and looked at her.</p>

-

-<p>'Wanda,' he murmured feebly, 'Wanda, you will forgive&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>She kissed him passionately, while her tears fell like rain upon his

-forehead. She did not hear his words distinctly; she was only alive to

-the intense joy of his recovered consciousness, of the sound of his

-voice, of the sense of his safety. She kneeled by his bed, covering his

-hands with caresses, prodigal of a thousand names of love, given up to

-an abandonment of terror and of hope which broke down all the serenity

-and self-command of her habitual temper. She was not even aware of the

-presence of others. The over-mastering emotions of anguish and of joy

-filled her soul, and made her seem deaf, indifferent to all living

-things save one.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran lay motionless. He felt her lips, he heard her voice; he did not

-look up again, nor did he speak again. He shut his eyes, and slowly

-remembered all that had passed. Greswold approached him and held his

-fingers on his wrist, and held a little glass to his mouth. Sabran put

-it away. 'It is an opiate,' he said feebly; 'I will not have it.'</p>

-

-<p>He was resolute; he closed his teeth, he thrust the calming draught

-away.</p>

-

-<p>He was thinking to himself: 'Sometimes in unconsciousness one speaks.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are not in great pain?' asked the physician. He made a negative

-movement of his head. What were the fire and the smart of his lacerated

-flesh, of his torn muscles, to the torments of his fears, to the agony

-of his long stifled conscience?</p>

-

-<p>'Do not torment him, let him be still,' she said to the physician; she

-held his hand in both her own and pressed it to her heart. His languid

-eyes thanked her, then closed again.</p>

-

-<p>Herr Greswold withdrew to a little distance and waited. It seemed to

-him strange that a man of the high courage and strong constitution of

-Sabran should be thus utterly broken down by any wound that was not

-mortal; should be thus sunk into dejection and apathy, making no effort

-to raise himself, even to console and reassure his wife. It was not

-like his careless and gallant temper, his virile and healthful strength.</p>

-

-<p>It was true, the doctor reflected, that he had lost a great amount of

-blood. Such a loss he knew sometimes affects the heart and shatters the

-nervous system in many unlooked-for ways. Yet, he thought, there was

-something beyond this; the attitude and the regard of Egon Vàsàrhely

-had been unnatural at such an hour of peril. 'When he said just now

-"forgive," what did he mean?' reflected the old man, whose ear had

-caught the word which had escaped that of Wanda, who had been only

-alive to the voice she adored.</p>

-

-<p>The next four days were anxious and terrible. Sabran did not recover as

-the physician expected that he would, seeing the nature of his wounds

-and the naturally elastic and sanguine temperament he possessed. He

-slept little, had considerable fever, woke from the little rest he

-had, startled, alarmed, bathed in cold sweats; at other times he lay

-still in an apathy almost comatose, from which all the caresses and

-entreaties of his wife failed to rouse him. They began to fear that the

-discharge from the arteries had in some subtle and dangerous manner

-affected the action of the heart, the composition of the blood, and

-produced aneurism or pyæmia. 'The hero of Idrac to be prostrated by a

-mere flesh wound!' thought Herr Greswold in sore perplexity. He sent

-for a great man of science from Vienna, who, when he came, declared the

-treatment admirable, the wounds healthy, the heart in a normal state,

-but added it was evident the nervous system had received a severe

-shock, the effects of which still remained.</p>

-

-<p>'But it is that which I cannot understand,' said the old man in

-despair. 'If you only knew the Marquis de Sabran as I know him; the

-most courageous, the most gay, the most resolute of men! A man to laugh

-at death in its face! A man absolutely without fear!'</p>

-

-<p>The other assented.</p>

-

-<p>'Every one knows what he did in the floods at Idrac,' he answered; 'but

-he has a sensitive temperament for all that. If you did not tell me it

-is impossible, I should say that he had had some mental shock, some

-great grief. The prostration seems to me more of the mind than the

-body. But you have assured me it is impossible?'</p>

-

-<p>'Impossible! There does not live on earth a man so happy, so fortunate,

-so blessed in all the world as he.'</p>

-

-<p>'Men have a past that troubles them sometimes,' said the Vienna

-physician. 'Nay, I mean nothing, but I believe that M. de Sabran was a

-man of pleasure. The cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must

-drink long afterwards. I do not mean anything; I merely suggest. The

-prostration has to my view its most probable origin in mental trouble;

-but it would do him more harm than good to excite him by any effort to

-certify this. To the Countess von Szalras I have merely said, that his

-state is the result of the large loss of blood, and, indeed, after all

-it may be so.'</p>

-

-<p>On the fifth day, Sabran, still lying in that almost comatose silence

-which had been scarcely broken since his accident, said in a scarce

-audible voice to his wife:</p>

-

-<p>'Is your cousin here?'</p>

-

-<p>She stooped towards him and answered:</p>

-

-<p>'Yes; he is here, love. All the others went immediately, but Egon

-remained. I suppose he thought it looked kinder to do so. I have

-scarcely seen him, of course.'</p>

-

-<p>The pallor of his face grew greyer; he turned his head away restlessly.</p>

-

-<p>'Why does he not go?' he muttered in his throat. 'Does he wait for my

-death?'</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, Réné! hush, hush!' she said, with horror and amaze. 'My love, how

-can you say such things? You are in no danger; the doctor assures me

-so. In a week or two you will be well, you will be yourself.'</p>

-

-<p>'Send your cousin away.'</p>

-

-<p>She hesitated; troubled by his unreasoning, restless jealousy, which

-seemed to be the only consciousness of life remaining with him. 'I will

-obey you, love; you are lord here,' she said softly; 'but will it not

-look strange? No guest can well be told to go.'</p>

-

-<p>'A guest!&mdash;he is an enemy!'</p>

-

-<p>She sighed, knowing how hopelessly reason can struggle against the

-delusions of a sick bed. 'I will tell him to go to-morrow,' she said,

-to soothe him. 'To-night it is too late.'</p>

-

-<p>'Write to him&mdash;do not leave me.'</p>

-

-<p>There was a childlike appeal in his voice, that from a man so strong

-had a piteous pathos. Her eyes swam with tears as she heard.</p>

-

-<p>'Oh, my dearest, I will not leave you!' she said passionately, 'not for

-one moment whilst I live; and oh, my beloved! what could death ever

-change in <i>me</i>? Have you so little faith?'</p>

-

-<p>'You do not know,' he said, so low that his breath scarcely stirred the

-air.</p>

-

-<p>She thought that he was tormented by a doubt that she would not be

-faithful to him if he died. She stooped and kissed him.</p>

-

-<p>'My own, I would sooner be faithless to you in your life than after

-death. Surely you know me well enough to know that at the least?'</p>

-

-<p>He was silent. A great sigh struggled from his breast and escaped his

-pale lips like a parting breath.</p>

-

-<p>'Kiss me again,' he murmured; 'kiss me again, whilst&mdash;&mdash;That gives me

-life,' he said, as he drew her head down upon his bosom, where his

-heart throbbed labouredly. A little while later he fell asleep. He

-slept some hours. When he awoke he was consumed by a nameless fear.</p>

-

-<p>'Is your cousin gone?' he asked.</p>

-

-<p>She told him that it was one o'clock in the same night; she had not

-written yet.</p>

-

-<p>'Let him stay,' he said feverishly. 'He shall not think I fear him. Do

-you hear me? Let him stay.'</p>

-

-<p>The words seemed to her the causeless caprice of a jealousy magnified

-and distorted by the weakness of fever. She strove to answer him

-calmly. 'He shall go or stay as you please,' she assured him. 'What

-does it matter, dear, what Egon does? You always speak of Egon. You

-have never spoken of the children once.'</p>

-

-<p>She wanted to distract his thoughts. She was pained to think how deep,

-though unspoken, his antagonism to her cousin must have been, that now

-in his feebleness it&mdash;was the one paramount absorbing thought.</p>

-

-<p>A great sadness came upon his face as she spoke; his lips trembled a

-little.</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! the children,' he repeated. 'Yes, bring them to me to-morrow. Bela

-is too like me. Poor Bela, it will be his curse.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is my joy of joys,' she murmured, afraid to see how his mind seemed

-astray.</p>

-

-<p>A shudder that was almost a spasm passed over him. He did not reply. He

-turned his face away from her, and seemed to sleep.</p>

-

-<p>The day following he was somewhat calmer, somewhat stronger, though his

-fever was high.</p>

-

-<p>The species of paralysis that had seemed to; fall on all his faculties

-had in a great measure left him. 'You wish, me to recover,' he said to

-her. 'I will do so, though perhaps it were, better not?'</p>

-

-<p>'He says strange things,' she said to Greswold. 'I cannot think why he

-has such thoughts.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is not he, himself, that has them, it is his fever,' answered the

-doctor. 'Why, in fever, do people often hate what they most adore when

-they are in health?'</p>

-

-<p>She was reassured, but not contented.</p>

-

-<p>The children were brought to see him. Bela had with him an ivory

-air-gun, with which he was accustomed to blow down his metal soldiers;

-he looked at his father with awed, dilated eyes, and said that he would

-go out with the gun and kill the brothers of the bear that had done the

-harm.</p>

-

-<p>'The bear was quite right,' said Sabran. 'It was I who was wrong to

-take a life not my own.'</p>

-

-<p>'That is beyond Bela,' said his wife. 'But I will translate it to him

-into language he shall understand, though I fear very much, say what I

-will, he will be a hunter and a soldier one day.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela looked from one to the other, knitting, his fair brows as he sat

-on the edge of the bed.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela will be like Egon,' he said, 'with all gold and fur to dress up

-in, and a big jewelled sword, and ten hundred men and horses, and Bela

-will be a great killer of things!'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran smiled languidly, but she saw that he flinched at her cousin's

-name.</p>

-

-<p>'I shall not love you, Bela, if you are a killer of things that are

-God's dear creatures,' she said, as she sent the child away.</p>

-

-<p>His blue eyes grew dark with anger.</p>

-

-<p>'God only cares about Bela,' he said in innocent profanity, with

-a profound sense of his own vastness in the sight of heaven, 'and

-Gela,' he added, with the condescending tenderness wherewith he always

-associated his brother and himself.</p>

-

-<p>'Where could he get all that overwhelming pride?' she said, as he was

-led away. 'I have tried to rear him so simply. Do what I may he will

-grow arrogant and selfish.'</p>

-

-<p>'My dear,' said Sabran, very bitterly, 'what avails that he was borne

-in your bosom? He is my son!'</p>

-

-<p>'Gela is your son, and he is so different,' she answered, not seeking

-to combat the self-censure to which she was accustomed in him, and

-which she attributed to faults or follies of a past life, magnified by

-a conscience too sensitive.</p>

-

-<p>'He is all yours then,' he said, with a wan smile. 'You have prevailed

-over evil.'</p>

-

-<p>In a few days later his recovery had progressed so far that he had

-regained his usual tone and look; his wounds were healing, and his

-strength was returning. He seemed to the keen eyes of Greswold to have

-made a supreme effort to conquer the moral depression into which he had

-sunk, and to have thrust away his malady almost by force of will. As he

-grew better he never spoke of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>On the fifteenth day from his accident he was restored enough to health

-for apprehension to cease. He passed some hours seated at an open

-window in his own room. He never asked if Vàsàrhely were still there or

-not.</p>

-

-<p>Wanda, who never left him, wondered at that silence, but she forbore to

-bring forward a name which had had such power to agitate him. She was

-troubled at the nervousness which still remained to him. The opening of

-a door, the sound of a step, the entrance of a servant made him start

-and turn pale. When she spoke of it with anxiety to Herr Joachim, he

-said vague sentences as to the nervousness which was consequent on

-great loss of blood, and brought forward instances of soldiers who had

-lost their nerve from the same cause. It did not satisfy her. She was

-the descendant of a long line of warriors; she could not easily believe

-that her husband's intrepid and careless courage could have been

-shattered by a flesh wound.</p>

-

-<p>'Did you really mean,' he said abruptly to her that afternoon, as he

-sat for the first time beside the open panes of the oriel; 'did you

-really mean that were I to die you would never forget me for any other?'</p>

-

-<p>She rose quickly as if she had been stung, and her face flushed.</p>

-

-<p>'Do I merit that doubt from you? she said. 'I think not.'</p>

-

-<p>She spoke rather in sadness than in anger. He had hurt her, he could

-not anger her. He felt the rebuke.</p>

-

-<p>'Even if I were dead, should I have all your life?' he murmured, in

-wonder at that priceless gift.</p>

-

-<p>'You and your children,' she said gravely. 'Ah! what can death do

-against great love? Make its bands stronger perhaps, its power purer.

-Nothing else.'</p>

-

-<p>'I thank you,' he said very low, with great humility, with intense

-emotion. For a moment he thought&mdash;&mdash;should he tell her, should he trust

-this deep tenderness which could brave death; and might brave even

-shame unblenching? He looked at her from under his drooped eyelids, and

-then&mdash;he dared not. He knew the pride which was in her better than she

-did&mdash;&mdash;her pride, which was inherited by her firstborn, and had been

-the sign manual of all her imperious race.</p>

-

-<p>He looked at her where she stood with the light falling on her through

-the amber hues of painted glass; worn, wan, and tired by so many days

-and nights of anxious vigil, she yet looked a woman whom a nation

-might salute with the <i>pro rege nostro!</i> that Maria Theresa heard. All

-that a great race possesses and rejoices in of valour, of tradition,

-of dignity, of high honour, and of blameless truth were expressed in

-her; every movement, attitude, and gesture spoke of the aristocracy of

-blood. All that potent and subtle sense of patrician descent which had

-most allured and intoxicated him in other days now awed and daunted

-him. He dared not tell her of his treason. He dared not. He was as a

-false conspirator before a great queen he has betrayed.</p>

-

-<p>'Are you faint, my love?' she asked him, alarmed to see the change upon

-his face and the exhaustion with which he sunk, backward against the

-cushions of his chair.</p>

-

-<p>'Mere weakness; it will pass,' he said, smiling as best he might, to

-reassure her. He felt like a man who slides down a crevasse, and has

-time and consciousness enough to see the treacherous ice go by him,

-the black abyss yawning below him, the cold, dark death awaiting him

-beyond, whilst on the heights the sun is shining.</p>

-

-<p>That night he entreated her to leave him and rest. He assured her he

-felt well; he feigned a need of sleep. For fifteen nights she had not

-herself lain down. To please him she obeyed, and the deep slumber of

-tired nature soon fell upon her. When he thought she slept, he rose

-noiselessly and threw on a long velvet coat, sable-lined, that was by

-his bedside, and looked at his watch. It was midnight.</p>

-

-<p>He crossed the threshold of the open door into his wife's chamber and

-stood beside her bed for a moment, gazing at her as she slept. She

-seemed like the marble statue of some sleeping saint; she lay in the

-attitude of S. Cecilia on her bier at Home. The faint lamplight made

-her fair skin white as snow. Bound her arm was a bracelet of his hair

-like the one which he wore of hers. He stood and gazed on her, then

-slowly turned away. Great tears fell down his cheeks as he left her

-chamber. He opened the door of his own room, the outer one which led

-into the corridor, and walked down the long tapestry-hung gallery

-leading to the guest-chambers. It was the first time that he had walked

-without assistance; his limbs felt strange and broken, but he held on,

-leaning now and then to rest against the arras. The whole house was

-still.</p>

-

-<p>He took his way straight to the apartments set aside for guests. All

-was dark. The little lamp he carried shed a circle of light about his

-steps but none beyond him. When he reached the chamber which he knew

-was Egon Vàsàrhely's he did not pause. He struck on its panels with a

-firm hand.</p>

-

-<p>The voice of Vàsàrhely asked from within, 'Who is there? Is there

-anything wrong?'</p>

-

-<p>'It is I! Open,' answered Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>In a moment more the door unclosed. Vàsàrhely stood within it; he was

-not undressed. There were a dozen wax candles burning in silver sconces

-on the table within. The tapestried figures on the walls grew pale and

-colossal in their light. He did not speak, but waited.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran entered and closed the door behind him. His face was bloodless,

-but he carried himself erect despite the sense of faintness which

-assailed him.</p>

-

-<p>'You know who I am?' he said simply, without preface or supplication.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely gave a gesture of assent.</p>

-

-<p>'How did you know it?'</p>

-

-<p>'I remembered,' answered the other.</p>

-

-<p>There was a moment's silence. If Vàsàrhely could have withered to the

-earth by a gaze of scorn the man before him, Sabran would have fallen

-dead. As it was his eyes dropped beneath the look, but the courage and

-the dignity of his attitude did not alter. He had played his part of

-a great noble for so long that it had ceased to be assumption and had

-become his nature.</p>

-

-<p>'You will tell her?' he said, and his voice did not tremble, though his

-very soul seemed to swoon within him.</p>

-

-<p>'I shall not tell her!'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely spoke with effort; his words were hoarse and stern.</p>

-

-<p>'You will not?'</p>

-

-<p>An immense joy, unlooked for, undreamed of, sprang up in him, checked

-as it rose by incredulity.</p>

-

-<p>'But you loved her!' he said, on an impulse which he regretted even

-as the exclamation escaped him. Vàsàrhely threw his head back with a

-gesture of fine anger.</p>

-

-<p>'If I loved' her what is that to you?' he said, with a restrained

-violence vibrating in his words. 'It is, perhaps, because I once loved

-her that your foul secret is safe with me now. I shall not tell her. I

-waited to say this to you. I could not write it lest it should meet her

-eyes. You came to ask me this? Be satisfied and go.'</p>

-

-<p>'I came to ask you this because, had you said otherwise, I would have

-shot myself ere she could have heard.'</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely said nothing; a great scorn was still set like the grimness

-of death upon his face. He looked far away at the dim figures on the

-tapestries; he shrunk from the sight of his boyhood's enemy as from

-some loathly unclean thing he must not kill.</p>

-

-<p>'Suicide!' he thought, 'the Slav's courage, the serf's refuge!</p>

-

-<p>Before the sight of Sabran the room went round, the lights grew dull,

-the figures on the walls became, fantastic and unreal. His heart beat

-with painful effort, yet his ears, his throat, his brain seemed full

-of blood. The nerves of his whole body seemed to shrink and thrill and

-quiver, but the force of habit kept him composed and erect before this

-man who was his foe, yet did for him what few friends would have done.</p>

-

-<p>'I do not thank you,' he said at last. 'I understand; you spare me for

-her sake, not mine.'</p>

-

-<p>'But for her, I would treat you so.'</p>

-

-<p>As he spoke he broke in two a slender agate ruler which lay on the

-writing-table at his elbow.</p>

-

-<p>'Go,' he added, 'you have had my word; though we live fifty years you

-are safe from me, because&mdash;&mdash;because&mdash;&mdash;God forgive you! you are hers.'</p>

-

-<p>He made a gesture towards the door. Sabran shivered under the insult

-which his conscience could not resent, his hand dared not avenge.</p>

-

-<p>Hearing this there fell away from him the arrogance that had been his

-mask, the courage that had been his shield. He saw himself for the

-first time as this man saw him, as all the world would see him if once

-it knew his secret. For the first time his past offences rose up like

-ghosts naked from their graves. The calmness, the indifference, the

-cynicism, the pride which had been so long in his manner and in his

-nature deserted him. He felt base-born before a noble, a liar before a

-gentleman, a coward before a man of honour.</p>

-

-<p>Where he stood, leaning on a high caned chair to support himself

-against the sickly weakness which still came on him from his scarce

-healed wounds, he felt for the first time to cower and shrink before

-this man who was his judge, and might become his accuser did he choose.

-Something in the last words of Egon Vàsàrhely suddenly brought home

-to him the enormity of his own sin, the immensity of the other's

-forbearance. He suddenly realised all the offence to honour, all the

-outrage to pride, all the ineffaceable indignity which he had brought

-upon a great race: all that he had done, never to be undone by any

-expiation of his own, in making Wanda von Szalras the mother of his

-sons. Submissive, he turned without a word of gesture or of pleading,

-and felt his way out of the chamber through the dusky mists of the

-faintness stealing on him.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against

-the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his

-clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.</p>

-

-<p>She was still asleep.</p>

-

-<p>When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever.

-He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a

-moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his

-desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.</p>

-

-<p>But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.</p>

-

-<p>Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned

-to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had

-left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person,

-as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no

-importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said

-nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental

-impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian

-mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use

-to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife

-attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial

-always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength

-returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a

-gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened

-upon her with a strange appeal.</p>

-

-<p>One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was

-certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following

-words to his foe and his judge:</p>

-

-<p>'Sir,&mdash;&mdash;You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I

-send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical

-weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time

-or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof

-absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that

-the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue

-it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but

-shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of

-action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present

-permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have

-governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or

-chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern

-both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse

-at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia

-Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to

-nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the

-great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was

-taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never

-saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years

-old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I

-remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you,

-and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then

-returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him.

-One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the

-Prince Zabaroff was dead&mdash;my protector, as they termed him&mdash;and that

-I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make

-you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always

-been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family,

-could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts,

-the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then,

-thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father.

-I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my

-fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother

-Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year

-after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You

-see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things

-or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had

-a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices,

-like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the

-love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit

-which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of

-me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive

-tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in

-my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those

-three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me

-with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be

-rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did

-me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a

-word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis

-with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold

-some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque

-going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down

-with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone

-reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe,

-and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread,

-fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I

-neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me

-popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name

-of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went

-there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the

-moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I

-liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely

-more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his

-fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior.

-Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left

-for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his

-hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the

-Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the

-solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts

-the hiss of an Indian's arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he

-lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of

-him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows

-of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher

-in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been

-subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having

-wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died

-of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to

-think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life

-with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed

-me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the

-dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history

-of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was

-glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike

-as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on

-the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the

-steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men

-I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I

-loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican <i>ranch</i> near,

-within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us

-and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost

-inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps

-covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it

-all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be

-gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies

-which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight

-whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector

-and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose

-heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he

-died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything

-he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would

-collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France.

-For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss.

-I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and

-his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of

-cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave.

-I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the

-temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all

-those which had been brought with him from France by his Jesuit tutors,

-and the certificates of his own and his father's births and marriages,

-with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper

-containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and

-patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden

-in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had

-desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great

-sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine:

-he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human

-being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed

-to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots

-not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had

-the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was

-born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible

-reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years

-I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and

-purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris,

-yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in

-many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong

-which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that

-I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it

-seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had

-deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and

-had given me all he held most dear&mdash;&mdash;the fruits of his researches.

-To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation.

-I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as

-the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew

-that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke

-no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was

-recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned

-to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance

-with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to

-me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not

-having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I

-went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had

-been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The

-priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the

-name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing&mdash;&mdash;Bretons

-never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead

-men who had gone down when the <i>Estelle</i> had foundered off the Pinos.

-I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so

-much during my seven years' absence from Paris that I did not suppose

-anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran.

-And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known

-me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred

-of me as your cousin's husband; and had you even had suspicions you

-could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in

-the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down

-the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me

-take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune

-involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have

-done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and

-some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What

-was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over

-with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is

-my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious

-and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense

-perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it

-as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying

-ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to

-justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware

-that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true

-that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed

-me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to

-me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I

-had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely

-closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became

-almost by necessity a <i>fainéant</i>, and fate smiled upon me more than I

-merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all

-his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me.

-I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I

-can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so

-natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made

-me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to

-act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and

-irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call

-<i>flair.</i> I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on

-the Bourse. I was also, famous for <i>la main heureuse</i> in all forms of

-gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept

-always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed

-to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded

-the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should

-not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was

-a man of honour until&mdash;&mdash;I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to

-defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware

-of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied

-your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her.

-You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It

-is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions

-of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to

-me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia,

-but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am

-base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting

-elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and

-mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten

-by a great lord's momentary <i>ennui</i> and caprice! But if you will stoop

-so far&mdash;&mdash;if you will consider me ennobled by <i>her</i> enough to meet

-you as an equal would do&mdash;&mdash;we can find with facility some pretext

-of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me.

-You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are

-the only male champion&mdash;what her brothers would surely have taken had

-they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have

-passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your

-commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to

-their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet

-you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother's

-than their father's, and she will rear them in all noble ways.'</p>

-

-<p>Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed

-it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return

-of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace

-with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his

-own cowardice and shame.</p>

-

-<p>It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of

-Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief:&mdash;&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for

-she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.</p>

-

-<p style="margin-left: 60%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.'</p>

-

-<p>To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:</p>

-

-<p>'Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did

-not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has

-seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return.

-It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a

-prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go

-to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If

-ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope

-this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen

-you.' Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to

-be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name.

-Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your

-husband, and give me a remembrance in your prayers.</p>

-

-<p style="margin-left: 70%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'EGON.'</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn

-shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and

-to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of

-her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to

-play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and

-eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this

-unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it

-plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian

-world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it

-was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman,

-which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon

-her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and

-what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at

-Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of

-it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation.

-If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again

-paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and

-her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.</p>

-

-<p>'Wanda has ruined him!' she always thought angrily. 'He always expects

-every other woman to have a soul above <i>chiffons</i> and to bury herself

-in the country with children and horses.'</p>

-

-<p>Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which

-his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to

-her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the

-pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him.

-Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed

-measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to

-entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and

-was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law.

-She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only

-came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild

-forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely,

-and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope,

-which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for

-her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the

-post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and

-soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was

-called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish

-literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race

-of Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>What was in that letter?</p>

-

-<p>She attended to none of her own, so absorbed was she in the impression

-which gained upon her that the packet which had brought so much

-surprise and even emotion upon his face came from the hand of Wanda.

-'If even she should be no saint at all?' she thought, with a malicious

-amusement. She did not see Egon Vàsàrhely for many hours, but she

-did not lose her curiosity nor cease to cast about for a method of

-gratifying it. At the close of the day when she came back from hunting

-she went into the library, which was then empty. She did not seriously

-expect to see anything that would reward her enterprise, but she knew

-he read his letters there and wrote the few he was obliged to write:

-like most soldiers he disliked using pen and ink. It was dusk, and

-there were a few lights burning in the old silver sconces fixed upon

-the horns of forest animals against the walls. With a quick, calm

-touch, she moved all the litter of papers lying on the huge table

-where he was wont to do such business as he was compelled to transact.

-She found nothing that gratified her inquisitiveness. She was about

-to leave the room in baffled impatience&mdash;&mdash;impatience of she knew not

-what&mdash;&mdash;when her eyes fell upon a pile of charred paper lying on the

-stove.</p>

-

-<p>It was one of those monumental polychrome stoves of fifteenth-century

-work in which the country-houses of Central Europe are so rich; a

-grand pile of fretted pottery, towering half way to the ceiling, with

-the crown and arms of the Vàsàrhely princes on its summit. There was

-no fire in it, for the weather was not cold, and Vàsàrhely, who alone

-used the room, was an ascetic in such matters; but upon its jutting

-step, which was guarded by lions of gilded bronze, there had been some

-paper burned: the ashes lay there in a little heap. Almost all of

-it was ash, but a few torn pieces were only blackened and coloured.

-With the eager curiosity of a woman who is longing to find another

-woman at fault, she kneeled down by the stove and patiently examined

-these pieces. Only one was so little burned that it had a word or two

-legible upon it; two of those words were Vassia Kazán. Nothing else was

-traceable; she recognised the handwriting of Sabran. She attached no

-importance to it, yet she slipped the little scrap, burnt and black as

-it was, within one of her gauntlets; then, as quickly as she had come

-there, she retreated and in another half hour, smiling and radiant,

-covered with jewels, and with no trace of fatigue or of weather, she

-descended the great banqueting-hall, clad as though the heart of the

-Greater Karpathians was the centre of the Boulevard S. Germain.</p>

-

-<p>Who was Vassia Kazán?</p>

-

-<p>The question floated above all her thoughts all that evening. Who was

-he, she, or it, and what could Sabran have to say of him, or her, or

-it to Egon Vàsàrhely? A less wise woman might have asked straightway

-what the unknown name might mean, but straight ways are not those

-which commend themselves to temperaments like hers. The pleasure and

-the purpose of her life was intrigue. In great things she deemed

-it necessity; in trifles it was an amusement; without it life was

-flavourless.</p>

-

-<p>The next day her brother-in-law abandoned Taróc, to join his hussars

-and prepare for the autumn manœuvres in the plains, and left her and

-Stefan in possession of the great place, half palace, half fortress,

-which had withstood more than one siege of Ottoman armies, where it

-stood across a deep gorge with the water foaming black below. But she

-kept the charred, torn, triangular scrap of paper; and she treasured

-in her memory the two words Vassia Kazán; and she said again and again

-and again to herself: 'Why should he write to Egon? Why should Egon

-burn what he writes?' Deep down in her mind there was always at work

-a bitter jealousy of Wanda von Szalras; jealousy of her regular and

-perfect beauty, of her vast possessions, of her influence at the Court,

-of her serene and unspotted repute, and now of her ascendency over the

-lives of Sabran and of Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>'Why should they both love that woman so much?' she thought very often.

-'She is always alike. She has no temptations. She goes over life as if

-it were frozen snow. She did one senseless thing, but then she was rich

-enough to do it with impunity. She is so habitually fortunate that she

-is utterly uninteresting; and yet they are both her slaves!'</p>

-

-<p>She went home and wrote to a cousin of her own who had been a member

-of the famous Third Section at Petersburg. She said in her letter: 'Is

-there anyone known in Russia as Vassia Kazán? I want you to learn for

-me to what or to whom this name belongs. It is certainly Russian, and

-appears to me to have been taken by some one who has been named <i>more

-hebrœo</i> from the city of Kazán. You, who know everything past,

-present, and to come, will be able to know this.'</p>

-

-<p>In a few days she received an answer from Petersburg. Her cousin wrote:

-'I cannot give you the information you desire. It must be a thing of

-the past. But I will keep it in mind, and sooner or later you shall

-have the knowledge you wish. You will do us the justice to admit that

-we are not easily baffled.'</p>

-

-<p>She was not satisfied, but knew how to be patient.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>Strangely enough the consciousness that one person lived who knew

-his secret unnerved him. He had said truly that so much were all his

-instincts and temper those of an aristocrat that he had long ceased to

-remember that he was not the true Marquis de Sabran. The admiration men

-frankly gave him, and the ascendency he exercised over women, had alike

-concurred in fostering his self-delusion. Since his recognition by the

-foe of his boyhood a vivid sense of his own shamefulness, however, had

-come upon him; a morbid consciousness that he was not what he seemed,

-and what all the world believed him, had returned to him. Egon would

-never speak, but he himself could never forget. He said to himself in

-his solitude, 'I am Vassia Kazán! and what he had done appeared to him

-intolerable, infamous, beyond all expiation.</p>

-

-<p>It was like an impalpable but impassable wall built up between himself

-and her. Nothing was changed except that one man knew his secret, but

-this one fact seemed to change the face of the world. For the first

-time all the deference, all the homage with which the people of the

-Tauern treated him seemed to him a derision. Naturally of proud temper,

-and of an intellect which gave him ascendency over others, he had from

-the first moment he had assumed the marquisate of Sabran received

-all the acknowledgments of his rank with an honest unconsciousness

-of imposture. After all he had in his veins blood as patrician as

-that of the Sabrans; but now that Egon Vàsàrhely knew the truth he

-was perpetually conscious of not being what he seemed. The mere sense

-that about the world there was another living being who knew what he

-knew, shook down all the self-possession and philosophy which had so

-long made him assure himself that the assumption of a name was an

-immaterial circumstance, which, harming no one, could concern no one.

-Egon Vàsàrhely seemed to have seized his sophisms in a rude grasp, and

-shaken them down as blossoms fall in wind. He thought with bitter

-self-contempt how true the cynic was who said that no sin exists so

-long as it is not found out; that discovery is the sole form which

-remorse takes.</p>

-

-<p>At times his remorse made him almost afraid of Wanda, almost shrink

-from her, almost tremble at her regard; at other times it intensified

-his passion and infused into his embraces a kind of ferocity of

-triumph. He would show an almost brutal ardour in his caresses, and

-would think with an almost cruel exultation, 'I was born a serf, and I

-am her lover, her lord! Strangely enough, she began to lose something

-of her high influence upon him, of her spiritual superiority in his

-sight. She was so entirely, so perpetually his, that she became in a

-manner tainted with his own degradation. She could no longer check him

-with a word, calm him with a gesture of restraint. She was conscious of

-a change in him which she could not explain to herself. His sweetness

-of temper was broken by occasional irritability that she had never seen

-before. He was at times melancholy and absorbed; he at times displayed

-a jealousy which appeared unworthy of herself and him; at other moments

-he adored her, submitted to her with too great a humility. They were

-still happy, but their happiness was more uncertain, more disturbed by

-passing shadows. She told herself that it was always so in marriage,

-that in the old trite phrase nothing mortal was ever perfect long. But

-this philosophy failed to reconcile her. She found herself continually

-pondering on the alteration that she perceived in him, without being

-able to explain it to herself in any satisfactory manner.</p>

-

-<p>One day he announced to her without preface that he had decided to

-renounce the name of Sabran; that he preferred to any other the title

-which she had given him in the Countship of Idrac. She was astonished,

-but on reflection only saw, in his choice, devotion and deference to

-herself. Perhaps, too, she reflected with a pang, he desired some

-foreign mission such as she had once proposed to him; perhaps the life

-at Hohenszalras was monotonous and too quiet for a man so long used

-to the movement and excitation of Paris. She suggested the invitation

-of a circle of guests more often, but he rejected the idea with some

-impatience. He, who had previously amused himself so well with the

-part of host to a brilliant society, now professed that he saw nothing

-but trouble and <i>ennui</i> in a house full of people, who changed every

-week, and of royal personages who exacted ceremonious observances

-that were tedious and burdensome. So they remained alone, for even

-the Princess Ottilie had gone away to Lilienslust. For her own part

-she asked nothing better. Her people, her lands, her occupations, her

-responsibilities, were always interest enough. She loved the stately,

-serene tread of Time in these mountain solitudes. Life always seemed

-to her a purer, graver, more august thing when no echo of the world

-without jarred on the solemnity of the woods and hills. She wanted her

-children to grow up to love Hohenszalras, as she had always done, far

-above all pomps and pleasures of courts and cities.</p>

-

-<p>The winter went by, and he spent most of the days out of doors in

-violent exercise, sledging, skating, wolf hunting. In the evenings he

-made music for her in the white room: beautiful, dreamy music, that

-carried her soul from earth. He played for hours and hours far into the

-night; he seemed more willing to do anything than to converse. When he

-talked to her she was sensible of an effort of constraint; it was no

-longer the careless, happy, spontaneous conversation of a man certain

-of receiving sympathy in all his opinions, indulgence in all his

-errors, comprehension in even his vaguest or most eccentric ideas: a

-certain charm was gone out of their intercourse. She thought sometimes

-humbly enough, was it because a man always wearies of a woman? Yet

-she could scarcely think that, for his reverential deference to her

-alternated with a passion that had lost nothing of its voluptuous

-intensity.</p>

-

-<p>So the winter passed away. Madame Ottilie was in the South for her

-health, with her relatives of Lilienhöhe; they invited no one, and so

-no one could approach them. The children grew and throve. Bela and his

-brother had a little sledge of their own, drawn by two Spanish donkeys,

-white as the snows that wrapped the Iselthal in their serenity and

-silence. In their little sable coats and their sable-lined hoods the

-two little boys looked like rosebuds wrapped in brown moss. They were a

-pretty spectacle upon the ice, with their stately Heiduck, wrapped in

-his scarlet and black cloak, walking by the gilded shell-shaped sledge.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela loves the ice best. Bela wishes the summer never was!' said the

-little heir of the Counts of Szalras one day, as he leaped out from

-under the bearskin of his snow-carriage. His father heard him, and

-smiled a little bitterly.</p>

-

-<p>'You have the snow in your blood,' he thought. 'I, too, know how I

-loved the winter with all its privations, how I skimmed like a swallow

-down the frozen Volga, how I breasted the wind of the North Sea, sad

-with the dying cries of the swans! But I had an empty stomach and

-naked limbs under my rough goatskin, and you ride there in your sables

-and velvets, a proud little prince, and yet you are my son!'</p>

-

-<p>Was he almost angered against his own child for the great heirship to

-which he was born, as kings are often of their dauphins? Bela looked up

-at him a little timidly, always being in a certain awe of his father.</p>

-

-<p>'May Bela go with you some day with the big black horses, one day when

-you go very far?'</p>

-

-<p>'Ask your mother,' said Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'She will like it,' said the child. 'Yesterday she said you never do

-think of Bela. She did not say it <i>to</i> Bela, but he heard.'</p>

-

-<p>'I will think of him,' said Sabran, with some emotion: he had a certain

-antagonism to the child, of which he was vaguely ashamed; he was sorry

-that she should have noticed it. He disliked him because Bela so

-visibly resembled himself that he was a perpetual reproach; a living

-sign of how the blood of a Russian lord and of a Persian peasant had

-been infused into the blood of the Austrian nobles.</p>

-

-<p>The next day he took the child with him on a drive of many leagues,

-through the frozen highways winding through the frosted forests under

-the huge snow-covered range of the Glöckner mountains. Bela was in

-raptures; the grand black Russian horses, whose speed was as the wind,

-were much more to his taste than the sedate and solemn Spanish asses.

-When they returned, and Sabran lifted him out of the sledge in the

-twilight, the child kissed his hand.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela loves you,' he said timidly.</p>

-

-<p>'Why do you?' said his father, surprised and touched. 'Because you are

-your mother's child?'</p>

-

-<p>Bela did not understand. He said, after a moment of reflection:</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is afraid, when you are angry; very afraid. But Bela does love

-you.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran laid his hand on the child's shoulder. 'I shall never be angry

-if Bela obey his mother, and never pain her. Remember that.'</p>

-

-<p>'He will remember,' said Bela. 'And may he go with the big black horses

-very soon again?'</p>

-

-<p>'Your mother's horses are just as big, and just as black. Is it not the

-same thing to go with her?'</p>

-

-<p>'No. Because she takes Bela often; you never.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are ungrateful,' said Sabran, in the tone which always alarmed and

-awed the bold, bright spirit of his child. 'Your mother's love beside

-mine is like the great mountain beside the speck of dust. Can you

-understand? You will when you are a man. Obey her and adore her. So you

-will best please me.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela looked at him with troubled suffused eyes; he went within doors a

-little sadly, led away by Hubert, and when he reached his nursery and

-had his furs taken from off him he was still serious, and for once he

-did not tell his thoughts to Gela, for they were too many for him to

-be able to master them in words. His father was a beautiful, august,

-terrible, magnificent figure in his eyes; with the confused fancies

-of a child's scarce-opened mind he blended together in his admiration

-Sabran and the great marble form of S. Johann of Prague which stretched

-its arm towards the lake from the doors of the great entrance, and, as

-Bela always understood, controlled the waters and the storms at will.

-Bela feared no one else in all the world, but he feared his father,

-and for that reason loved him as he loved nothing else in his somewhat

-selfish and imperious little life.</p>

-

-<p>'It is so good of you to have given Bela that pleasure,' his wife said

-to him when he entered the white room. 'I know you cannot care to hear

-a child chatter as I do. It can only be tiresome to you.'</p>

-

-<p>'I will drive him every day if it please <i>you</i>,' said Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'No, no; that would be too much to exact from you. Besides, he would

-soon despise his donkeys, and desert poor Gela. I take him but seldom

-myself for that reason. He has an idea that he is immeasurably older

-than Gela. It is true a year at their ages is more difference than are

-ten years at ours.'</p>

-

-<p>'The child said something to me, as if he had heard you say I do not

-care for him?'</p>

-

-<p>'You do not, very much. Surely you are inclined to be harsh to him?'</p>

-

-<p>'If I be so, it is only because I see so much of myself in him.'</p>

-

-<p>He looked at her, assailed once more by the longing which at times came

-over him to tell her the truth of himself, to risk everything rather

-than deceive her longer, to throw himself upon her mercy, and cut short

-this life which had so much of duplicity, so much of concealment, that

-every year added to it was a stone added to the mountain of his sins.

-But when he looked at her he dared not. The very grace and serenity

-of her daunted him; all the signs of nobility in her, from the repose

-of her manner to the very beauty of her hands, with their great rings

-gleaming on the long and slender fingers, seemed to awe him into

-silence. She was so proud a woman, so great a lady, so patrician in

-all her prejudices, her habits, her hereditary qualities, he dared not

-tell her that he had betrayed her thus. An infidelity, a folly, even

-any other crime he thought he could have summoned courage to confess

-to her; but to say to her, the daughter of a line of princes: 'I, who

-have made you the mother of my children, I was born a bastard and a

-serf!' How could he dare say that? Anything else she might forgive,

-he thought, since love is great, but never that. Nay, a cold sickness

-stole over him as he thought again that she came of great lords who had

-meted justice out over whole provinces for a thousand years; and he

-had wronged her so deeply that the human tongue scarcely held any word

-of infamy enough to name his crime. The law would set her free, if she

-chose, from a man who had so betrayed her, and his children would be

-bastards like himself.</p>

-

-<p>He had stretched himself on a great couch, covered with white

-bear-skins. He was in shadow; she was in the light that came from the

-fire on the wide hearth, and from the oriel window near, a red warm

-dusky light, that fell on the jewels on her hands, the furs on her

-skirts, the very pearls about her throat.</p>

-

-<p>She glanced at him anxiously, seeing how motionless he lay there, with

-his head turned backward on the cushions.</p>

-

-<p>'I am afraid you are weak still from that wound,' she said, as she rose

-and approached him. 'Greswold assures me it has left no trace, but I am

-always afraid. And you look often so pale. Perhaps you exert yourself

-too much? Let the wolves be. Perhaps it is too cold for you? Would you

-like to go to the south? Do not think of me; my only happiness is to do

-whatever you wish.'</p>

-

-<p>He kissed her hand with deep unfeigned emotion. 'I believe in angels

-since I knew you,' he murmured. 'No; I will not take you away from the

-winter and the people that you love. I am well enough. Greswold is

-right. I could not master those horses if I were not strong; be sure of

-that.'</p>

-

-<p>'But I always fear that it is dull here for you?'</p>

-

-<p>'Dull! with you? "Custom cannot stale her infinite variety." That was

-written in prophecy of your charm for me.'</p>

-

-<p>'You will always flatter me! And I am not "various" at all; I am too

-grave to be entertaining. I am just the German house-mother who cares

-for the children and for you.'</p>

-

-<p>He laughed.</p>

-

-<p>'Is that your portrait of yourself? I think Carolus Duran's is truer,

-my grand châtelaine. When you are at Court the whole circle seems to

-fade to nothing before your presence. Though there are so many women

-high-born and beautiful there, you eclipse them all.'</p>

-

-<p>'Only in your eyes! And you know I care nothing for courts. What I like

-is the life here, where one quiet day is the pattern of all the other

-days. If I were sure that you were content in it&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'Why should you think of that?'</p>

-

-<p>'My love, tell me honestly, do you never miss the world?'</p>

-

-<p>He rose and walked to the hearth. He, whose life was a long lie, never

-lied to her if he could avoid it; and he knew very well that he did

-miss the world with all its folly, stimulant, and sin. Sometimes the

-moral air here seemed to him too pure, too clear.</p>

-

-<p>'Did I do so I should be thankless indeed&mdash;thankless as madmen are who

-do not know the good done to them. I am like a ship that has anchored

-in a fair haven after press of weather. I infinitely prefer to see

-none but yourself: when others are here we are of necessity so much

-apart. If the weather,' he added more lightly, 'did not so very often

-wear Milton's grey sandals, there would be nothing one could ever

-wish changed in the life here. For such great riders as we are, that

-is a matter of regret. Wet saddles are too often our fate, but in

-compensation our forests are so green.'</p>

-

-<p>She did not press the question.</p>

-

-<p>But the next day she wrote a letter to a relative who was a great

-minister and had preponderating influence in the council chamber of the

-Austrian Empire. She did not speak to Sabran of the letter that she

-sent.</p>

-

-<p>She had not known any of that disillusion which befalls most women in

-their love. Her husband had remained her lover, passionately, ardently,

-jealously; and the sincerity of his devotion to her had spared her

-all that terrible consciousness of the man's satiety which usually

-confronts a woman in the earliest years of union. She shrank now with

-horror from the fear which came to her that this passion might, like so

-many others, alter and fade under the dulness of habit. She had high

-courage and clear vision; she met half-way the evil that she dreaded.</p>

-

-<p>In the spring a Foreign Office despatch from Vienna came to him and

-surprised and moved him strongly. With it in his hand he sought her at

-once.</p>

-

-<p>'You did this!' he said quickly. 'They offer me the Russian mission.'</p>

-

-<p>She grew a little pale, but had courage to smile. She had seen by a

-glance at his face the pleasure the offer gave him.</p>

-

-<p>'I only told my cousin Kunst that I thought you might be persuaded to

-try public life, if he proposed it to you.'</p>

-

-<p>'When did you say that?'</p>

-

-<p>'One day in the winter, when I asked you if you did not miss the world.'</p>

-

-<p>'I never thought I betrayed that I did so.'</p>

-

-<p>'You were only over eager to deny it. And I know your generosity, my

-love. You miss the world; we will go back to it for a little. It will

-only make our life here dearer&mdash;I hope.'</p>

-

-<p>He was silent; emotion mastered him. 'You have the most unselfish

-nature that was!' he said brokenly. 'It will be a cruel sacrifice to

-you, and yet you urge it for my sake.'</p>

-

-<p>'Dear, will you not understand? What is for your sake is what is most

-for mine. I see you long, despite yourself, to be amidst men once more,

-and use your rare talents as you cannot use them here. It is only right

-that you should have the power to do so. If our life here has taken

-the hold on your heart then, I think you will come back to it all the

-more gladly. And then I too have my vanity; I shall be proud for the

-world to see how you can fill a great station, conduct a difficult

-negotiation, distinguish yourself in every way. When they praise you,

-I shall be repaid a thousand times for any sacrifice of my own tastes

-that there may be.'</p>

-

-<p>He heard her with many conflicting emotions, of which a passionate

-gratitude was the first and highest.</p>

-

-<p>'You make me ashamed,' he said in a low voice. 'No man can be worthy of

-such goodness as yours; and I&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>Once more the avowal of the truth rose to his lips, but stayed

-unuttered. His want of courage took refuge in procrastination.</p>

-

-<p>'We need not decide for a day or two,' he added; 'they give me time; we

-will think well. When do you think I must reply?'</p>

-

-<p>'Surely soon; your delay would seem disrespect. You know we Austrians

-are very ceremonious.'</p>

-

-<p>'And if I accept, it will not make you unhappy?'</p>

-

-<p>'My love, no, a thousand times, no; your choice is always mine.'</p>

-

-<p>He stooped and kissed her hand.</p>

-

-<p>'You are ever the same,' he murmured. 'The noblest, the most

-generous&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>She smiled bravely. 'I am quite sure you have decided already. Go to my

-table yonder, and write a graceful acceptance to my cousin Kunst. You

-will be happier when it is posted.'</p>

-

-<p>'No, I will think a little. It is not a thing to be done in haste. It

-will be irrevocable.'</p>

-

-<p>'Irrevocable? A diplomatic mission? You can throw it up when you

-please. You are not bound to serve longer than you choose.'</p>

-

-<p>He was silent: what he had thought himself had been of the irrevocable

-insult he would be held to have offered to the emperor, the nation, and

-the world, if ever they knew.</p>

-

-<p>'It will not be liked if I accept for a mere caprice. One must never

-treat a State as Bela treats his playthings,' he said as he rang, and

-when the servant answered the summons ordered them to saddle his horse.</p>

-

-<p>'No; there is no haste. Glearemberg is not definitely recalled, I

-think.'</p>

-

-<p>But as she spoke she knew very well that, unknown to himself, he had

-already decided; that the joy and triumph the offer had brought to him

-were both too great for him eventually to resist them. He sat down and

-re-read the letter.</p>

-

-<p>She had said the truth to him, but she had not said all the truth. She

-had a certain desire that he should justify her marriage in the eyes of

-the world by some political career brilliantly followed; but this was

-not her chief motive in wishing him to return to the life of cities.

-She had seen that he was in a manner disquieted, discontented, and

-attributed it to discontent at the even routine of their lives. The

-change in his moods and tempers, the arbitrary violence of his love

-for her, vaguely alarmed and troubled her; she seemed to see the germ

-of much that might render their lives far less happy. She realised

-that she had given herself to one who had the capacity of becoming a

-tyrannical possessor, and retained, even after six years of marriage,

-the irritable ardour of a lover. She knew that it was better for them

-both that the distraction and the restraint of the life of the world

-should occupy some of his thoughts, and check the over-indulgence of

-a passion which in solitude grew feverish and morbid. She had not the

-secret of the change in him, of which the result alone was apparent to

-her, and she could only act according to her light. If he grew morose,

-tyrannical, violent, all the joy of their life would be gone. She knew

-that men alter curiously under the sense of possession. She felt that

-her influence, though strong, was not paramount as it had been, and she

-perceived that he no longer took much interest in the administration

-of the estates, in which he had shown great ability in the first years

-of their marriage. She had been forced to resume her old governance

-of all those matters, and she knew that it was not good for him to

-live without occupation. She feared that the sameness of the days, to

-her so delightful, to him grew tiresome. To ride constantly, to hunt

-sometimes, to make music in the evenings&mdash;&mdash;this was scarcely enough to

-fill up the life of a man who had been a <i>viveur</i> on the bitumen of the

-boulevards for so long.</p>

-

-<p>A woman of a lesser nature would have been too vain to doubt the

-all-sufficiency of her own presence to enthral and to content him; but

-she was without vanity, and had more wisdom than most women. It did

-not even once occur to her, as it would have done incessantly to most,

-that the magnificence of all her gifts to him were title-deeds to his

-content for life.</p>

-

-<p>Public life would be her enemy, would take her from the solitudes she

-loved, would change her plans for her children's education, would bring

-the world continually betwixt herself and her husband; but since he

-wished it that was all she thought of, all her law.</p>

-

-<p>'Surely he will accept?' said Mdme. Ottilie, who had returned from the

-south of France.</p>

-

-<p>'Yes, he will accept,' said his wife. 'He does not know it, but he

-will.'</p>

-

-<p>'I cannot imagine why he should affect to hesitate. It is the career

-he is made for, with his talents, his social graces.'</p>

-

-<p>'He does not affect; he hesitates for my sake. He knows I am never

-happy away from Hohenszalras.'</p>

-

-<p>'Why did you write then to Kunst?'</p>

-

-<p>'Because it will be better for him; he is neither a poet nor a

-philosopher, to be able to live away from the world.'</p>

-

-<p>'Which are you?'</p>

-

-<p>'Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the

-people she&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>'Reigns over,' added the Princess. 'Admit, my beloved, that a part of

-your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be

-quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!'</p>

-

-<p>Wanda von Szalras smiled. 'Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed

-with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.'</p>

-

-<p>'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural

-life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.'</p>

-

-<p>At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great

-avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before

-coming into his wife's presence. He would no more have gone to her with

-the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in

-such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.</p>

-

-<p>When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with

-vivacity:</p>

-

-<p>'Well! you accept, of course?</p>

-

-<p>'I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the

-carpet.</p>

-

-<p>'Wanda is a hermit,' she said; 'she should have dwelt in a cave, and

-lived on berries with S. Scholastica. What is the use of leaving it to

-her? She will say No. She loves her mountains.'</p>

-

-<p>'Then she shall stay amidst her mountains.'</p>

-

-<p>'And you will throw all your future away?'</p>

-

-<p>'Dear mother, I have no future&mdash;&mdash;should have had none but for her.'</p>

-

-<p>'All that is very pretty, but after nearly six years of marriage it is

-not necessary to <i>faire des madrigaux.</i>'</p>

-

-<p>The Princess sat a little more erect, angrily, and continued to tap her

-foot upon the floor. His wife was silent for a little while; then she

-went over to her writing-table, and wrote with a firm hand a few lines

-in German. She rose and gave the sheet to Sabran.</p>

-

-<p>'Copy that,' she said, 'or give it as many graces of style as you like.'</p>

-

-<p>His heart beat, his sight seemed dim as he read what she had written.</p>

-

-<p>It was an acceptance.</p>

-

-<p>'See, my dear Réné!' said the Princess, when she understood;

-'never combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon&mdash;

-unselfishness! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort.'</p>

-

-<p>The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her&mdash;&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of

-<i>faisant des madrigaux!</i>'</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna,

-and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called

-her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who

-showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and

-welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the

-most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the

-prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified

-and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware

-that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands

-for <i>finesse</i> and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make

-upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his

-wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and

-splendour it required.</p>

-

-<p>He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when

-the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his

-nerve, his self-command, his <i>insouciance</i>; he was once more capable of

-honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman

-he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of

-his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates

-a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must

-always exist, <i>sub rosa</i>, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance

-with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for

-every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul

-Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen

-politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The

-prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of

-a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff

-as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle

-projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social

-honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the

-minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in

-all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the

-purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of

-Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked <i>moujik</i> in the

-<i>isba</i> of a Persian peasant.</p>

-

-<p>Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like

-all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify

-his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort

-that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and

-perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men

-was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public

-career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to

-be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor

-had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.</p>

-

-<p>'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition

-that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which

-had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from

-circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of

-his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the

-social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better

-moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess

-von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;'

-and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless

-and ill at ease.</p>

-

-<p>He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold

-by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more

-prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if

-ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate,

-dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him

-with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed

-to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he

-been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his

-own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have

-always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion

-of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his

-own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any

-such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly,

-that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a

-suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always

-reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.</p>

-

-<p>This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life;

-not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a

-jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his

-ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it

-touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the

-felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the

-contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and

-witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and

-too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on

-his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed

-of constancy.</p>

-

-<p>'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of

-dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly

-degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is

-always hers and my love.'</p>

-

-<p>Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of

-her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty

-life led there under the show summits of her hills.</p>

-

-<p>He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's

-caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not

-infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most

-use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the

-daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.</p>

-

-<p>As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the

-Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and

-a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour

-and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he

-had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world

-beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had

-beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He

-went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now

-and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some

-portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some

-quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.</p>

-

-<p>On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:</p>

-

-<p>'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.</p>

-

-<p style="margin-left: 70%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'WANDA.'</p>

-

-<p>No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches

-could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful

-affection.</p>

-

-<p>'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.</p>

-

-<p>The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the

-season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the

-sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and

-the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and

-magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present

-at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation,

-as the ambassador-designate to Russia.</p>

-

-<p>Court dress became him, and his great height and elegance of manner

-made him noticeable even in that brilliant crowd of notables. All the

-greatest ladies distinguished him with their smiles, but he gave them

-no more than courtesy. He saw only before the 'eye of memory' his wife

-as he had seen her at the last court ball, with the famous pearls about

-her throat, and her train of silver tissue sown with pearls and looped

-up with white lilac.</p>

-

-<p>'It is the flower I like best,' she had said to him. 'It brought me

-your first love-message in Paris, do you remember? It said little; it

-was very discreet, but it said enough!'</p>

-

-<p>'You are always thinking of Wanda!' said the Countess Brancka to him

-now, with a tinge of impatience in her tone.</p>

-

-<p>He coloured a little, and said with that hauteur with which he always

-repressed any passing jest at his love for his wife:</p>

-

-<p>'When both one's duty and joy point the same way it is easy to follow

-them in thought.'</p>

-

-<p>'I hope you follow them in action too,' said Mdme. Brancka.</p>

-

-<p>'If I do not, I am at least only responsible to Wanda.'</p>

-

-<p>'Who would be a lenient judge you mean? said the Countess, with a

-certain smile that displeased him. 'Do not be too sure; she is a von

-Szalras. They are not agreeable persons when they are angered.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have not been so unhappy as to see her so,' said Sabran coldly,

-with a vague sense of uneasiness. As much as it is possible for a man

-to dislike a woman who is very lovely, and young enough to be still

-charming in the eyes of the world, he disliked Olga Brancka. He had

-known her for many years in Paris, not intimately, but by force of

-being in the same society, and, like many men who do not lead very

-decent lives themselves, he frankly detested <i>cocodettes.</i></p>

-

-<p>'If we want these manners we have our <i>lionnes</i>,' he was wont to say,

-at a time when Cochonette was seen every day behind his horses by the

-Cascade, and it had been the height of the Countess Olga's ambition at

-that time to be called like Cochonette. A certain resemblance there

-was between the great lady and the wicked one; they had the same small

-delicate sarcastic features, the same red gold curls, the same perfect

-colourless complexion; but where Cochonette had eyes of the slightest

-blue, the wife of Count Stefan had the luminous piercing black eyes of

-the Muscovite physiognomy. Still the likeness was there, and it made

-the sight of Mdme. Brancka distasteful to him, since his memories of

-the other were far from welcome. It was for Cochonette that he had

-broken the bank at Monte Carlo, and into her lap that he had thrown

-all the gold rouleaux at a time when in his soul he had already adored

-Wanda von Szalras, and had despised himself for returning to the slough

-of his old pleasures. It was Cochonette who had sold his secrets to

-the Prussians, and brought them down upon him in the farmhouse amongst

-the orchards of the Orléannais, whilst she passed safely through, the

-German lines and across the frontier, laden with her jewels and her

-<i>valeurs</i> of all kinds, saying in her teeth as she went: 'He will

-never see that Austrian woman again!' That had been the end of all he

-had known of Cochonette, and a presentiment of perfidy, of danger, of

-animosity always came over him whenever he saw the <i>joli petit minois</i>

-which in profile was so like Cochonette's, looking up from under the

-loose auburn curls that Mdme. Olga had copied from her.</p>

-

-<p>Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more

-admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds;

-and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette

-would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels

-flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams.

-There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her

-breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.</p>

-

-<p>Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an <i>étourdissement</i>

-that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.</p>

-

-<p>'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda,

-<i>mon beau</i> cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are

-really going to Russia?'</p>

-

-<p>'I believe so.'</p>

-

-<p>'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in

-paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'</p>

-

-<p>'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'</p>

-

-<p>'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy

-enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money

-that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'</p>

-

-<p>'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played

-since my marriage.'</p>

-

-<p>'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A

-saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature,

-though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by

-marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean

-nothing.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he

-was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.</p>

-

-<p>'Call me at least <i>cousinette</i>,' said Mdme. Olga; 'we are cousins, you

-know, thanks to Wanda. Oh! she will be very unhappy in St. Petersburg;

-she will not amuse herself, she never does. She is incapable of a

-flirtation; she never touches a card. When she dances it is only

-because she must, and then it is only a quadrille or a contre-dance.

-She always reminds me of Marie Thérèse's "In our position nothing is a

-trifle." You remember the Empress's letters to Versailles?'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran was very much angered, but he was afraid to express his anger

-lest it should seem to make him absurd.</p>

-

-<p>'Madame,' he said, with ill-repressed irritation, 'I know you speak

-only in jest, but I must take the liberty to tell you&mdash;&mdash;however

-bourgeois it appear&mdash;&mdash;that I do not allow a jest even from you upon my

-wife. Anything she does is perfect in my sight, and if she be imbued

-with the old traditions of gentle blood, too many ladies desert them in

-these days for me not to be grateful to her for her loyalty.'</p>

-

-<p>She listened, with her bright black eyes fixed on him; then she leaned

-a little more closely on his arm.</p>

-

-<p>'Do you know that you said that very well? Most men are ridiculous

-when they are in love with their wives, but it becomes you, Wanda is

-perfect, we all know that; you are not alone in thinking so. Ask Egon!'</p>

-

-<p>The face of Sabran changed as he heard that name. As she saw the

-change she thought: 'Can it be possible that he is jealous?'</p>

-

-<p>Aloud she said with a little laugh: 'I almost wonder Egon did not

-run you through the heart before you married. Now, of course, he

-is reconciled to the inevitable; or, if not reconciled, he has to

-submit to it as we all have to do. He grows very <i>farouche</i>; he lives

-between his troopers and his castle of Taróc, like a barbaric lord

-of the Middle Ages. Were you ever at Taróc? It is worth seeing&mdash;&mdash;a

-huge fortress, old as the days of Ottokar, in the very heart of the

-Karpathians. He leads a wild, fierce life enough there. If he keep the

-memory of Wanda with him it is as some men keep an idolatry for what is

-dead.'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran listened with a sombre irritation. 'Suppose we leave my wife's

-name in peace,' he said coldly. 'The <i>grosser cotillon</i> is about to

-begin; may I aspire to the honour?'</p>

-

-<p>As he led her out, and the light fell on her red gold curls, on her

-dazzling butterflies, her armour of diamonds, her snow-white skin, a

-thousand memories of Cochonette came over him, though the scene around

-him was the ball-room of the Hofburg, and the woman whose great bouquet

-of <i>rêve d'or</i> roses touched his hand was a great lady who had been the

-wife of Gela von Szalras, and the daughter of the Prince Serriatine.

-He distrusted her, he despised her, he disliked her so strongly that

-he was almost ashamed of his own antagonism; and yet her contact, her

-grace of movement, the mere scent of the bouquet of roses had a sort of

-painful and unwilling intoxication for the moment for him.</p>

-

-<p>He was glad when the long and gorgeous figures of the cotillon had

-tired out even her steel-like nerves, and he was free to leave the

-palace and go home to sleep. He looked at a miniature of his wife as

-he undressed; the face of it, with its tenderness and its nobility,

-seemed to him, after the face of this other woman, like the pure high

-air of the Iselthal after the heated and unhealthy atmosphere of a

-gambling-room.</p>

-

-<p>The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence

-was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which

-had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was

-brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural

-gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the

-sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some

-with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the

-empire.</p>

-

-<p>As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way

-slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through

-the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and

-odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After

-all, I may do her some honour before I die.'</p>

-

-<p>When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached

-him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said

-that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought

-it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the

-staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants

-away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.</p>

-

-<p>There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:</p>

-

-<p>'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to

-him, under secrecy, what I know.'</p>

-

-<p>They were fully signed&mdash;&mdash;'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a

-courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph.

-They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the

-Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>As the carriage of the Countess Olga rolled home through the Graben

-after the military spectacle, she stopped it suddenly, and signed to an

-old man in the crowd who was waiting to cross the road until a regiment

-of cuirassiers had rolled by. He was eyeing them critically, as only an

-old soldier does look at troops.</p>

-

-<p>'Is it you, Georg?' said Madame Olga. 'What brings you here?'</p>

-

-<p>'I came from Taróc with a letter from the Prince, my master,' answered

-the man, an old hussar who had carried Vàsàrhely in his arms off the

-field of Königsgrätz, after dragging him from under a heap of dead men

-and horses.</p>

-

-<p>'A letter! To whom?' asked Olga, who always was curious and persistent

-in investigation of all her brother-in-law's movements and actions.</p>

-

-<p>Vàsàrhely had not laid any injunction as to secrecy, only as to speed,

-upon his faithful servant; so that Georg replied, unwitting of harm,

-'To the Markgraf von Sabran, my Countess.'</p>

-

-<p>'A letter that could not go by post&mdash;how strange! And from Egon to

-Wanda's husband!' she thought, with her inquisitive eagerness awakened.

-Aloud she bade the old trooper call at her palace for a packet for

-Taróc, to make excuse for having stopped and questioned him, and drove

-onward lost in thought.</p>

-

-<p>'Perhaps it is a challenge late in the day!' she thought, with a laugh;

-but she was astonished and perplexed that any communication should take

-place between these men; she perplexed her mind in vain in the effort

-to imagine what tie could connect them, what mystery mutually affecting

-them could lie beneath the secret of Vassia Kazán.</p>

-

-<p>When, on the morrow, she heard at Court that the Emperor was deeply

-incensed at the caprice and disrespect of the Count von Idrac, as

-he was called at Court, who, at the eleventh hour, had declined a

-mission already accepted by him, and of which the offer had been in

-itself an unprecedented mark of honour and confidence, her swift

-sagacity instantly associated the action, apparently so excuseless and

-inexcusable, with the letter sent up from Taróc. It was still as great

-a mystery to her as it had been before what the contents of the letter

-could have been, but she had no doubt that in some way or another it

-had brought about the resignation of the appointment. It awakened a

-still more intense curiosity in her, but she was too wise to whisper

-her suspicion to anyone. To her friends at the Court she said, with

-laughter: 'A night or two ago I chanced to tell Sabran that his wife

-would be wretched at St. Petersburg. That is sure to have been enough

-for him. He is such a devoted husband.'</p>

-

-<p>No one of course believed her, but they received the impression that

-she knew the real cause of his resignation, though she could not be

-induced to say it.</p>

-

-<p>What did it matter to her? Nothing, indeed. But the sense of a secret

-withheld from her was to Mdme. Olga like the slot of the fox to a young

-hound. She might have a thousand secrets of her own if it pleased her,

-but she could not endure anyone else to guard one. Besides, in a vague,

-feverish, angry way, she was almost in love with the man who was so

-faithful to his wife that he had looked away from her as from some

-unclean thing when she had wished to dazzle him. She had no perception

-that the secret could concern him himself very nearly, but she thought

-it was probably one which he and Egon Vàsàrhely, for reasons of their

-own, chose to share and keep hidden. And if it were a secret that

-prevented Sabran from going to the Court of Russia? Then, surely, it

-was one worth knowing? And if she gained a knowledge of it, and his

-wife had none?&mdash;&mdash;what a superiority would be hers, what a weapon

-always to hand!</p>

-

-<p>She did not intend any especial cruelty or compass any especial end:

-she was actuated by a vague desire to interrupt a current of happiness

-that flowed on smoothly without her, to interfere where she had no

-earthly title or reason to do so, merely because she was disregarded

-by persons content with each other. It is not always definite motives

-which have the most influence; the subtlest poisons are those which

-enter the system we know not how, and penetrate it ere we are aware.

-The only thing which had ever held her back from any extremes of evil

-had been the mere habit of good-breeding and an absolute egotism which

-had saved her from all strong passions. Now something that was like

-passion had touched her under the sting of Sabran's indifference, and

-with it she became tenacious, malignant, and unsparing: adroit she had

-always been. Instinct is seldom at fault when we are conscious of an

-enemy, and Sabran's had not erred when it had warned him against the

-wife of Stefan Brancka as the serpent who would bring woe and disaster

-to his paradise.</p>

-

-<p>In some three months' time she received a more explicit answer from her

-cousin in St. Petersburg. Giving the precise dates, he told her that

-Vassia Kazán was the name given to the son of Count Paul Ivanovitch

-Zabaroff by a wayside amour with one of his own serfs at a village

-near the border line of Astrachan. He narrated the early history of

-the youth, and said that he had been amongst the passengers on board a

-Havre ship, which had foundered with all hands. So far the brief record

-of Vassia Kazán was clear and complete. But it told her nothing. She

-was unreasonably enraged, and looked at the little piece of burnt paper

-as though she would wrench the secret out of it.</p>

-

-<p>'There must be so much more to know,' she thought. 'What would a mere

-drowned boy be to either of those men&mdash;&mdash;a boy dead too all these years

-before?'</p>

-

-<p>She wrote insolently to her cousin, that the Third Section, with

-its eyes of Argus and its limbs of Vishnoo, had always been but an

-overgrown imbecile, and set her woman's wits to accomplish what the

-Third Section had failed to do for her. So much she thought of it that

-the name seemed forced into her very brain; she seemed to hear every

-one saying&mdash;&mdash;'Vassia Kazán.' It was a word to conjure with, at least:

-she could at the least try the effect of its utterance any day upon

-either of those who had made it the key of their correspondence. Russia

-had written down Vassia Kazán as dead, and the mystery which enveloped

-the name would not open to her. She knew her country too well not to

-know that this bold statement might cover some political secret, some

-story wholly unlike that which was given her. Vassia Kazán might have

-lived and have incurred the suspicions of the police, and be dwelling

-far away in the death in life of Siberian mines, or deep sunk in some

-fortress, like a stone at the bottom of a well. The reply not only

-did not beget her belief in it, but gave her range for the widest and

-wildest conjectures of imagination. 'It is some fault, some folly, some

-crime, who can tell? And Vassia Kazán is the victim or the associate,

-or the confidant of it. But what is it? And how does Egon know of it?'</p>

-

-<p>She passed the summer in pleasures of all kinds, but the subject did

-not lose its power over her, nor did she forget the face of Sabran as

-he had turned it away from her in the ball-room of the Hofburg.</p>

-

-<p>He himself had left the capital, after affirming to the minister that

-private reasons, which he could not enter into, had induced him to

-entreat the Imperial pardon for so sudden a change of resolve, and to

-solicit permission to decline the high honour that had been vouchsafed

-to him.</p>

-

-<p>'What shall I say to Wanda?' he asked himself incessantly, as the

-express train swung through the grand green country towards Salzburg.</p>

-

-<p>She was sitting on the lake terrace with the Princess, when a telegram

-from her cousin Kunst was brought to her. Bela and Gela were playing

-near with squadrons of painted cuirassiers, and the great dogs were

-lying on the marble pavement at her feet. It was a golden close to a

-sunless but fine day; the snow peaks were growing rosy as the sun shone

-for an instant behind the Venediger range, and the lake was calm and

-still and green, one little boat going noiselessly across it from the

-Holy Isle to the further side.</p>

-

-<p>'What a pity to leave it all!' she thought as she took the telegram.</p>

-

-<p>The Minister's message was curt and angered:</p>

-

-<p>'Your husband has resigned; he makes himself and me ridiculous. Unable

-to guess his motive, I am troubled and embarrassed beyond expression.'</p>

-

-<p>The other, from Sabran, said simply: 'I am coming home. I give up

-Russia.'</p>

-

-<p>'Any bad news?' the Princess asked, seeing the seriousness of her face.

-Her niece rose and gave her the papers.</p>

-

-<p>'Is Réné mad!' she exclaimed as she read. His wife, who was startled

-and dismayed at the affront to her cousin and to her sovereign, yet had

-been unable to repress a movement of personal gladness, hastened to say

-in his defence:</p>

-

-<p>'Be sure he has some grave, good reason, dear mother. He knows the

-world too well to commit a folly. Unexplained, it looks strange,

-certainly; but he will be home to-night or in the early morning; then

-we shall know; and be sure we shall find him right.'</p>

-

-<p>'Right!' echoed the Princess, lifting the little girl who was her

-namesake off her knee, a child white as a snowdrop, with golden curls,

-who looked as if she had come out of a band of Correggio's baby angels.</p>

-

-<p>'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who

-had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard

-suspended in the air.</p>

-

-<p>'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme

-displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when

-through him you are probably <i>brouillée</i> with your Sovereign for life.'</p>

-

-<p>She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a

-caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon.

-I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible

-excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such

-vast importance.'</p>

-

-<p>'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would

-condemn Réné unheard?'</p>

-

-<p>'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'</p>

-

-<p>'Perhaps none. I know it is a very grave offence that he has committed,

-and yet I cannot help being happy,' said his wife with a smile, as she

-lifted up the little Ottilie, and murmured over the child's fair curls,

-'Ah, my dear little dove! We are not going to Russia after all. You

-little birds will not leave your nest!'</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is not going to the snow palace?' said he, whose ears were very

-quick, and to whom his attendants had told marvellous narratives of an

-utterly imaginary Russia.</p>

-

-<p>'No; are not you glad, my dear?'</p>

-

-<p>He thought very gravely for a moment.</p>

-

-<p>'Bela is not sure. Marc says Bela would have slaves in Russia, and

-might beat them.'</p>

-

-<p>'Bela would be beaten himself if he did, and by my own hand, said his

-mother very gravely. 'Oh, child! where did you get your cruelty?'</p>

-

-<p>'He is not cruel,' said the Princess. 'He is only masterful.'</p>

-

-<p>'Alas! it is the same thing.'</p>

-

-<p>She sent the children indoors, and remained after the sun-glow had all

-faded, and Mdme. Ottilie had gone away to her own rooms, and paced

-to and fro the length of the terrace, troubled by an anxiety which

-she would have owned to no one. What could have happened to make

-him so offend alike the State and the Court? She tormented herself

-with wondering again and again whether she had used any incautious

-expression in her letters which could have betrayed to him the poignant

-regret the coming exile gave her. No! she was sure she had not done

-so. She had only written twice, preferring telegrams as quicker, and,

-to a man, less troublesome than letters. She knew courts and cabinets

-too well not to know that the step her husband had taken was one which

-would wholly ruin the favour he enjoyed with the former, and wholly

-take away all chance of his being ever called again to serve the

-latter. Personally she was indifferent to that kind of ambition; but

-her attachment to the Imperial house was too strong, and her loyalty

-to it too hereditary, for her not to be alarmed at the idea of losing

-its good-will. Disquieted and afraid of all kinds of formless unknown

-ills, she went with a heavy heart into the Rittersaal to a dinner for

-which she could find no appetite. The Princess also, so talkative and

-vivacious at other times, was silent and pre-occupied. The evening

-passed tediously. He did not come.</p>

-

-<p>It was past midnight, and she had given up all hope of his arrival,

-when she heard the returning trot of the horses, who had been sent over

-to Matrey in the evening on the chance of his being there. She was in

-her own chamber, having dismissed her women, and was trying in vain to

-keep her thoughts to nightly prayer. At the sound of the horses' feet

-without, she threw on a <i>négligé</i> of white satin and lace, and went,

-out on to the staircase to meet him. As he came up the broad stairs,

-with Donau and Neva gladly leaping on him, he looked up and saw her

-against the background of oak and tapestry and old armour, with the

-light of a great Persian lamp in metal that swung above shed full upon

-her. She had never looked more lovely to him than as she stood so, her

-eyes eagerly searching the dim shadow for him, and the loose white

-folds embroidered in silk with pale roses flowing downward from her

-throat to her feet. He drew her within her chamber, and took her in his

-arms with a passionate gesture.</p>

-

-<p>'Let us forget everything,' he murmured, 'except that we have been

-parted nearly a month!'</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>In the morning, after breakfast in the little Saxe room, she said to

-him with gentle firmness: 'Réné, you must tell me now&mdash;why have you

-refused Russia?'</p>

-

-<p>He had known that the question must come, and all the way on his

-homeward journey he had been revolving in his mind the answer he would

-give to it. He was very pale, but otherwise he betrayed no agitation as

-he turned and looked at her.</p>

-

-<p>'That is what I cannot tell you,' he replied.</p>

-

-<p>She could not believe she heard aright.</p>

-

-<p>'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'I have had a message from Kunst;

-he is deeply angered. I understand that, after all was arranged, you

-abruptly resigned the Russian mission. I ask your reasons. It is a very

-grave step to have taken. I suppose your motives must be very strong

-ones?'</p>

-

-<p>'They are so,' said Sabran; and he continued in the forced and measured

-tone of one who recites what he has taught himself to say: 'It is quite

-natural that your cousin Kunst should be offended; the Emperor also.

-You perhaps will be the same when I say to you that I cannot tell you,

-as I cannot tell them, the grounds of my withdrawal. Perhaps you, like

-them, will not forgive it.'</p>

-

-<p>Her nostrils dilated and her breast heaved: she was startled,

-mortified, amazed. 'You do not choose to tell <i>me</i>!' she said in

-stupefaction.</p>

-

-<p>'I cannot tell you.'</p>

-

-<p>'She gazed at him with the first bitterness of wrath that he had ever

-seen upon her face. She had been used to perfect submission of others

-all her life. She had the blood in her of stern princes, who had meted

-out rule and justice against which there had been no appeal. She was

-accustomed even in him to deference, homage, consideration, to be

-consulted always, deferred to often. His answer for the moment seemed

-to her an unwarrantable insult.</p>

-

-<p>Her influence, her relatives, her sovereign, had given him one of the

-highest honours conceivable, and he did not choose to even say why he

-was thankless for it! Passionate and withering words rose to her lips,

-but she restrained their utterance. Not even in that moment could she

-bring herself to speak what might seem to rebuke him with the weight

-of all his debt to her. She remained silent, but he understood all the

-intense indignation that held her speechless there. He approached her

-more nearly, and spoke with emotion, but with a certain sternness in

-his voice&mdash;&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'I know very well that I must offend and even outrage you. But I

-cannot tell you my motives. It is the first time that I have ever

-acted independently of you or failed to consult your wishes. I only

-venture to remind you that marriage does give to the man the right to

-do so, though I have never availed myself of it. Nay, even now, I owe

-you too much to be ingrate enough to take refuge in my authority as

-your husband. I prefer to owe more, as I have owed so much, to your

-tenderness. I prefer to ask of you, by your love for me, not to press

-me for an answer that I am not in a position to make; to be content

-with what I say&mdash;that I have relinquished the Russian mission because I

-have no choice but to do so.'</p>

-

-<p>He spoke firmly, because he spoke only the truth, although not all the

-truth.</p>

-

-<p>A great anger rose up in her, the first that she had ever been moved to

-by him. All the pride of her temper and all her dignity were outraged

-by this refusal to have confidence in her. It seemed incredible

-to her. She still thought herself the prey of some dream, of some

-hallucination. Her lips parted to speak, but again she withheld the

-words she was about to utter. Her strong justice compelled her to admit

-that he was but within his rights, and her sense of duty was stronger

-than her sense of self-love.</p>

-

-<p>She did not look at him, nor could she trust her voice. She turned

-from him without a syllable, and left the room. She was afraid of the

-violence of the anger that she felt.</p>

-

-<p>'If it had been only to myself I would pardon it,' she thought; 'but an

-insult to my people, to my country, to my sovereign!&mdash;an insult without

-excuse, or explanation, or apology&mdash;&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>She shut herself alone within her oratory and passed the most bitter

-hour of her life. The imperious and violent temper of the Szalras

-was dormant in her character, though she had chastened and tamed it,

-and the natural sweetness and serenity of her disposition had been a

-counterpoise to it so strong that the latter had become the only thing

-visible in her. But all the wrath of her race was now aroused and in

-arms against what she loved best on earth.</p>

-

-<p>'If it had been anything else,' she thought; 'but a public act like

-this&mdash;an ingratitude to the Crown itself! A caprice for all the world

-to chatter of and blame!'</p>

-

-<p>It would have been hard enough to bear, difficult enough to explain

-away to others, if he had told her his reasons, however captious,

-unwise, or selfish they might be; but to have the door of his soul

-thus shut upon her, his thoughts thus closed to her, hurt her with

-intolerable pain, and filled her with a deep and burning indignation.</p>

-

-<p>She passed all the early morning hours alone in her little temple of

-prayer, striving in vain against the bitterness of her heart; above

-her the great ivory Crucifixion, the work of Angermayer, beneath which

-so many generations of the women of the House of Szalras had knelt in

-their hours of tribulation or bereavement.</p>

-

-<p>When she left the oratory she had conquered herself. Though she could

-not extinguish the human passions that smarted and throbbed within her,

-she knew her duty well enough to know that it must lie in submission

-and in silence.</p>

-

-<p>She sought for him at once. She found him in the library: he was

-playing to himself a long dreamy concerto of Schubert's, to soothe the

-irritation of his own nerves and pass away a time of keen suspense. He

-rose as she came into the room, and awaited her approach with a timid

-anxiety in his eyes, which she was too absorbed by her own emotions to

-observe. He had assumed a boldness that he had not, and had used his

-power to dominate her rather in desperation than in any sense of actual

-mastery. In his heart it was he who feared her.</p>

-

-<p>'You were quite right,' she said simply to him. 'Of course, you are

-master of your own actions, and owe no account of them to me. We will

-say no more about it. For myself, you know I am content enough to

-escape exile to any embassy.'</p>

-

-<p>He kissed her hand with an unfeigned reverence and humility.</p>

-

-<p>'You are as merciful as you are great,' he murmured. 'If I be silent it

-is my misfortune.' He paused abruptly.</p>

-

-<p>A sudden thought came over her as he spoke.</p>

-

-<p>'It is some State secret that he knows and cannot speak of, and that

-has made him unwilling to go. Why did I never think of that before?'</p>

-

-<p>An explanation that had its root in honour, a reticence that sprang

-from conscience, were so welcome to her, and to her appeared so

-natural, that they now consoled her at once, and healed the wounds to

-her own pride.</p>

-

-<p>'Of course, if it be so, he is right not to speak even to me,' she

-mused, and her only desire was now to save him from the insistence and

-the indignation of the Princess, and the examination which these were

-sure to entail upon him when he should meet her at the noon breakfast

-now at hand.</p>

-

-<p>To that end she sought out her aunt in her own apartments, taking

-with her the tiny Ottilie, who always disarmed all irritation in her

-godmother by the mere presence of her little flower-like face.</p>

-

-<p>'Dear mother,' she said softly, when the child had made her morning

-obeisance, 'I am come to ask of you a great favour and kindness to me.

-Réné returned last night. He has done what he thought right. I do not

-even ask his reasons. He has acted from <i>force majeure</i> by dictate of

-his own honour. Will you do as I mean to do? Will you spare him any

-interrogation? I shall be so grateful to you, and so will he.'</p>

-

-<p>Mdme. Ottilie, opening her bonbonnière for her namesake, drew up her

-fragile figure with a severity unusual to her.</p>

-

-<p>'Do I hear you aright? You do not even know the reasons of the insult

-M. de Sabran has passed upon the Crown and Cabinet, and you do not even

-mean to ask them?'</p>

-

-<p>'I do mean that; and what I do not ask I feel sure you will admit no

-one else has any right to ask of him.'</p>

-

-<p>'No one certainly except His Majesty.'</p>

-

-<p>'I presume His Majesty has had all information due to him as our

-Imperial master. All I entreat of you, dearest mother, is to do as

-I have done; assume, as we are bound to assume, that Réné has acted

-wisely and rightly, and not weary him with questions to which it will

-be painful to him not to respond.'</p>

-

-<p>'Questions! I never yet indulged in anything so vulgar as curiosity,

-that you should imagine I shall be capable of subjecting your husband

-to a cross-examination. If you be satisfied, I can have no right to

-be more exacting than yourself. The occurrence is to me lamentable,

-inexcusable, unintelligible; but if explanation be not offered me you

-may rest assured I shall not intrude my request for it.'</p>

-

-<p>'Of that I am sure; but I am not contented only with that. I want you

-to feel no dissatisfaction, no doubt, no anger against him. You may be

-sure that he has acted from conviction, because he was most desirous to

-go to Russia, as you saw when you urged him to accept the mission.'</p>

-

-<p>'I have said the utmost that I can say,' replied the Princess, with a

-chill light in her blue eyes. 'This little child is no more likely to

-ask questions than I am, after what you have stated. But you must not

-regard my silence as any condonation of what must always appear to me a

-step disrespectful to the Crown, contrary to all usages of etiquette,

-and injurious to his own future and that of his children. His scruples

-of conscience came too late.'</p>

-

-<p>'I did not say they were exactly that. I believe he learned something

-which made him consider that his honour required him to withdraw.'</p>

-

-<p>'That may be,' said the Princess, frigidly. 'As I observed, it came

-lamentably late. You will excuse me if I breakfast in my own rooms this

-morning.'</p>

-

-<p>Wanda left her, gave the child to a nurse who waited without, and

-returned to the library. She had offended and pained Mdme. Ottilie,

-but she had saved her husband from annoyance. She knew that though

-the Princess was by no means as free from curiosity as she declared

-herself, she was too high-bred and too proud to solicit a confidence

-withheld from her.</p>

-

-<p>Sabran was seated at the piano where she had left him, but his forehead

-rested on the woodwork of it, and his whole attitude was suggestive

-of sad and absorbed thought and abandonment to regrets that were

-unavailing.</p>

-

-<p>'It has cost him so much,' she reflected as she looked at him. 'Perhaps

-it has been a self-sacrifice, a heroism even; and I, from mere wounded

-feeling, have been angered against him and almost cruel!'</p>

-

-<p>With the exaggeration in self-censure of all generous natures, she was

-full of remorse at having added any pain to the disappointment which

-had been his portion; a disappointment none the less poignant, as she

-saw, because it had been voluntarily, as she imagined, accepted.</p>

-

-<p>As he heard her approach he started and rose, and the expression of his

-face startled her for a moment; it was so full of pain, of melancholy,

-almost (could she have believed it) of despair. What could this matter

-be to affect him thus, since being of the State it could be at its

-worst only some painful and compromising secret of political life which

-could have no personal meaning for him? It was surely impossible that

-mere disappointment&mdash;&mdash;a disappointment self-inflicted&mdash;&mdash;could bring

-upon him such suffering? But she threw these thoughts away. In her

-great loyalty she had told herself that she must not even think of this

-thing, lest she should let it come between them once again and tempt

-her from her duty and obedience. Her trust in him was perfect.</p>

-

-<p>The abandonment of a coveted distinction was in itself a bitter

-disappointment, but it seemed to him as nothing beside the sense of

-submission and obedience compelled from him to Vàsàrhely. He felt as

-though an iron hand, invisible, weighed on his life, and forced it into

-subjection. When he had almost grown secure that his enemy's knowledge

-was a buried harmless thing, it had risen and barred his way, speaking

-with an authority which it was not possible to disobey. With all his

-errors he was a man of high courage, who had always held his own with

-all men. How the old forgotten humiliation of his earliest years

-revived, and enforced from him the servile timidity of the Slav blood

-which he had abjured. He had never for an instant conceived it possible

-to disregard the mandate he received; that an apparently voluntary

-resignation was permitted to him was, his conscience acknowledged, more

-mercy than he could have expected. That Vàsàrhely would act thus had

-not occurred to him; but before the act he could not do otherwise than

-admit its justice and obey.</p>

-

-<p>But the consciousness of that superior will compelling him, left in him

-a chill tremor of constant fear, of perpetual self-abasement. What was

-natural to him was the reckless daring which many Russians, such as

-Skobeleff, have shown in a thousand ways of peril. He was here forced

-only to crouch and to submit; it was more galling, more cruel to him

-than utter exposure would have been. The sense of coercion was always

-upon him like a dragging chain. It produced on him a despondency, which

-not even the presence of his wife or the elasticity of his own nature

-could dispel.</p>

-

-<p>He had to play a part to her, and to do this was unfamiliar and hateful

-to him. In all the years before he had concealed a fact from her, but

-he had never been otherwise false. Though to his knowledge there had

-been always between them the shadow of a secret untold, there had

-never been any sense upon him of obligation to measure his words, to

-feign sentiments he had not, to hide behind a carefully constructed

-screen of untruth. Now, though he had indeed not lied with his lips,

-he had to sustain a concealment which was a thousand times more trying

-to him than that concealment of his birth and station to which he had

-been so long accustomed that he hardly realised it as any error. The

-very nobility with which she had accepted his silence, and given it,

-unasked, a worthy construction, smote him with a deeper sense of shame

-than even that which galled him when he remembered the yoke laid on him

-by the will of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>

-

-<p>He roused himself to meet her with composure.</p>

-

-<p>She rested her hand caressingly on his.</p>

-

-<p>'We will never speak of Russia any more. I should be sorry were the

-Kaiser to think you capricious or disloyal, but you have too much

-ability to have incurred this risk. Let it all be as though there had

-never arisen any question of public life for you. I have explained

-to Aunt Ottilie; she will not weary you with interrogation; she

-understands that you have acted as your honour bade you. That is enough

-for those who love you as do she and I.'</p>

-

-<p>Every word she spoke entered his very soul with the cruellest irony,

-the sharpest reproach. But of these he let her see nothing. Yet he

-was none the less abjectly ashamed, less passionately self-condemned,

-because he had to consume his pain in silence, and had the self-control

-to answer, still with a smile, as he touched a chord or two of music:</p>

-

-<p>'When the Israelites were free they hankered after the flesh-pots of

-Egypt. They deserved eternal exile, eternal bondage. So do I, for

-having ever been ingrate enough to dream of leaving Hohenszalras for

-the world of men!'</p>

-

-<p>Then he turned wholly towards the Erard keyboard, and with splendour

-and might there rolled forth under his touch the military march of

-Rákóczi: he was glad of the majesty and passion of the music which

-supplanted and silenced speech.</p>

-

-<p>'That is very grand,' she said, when the last notes had died away.

-'One seems to hear the <i>Eljén!</i> of the whole nation in it. But play me

-something more tender, more pathetic&mdash;&mdash;some <i>lieder</i> half sorrow and

-half gladness, you know so many of all countries.'</p>

-

-<p>He paused a moment; then his hands wandered lightly across the notes,

-and called up the mournful folk-songs that he had heard so long, so

-long, before; songs of the Russian peasants, of the maidens borne off

-by the Tartar in war, of the blue-eyed children carried away to be

-slaves, of the homeless villagers beholding their straw-roofed huts

-licked up by the hungry hurrying flame lit by the Kossack or the Kurd;

-songs of a people without joy, that he had heard in his childish days,

-when the great rafts had drifted slowly down the Volga water, and

-across the plains the lines of chained prisoners had crept as slowly

-through the dust; or songs that he had sung to himself, not knowing

-why, where the winter was white on all the land, and the bay of the

-famished wolves afar off had blent with the shrill sad cry of the wild

-swans dying of cold and of hunger and of thirst on the frozen rivers,

-and the reeds were grown hard as spears of iron, and the waves were

-changed to stone.</p>

-

-<p>The intense melancholy penetrated her very heart. She listened with

-the tears in her eyes, and her whole being stirred and thrilled by a

-pain not her own. A kind of consciousness came to her, borne on that

-melancholy melody, of some unspoken sorrow which lived in this heart

-which beat so near her own, and whose every throb she had thought she

-knew. A sudden terror seized her lest all this while she who believed

-his whole life hers was in truth a stranger to his deepest grief, his

-dearest memories.</p>

-

-<p>When the last sigh of those plaintive songs without words had died

-away, she signed to him to approach her.</p>

-

-<p>'Tell me,' she said very gently, 'tell me the truth. Réné, did you ever

-care for any woman, dead or lost, more than, or as much as, you care

-for me? I do not ask you if you loved others. I know all men have many

-caprices, but was any one of them so dear to you that you regret her

-still? Tell me the truth; I will be strong to bear it.'</p>

-

-<p>He, relieved beyond expression that she but asked him that on which his

-conscience was clear and his answer could be wholly sincere, sat down

-at her feet and leaned his head against her knee.</p>

-

-<p>'Never, so hear me God!' he said simply. 'I have loved no woman as I

-love you.'</p>

-

-<p>'And there is not one that you regret?'</p>

-

-<p>'There is not one.'</p>

-

-<p>'Then what is it that you do regret? Something more weighs on you than

-the mere loss of diplomatic life, which; after all, to you is no more

-than the loss of a toy to Bela.'</p>

-

-<p>'If I do regret,' he said, with a smile, 'it is foolish and thankless.

-The happiness you give me here is worth all the fret and fever of

-the world's ambitions. You are so great and good to be so little

-angered with me for my reticence. All my life, such as it is, shall be

-dedicated to my gratitude.'</p>

-

-<p>Once more an impulse to tell her all passed over him&mdash;&mdash;a sense that

-he might trust her absolutely for all tenderness and all pity came

-upon him; but with the weakness which so constantly holds back human

-souls from their own deliverance, his courage once again failed him.

-He once more looking at her thought: 'Nay! I dare not. She would never

-understand, she would never pardon, she would never listen. At the

-first word she would abhor me.'</p>

-

-<p>He did not dare; he bent his face down on her knees as any child might

-have done.</p>

-

-<p>'What I ever must regret is not to be worthy of you!' he murmured; and

-the subterfuge was also a truth.</p>

-

-<p>She looked down at him wistfully with doubt and confusion mingled. She

-sighed, for she understood that buried in his heart there was some pain

-he would not share, perchance some half involuntary unfaithfulness he

-did not dare confess. She thrust this latter thought away quickly; it

-hurt her as the touch of a hot iron hurts tender flesh; she would not

-harbour it. It might well be, she knew.</p>

-

-<p>She was silent some little time, then she said calmly:</p>

-

-<p>'I think you worthy. Is not that enough? Never say to me what you do

-not wish to say. But&mdash;&mdash;but&mdash;&mdash;if there be anything you believe that I

-should blame, be sure of this, love: I am no fair weather friend. Try

-me in deep water, in dark storm!'</p>

-

-<p>And still he did not speak.</p>

-

-<p>His evil angel held him back and said to him, 'Nay! she would never

-forgive.'</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>One day in this winter time she sat alone in her octagon-room whilst he

-was out driving in the teeth of a strong wind blowing from the north

-and frequent bursts of snowstorm. Rapid exercise, eager movements, were

-necessary to him at once as tonic and as anodyne, and the northern

-blood that was in him made the bitter cold, the keen and angry air, the

-conflict with the frantic horses tearing at their curbs welcome and

-wholesome to him. Paul Zabaroff had many a day driven so over the hard

-snows of Russian plains.</p>

-

-<p>She sat at home as the twilight drew on, her feet buried in the furs

-before her chair, the fragrance shed about her from a basket of forced

-narcissus and bowls full of orange flowers and of violets, the light

-of the burning wood shining on the variegated and mellow hues of the

-tiles of the hearth. The last poems of Coppée were on her lap, but

-her thoughts had wandered away from those to Sabran, to her children,

-to a thousand happy trifles connected with one or the other. She was

-dreaming idly in that vague reverie which suits the last hour of the

-reclining day in the grey still winter of a mountain-land. She was

-almost sorry when Hubert entered and brought her the mail-bag, which

-had just come through the gloomy defiles and the frosted woods which

-stretched between them and Matrey.</p>

-

-<p>'It grows late,' she said to him. 'I fear it will be a stormy night.

-Have you heard the Marquis return?</p>

-

-<p>He told her that Sabran had not yet driven in, and ventured to add

-his hope that his master would not be out long; then he asked if she

-desired the lamps lit, and on being told she did not, withdrew, leaving

-the leather bag on a table close to one of the Saxe bowls of violets.

-There was plenty of light from the fire, and even from the windows, to

-read her letters by; she went first to one of the casements and looked

-at the night, which was growing very wild and dark. Though day still

-lingered, she could hear the wind go screaming down the lake, and

-the rush of the swollen water swirling against the terrace buttresses

-below. All beyond, woods, hills, mountains, were invisible under the

-grey mist.</p>

-

-<p>'I hope he will not be late,' she thought, but she was too keen a

-mountaineer to be apprehensive. Sabran now knew every road and path

-through all the Tauern as well as she did. She returned to her seat and

-unlocked the leather bag; there were several newspapers, two letters

-for the Princess, three or four for Sabran, and one only for herself.

-She laid his aside for him, sent those of the Princess to her room,

-and opened her own. The writing of it she did not recognise; it was

-anonymous, and was very brief.</p>

-

-

-<p>'If you wish to know why the Marquis de Sabran did not go to Russia,

-ask Egon Vàsàrhely.'</p>

-

-

-<p>That was all: so asps are little.</p>

-

-<p>She sat quite still, and felt as if a bolt had fallen on her from the

-leaden skies without. Vàsàrhely knew, the writer of the letter knew,

-and she&mdash;&mdash;<i>she&mdash;&mdash;</i> did not know! That was her first distinct thought.</p>

-

-<p>If Sabran had entered the room at that instant she would have held to

-him this letter, and would have said, 'I ask you, not him.' He was

-absent, and she sat motionless, keeping the unsigned note in her hand,

-and staring down on it. Then she turned and looked at the post-mark.

-It was 'Vienna,' A city of a million souls! What clue to the writer

-was there? She read it again and again, as even the wisest will read

-such poisonous things, as though by repeated study that mystery would

-be compelled to stand out clearly revealed. It did not say enough to

-have been the mere invention of the sender; it was not worded as an

-insinuation, but as a fact. For that reason it took a hold upon her

-mind which would at once have rejected a fouler or a darker suggestion.

-Although free from any baseness of suspicion there was yet that in the

-name of her cousin, in juxtaposition with her husband's, which could

-not do otherwise than startle and carry with it a corroboration of the

-statement made. A wave of the deep anger which had moved her on her

-husband's first refusal swept over her again. Her hand clenched, her

-eyes hashed, where she sat alone in the gathering shadows.</p>

-

-<p>There came a sound at the door of the room and a small golden head came

-from behind the tapestry.</p>

-

-<p>'May we come in?' said Bela; it was the children's hour.</p>

-

-<p>She rose, and put him backward.</p>

-

-<p>'Not now, my darling; I am occupied. Go away for a little while.'</p>

-

-<p>The women who were with them took the children back to their

-apartments. She sat down with the note still in her hand. What could

-it mean? No good thing was ever said thus. She pondered long, and was

-unable to imagine any sense or meaning it could have, though all the

-while memories thronged upon, her of words, and looks, and many trifles

-which had told her of the enmity that was existent between her cousin

-and Sabran. That she saw; but there her knowledge ceased, her vision

-failed. She could go no further, conjecture nothing more.</p>

-

-<p>'Ask Egon!' Did they think she would ask him or any living being that

-which Sabran had refused to confide in her? Whoever wrote this knew her

-little, she thought. Perhaps there were women who would have done so.

-She was not one of them.</p>

-

-<p>With a sudden impulse of scorn she cast the sheet of paper into the

-fire before her. Then she went to her writing-table and enclosed the

-envelope in another, which she addressed to her lawyers in Salzburg.

-She wrote with it: 'This is the cover to an anonymous letter which I

-have received. Try your uttermost to discover the sender.'</p>

-

-<p>Then she sat down again and thought long, and wearily, and vainly. She

-could make nothing of it. She could see no more than a wayfarer whom a

-blank wall faces as he goes. The violets and orange blossoms were close

-at her elbow; she never in after time smelt their perfume without a

-sick memory of the stunned, stupefied bewilderment of that hour.</p>

-

-<p>The door unclosed again, a voice again spoke behind as a hand drew back

-the folds of the tapestry.</p>

-

-<p>'What, are you in darkness here? I am very cold. Have you no tea for

-me?' said Sabran, as he entered, his eyes brilliant; his cheeks warm,

-from the long gallop against the wind. He had changed his clothes, and

-wore a loose suit of velvet; the servants, entering behind him, lit the

-candelabra, and brought in the lamps; warmth, and gladness, and light

-seemed to come with him; she looked up and thought, 'Ah! what does any

-thing matter? He is home in safety!'</p>

-

-<p>The impulse to ask of him what she had been bidden to ask of Egon

-Vàsàrhely had passed with the intense surprise of the first moment. She

-could not ask of him what she had promised never to seek to know; she

-could not reopen a long-closed wound. But neither could she forget the

-letter lying burnt there amongst the flames of the wood. He noticed

-that her usual perfect calm was broken as she welcomed him, gave him

-his letters, and bade the servants bring tea; but he thought it mere

-anxiety, and his belated drive; and being tired with a pleasant fatigue

-which made rest sweet, he stretched his limbs out on a low couch beside

-the hearth, and gave himself up to that delicious dreamy sense of

-<i>bien-être</i> which a beautiful woman, a beautiful room, tempered warmth

-and light, and welcome repose, bring to any man after some hours effort

-and exposure in wild weather and intense cold and increasing darkness.</p>

-

-<p>'I almost began to think I should not see you to-night,' he said

-happily, as he took from her hand the little cup of Frankenthal china

-which sparkled like a jewel in the light. 'I had fairly lost my way,

-and Josef knew it no better than I; the snow fell with incredible

-rapidity, and it seemed to grow night in an instant. I let the horses

-take their road, and they brought us home; but if there be any poor

-pedlars or carriers on the hills to-night I fear they will go to their

-last sleep.'</p>

-

-<p>She shuddered and looked at him with dim, fond eyes, 'He is here; he is

-mine,' she thought; 'what else matters?'</p>

-

-<p>Sabran stretched out his fingers and took some of the violets from the

-Saxe bowl and fastened them in his coat as he went on speaking of the

-weather, of the perils of the roads whose tracks were obliterated, and

-of the prowess and intelligence of his horses, who had found the way

-home when he and his groom, a man born and bred in the Tauern, had both

-been utterly at a loss. The octagon-room had never looked lovelier and

-gayer to him, and his wife had never looked more beautiful than both

-did now as he came to them out of the darkness and the snowstorm and

-the anxiety of the last hour.</p>

-

-<p>'Do not run those risks,' she murmured. 'You know all that your life is

-to me.'</p>

-

-<p>The letter which lay burnt in the fire, and the dusky night of ice

-and wind without, had made him dearer to her than ever. And yet the

-startled, shocked sense of some mystery, of some evil, was heavy upon

-her, and did not leave her that evening nor for many a day after.</p>

-

-<p>'You are not well?' he said to her anxiously later, as they left the

-dinner-table. She answered evasively.</p>

-

-<p>'You know I am not always quite well now. It is nothing. It will pass.'</p>

-

-<p>'I was wrong to alarm you by being out so late in such weather,' he

-said with self-reproach. 'I will go out earlier in future.'</p>

-

-<p>'Do not wear those violets,' she said, with a trivial caprice wholly

-unlike her, as she took them from his coat. 'They are Bonapartist

-emblems&mdash;<i>fleurs de malheur</i>.'</p>

-

-<p>He smiled, but he was surprised, for he had never seen in her any one

-of those fanciful whims and vagaries that are common to women.</p>

-

-<p>'Give me any others instead,' he said; 'I wear but your symbol, O my

-lady!'</p>

-

-<p>She took some myrtle and lilies of the valley from one of the large

-porcelain jars in the Rittersaal.</p>

-

-<p>'These are our flowers,' she said as she gave them to him. 'They mean

-love and peace.'</p>

-

-<p>He turned from her slightly as he fastened them where the others had

-been.</p>

-

-<p>All the evening she was pre-occupied and nervous. She could not forget

-the intimation she had received. It was intolerable to her to have

-anything of which she could not speak to her husband. Though they had

-their own affairs apart one from the other, there had been nothing

-of moment in hers that she had ever concealed from him. But here it

-was impossible for her to speak to him, since she had pledged herself

-never to seek to know the reason of an action which, however plausibly

-she explained it to herself, remained practically inexplicable and

-unintelligible. It was terrible to her, too, to feel that the lines

-of a coward who dared not sign them had sunk so deeply into her mind

-that she did not question their veracity. They had at once carried

-conviction to her that Egon Vàsàrhely did know what they said he did.

-She could not have told why this was, but it was so. It was what hurt

-her most&mdash;&mdash;others knew; she did not.</p>

-

-<p>She felt that if she could have spoken to Sabran of it, the matter

-would have become wholly indifferent to her; but the obligation of

-reticence, the sense of separation which it involved, oppressed her

-greatly. She was also haunted by the memory of the enmity which existed

-between these men, whose names were so strangely coupled in the

-anonymous counsel given her.</p>

-

-<p>She stayed long in her oratory that night, seeking vainly for calmness

-and patience under this temptation; seeking beyond all things for

-strength to put the poison of it wholly from her mind. She dreaded lest

-it should render her irritable and suspicious. She reproached herself

-for having been guilty of even so much insinuation of rebuke to him

-as her words with the flower had carried in them. She had ideas of

-the duties of a woman to her husband widely different to those which

-prevail in the world. She allowed herself neither irritation nor irony

-against him. 'When the thoughts rebel, the acts soon revolt,' she was

-wont to say to herself, and even in her thoughts she would never blame

-him.</p>

-

-<p>Prayer, even if it have no other issue or effect, rarely fails to

-tranquillise and fortify the heart which is lifted up ever so vaguely

-in search of a superhuman aid. She left her oratory strengthened and

-calmed, resolved in no way to allow such partial success to their

-unknown foe as would be given if the treacherous warning brought any

-suspicion or bitterness to her mind. She passed through the open

-archway in the wall which divided his rooms from hers, and looked at

-him where he lay already asleep upon his bed, early fatigued by the

-long cold drive from which he had returned at nightfall. He was never

-more handsome than sleeping calmly thus, with the mellow light of a

-distant lamp reaching the fairness of his face. She looked at him with

-all her heart in her eyes; then stooped and kissed him without awaking

-him.</p>

-

-<p>'Ah! my love,' she thought, 'what should ever come between us? Hardly

-even death, I think, for if I lost you I should not live long without

-you.'</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>The Salzburg lawyers employed all the resources of the Viennese police

-to discover the sender of the envelope, but vainly; nothing was

-learned by all the efforts made. But the letter constantly haunted her

-thoughts. It produced in her an uneasiness and an apprehensiveness

-wholly foreign to her temper. The impossibility also of saying anything

-about it increased the weight of it on her memory. Yet she never once

-thought of asking Vàsàrhely. She wrote to him now and then, as she had

-always done, to give him tidings of her health or of her movements,

-but she never once alluded in the most distant terms to the anonymous

-information she had received. If he had been there beside her she would

-not have spoken of it. Of the two, she would sooner have reopened the

-subject to her husband. But she never did so. She had promised him

-to be silent, and to her creed a promise was inviolate, never to be

-retracted, be the pressure or the desire to do so what it would.</p>

-

-<p>It was these grand lines on which her character and her habits were

-cast that awed him, and made him afraid to tell her his true history.

-Had he revered her less he would probably have deceived her less. Had

-she been of a less noble temperament she would also probably have been

-much less easy to deceive.</p>

-

-<p>Her health was at this time languid, and more uncertain than usual,

-and the two lines of the letter were often present to her thoughts,

-tormenting her with idle conjecture, painful doubt, none the less

-painful because it could take no definite shape. Sometimes when she

-was not well enough to accompany him out of doors or drive her own

-sleigh through the keen clear winter air, she sat doing nothing, and

-thinking only of this thing, in the same room, with the same smell of

-violets about her, musing on what it might by any possibility mean. Any

-secret was safe with Egon, but then since the anonymous writer was in

-possession of it the secret was not only his. She wondered sometimes in

-terror whether it could be anything that might in after years affect

-her children's future, and then as rapidly discarded the bare thought

-as so much dishonour to their father. 'It is only because I am now

-nervous and impressionable,' she said to herself,'that this folly takes

-such a hold upon me. When I am well again I shall not think of it. Who

-is it says of anonymous letters that they are like "<i>les immondices des

-rues: il faut boucher le nez, tourner la tête et passer outre?</i>"'</p>

-

-<p>But '<i>les immondices</i>' spoiled the odours of the new year violets to

-her.</p>

-

-<p>In the early spring of the year she gave birth to another son. She

-suffered more than she had ever done before, and recovered less

-quickly. The child was like all the others, fair, vigorous, and full

-of health. She wished to give him her husband's name, but Sabran so

-strenuously opposed the idea that she yielded, and named him after her

-brother Victor, who had fallen at Magenta.</p>

-

-<p>There were the usual rejoicings throughout the estates, rejoicings

-that were the outcome of genuine affection and fealty to the race of

-Szalras, whose hold on the people of the Tauern had resisted all the

-revolutionary movements of the earlier part of the century, and had

-fast root in the hearts of the staunch and conservative mountaineers.

-But for the first time as she heard the hearty '<i>Hoch!</i>' of the

-assembled peasantry echoing beneath her windows, and the salvos fired

-from the old culverins on the keep, a certain fear mingled with her

-maternal pride, and she thought: 'Will the people love them as well

-twenty years hence, fifty years hence, when I shall be no more? Will my

-memory be any shield to them? Will the traditions of our race outlast

-the devouring changes of the world?'</p>

-

-<p>Meantime the Princess, happy and smiling, showed the little new-born

-noble to the stalwart chamois hunters, the comely farmers and

-fishermen, the clear-eyed stout-limbed shepherds and labourers gathered

-bareheaded round the Schloss.</p>

-

-<p>Bela stood by contemplating the crowd he knew so well; he did not see

-why they should cheer any other child beside himself. He stood with his

-little velvet cap in his hand, because he was always told to do so, but

-he felt very inclined to put it on; if his father had not been present

-there he would have done so.</p>

-

-<p>'If I have ever so many brothers,' he said at last thoughtfully to

-Greswold, who was by his side, 'it will not make any difference, will

-it? I shall always be <i>the</i> one?'</p>

-

-<p>'What do you mean?' asked the physician.</p>

-

-<p>'They will none of them be like me? They will none of them be as great

-as I am? Not if I have twenty?'</p>

-

-<p>'You will be always the eldest son, of course,' said the old man,

-repressing a smile. 'Yes; you will be their head, their chief, their

-leading spirit; but for that reason you will have much more expected of

-you than will be expected of them; you will have to learn much more,

-and try to be always good. Do you follow me, Count Bela?'</p>

-

-<p>Bela's little rosy mouth shut itself up contemptuously. 'I shall be

-always the eldest, and I shall do whatever I like. I do not see why

-they want any others than me.'</p>

-

-<p>'You will not do always what you like, Count Bela.'</p>

-

-<p>'Who shall prevent me?'</p>

-

-<p>'The law, which you will have to obey like everyone else.'</p>

-

-<p>'I shall make the laws when I am a little older,' said Bela. 'And they

-will be for my brothers and all the people, but not for me. I shall do

-what I like.'</p>

-

-<p>'That will be very ungenerous,' said Greswold, quietly. 'Your mother,

-the Countess, is very different. She is stern to herself, and indulgent

-to all others. That is why she is beloved. If you will think of

-yourself so much when you are grown up, you will be hated.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela flushed a little guiltily and angrily.</p>

-

-<p>'That will not matter,' he said sturdily. 'I shall please myself

-always.'</p>

-

-<p>'And be unkind to your brothers?'</p>

-

-<p>'Not if they do what I tell them; I will be very kind if they are good.

-Gela always does what I tell him,' he added after a little pause; 'I do

-not want any but Gela.'</p>

-

-<p>'It is natural you should be fondest of Gela, as he is nearest your

-age, but you must love all the brothers you may have, or you will

-distress your mother very greatly.'</p>

-

-<p>'Why does she want any but me?' said Bela, clinging to his sense of

-personal wrong. And he was not to be turned from that.</p>

-

-<p>'She wants others beside you,' said the physician, adroitly, 'because

-to be happy she needs children who are tender-hearted, unselfish, and

-obedient. You are none of those things, my Count Bela, so Heavens ends

-her consolation.'</p>

-

-<p>Bela opened his blue eyes very wide, and he coloured with mortification.</p>

-

-<p>'She always loves me best!' he said haughtily. 'She always will!'</p>

-

-<p>'That will depend on yourself, my little lord,' said Greswold, with a

-significance which was not lost on the quick intelligence of the child;

-and he never forgot this day when his brother Victor was shown to the

-people.</p>

-

-<p>'There will be no lack of heirs to Hohenszalras,' said the Princess

-meanwhile to his father.</p>

-

-<p>He thought as he heard:</p>

-

-<p>'And if ever she know she can break her marriage like a rotten thread!

-Those boys can all be made as nameless as I was! Would she do it?

-Perhaps not, for the children's sake. God knows&mdash;&mdash;she might change

-even to them; she might hate them as she loves them now, because they

-are mine.'</p>

-

-<p>Even as he sat beside her couch with her hand in his these thoughts

-pursued and haunted him. Remorse and fear consumed him. When she looked

-at the blue eyes of her new-born son, and said to him with a happy

-smile: 'He will be just as much like you as the others are,' he could

-only think with a burning sense of shame, 'Like me! like a traitor!

-like a liar! like a thief!'&mdash;&mdash;and the faces of these children seemed

-to him like those of avenging angels.</p>

-

-<p>He thought with irrepressible agony of the fact that her country's

-laws would divorce her from him if she chose, did ever the truth come

-to her ear. He had always known this indeed, as he had known all the

-other risks he ran in doing what he did. Put it had been far away,

-indistinct, unasserted; whenever the memory of it had passed over him

-he had thrust it away. Now when another knew his secret, he could

-not do so. He had a strange sensation of having fallen from some

-great height; of having all his life slide away like melting ice out

-of his hands. He never once doubted for an instant the good faith of

-Egon Vàsàrhely. He knew that his lips would no more unclose to tell

-his secret than the glaciers yonder would find human voice. But the

-consciousness that one man lived, moved, breathed, rose with each day,

-and went amongst other men, bearing with him that fatal knowledge,

-made it now impossible for himself ever to forget it. A dull remorse,

-a sharp apprehension, were for ever his companions, and never left him

-for long even in his sweetest hours. He did justice to the magnificent

-generosity of the one who spared him. Egon Vàsàrhely knew, as he knew,

-that she, hearing the truth, could annul the marriage if she chose.

-His children would have no rights, no name, if their mother chose to

-separate herself from him. The law would make her once more as free

-as though she had never wedded him. He knew that, and the other man

-who loved her knew it too. He could measure the force of Vàsàrhely's

-temptation as that simple and heroic soldier could not stoop to measure

-his.</p>

-

-<p>He was deeply unhappy, but he concealed it from her. Even when his

-heart beat against hers it seemed to him always that there was an

-invisible wall between himself and her. He longed to tell the whole

-truth to her, but he was afraid; if the whole pain and shame had been

-his own that the confession would have caused, he would have dared it;

-but he had not the heart to inflict on her such suffering, not the

-courage to destroy their happiness with his own hand. Egon Vàsàrhely

-alone knew, and he for her sake would never speak. As for the reproach

-of his own conscience, as for the remorse that the words of his

-children might at any moment call up in him, these lie must bear. He

-was a man of cool judgment and of ready resource, and though he had

-never foreseen the sharp repentance which his better nature now felt,

-he knew that he would be able to live it down as he had crushed out so

-many other scruples. He vowed to himself that as far as in him lay he

-would atone for his act. The moral influence of his wife had not been

-without effect on him. Not altogether, but partially, he had grown to

-believe in what she believed in, of the duty of human life to other

-lives; he had not her sympathy for others, but he had admired it, and

-in his own way followed it, though without her faith.</p>

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></h4>

-

-

-<p>Life went on in its old pathways at Hohenszalras. Nothing more, was

-said by him, or to him, as to his rejection of the Russian mission. She

-was niggard in nothing, and when she offered her faith or pledged her

-silence, gave both entirely and ungrudgingly. Sabran to her showed an

-increase of devotion, an absolute adoration which would in themselves

-have sufficed to console any woman; and if the most observant member

-of their household, Greswold, perceived in him a preoccupation, a

-languor, a gloom, which boded ill for their future peace, the old man

-was too loyal in his attachment not to endeavour to shake off his own

-suspicions and discredit his own penetration.</p>

-

-<p>The Princess had been favoured by a note from Olga Brancka, in which

-that lady wrote: 'Have you discovered the nature of his refusal of

-Russia? Myself, I believe that I was to blame. I hinted to him that

-he would be tempted to his old sins in St. Petersburg, and that Wanda

-would be very miserable there. It seems that this was enough for the

-tender heart of this devoted lover, and too much for his wisdom and

-his judgment; he rejected the mission after accepting it. I believe

-the Court is furious. I am not <i>de service</i> now, so that I have no

-opportunity of endeavouring to restore him to favour; but I imagine the

-Emperor will not quarrel for ever with the Hohenszalrasburg.</p>

-

-<p>The letter restored him at least to the favour of Mdme. Ottilie.

-Exaggerated as such a scruple appeared it did not seem to her

-impossible in a man whose devotion to his wife she daily witnessed,

-shown in a hundred traits. She blamed him still severely in her own

-thoughts for what she held an inexcusable disrespect to the Crown, but

-she kept her word scrupulously and never spoke to him on the subject.</p>

-

-<p>'Where else in the wide world would any man have found such

-forbearance?' he thought with gratitude, and he knew that nowhere

-would such delicate sentiment have existed outside the pale of that

-fine patrician dignity which is as incapable of the vulgarity of

-inquisitiveness and interrogation as was the Spartan of lament.</p>

-

-<p>The months went by. They did not leave home; he seemed to have lost

-all wish for any absence, and even repulsed the idea of inviting the

-usual house parties of the year. She supposed that he was averse to

-meeting people who might recur to his rejection of the post he had

-once accepted. The summer passed and the autumn came; he spent his

-time in occasional sport, the keen and perilous sport of the Austrian

-mountains, and more often and more faithfully beguiled himself with

-those arts of which he was a brilliant master, though he would call

-himself no more than a mere amateur. From the administration of the

-estates he had altogether withdrawn himself.</p>

-

-<p>'You are so much wiser than I,' he always said to her; and when she

-would have referred to him, replied: 'You have your lawyers; they are

-all honest men. Consult them rather than me.'</p>

-

-<p>With the affairs of Idrac only he continued to concern himself a

-little, and was persistent in setting aside all its revenues to

-accumulate for his second son.</p>

-

-<p>'I wish you cared more about all these things,' she said to him one

-day, when she had in her hand the reports from the mines of Galicia.

-He answered angrily, 'I have no right to them. They are not mine. If

-you chose to give them all away to the Crown I should say nothing.'</p>

-

-<p>'Not even for the children's sake?'</p>

-

-<p>'No: you would be entirely justified if you liked to give the children

-nothing.'</p>

-

-<p>'I really do not understand you,' she said in great surprise.</p>

-

-<p>'Everything is yours,' he said abruptly.</p>

-

-<p>'And the children too, surely!' she said, with a smile: but the

-strangeness of the remark disquieted her. 'It is over-sensitiveness,'

-she thought; 'he can never altogether forget that he was poor. It is

-for that reason public life would have been so good for him; dignities

-which he enjoyed of his own, honours that he arrived at through his own

-attainments.'</p>

-

-<p>Chagrined to have lost, the opportunity of winning personal honours

-in a field congenial to him, the sense that everything was hers could

-hardly fail to gall him sometimes constantly, though she strove to

-efface any remembrance or reminder that it was so.</p>

-

-<p>In the midsummer of that year, whilst they were quite alone, they were

-surprised by another letter from Mdme. Brancka, in which she proposed

-to take Hohenszalras on her way from France to Tsarköe Selo, where she

-was about to pay a visit which could not be declined by her.</p>

-

-<p>When in the spring he had written with formality to her to announce the

-birth of his son Victor, she had answered with a witty coquettish reply

-such as might well have been provocative of further correspondence.

-But he had not taken up the invitation. Mortified and irritated, she

-had compared his writing with the piece of burnt paper, and been more

-satisfied than ever that he had penned the name of Vassia Kazán. But

-even were it so, what, she wondered, had it to do with Russia? He

-and Egon Vàsàrhely were not friends so intimate that they had any

-common interests one with the other. The mystery had interested her

-intensely when her rapid intuition had connected the resignation of

-Sabran's appointment with the messenger sent to him from Taróc. Her

-impatience to be again in his presence grew intense. She imagined a

-thousand stories, to cast each aside in derision as impossible. All her

-suppositions were built upon no better basis than a fragment of charred

-paper; but her shrewd intuition bore her into the region of truth,

-though the actual truth of course never suggested itself to her even in

-her most fantastic and dramatic visions. Finally she thus proposed to

-visit Hohenszalras in the midsummer months.</p>

-

-<p>'Last year you had such a crowd about you,' she wrote, 'that I

-positively saw nothing of you, <i>liebe</i> Wanda. You are alone now, and

-I venture to propose myself for a fortnight. You cannot exactly be

-said to be in the way to anywhere, but I shall make you so. When one

-is going to Russia, a matter of another five hundred miles or so is a

-bagatelle.'</p>

-

-<p>'We must let her come,' said Wanda, as she gave the letter to Sabran,

-who, having read it, said with much sincerity&mdash;&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>'For heaven's sake, do not. A fortnight of Madame Olga! as well

-have&mdash;&mdash;a century of "Madame Angot!"'</p>

-

-<p>'Can I prevent her?'</p>

-

-<p>'You can make some excuse. I do not like Mdme. Brancka.'</p>

-

-<p>'Why?'</p>

-

-<p>He hesitated; he could not tell her what he had felt at the ball of

-the Hofburg. 'She reminds me of a woman who drew me into a thousand

-follies, and to cap her good deeds betrayed me to the Prussians. If you

-must let her come I will go away. I will go and see your haras on the

-Pusztas.'</p>

-

-<p>'Are you serious?'</p>

-

-<p>'Quite serious. Were I not ashamed of such a weakness, I should use a

-feminine expression. I should say "<i>elle me donne des nerfs.</i>"'</p>

-

-<p>'I think she has a great admiration for you, and she does not conceal

-it.'</p>

-

-<p>'Merely because she is sensible that I do not like her. Such women as

-she are discontented if only one person fail to admit their charm. She

-is accustomed to admiration, and she is not scrupulous as to how she

-obtains it.'</p>

-

-<p>'My dear! pray remember that she is our guest, and doubly our relative.'</p>

-

-<p>'I will try and remember it; but, believe me, all honour is wholly

-wasted upon Mdme. Olga. You offer her a coin of which the person and

-the superscription are alike unknown to her.'</p>

-

-<p>'You are very severe,' said his wife.</p>

-

-<p>She looked at him, and perceived that he was not jesting, that he

-was on the contrary disturbed and annoyed, and she remembered the

-persistence with which Olga Brancka had sought his companionship and

-accompanied him on his sport in the summer of her visit there.</p>

-

-<p>'If she had not married first my brother and then my cousin, she would

-never have been an intimate friend of mine,' she continued. 'She is of

-a world wholly opposed to all my tastes. For you to be absent, if she

-came, would be too marked, I think; but we can both leave, if you like.

-I am well enough for any movement now, and I can leave the child with

-his nurse. Shall we make a tour in Hungary? The haras will interest

-you. There are the mines, too, that one ought to visit.'</p>

-

-<p>He received her assent with gratitude and delight. He felt that he

-would have gone to the uttermost ends of the earth rather than run the

-risk of spending long lonely summer days in the excitation of Mdme.

-Brancka's presence. He detested her, he would always detest her; and

-yet when he shut his eyes he saw her so clearly, with the malicious

-light in her dusky glance, and the jewelled butterfly trembling about

-her breasts.</p>

-

-<p>'She shall never come under Wanda's roof if I can prevent it,' he

-thought, remembering her as she had been that night.</p>

-

-<p>A few days later the Countess Brancka, much to her rage, had a note

-from the Hohenszalrasburg, which said that they were on the point of

-leaving for Hungary and Galicia, but that if she would come there in

-their absence, the Princess Ottilie, who remained, would be charmed to

-receive her. Of course she excused herself, and did not go. A visit to

-the solitudes of the Iselthal, where she would, see no one but a lady

-of eighty years old and four little children, had few attractions for

-the adventurous and vivacious wife of Stefan Brancka.</p>

-

-<p>'It is only Wanda's jealousy,' she thought, and was furious; but she

-looked at herself in the mirror, and was almost consoled as she thought

-also, 'He avoids me. Therefore he is afraid of me!'</p>

-

-<p>She went to her god, <i>le monde</i>, and worshipped at all its shrines and

-in all its fashions; but in the midst of the turmoil and the triumphs,

-the worries and the intoxications of her life, she did not lose her

-hold on her purpose, nor forget that he had slighted her. His beautiful

-face, serene and scornful, was always before her. He might have been at

-her feet, and he chose to dwell beside his wife under those solitary

-forests, amongst those solitary mountains of the High Tauern!</p>

-

-<p>'With a woman he has lived with all these eight years!' she thought,

-with furious impatience. 'With a woman who has grafted the Lady of La

-Garaye on Libussa, who never gives him a moment's jealousy, who is

-as flawless as an ivory statue or a marble throne, who suckles her

-children and could spin their clothes if she wanted, who never cares

-to go outside the hills of her own home&mdash;&mdash;the Teuton <i>Hausfrau</i> to

-her finger-tips.' And she was all the more bitter and the more angered

-because, always as she tried to think thus, the image of Wanda rose up

-before her, as she had seen her so often at Vienna or Hohenszalras,

-with the great pearls on her hair and on her breast.</p>

-

-<p style="margin-left: 20%;">

-A planet at whose passing, lo!<br />

-All lesser stars recede, and night<br />

-Grows clear as day thus lighted up<br />

-By all her loveliness, which burns<br />

-With pure white flame of chastity;<br />

-And fires of fair thought....<br />

-</p>

-

-

-<h4>END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.</h4>

-<hr class="full" />

-<p style="margin-left: 20%; font-size: 0.8em;">

-CONTENTS<br /><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a><br />

-<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a><br />

-</p>

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-<pre>

-

-

-

-

-

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+
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52136 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
+</div>
+<h1>WANDA</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>OUIDA</h2>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>'Doch!&mdash;alles was dazu mich trieb;</i><br />
+<i>Gott!&mdash;war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20%;">Goethe</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h4>IN THREE VOLUMES</h4>
+
+<h4>VOL. II.</h4>
+
+
+<h5>London</h5>
+
+<h5>CHATTO &amp; WINDUS, PICCADILLY</h5>
+
+<h5>1883</h5>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<h3><a name="WANDA" id="WANDA">WANDA.</a></h3>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>On her return she spoke of her royal friends, of her cousins, of
+society, of her fears for the peace of Europe, and her doubts as to
+the strength of the empire; but she did not speak of the one person of
+whom, beyond all others, Mdme. Ottilie was desirous to hear. When some
+hours had passed, and still she had never alluded to the existence of,
+the Princess could bear silence no longer, and casting prudence to the
+winds, said boldly and with impatience:</p>
+
+<p>'And your late guest? Have you nothing to tell me? Surely you have seen
+him?'</p>
+
+<p>'He called once,' she answered, 'and I heard him speak at the Chamber.'</p>
+
+<p>'And was that all?' cried the Princess, disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>'He speaks very well in public,' added Wanda, 'and he said many tender
+and grateful things of you, and sent you many messages&mdash;such grateful
+ones that my memory is too clumsy a tray to hold such eggshell china.'</p>
+
+<p>She was angered with herself as she spoke, but the fragrance of the
+white lilac and the remembrance of its donor pursued her&mdash;angered
+with herself, too, because Hohenszalras seemed for the moment sombre,
+solitary, still, almost melancholy, wrapped in that winter whiteness
+and stillness which she had always loved so well.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning she saw all her people, visited her schools and her
+stables, and tried to persuade herself that she was as contented as
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>The aurist came from Paris shortly after her, and consoled the Princess
+by assuring her that the slight deafness she suffered from occasionally
+was due to cold.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course!' she said, with some triumph. 'These mountains, all this
+water, rain whenever there is not snow, snow whenever there is not
+rain; it is a miracle, and the mercy of Heaven, if one saves any of
+one's five senses uninjured in a residence here.'</p>
+
+<p>She had her satin hood trebly wadded, and pronounced the aurist a
+charming person. Herr Greswold in an incautious moment had said to her
+that deafness was one of the penalties of age and did not depend upon
+climate. A Paris doctor would not have earned his fee of two hundred
+napoleons if he had only produced so ungallant a truism. She heard a
+little worse after his visit, perhaps, but if so, she said that was
+caused by the additional wadding in her hood. He had told her to use a
+rose-water syringe, and Herr Greswold was forbidden her presence for a
+week because he averred that you might as well try to melt the glacier
+with a lighted pastille.</p>
+
+<p>The aurist gone, life at Hohenszalras resumed its even tenor; and
+except for, the post, the tea-cups, and the kind of dishes served at
+dinner, hardly differed from what life had been there in the sixteenth
+century, save that there were no saucy pages playing in the court, and
+no destriers stamping in the stalls, and no culverins loaded on the
+bastions.</p>
+
+<p>'It is like living between the illuminated leaves of one of the Hours,'
+thought the Princess, and though her conscience told her that to dwell
+so in a holy book like a pressed flower was the most desirable life
+that could be granted by Heaven to erring mortality, still she felt it
+was dull. A little gossip, a little movement, a little rolling of other
+carriage-wheels than her own, had always seemed desirable to her.</p>
+
+<p>Life here was laid down on broad lines. It was stately, austere,
+tranquil; one day was a mirror of all the rest. The Princess fretted
+for some little <i>frou-frou</i> of the world to break its solemn silence.</p>
+
+<p>When Wanda returned from her ride one forenoon she said a little
+abruptly to her aunt:</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose you will be glad to hear you have convinced me. I have
+telegraphed to Ludwig to open and air the house in Vienna; we will go
+there for three months. It is, perhaps, time I should be seen at Court.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is a very sudden decision!' said Madame Ottilie, doubting that she
+could hear aright.</p>
+
+<p>'It is the fruit of your persuasions, dear mother mine! The only
+advantage in having houses in half a dozen different places is to be
+able to go to them without consideration. You think me obstinate,
+whimsical, barbaric; the Kaiserin thinks so too. I will endeavour to
+conquer my stubbornness. We will go to Vienna next week. You will see
+all your old friends, and I all my old jewels.'</p>
+
+<p>The determination once made, she adhered to it. She had felt a vague
+annoyance at the constancy and the persistency with which regret for
+the lost society of Sabran recurred to her. She had attributed it to
+the solitude in which she lived: that solitude which is the begetter
+and the nurse of thought may also be the hotbed of unwise fancies.
+It was indeed a solitude filled with grave duties, careful labours,
+high desires and endeavours; but perhaps, she thought, the world for a
+while, even in its folly, might be healthier, might preserve her from
+the undue share which the memory of a stranger had in her musings.</p>
+
+<p>Her people, her lands, her animals, would none of them suffer by
+a brief absence; and perhaps there were duties due as well to her
+position as to her order. She was the only representative of the great
+Counts of Szalras. With the whimsical ingratitude to fate common
+to human nature, she thought she would sooner have been obscure,
+unnoticed, free. Her rank began to drag on her with something like the
+sense of a chain. She felt that she was growing irritable, fanciful,
+thankless; so she ordered the huge old palace in the Herrengasse to be
+got ready, and sought the world as others sought the cloister.</p>
+
+<p>In a week's time she was installed in Vienna, with a score of horses,
+two score of servants, and all the stir and pomp that attend a great
+establishment in the most aristocratic city of Europe, and she made her
+first appearance at a ball at the Residenz covered with jewels from
+head to foot; the wonderful old jewels that for many seasons had lain
+unseen in their iron coffers&mdash;opals given by Rurik, sapphires taken
+from Kara Mustafa, pearls worn by her people at the wedding of Mary of
+Burgundy, diamonds that had been old when Maria Theresa had been young.</p>
+
+<p>She had three months of continual homage, of continual flattery, of
+what others called pleasure, and what none could have denied was
+splendour. Great nobles laid their heart and homage before her feet,
+and all the city looked after her for her beauty as she drove her
+horses round the Ringstrasse. It left her all very cold and unamused
+and indifferent.</p>
+
+<p>She was impatient to be back at Hohenszalras, amidst the stillness of
+the woods, the sound of the waters.</p>
+
+<p>'You cannot say now that I do not care for the world, because I have
+forgotten what it was like,' she observed to her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish you cared more,' said the Princess. 'Position has its duties.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never dispute that; only I do not see that being wearied by society
+constitutes one of them. I cannot understand why people are so afraid
+of solitude; the routine of the world is quite as monotonous.'</p>
+
+<p>'If you only appreciated the homage that you receive&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Surely one's mind is something like one's conscience: if one can be
+not too utterly discontented with what it says one does not need the
+verdict of others.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with
+your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your
+overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the
+one I possess.'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be
+pride&mdash;the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely
+better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are not all simpletons.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very
+stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well
+as of the Wurstel-Prater.'</p>
+
+<p>The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the
+Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw
+the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she
+was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something
+wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up,
+nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.</p>
+
+<p>The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain,
+and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging
+primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of
+the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging
+with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass
+was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale
+sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras,
+and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she
+returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.</p>
+
+<p>'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold,
+as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the
+Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias
+and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between
+the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of
+their stalls.</p>
+
+<p>'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert,
+as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with
+tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with
+'<i>Willkommen</i>' written on it.</p>
+
+<p>She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single
+word.</p>
+
+<p>How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that
+day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been
+sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.</p>
+
+<p>'That is the Stanhopea tigrina,' said Herr Greswold, touching one with
+reverent fingers; 'they are all very rare. It is a welcome worthy of
+you, my lady.'</p>
+
+<p>'A very extravagant one,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a certain
+displeasure that mingled with a softened emotion. 'Who brought it?'</p>
+
+<p>'The Marquis de Sabran, by <i>extra-poste</i>, himself this morning,'
+answered Hubert&mdash;an answer she did not expect. 'But he would not wait;
+he would not even take a glass of tokayer, or let his horses stay for a
+feed of corn.'</p>
+
+<p>'What knight-errantry!' said the Princess well pleased.</p>
+
+<p>'What folly!' said Wanda, but she had the basket of orchids taken to
+her own octagon room.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as if he had divined how much of late she had thought of him.
+She was touched, and yet she was angered a little.</p>
+
+<p>'Surely she will write to him,' thought the Princess wistfully very
+often: but she did not write. To a very proud woman the dawning
+consciousness of love is always an irritation, an offence, a failure, a
+weakness: the mistress of Hohenszalras could not quickly pardon herself
+for taking with pleasure the message of the orchids.</p>
+
+<p>A little while later she received a letter from Olga Brancka. In it she
+wrote from Paris:</p>
+
+<p>'Parsifal is doing wonders in the Chamber, that is, he is making Paris
+talk; his party will forbid him doing anything else. You certainly
+worked a miracle. I hear he never plays, never looks at an actress,
+never does anything wrong, and when a grand heiress was offered to
+him by her people refused her hand blandly but firmly. What is one to
+think? That he washed his soul white in the Szalrassee?'</p>
+
+<p>It was the subtlest flattery of all, the only flattery to which she
+would have been accessible, this entire alteration in the current
+of a man's whole life; this change in habit, inclination, temper,
+and circumstance. If he had approached her its charm would have been
+weakened, its motive suspected; but aloof and silent as he remained,
+his abandonment of all old ways, his adoption of a sterner and worthier
+career, moved her with its marked, mute homage of herself.</p>
+
+<p>When she read his discourses in the French papers she felt a glow
+of triumph, as if she had achieved some personal success; she felt
+a warmth at her heart as of something near and dear to her, which
+was doing well and wisely in the sight of men. His cause did not,
+indeed, as Olga Brancka had said, render tangible, practical, victory
+impossible for him, but he had the victories of eloquence, of
+patriotism, of high culture, of pure and noble language, and these
+blameless laurels seemed to her half of her own gathering.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you never reward him?' the Princess ventured to say at last,
+overcome by her own impatience to rashness. 'Never? Not even by a word?'</p>
+
+<p>'Hear mother,' said Wanda, with a smile which perplexed and baffled the
+Princess, 'if your hero wanted reward he would not be the leader of a
+lost cause. Pray do not suggest to me a doubt of his disinterestedness.
+You will do him very ill service.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess was mute, vaguely conscious that she had said something
+ill-timed or ill-advised.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed on and brought beautiful weather in the month of June,
+which here in the High Tauern means what April does in the south.
+Millions of song-birds were shouting in the woods, and thousands of
+nests were suspended on the high branches of the forest trees, or
+hidden in the greenery of the undergrowth; water-birds perched and
+swung in the tall reeds where the brimming streams tumbled; the purple,
+the white, and the grey herons were all there, and the storks lately
+flown home from Asia or Africa were settling in bands by the more
+marshy grounds beside the northern shores of the Szalrassee.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon she had been riding far and fast, and on her return a
+telegram from Vienna had been brought to her, sent on from Lienz.
+Having opened it, she approached her aunt and said with an unsteady
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>'War is declared between France and Prussia!'</p>
+
+<p>'We expected it; we are ready for it,' said the Princess, with all
+her Teutonic pride in her eyes. 'We shall show her that we cannot be
+insulted with impunity.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is a terrible calamity for the world,' said Wanda, and her face was
+very pale.</p>
+
+<p>The thought which was present to her was that Sabran would be foremost
+amidst volunteers. She did not hear a word of all the political
+exultation with which Princess Ottilie continued to make her militant
+prophecies. She shivered as with cold in the warmth of the midsummer
+sunset.</p>
+
+<p>'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her
+house.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess demurred.</p>
+
+<p>'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all
+the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial.
+You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the
+especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge
+Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from
+her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.</p>
+
+<p>In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War
+is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss
+of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I
+shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw
+bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every
+sword she has.'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:</p>
+
+<p>'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her
+soil is bound to arm.'</p>
+
+<p>More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her
+grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,'
+written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were
+filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that
+was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a
+child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian
+campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made
+her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal
+conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she
+became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had
+at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from
+the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the
+shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the
+command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their
+own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was
+congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of
+his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally,
+in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name
+mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That
+was all.</p>
+
+<p>The autumn began to deepen into winter, and complete silence covered
+all his life. She thought with a great remorse&mdash;if he were dead?
+Perhaps he was dead? Why had she been always so cold to him? She
+suffered intensely; all the more intensely because it was not a sorrow
+which she could not confess even to herself. When she ceased altogether
+to hear anything of or from him, she realised the hold which he had
+taken on her life.</p>
+
+<p>These months of suspense did more to attach her to him than years
+of assiduous and ardent homage could have done. She, a daughter of
+soldiers, had always felt any man almost unmanly who had not received
+the baptism of fire.</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Ottilie talked of him constantly, wondered frequently if he were
+wounded, slain, or in prison; she never spoke his name, and dreaded to
+hear it.</p>
+
+<p>Greswold, who perceived an anxiety in her that, he did not dare to
+allude to, ransacked every journal that was published in German to find
+some trace of Sabran's name. At the first he saw often some mention of
+the Cuirassiers d'Orléans, and of their intrepid Colonel Commandant:
+some raid, skirmish, or charge in which they had been conspicuous for
+reckless gallantry. But after the month of November he could find
+nothing. The whole regiment seemed to have been obliterated from
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>Winter settled down on Central Austria with cold silence, with roads
+blocked and mountains impassable. The dumbness, the solitude around
+her, which she had always loved so well, now grew to her intolerable.
+It seemed like death.</p>
+
+<p>Paris capitulated. The news reached her at the hour of a violent
+snowstorm; the postillion of her post-sledge bringing it had his feet
+frozen.</p>
+
+<p>Though her cousins of Lilienhöhe were amongst those who entered the
+city as conquerors, the fate of Paris smote her with a heavy blow. She
+felt as if the cold of the outer world had chilled her very bones, her
+very soul. The Princess, looking at her, was afraid to rejoice.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day she wrote to her cousin Hugo of Lilienhöhe, who
+was in Paris with the Imperial Guard. She asked him to inquire for and
+tell her the fate of a friend, the Marquis de Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>In due time Prince Hugo answered:</p>
+
+<p>'The gentleman you asked for was one of the most dangerous of our
+enemies. He commanded a volunteer cavalry regiment, which was almost
+cut to pieces by the Bavarian horse in an engagement before Orleans.
+Two or three alone escaped; their Colonel was severely wounded in
+the thigh, and had his charger shot dead under him. He was taken
+prisoner by the Bavarians after a desperate resistance. Whilst he
+lay on the ground he shot three of our men with his revolver. He was
+sent to a fortress, I think Ehrenbreitstein, but I will inquire more
+particularly. I am sorry to think that you have any French friends.</p>
+
+<p>By-and-by she heard that he had been confined not at Ehrenbreitstein
+but at a more obscure and distant fortress on the Elbe; that his wounds
+had been cured, and that he would shortly be set free like other
+prisoners of war. In the month of March in effect she received a brief
+letter from his own hand, gloomy and profoundly dejected.</p>
+
+<p>'Our plans were betrayed,' he wrote. 'We were surprised and surrounded
+just as we had hobbled our horses and lain down to rest, after being
+the whole day in the saddle. Bavarian cavalry, outnumbering us four to
+one, attacked us almost ere we could mount our worn-out beasts. My
+poor troopers were cut to pieces. They hunted me down when my charger
+dropped, and I was made a prisoner. When they could they despatched
+me to one of their places on the Elbe. I have been here December and
+January. I am well. I suppose I must be very strong; nothing kills
+me. They are now about to send me back to the frontier. My beautiful
+Paris! What a fate! But I forget, I cannot hope for your sympathy; your
+kinsmen are our conquerors. I know not whether the house I lived in
+there exists, but if you will write me a word at Romaris, you will be
+merciful, and show me that you do not utterly despise a lost cause and
+a vanquished soldier.'</p>
+
+<p>She wrote to him at Romaris, and the paper she wrote on felt her tears.
+In conclusion she said:</p>
+
+<p>'Whenever you will, come and make sure for yourself that both the
+Princess Ottilie and I honour courage and heroism none the less because
+it is companioned by misfortune.'</p>
+
+<p>But he did not come.</p>
+
+<p>She understood why he did not. An infinite pity for him overflowed her
+heart. His public career interrupted, his country ruined, his future
+empty, what remained to him? Sometimes she thought, with a blush on her
+face, though she was all alone: 'I do.' But then, if he never came to
+hear that?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The little hamlet of Romaris, on the coast of Finisterre, was very dull
+and dark and silent. A few grave peasant women knitted as they walked
+down the beach or sat at their doors; a few children did the same. Out
+on the <i>landes</i> some cows were driven through the heather and broom;
+out on the sea some fishing-boats with rough, red sails were rocking to
+and fro. All was melancholy, silent, poor; life was hard at Romaris for
+all. The weatherbeaten church looked grey and naked on a black rock;
+the ruins of the old <i>manoir</i> faced it amidst sands and surfs; the only
+thing of beauty was the bay, and that for the folk of Romaris had no
+beauty; they had seen it kill so many.</p>
+
+<p>There was never any change at Romaris, unless it were a change in the
+weather, a marriage, a birth, or a death. Therefore the women and
+children who were knitting had lifted up their heads as a stranger,
+accompanied by their priest, had come down over the black rocks, on
+which the church stood, towards the narrow lane that parted the houses
+where they clustered together face to face on the edge of the shore.</p>
+
+<p>Their priest, an old man much loved by them, came slowly towards them,
+conversing in low tones with the stranger, who had been young and
+handsome, and a welcome sight, since a traveller to Romaris always
+needed a sailing-boat or a rowing-boat, a guide over the moors, or a
+drive in an ox-waggon through the deep-cut lanes of the country.</p>
+
+<p>But they had ceased to think of such things as these when the curate,
+with his hands extended as when he blessed them, had said in <i>bas</i>
+Breton as he stood beside them:</p>
+
+<p>'My children, this is the last of the Sabrans of Romaris, come back to
+us from the far west that lies in the setting of the sun. Salute him,
+and show him that in Brittany we do not forget&mdash;nay, not in a hundred
+years.'</p>
+
+<p>Many years had gone by since then, and of the last of the old race,
+Romaris had scarcely seen more than when he had been hidden from
+their sight on the other side of the heaving ocean. Sabran rarely came
+thither. There was nothing to attract a man who loved the world and
+who was sought by it, in the stormy sea coast, the strip of sea-lashed
+oak forest, that one tall tower with its gaunt walls of stone which
+was all that was left of what had once been the fortress of his race.
+Now and then they saw him, chiefly when he had heard that there was
+wild weather on the western coast, and at such times he would go out
+in their boats to distressed vessels, or steer through churning waters
+to reach a fishing-smack in trouble, with a wild courage and an almost
+fierce energy which made him for the moment one of themselves. But
+such times had been few, and all that Romaris really knew of the last
+marquis was that he was a gay gentleman away there in distant Paris.</p>
+
+<p>He had been a mere name to them. Now and then he had sent fifty
+napoleons, or a hundred, to the old priest for such as were poor or
+sick amongst them. That was all. Now after the war he came hither.
+Paris had become hateful to him; his political career was ended, at
+all events for the time; the whole country groaned in anguish; the
+vices and follies that had accompanied his past life disgusted him
+in remembrance. He had been wounded and a prisoner; he had suffered
+betrayal at unworthy hands; Cochonette had sold him to the Prussians,
+in revenge of his desertion of her.</p>
+
+<p>He was further removed from the Countess von Szalras than ever. In the
+crash with which the Second Empire had fallen and sunk out of sight for
+evermore, his own hopes had gone down like a ship that sinks suddenly
+in a dark night. All his old associations were broken, half his old
+friends were dead or ruined; gay châteaux that he had ever been welcome
+at were smoking ruins or melancholy hospitals; the past had been
+felled to the ground like the poor avenues of the Bois. It affected
+him profoundly. As far as he was capable of an impersonal sentiment
+he loved France, which had been for so many years his home, and which
+had always seemed to smile at him with indulgent kindness. Her vices,
+her disgrace, her feebleness, her fall, hurt him with an intense pain
+that was not altogether selfish, but had in it a nobler indignation, a
+nobler regret.</p>
+
+<p>When he was released by the Prussians and sent across the frontier, he
+went at once to this sad sea village of Romaris, to collect as best
+he might the shattered fragments of his life, which seemed to him as
+though it had been thrown down by an earthquake. He had resigned his
+place as deputy when he had offered his sword to France; he had now no
+career, no outlet for ambition, no occupation. Many of his old friends
+were dead or ruined; although such moderate means as he possessed were
+safe, they were too slender to give him any position adequate to his
+rank. His old life in Paris, even if Paris arose from her tribulations,
+gay and glorious once more, seemed to him altogether impossible. He had
+lost taste for those pleasures and distractions which had before the
+war&mdash;or before his sojourn on the Holy Isle&mdash;seemed to him the Alpha
+and Omega of a man's existence. '<i>Que faire?</i>' he asked himself wearily
+again and again. He did not even know whether his rooms in Paris had
+been destroyed or spared; a few thousands of francs which he had
+made by a successful speculation years before, and placed in foreign
+funds, were all he had to live on. His keen sense told him that the
+opportunity which might have replaced the Bourbon throne had been lost
+through fatal hesitation. His own future appeared to him like a blank
+dead wall that rose up in front of him barring all progress; he was no
+longer young enough to select a career and commence it. With passionate
+self-reproach he lamented all the lost irrevocable years that he had
+wasted.</p>
+
+<p>Romaris was not a place to cheer a disappointed and dejected soldier
+who had borne the burning pain of bodily wounds and the intolerable
+shame of captivity in a hostile land. Its loneliness, its darkness,
+its storms, its poverty, had nothing in them with which to restore his
+spirit to hope or his sinews to ambition. In these cold, bleak, windy
+days of a dreary and joyless spring-time, the dusky moors and the
+gruesome sea were desolate, without compensating grandeur. The people
+around him were all taciturn, dull, stupid; they had not suffered by
+the war, but they understood that, poor as they were, they would have
+to bear their share in the burden of the nation's ransom. They barred
+their doors and counted their hoarded gains in the dark with throbbing
+hearts, and stole out in the raw, wet, gusty dawns to kneel at the
+bleeding feet of their Christ. He envied them their faith; he could not
+comfort them, they could not comfort him; they were too far asunder.</p>
+
+<p>The only solace he had was the knowledge that he had done his duty by
+France, and to the memory of those whose name he bore; that he had
+rendered what service he could; that he had not fled from pain and
+peril; that he had at least worn his sword well and blamelessly; that
+he had not abandoned his discrowned city of pleasure in the day of
+humiliation and martyrdom. The only solace he had was that he felt
+Wanda von Szalras herself could have commanded him to do no more than
+he had done in this the Année Terrible.</p>
+
+<p>But, though his character had been purified and strengthened by the
+baptism of fire, and though his egotism had been destroyed by the
+endless scenes of suffering and of heroism which he had witnessed, he
+could not in a year change so greatly that he could be content with the
+mere barren sense of duty done and honour redeemed. He was deeply and
+restlessly miserable. He knew not where to turn, either for occupation
+or for consolation. Time hung on his hands like a wearisome wallet of
+stones.</p>
+
+<p>When all the habits of life are suddenly rent asunder, they are like a
+rope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or they may be
+thrown altogether aside and a new strand woven, but they will never be
+the same thing again.</p>
+
+<p>Romaris, with its few wind-tortured trees and its leaden-hued dangerous
+seas, seemed to him, indeed, a <i>champ des trépassés</i>, as it was called,
+a field of death. The naked, ugly, half-ruined towers, which no ivy
+shrouded and no broken marble ennobled, as one or the other would have
+done had it been in England or in Italy, was a dreary residence for
+a man who was used to all the elegant and luxurious habits of a man
+of the world, who was also a lover of art and a collector of choice
+trifles. His rooms had been the envy of his friends, with all their
+eighteenth century furniture, and their innumerable and unclassified
+treasures; when he had opened his eyes of a morning a pastel of La
+Tour had smiled at him, rose-coloured windows had made even a grey
+sky smile. Without, there had been the sound of wheels going down
+the gay Boulevard Haussmann. All Paris had passed by, tripping and
+talking, careless and mirthful, beneath his gilded balconies bright
+with canariensis and volubilis; and on a little table, heaped in
+their hundreds, had been cards that bade him to all the best and most
+agreeable houses, whilst, betwixt them, slipped coyly in many an
+amorous note, many an unlooked-for declaration, many an eagerly-desired
+appointment.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Quel beau temps!</i>' he thought, as he awoke in the chill, bare,
+unlively chamber of the old tower by the sea; and it seemed to him
+that he must be dreaming: that all the months of the war had been
+a nightmare; that if he fully awakened he would find himself once
+more with the April sunshine shining through the rose glass, and
+the carriages rolling beneath over the asphalt road. But it was no
+nightmare, it was a terrible, ghastly reality to him, as to so many
+thousands. There were the scars on his breast and his loins where
+the Prussian steel had hacked and the Prussian shot had pierced him;
+there was his sword in a corner all dinted, notched, stained; there
+was a crowd of hideous ineffaceable tumultuous memories; it was all
+true enough, only too true, and he was alone at Romaris, with all his
+dreams and ambitions faded into thin air, vanished like the blown burst
+bubbles of a child's sport.</p>
+
+<p>In time to come he might recover power and nerve to recommence his
+struggle for distinction, but at present it seemed to him that all was
+over. His imprisonment had shaken and depressed him as nothing else
+in the trials of war could have done. He had been shut up for months
+alone, with his own desperation. To a man of high courage and impatient
+appetite for action there is no injury so great and in its effect so
+lasting as captivity. Joined to this he had the fever of a strong, and
+now perfectly hopeless, passion.</p>
+
+<p>Pacing to and fro the brick floor of the tower looking down on the
+sands and rocks of the coast, his thoughts were incessantly with Wanda
+von Szalras in her stately ancient house, built so high up amidst the
+mountains and walled in by the great forests and the ice slopes of the
+glaciers. In the heat and stench of carnage he had longed for a breath
+of that mountain breeze, for a glance from those serene eyes; he longed
+for them still.</p>
+
+<p>As he passed to and fro in the wild wintry weather, his heart was sick
+with hope deferred, with unavailing regret and repentance, with useless
+longings.</p>
+
+<p>It was near noonday; there was no sun; a heavy wrack of cloud was
+sweeping up from the west; on the air the odour of rotting fish and
+of fish-oil, and of sewage trickling uncovered to the beach, were too
+strong to be driven away by the pungency of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The sea was high and moaning loud; the dusk was full of rain; the
+wind-tormented trees groaned and seemed to sigh; their boughs were
+still scarce in bud though May had come. He felt cold, weary, hopeless.
+His walk brought no warmth to his veins, and his thoughts none to
+his heart. The moisture of the air seemed to chill him to the bone,
+and he went within and mounted the broken granite stairs to his
+solitary chamber, bare of all save the simplest necessaries, gloomy
+and cheerless with the winds and the bats beating together at the high
+iron-barred casement. He wearily lighted a little oil lamp, and threw
+a log or two of drift-wood on the hearth and set fire to them with a
+faggot of dried ling.</p>
+
+<p>He dreaded his long lonely evening.</p>
+
+<p>He had set the lamp on a table while he had set fire to the wood; its
+light fell palely on a small white square thing. It was a letter. He
+took it up eagerly; he, who in Paris had often tossed aside, with a
+passing glance, the social invitations of the highest personages and
+the flattering words of the loveliest women.</p>
+
+<p>Here, any letter seemed a friend, and as he took up this his pulse
+quickened; he saw that it was sealed with armorial bearings which he
+knew&mdash;a shield bearing three vultures with two knights as supporters,
+and with the motto '<i>Gott und mein Schwert</i>;' the same arms, the same
+motto as were borne upon the great red and gold banner floating from
+the keep on the north winds at the Hohenszalrasburg. He opened it with
+a hand which shook a little and a quick throb of pleasure at his heart.
+He had scarcely hoped that she would write again to him. The sight of
+her writing filled him with a boundless joy, the purest he had ever
+known called forth by the hand of woman.</p>
+
+<p>The letter was brief, grave, kind. As he read he seemed to hear the
+calm harmonious voice of the lady of Hohenszalras speaking to him in
+her mellowed and softened German tongue.</p>
+
+<p>She sent him words of consolation, of sympathy, of congratulation, on
+the course of action he had taken in a time of tribulation, which had
+been the touchstone of character to so many.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me something of Romaris,' she said in conclusion. 'I am sure
+you will grow to care for the place and the people, now that you seek
+both in the hour of the martyrdom of France. Have you any friends near
+you? Have you books? How do your days pass? How do you fill up time,
+which must seem so dull and blank to you after the fierce excitations
+and the rapid changes of war? Tell me all about your present life, and
+remember that we at Hohenszalras know how to honour courage and heroic
+misfortune.'</p>
+
+<p>He laid the letter down after twice reading it. Life seemed no longer
+all over for him. He had earned her praise and her sympathy. It was
+doubtful if years of the most brilliant political successes would have
+done as much as his adversity, his misadventure, and his daring had
+done for him in her esteem. She had the blood of twenty generations of
+warriors in her, and nothing appealed so forcibly to her sympathies and
+her instincts as the heroism of the sword. Those few lines too were
+a permission to write to her. He replied at once, with a gratitude
+somewhat guardedly expressed, and with details almost wholly impersonal.</p>
+
+<p>She was disappointed that he said so little of himself, but she did
+justice to the delicacy of the carefully guarded words from a man
+whose passion appealed to her by its silence, where it would only have
+alienated her by any eloquence. Of Romaris he said nothing, save that,
+had Dante ever been upon their coast, he would have added another canto
+to the 'Purgatorio,' more desolate and more unrelieved in gloom than
+any other.</p>
+
+<p>'Does he regret Cochonette?' she thought, with a jealous
+contemptuousness of which she was ashamed as soon as she felt it.</p>
+
+<p>Having once written to her, however, he thought himself privileged
+to write again, and did so several times. He wrote with ease, grace,
+and elegance: he wrote as he spoke, which gives this charm to
+correspondence, seem close at hand to the reader in intimate communion.
+The high culture of his mind displayed itself without effort, and he
+had that ability of polished expression which is in our day too often
+a neglected one. His letters became welcome to her: she answered them
+briefly, but she let him see that they were agreeable to her. There
+was in them the note of a profound depression, of an unuttered, but
+suggested hopelessness which touched her. If he had expressed it in
+plain words, it would not have appealed to her one half so forcibly.</p>
+
+<p>They remained only the letters of a man of culture to a woman capable
+of comprehending the intellectual movement of the time, but it
+was because of this limitation that she allowed them. Any show of
+tenderness would have both alarmed and alienated her. There was no
+reason after all, she thought, why a frank friendship should not exist
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she was surprised at herself for having conceded so much,
+and angry that she had done so. Happily he had the good taste to take
+no advantage of it. Interesting as his letters were they might have
+been read from the housetops. With that inconsistency of her sex from
+which hitherto she had always flattered herself she had been free, she
+occasionally felt a passing disappointment that they were not more
+personal as regarded himself. Reticence is a fine quality; it is the
+marble of human nature. But sometimes it provokes the impatience that
+the marble awoke in Pygmalion.</p>
+
+<p>Once only he spoke of his own aims. Then he wrote:</p>
+
+<p>'You bade me do good at Romaris. Candidly, I see no way to do it
+except in saving a crew off a wreck, which is not an occasion that
+presents itself every week. I cannot benefit these people materially,
+since I am poor; I cannot benefit them morally, because I have not
+their faith in the things unseen, and I have not their morality in the
+things tangible. They are God-fearing, infinitely patient, faithful
+in their daily lives, and they reproach no one for their hard lot,
+cast on an iron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at risk
+of their lives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What
+should I say to them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience,
+one petulant mutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only
+take them what the world always takes into solitude&mdash;discontent. It
+would be a cruel gift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any
+other. It is a homely saying that no blood comes out of a stone; so,
+out of a life saturated with the ironies, the contempt, the disbelief,
+the frivolous philosophies, the hopeless negations of what we call
+society, there can be drawn no water of hope and charity, for the
+well-head&mdash;belief&mdash;is dried up at its source. Some pretend, indeed,
+to find in humanity what they deny to exist as deity, but I should
+be incapable of the illogical exchange. It is to deny that the seed
+sprang from a root; it is to replace a grand and illimitable theism by
+a finite and vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased
+mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the
+poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a <i>vibrion</i>,
+a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere
+bundle of phosphorus and carbon? how can it contain the elements of
+worship; what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the
+weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty.
+It becomes ridiculous. The <i>carpe diem</i> of the classic sensualists, the
+morality of the "Satyricon" or the "Decamerone," are its only natural
+concomitants and outcome; but as yet it is not honest enough to say
+this. It affects the soothsayer's long robe, the sacerdotal frown, and
+is a hypocrite.'</p>
+
+<p>In answer she wrote back to him:</p>
+
+<p>'I do not urge you to have my faith: what is the use? Goethe was
+right. It is a question between a man and his own heart. No one should
+venture to intrude there. But taking life even as you do, it is surely
+a casket of mysteries. May we not trust that at the bottom of it, as
+at the bottom of Pandora's, there may be hope? I wish again to think
+with Goethe that immortality is not an inheritance, but a greatness
+to be achieved like any other greatness, by courage, self-denial, and
+purity of purpose&mdash;a reward allotted to the just. This is fanciful, may
+be, but it is not illogical. And without being either a Christian or a
+Materialist, without beholding either majesty or divinity in humanity,
+surely the best emotion that our natures know&mdash;pity&mdash;must be large
+enough to draw us to console where we can, and sustain where we can, in
+view of the endless suffering, the continual injustice, the appalling
+contrasts, with which the world is full. Whether man be the <i>vibrion</i>
+or the heir to immortality, the bundle of carbon or the care of angels,
+one fact is indisputable: he suffers agonies, mental and physical,
+that are wholly out of proportion to the brevity of his life, while he
+is too often weighted from infancy with hereditary maladies, both of
+body and of character. This is reason enough, I think, for us all to
+help each other, even though we feel, as you feel, that we are as lost
+children wandering in a great darkness, with no thread or clue to guide
+us to the end.'</p>
+
+<p>When Sabran read this answer, he mused to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'Pity! how far would her pity reach? How great offences would it cover?
+She has compassion for the evil-doers, but it is easy, since the evil
+does not touch her. She sits on the high white throne of her honour and
+purity, and surveys the world with beautiful but serene compassion.
+If the mud of its miry labyrinths reached and soiled her, would her
+theories prevail? They are noble, but they are the theories of one who
+sits in safety behind a gate of ivory and jasper, whilst outside, far
+below, the bitter tide of the human sea surges and moans too far off,
+too low down, for its sound to reach within. <i>Tout comprendre, c'est
+tout pardonner.</i> But since she would never understand, how could she
+ever pardon? There are things that the nature must understand rather
+than the mind; and her nature is as high, as calm, as pure as the snows
+of her high hills.'</p>
+
+<p>And then the impulse came over him for a passing moment to tell her
+what he had never told any living creature; to make confession to
+her and abide her judgment, even though he should never see her face
+again. But the impulse shrank and died away before the remembrance
+of her clear, proud eyes. He could not humiliate himself before her.
+He would have risked her anger; he could not brave her disdain.
+Moreover, straight and open ways were hot natural to him, though he was
+physically brave to folly. There was a subtlety and a reticence in him
+which were the enemies of candour.</p>
+
+<p>To her he was more frank than to any other because her influence
+was great on him, and a strong reverence was awakened in him that
+was touched by a timid fear quite alien to a character naturally
+contemptuously cynical and essentially proud. But even to her he could
+not bring himself to be entirely truthful in revelation of his past.
+Truthfulness is in much a habit, and he had never acquired its habit.
+When he was most sincere there was always some reserve lying behind
+it. This was perhaps one of the causes of the attraction he exercised
+on all women. All women are allured by the shadows and the suggestions
+of what is but imperfectly revealed. Even on the clear, strong nature
+of Wanda von Szalras it had its unconscious and intangible charm. She
+herself was like daylight, but the subtle vague charm of the shadows
+had their seduction for her; Night holds dreams and passions that fade
+and flee before the lucid noon, and who, at noonday wishes not for
+night?</p>
+
+<p>For himself, the letters he received from her seemed the only things
+that bound him to life at all.</p>
+
+<p>The betrayal of him by a base and mercenary woman had hurt him more
+than it was worthy to do; it had stung his pride and saddened him in
+this period of adversity with a sense of degradation. He had been sold
+by a courtezan; it seemed to him to make him ridiculous as Samson was
+ridiculous, and he had no gates of Gaza to pull down upon himself and
+her. He could only be idle, and stare at an unoccupied and valueless
+future. The summer went on, and he remained at Romaris. An old servant
+had sent him word that all his possessions were safe in Paris, and his
+apartments unharmed; but he felt no inclination to go there: he felt no
+sympathy with Communists or Versaillists, with Gambetta or Gallifet. He
+stayed on at the old storm-beaten sea-washed tower, counting his days
+chiefly by the coming to him of any line from the castle by the lake.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to understand that and pity it, for each week brought him
+some tidings.</p>
+
+<p>At midsummer she wrote him word that she was about to be honoured again
+by a two days' visit of her Imperial friends.</p>
+
+<p>'We shall have, perforce, a large house party,' she said. 'Will you
+be inclined this time to join it? It is natural that you should
+sorrow without hope for your country, but the fault of her disasters
+lies not with you. It is, perhaps, time that you should enter the
+world again; will you commence with what for two days only will be
+worldly&mdash;Hohenszalras? Your old friends the monks will welcome you
+willingly and lovingly on the Holy Isle?'</p>
+
+<p>He replied with gratitude, but he refused. He did not make any plea or
+excuse; he thought it best to let the simple denial stand by itself.
+She would understand it.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not think, however,' he wrote, 'that I am the less profoundly
+touched by your admirable goodness to a worsted and disarmed combatant
+in a lost cause.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is the causes that are lost which are generally the noble ones,'
+she said in answer. 'I do not see why you should deem your life at an
+end because a sham empire, which you always despised, has fallen to
+pieces. If it had not perished by a blow from without, it would have
+crumbled to pieces from its own internal putrefaction.'</p>
+
+<p>'The visit has passed off very well,' she continued. 'Every one was
+content, which shows their kindness, for these things are all of
+necessity so much alike that it is difficult to make them entertaining.
+The weather was fortunately fine, and the old house looked bright.
+You did rightly not to be present, if you felt festivity out of tone
+with your thoughts. If, however, you are ever inclined for another
+self-imprisonment upon the island, you know that your friends, both at
+the monastery and at the burg, will be glad to see you, and the monks
+bid me salute you with affection.'</p>
+
+<p>A message from Mdme. Ottilie, a little news of the horses, a few
+phrases on the politics of the hour, and the letter was done. But,
+simple as it was, it seemed to him to be like a ray of sunshine amidst
+the gloom of his empty chamber.</p>
+
+<p>From her the permission to return to the monastery when he would
+seemed to say so much. He wrote her back calm and grateful words of
+congratulation and cordiality; he commenced with the German formality,
+'Most High Lady,' and ended them with the equally formal 'devoted and
+obedient servant;' but it seemed to him as if under that cover of
+ceremony she must see his heart beating, his blood throbbing; she must
+know very well, and if knowing, she suffered him to return to the Holy
+Isle, why then&mdash;he was all alone, but he felt the colour rise to his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>'And I must not go! I must not go!' he thought, and looked at his
+pistols.</p>
+
+<p>He ought sooner to blow his brains out, and leave a written confession
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>The hoarse sound of the sea surging amongst the rocks at the base of
+the tower was all that stirred the stillness; evening was spreading
+over all the monotonous inland country; a west wind was blowing and
+rustling amidst the gorse; a woman led a cow between the dolmen,
+stopping for it to crop grass here and there; the fishing-boats were
+far out to sea, hidden under the vapours and the shadows. It was all
+melancholy, sad-coloured, chill, lonesome. As he leaned against the
+embrasure of the window and looked down, other familiar scenes, long
+lost, rose up to his memory. He saw a wide green rolling river, long
+lines of willows and of larches bending under a steel-hued sky, a vast
+dim plain stretching away to touch blue mountains, a great solitude,
+a silence filled at intervals with the pathetic song of the swans,
+chanting sorrowfully because the nights grew cold, the ice began to
+gather, the food became scanty, and they were many in number.</p>
+
+<p>'I must not go!' he said to himself; 'I must never see Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>And he lit his study lamp, and held her letter to it and burnt it.
+It was his best way to do it honour, to keep it holy. He had the
+letters of so many worthless women locked in his drawers and caskets
+in his rooms in Paris. He held himself unworthy to retain hers. He
+had burned each written by her as it had come to him, in that sort
+of exaggeration of respect with which it seemed to him she was most
+fittingly treated by him. There are less worthy offerings than the
+first scruple of an unscrupulous life. It is like the first pure drops
+that fall from a long turbid and dust-choked fountain.</p>
+
+<p>As he walked the next day upon the windblown, rock-strewn strip of sand
+that parted the old oak wood from the sea, he thought restlessly of her
+in those days of stately ceremony which suited her so well. What did he
+do here, what chance had he to be remembered by her? He chafed at his
+absence, yet it seemed to him impossible that he could ever go to her.
+What had been at first keen calculation with him had now become a finer
+instinct, was now due to a more delicate sentiment, a truer and loftier
+emotion. What could he ever look to her if he sought her but a mere
+base fortune-seeker, a mere liar, with no pride and no manhood in him?
+And what else was he? he thought, with bitterness, as he paced to and
+fro the rough strip of beach, with the dusky heaving waves trembling
+under a cloudy sky, where a red glow told the place of the setting sun.</p>
+
+<p>There were few bolder men living than He, and he was cynical and
+reckless before many things that most men reverence; but at the thought
+of her possible scorn he felt himself tremble like a child. He thought
+he would rather never see her face again than risk her disdain; there
+was in him a vague romantic wishfulness rather to die, so that she
+might think well of his memory, than live in her love through any
+baseness that would be unworthy of her.</p>
+
+<p>Sin had always seemed a mere superstitious name to him, and if he had
+abstained from its coarser forms it had been rather from the revolt
+of the fine taste of a man of culture than from any principle or
+persuasion of duty. Men he believed were but ephemera, sporting their
+small hours, weaving their frail webs, and swept away by the great
+broom of destiny as spiders by the housewife. In the spineless doctrine
+of altruism he had had too robust a temperament, too clear a reason,
+to seek a guide for conduct. He had lived for himself, and had seen
+no cause to do otherwise. That he had not been more criminal had been
+due partly to indolence, partly to pride. In his love for Wanda von
+Szalras, a love with which considerable acrimony had mingled at the
+first, he yet, through all the envy and the impatience which alloyed
+it, reached a moral height which he had never touched before. Between
+her and him a great gulf yawned. He abstained from any effort to pass
+it. It was the sole act of self-denial of a selfish life, the sole
+obedience to conscience in a character which obeyed no moral laws, but
+was ruled by a divided tyranny of natural instinct and conventional
+honour.</p>
+
+<p>The long silent hours of thought in the willow-shaded cloisters of
+the Holy Isle had not been wholly without fruit. He desired, with
+passion and sincerity, that she should think well of him, but he did
+not dare to wish for more; love offered from him to her seemed to him
+as if it would be a kind of blasphemy. He remembered in his far-off
+childhood, which at times still seemed so near to him, nearer than all
+that was around him, the vague, awed, wistful reverence with which
+he had kneeled in solitary hours before the old dim picture of the
+Madonna with the lamp burning above it, a little golden flame in the
+midst of the gloom; he remembered so well how his fierce young soul and
+his ignorant yearning child's heart had gone out in a half-conscious
+supplication, how it had seemed to him that if he only knelt long
+enough, prayed well enough, she would come down to him and lay her
+hands on him. It was all so long ago, yet, when he thought of Wanda
+von Szalras, something of that same emotion rose up in him, something
+of the old instinctive worship awoke in him. In thought he prostrated
+himself once more whenever the memory of her came to him. He had no
+religion; she became one to him.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, he was constantly thinking restlessly to himself, 'Did I do
+ill not to go?'</p>
+
+<p>His bodily life was at Romaris, but his mental life was at
+Hohenszalras. He was always thinking of her as she would look in those
+days of the Imperial visit; he could see the stately ceremonies of
+welcome, the long magnificence of the banquets, the great Rittersaal
+with cressets of light blazing on its pointed emblazoned roofs; he
+could see her as she would move down the first quadrille which she
+would dance with her Kaiser: she would wear her favourite ivory-white
+velvet most probably, and her wonderful old jewels, and all her orders.
+She would look as if she had stepped down off a canvas of Velasquez
+or Vandyck, and she would be a little tired, a little contemptuous, a
+little indifferent, despite her loyalty; she would be glad, he knew,
+when the brilliant gathering was broken up, and the old house, and the
+yew terrace, and the green lake were all once more quiet beneath the
+rays of the watery moon. She was so unlike other women. She would not
+care about a greatness, a compliment, a success more or less. Such
+triumphs were for the people risen yesterday, not for a Countess von
+Szalras.</p>
+
+<p>He knew the simplicity of her life and the pride of her temper,
+and they moved him to the stronger admiration because he knew also
+that those mere externals which she held in contempt had for him an
+exaggerated value. He was scarcely conscious himself of how great a
+share the splendour of her position, united to her great indifference
+to it, had in the hold she had taken on his imagination and his
+passions. He did know that there were so much greater nobilities in
+her that he was vaguely ashamed of the ascendency which her mere rank
+took in his thoughts of her. Yet he could not divest her of it, and
+it seemed to enhance both her bodily and spiritual beauty, as the
+golden calyx of the lily makes its whiteness seem the whiter by its
+neighbourhood.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the Iselthal the summer was more brilliant and warm than usual. The
+rains were less frequent, and the roses on the great sloping lawns
+beneath the buttresses and terraces of Hohenszalras were blooming
+freely.</p>
+
+<p>Their mistress did not for once give them much heed. She rode long and
+fast through the still summer woods, and came back after nightfall. Her
+men of business, during their interviews with her, found her attention
+less perfect, her interest less keen. In stormy days she sat in the
+library, and read Heine and Schiller often, and all the philosophers
+and men of science rarely. A great teacher has said that the Humanities
+must outweigh the Sciences at all times, and he is unquestionably
+true, if it were only for the reason that in the sweet wise lore of
+ages every human heart in pain and perplexity finds a refuge; whilst in
+love or in sorrow the sciences seem the poorest and chilliest of mortal
+vanities that ever strove to measure the universe with a foot-rule.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess watched her with wistful, inquisitive eyes, but dared
+not name the person of whom they both thought most. Wanda was herself
+intolerant of the sense of impatience with which she awaited the coming
+of the sturdy pony that brought the post-bag from Windisch-Matrey.
+He in his loneliness and emptiness of life on the barren sea-shore
+of Romaris did not more anxiously await her letters than did the
+châtelaine of Hohenszalras, amidst all her state, her wealth, and her
+innumerable occupations, await his. She pitied him intensely; there was
+something pathetic to her in the earnestness with which he had striven
+to amend his ways of life, only to have his whole career shattered by
+an insensate and unlooked-for national war. She understood that his
+poverty stood in the path of his ambition, and she divined that his
+unhappiness had broken that spring of manhood in him which would have
+enabled him to construct a new career for himself out of the ruins of
+the old. She understood why he was listless and exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>There were moments when she was inclined to send him some invitation
+more cordial, some bidding more clear; but she hesitated to take a step
+which would bind her in her own honour to so much more. She knew that
+she ought not to suggest a hope to him to which she was not prepared
+to give full fruition. And again, how could he respond? It would be
+impossible for him to accept. She was one of the great alliances of
+Europe, and he was without fortune, without career, without a future.
+Even friendship was only possible whilst they were far asunder.</p>
+
+<p>Two years had gone by since he had come across from the monastery in
+the green and gold of a summer afternoon. The monks had not forgotten
+him; throughout the French war they had prayed for him. When their
+Prior saw her, he said anxiously sometimes: 'And the Markgraf von
+Sabran, will he never come to us again? Were we too dull for him?
+Will your Excellency remember us to him, if ever you can?' And she
+had answered with a strange emotion at her heart: 'His country is
+in trouble, holy father; a good son cannot leave his land in her
+adversity. No: I do not think he was dull with you; he was quite happy,
+I believe. Perhaps he may come again some day, who knows? He shall be
+told what you say.'</p>
+
+<p>Then a vision would rise up to her of herself and him, as they would
+be perhaps when they should be quite old. Perhaps he would retire into
+this holy retreat of the Augustines, and she would be a grave sombre
+woman, not gay and pretty and witty, as the Princess was. The picture
+was gloomy; she chased it away, and galloped her horse long and far
+through the forests.</p>
+
+<p>The summer had been so brilliant that the autumn which followed was
+cold and severe, earlier than usual, and heavy storms swept over the
+Tauern, almost ere the wheat harvest could be reaped. Many days were
+cheerless and filled only with the sound of incessant rains. In the
+Pinzgau and the Salzkammergut floods were frequent. The Ache and the
+Szalzach, with all their tributary streams and wide and lonely lakes,
+were carrying desolation and terror into many parts of the land which
+in summer they made beautiful. Almost every day brought her some
+tidings of some misfortunes in the villages on the farms belonging to
+her in the more distant parts of Austria; a mill washed away, a bridge
+down, a dam burst, a road destroyed, a harvest swept into the water,
+some damage or other done by the swollen river and torrents, she heard
+of by nearly every communication that her stewards and her lawyers made
+to her at this season.</p>
+
+<p>'Our foes the rivers are more insidious than your mighty enemy the
+salt water,' she wrote to Romaris. 'The sea deals open blows, and men
+know what they must expect if they go out on the vasty deep. But here
+a little brook that laughed and chirped at noon-day as innocently as
+a child may become at nightfall or dawn a roaring giant, devouring
+all that surrounds him. We pay heavily for the glory of our mountain
+waters.'</p>
+
+<p>These autumn weeks seemed very dreary to her. She visited her horses
+chafing at inaction in their roomy stalls, and attended to her affairs,
+and sat in the library or the octagon room hearing the rain beat
+against the emblazoned leaded panes, and felt the days, and above all
+the evenings, intolerably dull and melancholy. She had never heeded
+rain before, or minded the change of season.</p>
+
+<p>One Sunday a messenger rode through the drenching storm, and brought
+her a telegram from her lawyer in Salzburg. It said: 'Idrac flooded:
+many lives lost: great distress: fear town wholly destroyed. Please
+send instructions.'</p>
+
+<p>The call for action roused her as a trumpet sounding rouses a cavalry
+charger.</p>
+
+<p>'Instructions!' she echoed as she read. 'They write as if I could bid
+the Danube subside, or the Drave shrink in its bed!'</p>
+
+<p>She penned a hasty answer.</p>
+
+<p>'I will go to Idrac myself.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she sent a message also to S. Johann im Wald for a special train
+to be got in readiness for her, and told one of her women and a trusty
+servant to be ready to go with her to Vienna in an hour. It was still
+early in the forenoon.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you mad?' cried Madame Ottilie, when she was informed of the
+intended journey.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'There is no madness in what I shall do, dear mother, and Bela surely
+would have gone.'</p>
+
+<p>'Can you stay the torrents of heaven? Can you arrest a river in its
+wrath?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; but lives are often lost because poor people lose their senses in
+fright. I shall be calmer than anyone there. Besides, the place belongs
+to us; we are bound to share its danger. If only Egon were not away
+from Hungary!'</p>
+
+<p>'But he is away. You have driven him away.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not dissuade me, dearest mother. It would be cowardice not to go.'</p>
+
+<p>'What can women do in such extremities?'</p>
+
+<p>'But we of Hohenszalras must not be mere women when we are wanted in
+any danger. Remember Luitgarde von Szalras, the <i>kuttengeier.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess sighed, prayed, even wept, but Wanda was gently
+inflexible. The Princess could not see why a precious life should be
+endangered for the sake of a little half barbaric, half Jewish town,
+which was remarkable for nothing except for shipping timber and selling
+<i>salbling.</i> The population was scarcely Christian, so many Hebrews were
+there, and so benighted were the Sclavonian poor, who between them made
+up the two thousand odd souls that peopled Idrac. To send a special
+messenger there, and to give any quantity of money that the distress
+of the moment might demand, would be all right and proper; indeed,
+an obligation on the owner of the little feudal river-side town. But
+to go! A Countess von Szalras to go in person where not one out of a
+hundred of the citizens had been properly baptized or confirmed! The
+Princess could not view this Quixotism in any other light than that of
+an absolute insanity.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela lost his life in just such a foolish manner!' she pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>'So did the saints, dear mother,' said his sister, gently.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess coloured and coughed.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, I am aware that many holy lives have been&mdash;have been&mdash;what
+appears to our finite senses wasted,' she said, with a little asperity.
+'But I am also aware, Wanda, that the duties most neglected are those
+which lie nearest home and have the least display; consideration for
+<i>me</i> might be better, though less magnificent, than so much heroism for
+Idrac.'</p>
+
+<p>'It pains me that you should put it in that light, dearest mother,'
+said Wanda, with inexhaustible patience. 'Were you in any danger I
+would stay by you first, of course; but you are in none. These poor,
+forlorn, ignorant, cowardly creatures are in the very greatest. I
+draw large revenues from the place; I am in honour bound to share
+its troubles. Pray do not seek to dissuade me. It is a matter not of
+caprice but of conscience. I shall be in no possible peril myself. I
+shall go down the river in my own vessel, and I will telegraph to you
+from every town at which I touch.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess ceased not to lament, to oppose, to bemoan her own
+powerlessness to check intolerable follies. Sitting in her easy chair
+in her warm blue-room, sipping her chocolate, the woes of a distant
+little place on the Danube, whose population was chiefly Semitic, were
+very bearable and altogether failed to appeal to her.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda kissed her, asked her blessing humbly, and took her way in the
+worst of a blinding storm along the unsafe and precipitous road which
+went over the hills to Windisch-Matrey.</p>
+
+<p>'What false sentiment it all is!' thought the Princess, left alone.
+'She has not seen this town since she was ten years old. She knows that
+they are nearly all Jews, or quite heathenish Sclavonians. She can do
+nothing at all&mdash;what should a woman do?&mdash;and yet she is so full of her
+conscience that she goes almost to the Iron Gates in quest of a duty in
+the wettest of weather, while she leaves a man like Egon and a man like
+Sabran wretched for want of a word! I must say,' thought the Princess,
+'false sentiment is almost worse than none at all!'</p>
+
+<p>The rains were pouring down from leaden skies, hiding all the sides of
+the mountains and filling the valleys with masses of vapour. The road
+was barely passable; the hill torrents dashed across it; the little
+brooks were swollen to water-courses; the protecting wall on more than
+one giddy height had been swept away; the gallop of the horses shook
+the frail swaying galleries and hurled the loosened stones over the
+precipice with loud resounding noise. The drive to Matrey and thence
+with post-horses to S. Johann im Wald, the nearest railway station, was
+in itself no little peril, but it was accomplished before the day had
+closed in, and the special train she had ordered being in readiness
+left at once for Vienna, running through the low portions of the
+Pinzgau, which were for the most part under water.</p>
+
+<p>All the way was dim and watery, and full of the sound of running
+or of falling water. The Ache and the Szalsach, both always deep
+and turbulent rivers, were swollen and boisterous, and swirled and
+thundered in their rocky beds; in the grand Pass of Lueg the gloom,
+always great, was dense as at midnight, and when they reached Salzburg
+the setting sun was bursting through ink-black clouds, and shed a
+momentary glow as of fire upon the dark sides of the Untersberg, and
+flamed behind the towers of the great castle on its rocky throne. All
+travellers know the grandeur of that scene; familiar as it was to her
+she looked upward at it with awe and pleasure commingled. Salzburg in
+the evening light needs Salvator Rosa and Rembrandt together to portray
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The train only paused to take in water; the station was crowded as
+usual, set as it is between the frontiers of empire and kingdom, but in
+the brief interval she saw one whom she recognised amongst the throng,
+and she felt the colour come into her own face as she did so.</p>
+
+<p>She saw Sabran; he did not see her. Her train moved out of the station
+rapidly, to make room for the express from Munich; the sun dropped down
+into the ink-black clouds; the golden and crimson pomp of Untersberg
+changed to black and grey; the ivory and amber and crystal of the
+castle became stone and brick and iron, that frowned sombrely over a
+city sunk in river-mists and in rain-vapours. She felt angrily that
+there was an affinity between the landscape and herself; that so, at
+sight of him, a light had come into her life which had no reality in
+fact, prismatic colours baseless as a dream.</p>
+
+<p>She had longed to speak to him; to stretch out her hand to him; to
+say at least how her thoughts and her sympathies had been with him
+throughout the war. But her carriage was already in full onward
+movement, and in another moment had passed at high speed out of the
+station into that grand valley of the Szalzach where Hohensalzburg
+seems to tower as though Friederich Barbarossa did indeed sleep there.
+With a sigh she sank backward amongst her furs and cushions, and saw
+the soaring fortress pass, into the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>The night had now closed in; the rain fell heavily. As the little
+train, oscillating greatly from its lightness, swung over the iron
+rails, there was a continual sound of splashing water audible above
+the noise of the wheels and the throb of the engine. She had often
+travelled at night and had always slept soundly; this evening she could
+not sleep. She remained wide awake watching the swaying of the lamp,
+listening to the shrill shriek of the wheels as they rushed through
+water where some hillside brook had broken bounds and spread out in a
+shallow lagoon. The skies were overcast in every direction; the rain
+was everywhere unceasing; the night seemed to her very long.</p>
+
+<p>She pondered perpetually on his presence at Salzburg, and wondered if
+he were going to the Holy Isle. Three months had gone by since she had
+sent him the semi-invitation to her country.</p>
+
+<p>The train sped on; the day dawned; she began to get glimpses of the
+grand blue river, now grey and ochre-coloured and thick with mud, its
+turbid waves heaving sullenly under the stormy October skies. She had
+always loved the great Donau; she knew its cradle well in the north
+land of the Teutons. She had often watched the baby-stream rippling
+over the stones, and felt the charm, as of some magical transformation,
+as she thought of the same stream stretching broadly under the monastic
+walls of Klosterneuberg, rolling in tempest by the Iron Gates, and
+gathering its mighty volume higher and deeper to burst at last into
+the sunlight of the eastern sea. Amidst the levelled monotony of
+modern Europe the Danube keeps something of savage grandeur, something
+of legendary power, something of oriental charm; it is still often
+tameless, a half-barbaric thing, still a Tamerlane amidst rivers: and
+yet yonder at its birthplace it is such a slender thread of rippling
+water! She and Bela had crossed it with bare feet to get forget-me-nots
+in Taunus, talking together of Chriemhilde and her pilgrimage to the
+land of the Huns.</p>
+
+<p>The little train swung on steadily through the water above and below,
+and after a night of no little danger came safely to Vienna as the dawn
+broke. She went straight to her yacht, which was in readiness off the
+Lobau and weighed anchor as the pale and watery morning broadened into
+day above the shores that had seen Aspern and Wagram. The yacht was
+a yawl, strongly built and drawing little water, made on purpose for
+the ascent and descent of the Danube, from Passau up in the north to
+as far south as the Bosphorus if needed. The voyage had been of the
+greatest joys of hers and of Bela's childhood; they had read on deck
+alternately the 'Nibelungen-Lied' and the 'Arabian Nights,' clinging
+together in delighted awe as they passed through the darkness of the
+defile of Kasan.</p>
+
+<p>Idrac was situated between Pesth and Peterwardein, lying low on marshy
+ground that was covered with willows and intersected by small streams
+flowing from the interior to the Danube.</p>
+
+<p>The little town gave its name and its seigneurie to the owner of its
+burg; an ancient place built on a steep rock that rose sheer out of
+the fast-running waves, and dominated the passage of the stream. The
+Counts of Idrac had been exceeding powerful in the old times, when
+they had stopped at their will the right of way of the river; and
+their appanages with their title had come by marriage into the House
+of Szalras some four centuries before, and although the dominion over
+the river was gone, the fortress and the little town and all that
+appertained thereto still formed a considerable possession; it had
+usually been given with its Countship to the second son of the Szalras.</p>
+
+<p>Making the passage to Pesth in fourteen hours, the yacht dropped
+anchor before the Franz Josef Quai as the first stars came out above
+the Blocksburg, for by this time the skies had lightened and the rains
+had ceased. Here she stayed the night perforce, as an accident had
+occurred to the machinery of the vessel. She did not leave the yacht,
+but sent into the inner city for stores of provisions and of the local
+cordial, the <i>slibowitza</i>, to distribute to the half-drowned people
+amongst whom she was about to go. It was noonday before the yawl got
+under weigh and left the twin-towns behind her. A little way further
+down the stream they passed a great castle, standing amidst beech woods
+on a rock that rose up from fields covered with the Carlowitz vine. She
+looked at it with a sigh: it was the fortress of Kohacs, one of the
+many possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>The weather had now cleared, but the skies were overcast, and the
+plains, which began to spread away monotonously from either shore,
+were covered with white fog. Soon the fog spread also over the river,
+and the yacht was compelled to advance cautiously and slowly, so that
+the voyage was several hours longer than usual. When the light of the
+next day broke they had come in sight of the flooded districts on their
+right: the immense flat fields that bore the flax and grain which make
+the commerce of Baja, of Neusatz, and of other riverain towns, were
+all changed to shallow estuaries. The Theiss, the Drave, and many
+minor streams, swollen by the long autumnal rains, had burst their
+boundaries and laid all the country under water for hundreds of square
+leagues. The granaries, freshly filled with the late abundant harvest,
+had at many places been flooded or destroyed: thousands of stacks of
+grain were floating like shapeless, dismasted vessels. Timber and the
+thatched roofs of the one-storied houses were in many places drifting
+too, like the flotsam and the hulls of wrecked ships.</p>
+
+<p>There are few scenes more dreary, more sad, more monotonous than those
+of a flat country swamped by flood: the sky above them was leaden
+and heavy, the Danube beneath them was turgid and discoloured; the
+shrill winds whistled through the brakes of willow, the water-birds,
+frightened, flew from their osier-beds on the islands, the bells of
+churches and watch-towers tolled dismally.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon when she came within sight of her little
+town on the Sclavonian shore, which Ernst von Szalras had fired on
+August 29, 1526, to save it from the shame of violation by the Turks.
+Though he had perished, and most of the soldiers and townsfolk with
+him, the fortress, the <i>têtes du pont</i>, and the old water-gates and
+walls had been too strong for the flames to devour, and the town had
+been built up again by the Turks and subsequently by the Hungarians.</p>
+
+<p>The slender minarets of the Ottomans' two mosques still raised
+themselves amidst the old Gothic architecture of the mediæval
+buildings, and the straw-covered roofs and the white-plastered walls
+of the modern houses. As they steamed near it the minarets and the
+castle towers rose above what looked a world of waters, all else seemed
+swallowed in the flood; the orchards, which had surrounded all save the
+river-side of the town; were immersed almost to the summits of their
+trees. The larger vessels could never approach Idrac in ordinary times,
+the creek being too shallow on which it stood; but now the water was
+so high that though it would be too imprudent to anchor there, the
+yacht easily passed in, and hove-to underneath the water-walls, a pilot
+taking careful soundings as they steered. It was about three in the
+afternoon. The short, grey day was near its end; a shout of welcome
+rose from some people on the walls as they recognised the build and the
+ensign of the yawl. Some crowded boats were pulling away from the town,
+laden with fugitives and their goods.</p>
+
+<p>'How soon people run away! They are like rats,' she thought. 'I would
+sooner be like the stork, and not quit my nest if it were in flames.'</p>
+
+<p>She landed at the water-stairs of the castle. Men, women, and children
+came scrambling along the walls, where they were huddled together out
+of temporary reach of the flood, and threw themselves down at her
+feet and kissed her skirts with abject servility. They were half mad
+with terror, and amongst the population there were many hundreds of
+Jews, the most cowardly people in all the world. The boats were quite
+inadequate in number to the work they had to do; the great steamers
+passing up and down did not pause to help them; the flood was so
+general below Pesth that on the right shore of the river each separate
+village and township was busy with its own case and had no help for
+neighbours: the only aid came from those on the opposite shore, but
+that was scanty and unwisely ministered. The chief citizens of Idrac
+had lost their wits, as she had foreseen they would do. To ring the
+bells madly night and day, and fire off the old culverins from the
+water-gate, was all they seemed to know how to do. They told her that
+many lives had been lost, as the inland waters had risen in the night,
+and most of the houses were of only one storey. In the outlying
+flax-farms it was supposed that whole households had perished. In the
+town itself there were six feet of water everywhere, and many of the
+inhabitants were huddled together in the two mosques, which were now
+granaries, in the towers, and in the fortress itself; but several
+families had been enabled to escape, and had climbed upon the roofs,
+clinging to the chimneys for bare life.</p>
+
+<p>Her mere presence brought reviving hope and energy to the primitive
+population. Their Lady had a romantic legendary reputation amongst
+them, and they were ready to cling round the pennon of the yacht as
+their ancestors had rallied round the standard of Ernst von Szalras.</p>
+
+<p>She ascended to the Rittersaal of the fortress, and assembled a few of
+the men about her, who had the most influence and energy in the little
+place. She soon introduced some kind of system and method into the
+efforts made, promised largesse to those who should be the most active,
+and had the provisions she had brought distributed amongst those who
+most needed them. The boats of the yawl took many away to a temporary
+refuge on the opposite shore. Many others were brought in to the
+state-room of the castle for shelter. Houses were constantly falling,
+undermined by the water, and there were dead and wounded to be attended
+to, as well as the hungry and terrified living creatures. Once before,
+Idrac had been thus devastated by flood, but it had been far away in
+the previous century, and the example was too distant to have been a
+warning to the present generation.</p>
+
+<p>She passed a fatiguing and anxious night. It was impossible to
+think of sleep with so much misery around. The yacht was obliged to
+descend, the river for safe anchorage, but the boats remained. She
+went herself, now in one, now in another, to endeavour to inspire the
+paralysed people with some courage and animation. A little wine, a
+little bread, were all she took; food was very scarce. The victuals of
+the yacht's provisioning did not last long amongst so many famishing
+souls. She ordered her skipper at dawn to go down as far as Neusatz
+and purchase largely. There were five thousand people, counting those
+of the neighbourhood, or more, homeless and bereft of all shelter. The
+telegraph was broken, the poles had been snapped by the force of the
+water in many places.</p>
+
+<p>With dawn a furious storm gathered and broke, and renewed rains added
+their quota to the inundation and their discomfort to the exposed
+sufferers. The cold was great, and the chill that made them shudder
+from head to foot was past all cure by cordials. She regretted not
+to have brought Greswold with her. She was indifferent to danger,
+indefatigable in exertion, and strong as Libussa, brave as Chriemhilde.
+Because the place belonged to her in almost a feudal manner, she held
+herself bound to give her life for it if need be. Bela would have done
+what she was doing.</p>
+
+<p>Twice or thrice during the two following days she heard the people
+speak of a stranger who had arrived fifteen hours before her, and had
+wrought miracles of deliverance. Unless the stories told her were
+greatly exaggerated, this foreigner had shown a courage and devotion
+quite unequalled. He had thrown himself into the work at once on his
+arrival there in a boat from Neusatz, and had toiled night and day,
+enduring extreme fatigue and running almost every hour some dire peril
+of his life. He had saved whole families of the poorest and most
+wretched quarter; he had sprung on to roofs that were splitting and
+sinking, on to walls that were trembling and tottering, and had borne
+away in safety men, women, and children, the old, and the sick, and the
+very animals; he had infused some of his own daring and devotedness
+into the selfish and paralysed Hebrew population; priests and rabbis
+were alike unanimous in his praise, and she, as she heard, felt that
+he who had fought for France had been here for her sake. They told
+her that he was now out amongst the more distant orchards and fields,
+amidst the flooded farms where the danger was even greater than in the
+town itself. Some Czechs said that he was S. John of Nepomuc himself.
+She bade them bring him to her, that she might thank him, whenever he
+should enter the town again, and then thought of him no more.</p>
+
+<p>Her whole mind and feeling were engrossed by the spectacle of a misery
+that even all her wealth could not do very much to alleviate. The
+waters as yet showed no sign of abatement. The crash of falling houses
+sounded heavily ever and again through the gloom. The melancholy sight
+of humble household things, of drowned cattle, of dead dogs, borne down
+the discoloured flood out to the Danube renewed itself every hour.
+The lamentations of the ruined people went up in an almost continuous
+wail like the moaning of a winter wind. There was nothing grand,
+nothing picturesque, nothing exciting to redeem the dreariness and the
+desolation. It was all ugly, miserable, dull. It was more trying than
+war, which even in its hideous senselessness lends a kind of brutal
+intoxication to all whom it surrounds.</p>
+
+<p>She was incessantly occupied and greatly fatigued, so that the time
+passed without her counting it. She sent a message each day to the
+Princess at home, and promised to return as soon as the waters had
+subsided and the peril passed. For the first time in her life she
+experienced real discomfort, real privation; she had surrendered nearly
+all the rooms in the burg to the sick people, and food ran short and
+there was none of good quality, though she knew that supplies would
+soon come from the steward at Kohacs and by the yacht.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth day the waters had sunk an inch. As she heard the good
+tidings she was looking out inland over the waste of grey and yellow
+flood; a Jewish rabbi was beside her speaking of the exertions of the
+stranger, in whom the superstitious of the townsfolk saw a saint from
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p>'And does no one even know who he is?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'No one has asked,' answered the Jew. 'He has been always out where the
+peril was greatest.'</p>
+
+<p>'How came he here?'</p>
+
+<p>'He came by one of the big steamers that go to Turkey. He pulled
+himself here in a little boat that he had bought; the boat in which he
+has done such good service.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is he like in appearance?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is very tall, very fair, and handsome; I should think he is
+northern.'</p>
+
+<p>Her pulse beat quicker for a moment; then she rejected the idea as
+absurd, though indeed, she reflected, she had seen him at Salzburg.</p>
+
+<p>'He must at least be a brave man,' she said quietly. 'If you see him
+bring him to me that I may thank him. Is he in the town now?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; he is yonder, where the Rathwand farms are, or were; where your
+Excellency sees those dark, long islands which are not islands at all,
+but only the summits of cherry orchards. He has carried the people
+away, carried them down to Peterwardein; and he is now about to try and
+rescue some cattle which were driven up on to the roof of a tower, poor
+beasts&mdash;that tower to the east there, very far away: it is five miles
+as the crow flies.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose he will come into the town again?'</p>
+
+<p>'He was here last night; he had heard of your Excellency, and asked for
+her health.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! I will see and thank him if he come again.'</p>
+
+<p>But no one that day saw the stranger in Idrac.</p>
+
+<p>The rains fell again and the waters again rose. The maladies which
+come of damp and of bad exhalations spread amongst the people; they
+could not all be taken to other villages or towns, for there was no
+room for them. She had quinine, wines, good food ordered by the great
+steamers, but they were not yet arrived. What could be got at Neusatz
+or Peterwardein the yacht brought, but it was not enough for so many
+sick and starving people. The air began to grow fœtid from the many
+carcases of animals, though as they floated the vultures from the hills
+fed on them. She had a vessel turned into a floating hospital, and
+the most delicate of the sick folk carried to it, and had it anchored
+off the nearest port. Her patience, her calmness, and her courage did
+more to revive the sinking hearts of the homeless creatures than the
+cordials and the food. She was all day long out in her boat, being
+steered from one spot to another. At night she rested little and passed
+from one sick bed to another. She had never been so near to hopeless
+human misery before. At Hohenszalras no one was destitute.</p>
+
+<p>One twilight hour on the ninth day, as she was rowed back to the castle
+stairs, she passed another boat in which were two lads and a man. The
+man was rowing, a dusky shadow in the gloom of the wet evening and the
+uncouthness of his waterproof pilot's dress; but she had a lantern
+beside her, and she flashed its light full on the boat as it passed
+her. When she reached the burg, she said to her servant Anton: 'Herr
+von Sabran is in Idrac; go and say that I desire to see him.'</p>
+
+<p>Anton, who remembered him well, returned in an hour, and said he could
+neither find him nor hear of him.</p>
+
+<p>All the night long, a cheerless tedious night, with the rain falling
+without and the storm that was raging in the Bosphorus sending its
+shrill echoes up the Danube, she sat by the beds of the sick women
+or paced up and down the dimly-lit Rittersaal in an impatience which
+it humiliated her to feel. It touched her that he should be here,
+so silently, so sedulously avoiding her, and doing so much for the
+people of Idrac, because they were her people. The old misgiving that
+she had been ungenerous in her treatment of him returned to her. He
+seemed always to have the finer part&mdash;the <i>beau rôle.</i> To her, royal
+in giving, imperious in conduct, it brought a sense of failure, of
+inferiority. As she read the psalms in Hungarian to the sick Magyar
+women, her mind perpetually wandered away to him.</p>
+
+<p>She did not see Sabran again, but she heard often of him. The fair
+stranger, as the people called him, was always conspicuous wherever
+the greatest danger was to be encountered. There was always peril in
+almost every movement where the undermined houses, the tottering walls,
+the stagnant water, the fever-reeking marshes presented at every turn a
+perpetual menace to life. 'He is not vainly <i>un fils des preux</i>,' she
+thought, with a thrill of personal pride, as if someone near and dear
+to her were praised, as she listened to the stories of his intrepidity
+and his endurance. Whole nights spent in soaked clothes, in half
+swamped boats; whole days lost in impotent conflict with the ignorance
+or the poltroonery of an obstinate populace, continual risk encountered
+without counting its cost to rescue some poor man's sick beast, or pull
+a cripple from beneath falling beams, or a lad from choking mud; hour
+on hour of steady laborious rowing, of passage to and fro the sullen
+river with a freight of moaning, screaming peasantry&mdash;this was not
+child's play, nor had it any of the animation and excitation which in
+war or in adventure make of danger a strong wine that goes merrily and
+voluptuously to the head. It was all dull, stupid, unlovely, and he
+had come to it for her sake. For her sake certainly, though he never
+approached her; though when Anton at last found and took her message
+to him he excused himself from obedience to it by a plea that he was
+at that moment wet and weary, and had come from a hut where typhoid
+raged. She understood the excuse; she knew that he knew well she was no
+more afraid than he of that contagion. She admired him the more for his
+isolation; in these grey, rainy, tedious, melancholy days his figure
+seemed to grow into a luminous heroic shape like one of the heroes of
+the olden time. If he had once seemed to seek a guerdon for it the
+spell would have been broken. But he never did. She began to believe
+that such a knight deserved any recompense which she could give.</p>
+
+<p>'Egon himself could have done no more,' she said in her own thoughts,
+and it was the highest praise that she could give to any man, for
+her Magyar cousin was the embodiment of all martial daring, of all
+chivalrous ardour, and had led his glittering hussars down on to the
+French bayonets, as on to the Prussian Krupp guns, with a fury that
+bore all before it, impetuous and irresistible as a stream of fired
+naphtha.</p>
+
+<p>On the twelfth morning the river had sunk so much lower that the yacht
+arriving with medicines and stores of food from Neusatz signalled that
+she could not enter the creek on which Idrac stood, and waited orders.
+It had ceased to rain, but the winds were still strong and the skies
+heavy. She descended to her boat at the water-gate, and told the men to
+take her out to the yacht. It was early, the sun behind the clouds had
+barely climbed above the distant Wallachian woods, and the scene had
+lost nothing of its melancholy. A man was standing on the water-stairs
+as she descended them, and turned rapidly away, but she had seen him
+and stretched out her long staff and touched him lightly.</p>
+
+<p>'Why do you avoid me?' she said, as he uncovered his head; 'my men
+sought you in all directions; I wished to thank you.'</p>
+
+<p>He bowed low over the hand she held out to him. 'I ventured to be near
+at hand to be of use,' he answered. 'I was afraid the exposure, and,
+the damp, and all this pestilence would make you ill: you are not ill?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I am quite well. I have heard of all your courage and endurance.
+Idrac owes you a great debt.'</p>
+
+<p>'I only pay my debt to Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>They were both silent; a certain constraint was upon them both.</p>
+
+<p>'How did you know of the inundation? It was unkind of you not to come
+to me,' she said, and her voice was unsteady as she spoke. 'I want so
+much to tell you, better than letters can do, all that we felt for you
+throughout that awful war.'</p>
+
+<p>He turned away slightly with a shudder. 'You are too good. Thousands of
+men much better than I suffered much more.'</p>
+
+<p>The tears rose to her eyes as she glanced at him. He was looking pale
+and worn. He had lost the graceful <i>insouciance</i> of his earlier manner.
+He looked grave, weary, melancholy, like a man who had passed through
+dire disaster, unspeakable pain, and had seen his career snapped in
+two like a broken wand. But there was about him instead something
+soldierlike, proven, war-worn, which became him in her eyes, daughter
+of a race of warriors as she was.</p>
+
+<p>'You have much to tell me, and I have much to hear,' she said, after
+a pause. 'You should have come to the monastery to be cured of your
+wounds. Why were you so mistrustful of our friendship?'</p>
+
+<p>He coloured and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed,' she said gravely, 'we can honour brave men in the Tauern and
+in Idrac too. You are very brave. I do not know how to thank you for my
+people or for myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Pray do not speak so,' he said, in a very low voice. 'To see you again
+would be recompense for much worthier things than any I have done.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you might have seen me long ago,' she said, with a certain
+nervousness new to her, 'had you only chosen to come to the Isle. I
+asked you twice.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with eyes of longing and pathetic appeal.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not tempt me,' he murmured. 'If I yielded, and if you despised
+me&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'How could I despise one who has so nobly saved the lives of my people?'</p>
+
+<p>'You would do so.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke very low: he was silent a little while, then he said very
+softly:</p>
+
+<p>'One evening, when we spoke together on the terrace at Hohenszalras,
+you leant your hand upon the ivy there. I plucked the leaf you touched;
+you did not see. I had the leaf with me all through the war. It was
+a talisman. It was like a holy thing. When your cousin's soldiers
+stripped me in their ambulance, they took it from me.'</p>
+
+<p>His voice faltered. She listened and was moved to a profound emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'I will give you something better,' she said very gravely. He did not
+ask her what she would give.</p>
+
+<p>She looked away from him awhile, and her face flushed a little. She was
+thinking of what she would give him; a gift so great that the world
+would deem her mad to bestow it, and perhaps would deem him dishonoured
+to take it.</p>
+
+<p>'How did you hear of these floods along the Danube?' she asked him,
+recovering her wonted composure.</p>
+
+<p>'I read about them in telegrams in Paris,' he made answer. 'I had
+mustered courage to revisit my poor Paris; all I possess is there.
+Nothing has been injured; a shell burst quite close by but did not
+harm my apartments. I went to make arrangements for the sale of my
+collections, and on the second day that I arrived there I saw the news
+of the inundations of Idrac and the lower Danubian plains. I remembered
+the name of the town; I remembered it was yours. I remembered your
+saying once that where you had feudal rights you had feudal duties, so
+I came on the chance of being of service.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have been most devoted to the people.'</p>
+
+<p>'The people! What should I care though the whole town perished? Do not
+attribute to me a humanity that is not in my nature.'</p>
+
+<p>'Be as cynical as you like in words so long as you are heroic in
+action. I am going out to the yacht; will you come with me?'</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated. 'I merely came to hear from the warder of your health. I
+am going to catch the express steamer at Neusatz; all danger is over.'</p>
+
+<p>'The yacht can take you to Neusatz. Come with me.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not offer more opposition; he accompanied her to the boat and
+entered it.</p>
+
+<p>The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing more, but she could not
+forget that scores of her own people here had owed their lives to his
+intrepidity and patience, and that he had never hesitated to throw his
+life into the balance when needed. And it had been done for her sake
+alone. The love of humanity might have been a nobler and purer motive,
+but it would not have touched her so nearly as the self-abandonment of
+a man by nature selfish and cold.</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments they were taken to the yawl. He ascended the deck with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The tidings the skipper brought, the examination of the stores, the
+discussion of ways and means, the arrangements for the general relief,
+were air dull, practical matters that claimed careful attention and
+thought. She sat in the little cabin that was brave with marqueterie
+work and blue satin and Dresden mirrors, and made memoranda and
+calculations, and consulted him, and asked his advice on this, on
+that. The government official, sent to make official estimates of the
+losses in the township, had come on board to salute and take counsel
+with her. The whole forenoon passed in these details. He wrote, and
+calculated, and drew up reports for her. No more tender or personal
+word was spoken between them; but there was a certain charm for them
+both in this intimate intercourse, even though it took no other shape
+than the study of how many boatloads of wheat were needed for so many
+hundred people, of how many florins a day might be passed to the head
+of each family, of how many of the flooded houses would still be
+serviceable with restoration, of how many had been entirely destroyed,
+of how the town would best be rebuilt, and of how the inland rivers
+could best be restrained in the future.</p>
+
+<p>To rebuild it she estimated that she would have to surrender for five
+years the revenues from her Galician and Hungarian mines, and she
+resolved to do it altogether at her own cost. She had no wish to see
+the town figure in public prints as the object of public subscription.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure all my woman friends,' she said, 'would kindly make it
+occasion for a fancy fair or a lottery (with new costumes) in Vienna,
+but I do not care for that sort of thing, and I can very well do what
+is needed alone.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent. He had always known that her riches were great, but
+he had never realised them as fully as he now did when she spoke of
+rebuilding an entire town as she might have spoken of building a
+carriage.</p>
+
+<p>'You would make a good prime minister,' she said, smiling; 'you have
+the knowledge of a specialist on so many subjects.'</p>
+
+<p>At noon they served her a little plain breakfast of Danubian
+<i>salbling</i>, with Carlowitzer wine and fruit sent by the steward of
+Mohacs. She bade him join her in it.</p>
+
+<p>'Had Egon himself been here he could not have done more for Idrac than
+you have done,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Is this Prince Egon's wine?' he said abruptly, and on hearing that it
+was so, he set the glass down untasted.</p>
+
+<p>She looked surprised, but she did not ask him his reason, for she
+divined it. There was an exaggeration in the unspoken hostility more
+like the days of Arthur and Lancelot than their own, but it did not
+displease her.</p>
+
+<p>They were both little disposed to converse during their meal; after the
+dreary and terrible scenes they had been witness of, the atmosphere
+of life seems grave and dark even to those whom the calamity had not
+touched. The most careless spirit is oppressed by a sense of the
+precariousness and the cruelty of existence.</p>
+
+<p>When they ascended to the deck the skies were lighter than they had
+been for many weeks; the fog had cleared, so that, in the distance, the
+towers of Neusatz and the fortress of Peterwardein were visible; vapour
+still hung over the vast Hungarian plain, but the Danube was clear and
+the affluents of it had sunk to their usual level.</p>
+
+<p>'You really go to-night?' she said, as they looked down the river.</p>
+
+<p>'There is no need for me to stay; the town is safe, and you are well,
+you say. If there be anything I can still do, command me.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled a little and let her eye meet his for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, if I command you to remain then, will you do so as my viceroy?
+I want to return home; Aunt Ottilie grows daily more anxious, more
+alarmed, but I cannot leave these poor souls all alone with their
+priests, and their rabbi, who are all as timid as sheep and as stupid.
+Will you stay in the castle and govern them, and help them till they
+recover from their fright? It is much to ask, I know, but you have
+already done so much for Idrac that I am bold to ask you to do more?'</p>
+
+<p>He coloured with a mingled emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'You could ask me nothing that I would not do,' he said in a low tone.
+'I could wish you asked me something harder.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it will be very hard,' she said, with an indifference she did not
+feel. 'It will be very dull, and you will have no one to speak to that
+knows anything save how to grow flax and cherries. You will have to
+talk the Magyar tongue all day, and you will have nothing to eat save
+<i>kartoffeln</i> and <i>salbling</i>; and I do not know that I am even right,'
+she added, more gravely, 'to ask you to incur the risks that come from
+all that soaked, ground, which will be damp so long.'</p>
+
+<p>'The risks that you have borne yourself! Pray do not wound me by any
+such scruple as that. I shall be glad, I shall be proud, to be for ever
+so short or so long a time as you command, your representative, your
+servant.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very good.'</p>
+
+<p>'No.'</p>
+
+<p>His eyes looked at hers with a quick flash, in which all the passion
+he dared not express was spoken. She averted her glance and continued
+calmly: 'You are very good indeed to Idrac. It will be a great
+assistance and comfort to me to know that you are here. The poor people
+already love you, and you will write to me and tell me all that may
+need to be done. I will leave you the yacht and Anton. I shall return
+by land with my woman; and when I reach home I will send you Herr
+Greswold. He is a good companion, and has a great admiration for you,
+though he wishes that you had not forsaken the science of botany.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is like all other dissection or vivisection; it spoils the artistic
+appreciation of the whole. I am yet unsophisticated enough to feel the
+charm of a bank of violets, of a cliff covered with alpen-roses. I may
+write to you?'</p>
+
+<p>'You must write to me! It is you who will know all the needs of Idrac.
+But are you sure that to remain here will not interfere with your own
+projects, your own wishes, your own duties?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have none. If I had any I would throw them away, with pleasure, to
+be of use to one of your dogs, to one of your birds.'</p>
+
+<p>She moved from his side a little.</p>
+
+<p>'Look how the sun has come out. I can see the sparkle of the brass on
+the cannon down yonder at Neusatz. We had better go now. I must see my
+sick people and then leave as soon as I can. The yacht must take me to
+Mohacs; from there I will send her back to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do as you will. I can have no greater happiness than to obey you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure that I thank you in the way that you like best, when I say
+that I believe you.'</p>
+
+<p>She said the words in a very low tone, but so calmly that the calmness
+of them checked any other words he might have uttered. It was a royal
+acceptance of a loyal service; nothing more. The boat took them back
+to the fortress. Whilst she was occupied in her farewell to the sick
+people, and her instructions to those who attended on them, he, left
+to himself in the apartment she had made her own, instinctively went
+to an old harpsichord that stood there and touched the keys. It had a
+beautiful case, rich with the varnish of the Martins. He played with
+it awhile for its external beauty, and then let his fingers stray over
+its limited keyboard. It had still sweetness in it, like the spinet
+of Hohenszalras. It suited certain pathetic quaint old German airs he
+knew, and which he half unconsciously reproduced upon it, singing them
+as he did so in a low tone. The melody, very soft and subdued, suited
+to the place where death had been so busy and nature so unsparing, and
+where a resigned exhaustion had now succeeded to the madness of terror,
+reached the ears of the sick women in the Rittersaal and of Wanda von
+Szalras seated beside their beds.</p>
+
+<p>'It is like the saints in Heaven sighing in pity for us here,' said one
+of the women who was very feeble and old, and she smiled as she heard.
+The notes, tremulous from age but penetrating in their sweetness, came
+in slow calm movements of harmony through the stillness of the chamber;
+his voice, very low also, but clear, ascended with them. Wanda sat
+quite still, and listened with a strange pleasure. 'He alone,' she
+thought, 'can make the dumb strings speak.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost dusk when she descended to the room which she had made
+her own. In the passages of the castle oil wicks were lighted in the
+iron lamps and wall sconces, but here it was without any light, and
+in the gloom she saw the dim outline of his form as he sat by the
+harpsichord. He had ceased playing; his head was bent down and rested
+on the instrument; he was lost in thought, and his whole attitude was
+dejected. He did not hear her approach, and she looked at him some
+moments, herself unseen. A great tenderness came over her: he was
+unhappy, and he had been very brave, very generous, very loyal: she
+felt almost ashamed. She went nearer, and he raised himself abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'I am going,' she said to him. 'Will you come with me to the yacht?'</p>
+
+<p>He rose, and though it was dusk, and in this chamber so dark that his
+face was indistinct to her, she was sure that tears had been in his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Your old harpsichord has the vernis Martin,' he said, with effort.
+'You should not leave it buried here. It has a melody in it too, faint
+and simple and full of the past, like the smell of dead rose-leaves.
+Yes, I will have the honour to come with you. I wish there were a full
+moon. It will be a dark night on the Danube.'</p>
+
+<p>'My men know the soundings of the river well. As for the harpsichord,
+you alone have found its voice. It shall go to your rooms in Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are too good, but I would not take it. Let it go to Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why would you not take it?</p>
+
+<p>'I would take nothing from you.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke abruptly, and with some sternness.</p>
+
+<p>'I think there is such a thing as being too proud? she said, with
+hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>'Your ancestors would not say so,' he answered, with an effort; she
+understood the meaning that underlay the words. He turned away and
+closed the lid of the harpsichord, where little painted cupids wantoned
+in a border of metal scroll-work.</p>
+
+<p>All the men and women well enough to stand crowded on the water-stairs
+to see her departure; little children were held up in their mother's
+arms and bidden remember her for evermore; all feeble creatures lifted
+up their voices to praise her; Jew and Christian blessed her; the
+water-gate was cumbered with sobbing people, trying to see her face,
+to kiss her skirt for the last time. She could not be wholly unmoved
+before that unaffected, irrepressible emotion. Their poor lives were
+not worth much, but such as they were she, under Heaven, had saved them.</p>
+
+<p>'I will return and see you again,' she said to them, as she made a slow
+way through the eager crowd. 'Thank Heaven, my people, not me. And I
+leave my friend with you, who did much more for you than I. Respect him
+and obey him.'</p>
+
+<p>They raised with their thin trembling voices a loud <i>Eljén</i>! of homage
+and promise, and she passed away from their sight into the evening
+shadows on the wide river.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran accompanied her to the vessel, which was to take her to the town
+of Mohacs, thence to make her journey home by railway.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not leave until you bid me, even though you should forget to
+call me all in my life!' he said, as the boat slipped through the dark
+water.</p>
+
+<p>'Such oblivion would be a poor reward.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have had reward enough. You have called me your friend.'</p>
+
+<p>She was silent. The boat ran through the dusk and the rippling rays of
+light streaming from the sides of the yacht, and they went on board. He
+stood a moment with uncovered head before her on the deck, and she gave
+him her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'You will come to the Holy Isle?' she said, as she did so.</p>
+
+<p>'If you bid me,' he said, as he bowed and kissed her hand. His lips
+trembled as he did so, and by the lamplight she saw that he was very
+pale.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall bid you,' she said, very softly, by-and-by. Farewell!'</p>
+
+<p>He bowed very low once more, then he dropped over the yacht's side into
+the boat waiting below; the splash of the oars told her he was gone
+back to Idrac. The yawl weighed anchor and began to go up the river,
+a troublesome and tedious passage at all seasons. She sat on deck
+watching the strong current of the Danube as it rolled on under the bow
+of the schooner. For more than a league she could see the beacon that
+burned by the water-gate of the fortress. When the curve of the stream
+hid it from her eyes she felt a pang of painful separation, of wistful
+attachment to the old dreary walls where she had seen so much suffering
+and so much courage, and where she had learned to read her own heart
+without any possibility of ignoring its secrets. A smile came on her
+mouth and a moisture in her eyes as she sat alone in the dark autumn
+night, while the schooner made her slow ascent through the swell that
+accompanies the influx of the Drave.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In two days' time Hohenszalras received its mistress home.</p>
+
+<p>She was not in any way harmed by the perils she had encountered, and
+the chills and fever to which she had been exposed. On the contrary,
+her eyes had a light and her face had a bloom which for many months had
+not been there.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess heard a brief sketch of what had passed in almost
+total silence. She had disapproved strongly, and she said that her
+disapproval could not change, though a merciful heavenly host had
+spared her the realisation of her worst fears.</p>
+
+<p>The name of Sabran was not spoken. Wanda was of a most truthful temper,
+but she could not bring herself to speak of his presence at Idrac; the
+facts would reveal themselves inevitably soon enough.</p>
+
+<p>She sent Greswold to the Danube laden with stores and medicines.
+She received a letter every morning from her delegate; but he wrote
+briefly, and with scrupulous care, the statements of facts connected
+with the town and reports of what had been done. Her engineer had
+arrived from the mines by Kremnitz, and the builders estimated that
+the waters would have subsided and settled enough, if no fresh rising
+took place, for them to begin the reconstruction of the town with the
+beginning of the new month. Ague and fever were still very common, and
+fresh cases were brought in every hour to the hospital in the fortress.
+He wrote on the arrival of Herr Greswold, that, with her permission, he
+himself would still stay on, for the people had grown used to him, and
+having some knowledge of hydraulics he would be interested to see the
+plans proposed by her engineers for preserving the town from similar
+calamities.</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks passed; all that time she spoke but little either of him or
+of any other subject. She took endless rides, and she sat many hours
+doing nothing in the white room, absorbed in thought. The Princess,
+who had learned what had passed, with admirable exercise of tact and
+self-restraint made neither suggestion nor innuendo, and accepted the
+presence of a French Marquis at a little obscure town in Sclavonia as
+if it were the most natural circumstance in the world.</p>
+
+<p>'All the Szalras have been imperious, arrogant, and of complicated
+character,' she thought; 'she has the same temper, though it is
+mitigated in her by great natural nobility of disposition and strong
+purity of motives. She will do as she chooses, let all the world do
+what it may to change her. If I say a word either way it may take
+effect in some wholly unforeseen manner that I should regret. It is
+better to abstain. In doubt do nothing, is the soundest of axioms.'</p>
+
+<p>And Princess Ottilie, who on occasion had the wisdom of the serpent
+with the sweetness of the dove, preserved a discreet silence, and
+devoured her really absorbing curiosity in her own heart.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the fourth week she heard that all was well at Idrac,
+so far as it could be so in a place almost wholly destroyed. There
+was no sign of renewed rising of the inland streams. The illness was
+diminished, almost conquered; the people had begun to take heart and
+hope, and, being aided, wished to aid themselves. The works for new
+embankments, water-gates, and streets were already planned, though
+they could not be begun until the spring. Meanwhile, strong wooden
+houses were being erected on dry places, which which could shelter
+<i>ad interim</i> many hundreds of families; the farmers were gradually
+venturing to return to their flooded lands. The town had suffered
+grievously and in much irreparably, but it began to resume its trade
+and its normal life.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated a whole day when she heard this. Though Sabran did not
+hint at any desire of his own to leave the place, she knew it, was
+impossible to bid him remain longer, and that a moment of irrevocable
+decision was come. She hesitated all the day, slept little all the
+night, then sent him a brief telegram: 'Come to the Island.'</p>
+
+<p>Obey the summons as rapidly as he might, he could not travel by Vienna
+and Salzburg more quickly than in some thirty hours or more. The time
+passed to her in a curious confusion and anxiety. Outwardly she was
+calm enough; she visited the schools, wrote some letters, and took her
+usual long ride in the now leafless woods, but at heart she was unquiet
+and ill at ease, troubled more than by anything else at the force of
+the desire she felt to meet him once more. It was but a month since
+they had parted on the deck, and it seemed ten years. She had known
+what he had meant when he had said that he would come if she bade him;
+she had known that she would only do the sheerest cruelty and treachery
+if she called him thither only to dismiss him. It had not been a visit
+of the moment, but all his life that she had consented to take when she
+had written 'Come to the Island.'</p>
+
+<p>She would never have written it unless she had been prepared to fulfil
+all to which it tacitly pledged her. She was incapable of wantonly
+playing with any passion that moved another, least of all with his. The
+very difference of their position would have made indecision or coyness
+in her seem cruelty, humiliation. The decision hurt her curiously with
+a sense of abdication, mortification, and almost shame. To a very proud
+woman in whom the senses have never asserted their empire, there is
+inevitably an emotion of almost shame, of self-surrender, of loss of
+self-respect, in the first impulses of love. It made her abashed and
+humiliated to feel the excitation that the mere touch of his hand, the
+mere gaze of his eyes, had power to cause her. 'If this be love,' she
+thought, 'no wonder the world is lost for it.'</p>
+
+<p>Do what she would, the time seemed very long; the two evenings that
+passed were very tedious and oppressive. The Princess seemed to
+observe nothing of what she was perfectly conscious of, and her
+flute-like voice murmured on in an unending stream of commonplaces to
+which her niece replied much at random.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon of the third day she stood on the terrace looking down
+the lake and towards the Holy Isle, with an impatience of which she was
+in turn impatient. She was dressed in white woollen stuff with silver
+threads in it; she had about her throat an old necklace of the Golden
+Fleece, of golden shells enamelled, which had been a gift from Charles
+the Fifth to one of her house; over her shoulders, for the approach
+of evening was cold, she had thrown a cloak of black Russian sables.
+She made a figure beautiful, stately, patrician, in keeping with the
+background of the great donjon tower, and the pinnacled roofs, and the
+bronze warriors in their Gothic niches.</p>
+
+<p>When she had stood there a few minutes looking down the lake towards
+the willows of the monastery island, a boat came out from the willow
+thickets, and came over the mile-and-half of green shadowy water. There
+was only one person in it. She recognised him whilst he was still far
+off, and a smile came on her mouth that it was a pity he could not see.</p>
+
+<p>He was a bold man, but his heart stood still with awe of her, and his
+soul trembled within him at this supreme moment of his fate. For he
+believed that she would not have bidden him there unless her hand were
+ready to hold out destiny to him&mdash;the destiny of his maddest, of his
+sweetest, dreams.</p>
+
+<p>She came forward a few paces to meet him; her face was grave and pale,
+but her eyes had a soft suppressed light.</p>
+
+<p>'I have much for which to thank you,' she said, as she held out her
+hand to him. Her voice was tremulous though calm.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand, then stood silent. It seemed to him that there was
+nothing to say. She knew what he would have said if he had been king,
+or hero, or meet mate for her. His pulses were beating feverishly, his
+self-possession was gone, his eyes did not dare to meet hers. He felt
+as if the green woods, the shining waters, the rain-burdened skies were
+wheeling round him. That dumbness, that weakness, in a man so facile
+of eloquence, so hardy and even cynical in courage, touched her to a
+wondering pitifulness.</p>
+
+<p>'After all,' she thought once more, 'if we love one another what is it
+to anyone else? We are both free.'</p>
+
+<p>If the gift she would give would be so great that the world would blame
+him for accepting it, what would that matter so long as she knew him
+blameless?</p>
+
+<p>They were both mute: he did not even look at her, and she might have
+heard the beating of his heart. She looked at him and the colour came
+back into her face, the smile back upon her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>'My friend,' she said very gently,'did never you think that I also&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She paused: it was very hard to her to say what she must say, and he
+could not help her, dared not help her, to utter it.</p>
+
+<p>They stood thus another moment mute, with the sunset glow upon the
+shining water, and upon the feudal majesty of the great castle.</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked at him with a straight, clear, noble glance, and with
+the rich blood mounting in her face, stretched out her hand to him with
+a royal gesture.</p>
+
+<p>'They robbed you of your ivy leaf, my cruel Prussian cousins. Will
+you&mdash;take&mdash;this&mdash;instead?'</p>
+
+<p>Then Heaven itself opened to his eyes. He did not take her hand. He
+fell at her feet and kissed them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Is it wisest after all to be very unwise, dear mother mine?' she said a
+little later, with a smile that was tender and happy.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess looked up quickly, and so looking understood.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my beloved, is it indeed so? Yes, you are wise to listen to your
+heart; God speaks in it!'</p>
+
+<p>With tears in her eyes she stretched out her pretty hands in solemn
+benediction.</p>
+
+<p>'Be His Spirit for ever with you,' she said with great emotion. 'I
+shall be so content to know that I leave you not alone when our Father
+calls me, for I think your very greatness and dominion, my dear, but
+make you the more lonely, as sovereigns are, and it is not well to be
+alone, Wanda; it is well to have human love close about us.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is to lean on a reed, perhaps,'murmured Wanda, in that persistent
+misgiving which possessed her. 'And when the reed breaks, then though
+it has been so weak before, it becomes of iron, barbed and poisoned.'</p>
+
+<p>'What gloomy thoughts! And you have made me so happy, and surely you
+are happy yourself?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes. My reed is in full flower, but&mdash;but&mdash;yes, I am happy; I hope that
+Bela knows.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess kissed her once again.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! he loves you so well.'</p>
+
+<p>'That I am sure of; yet I might never have known it but for you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I did for the best.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will send him to you. I want to be alone a little. Dear mother, he
+cares for you as tenderly as though he were your son.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have been his friend always,' said the Princess, with a smile,
+whilst the tears still stood in her eyes. 'You cannot say so much,
+Wanda; you were very harsh.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know it. I will atone to him.'</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the Princess followed her tenderly.'</p>
+
+<p>'And she will make her atonement generously, grandly,' she thought.
+'She is a woman of few protestations, but of fine impulses and of
+unerring magnanimity. She will be incapable of reminding him that
+their kingdom is hers. I have done this thing; may Heaven be with it!
+If she had loved no one, life would have grown so pale, so chill, so
+monotonous to her; she would have tired of herself, having nothing
+but herself for contemplation. Solitude has been only grand to her
+hitherto because she has been young, but as the years rolled on she
+would have died without ever having lived; now she will live. She may
+have to bear pains, griefs, infidelities, calamities that she would
+have escaped; but even so, how much better the summer day, even with
+the summer storm, than the dull, grey, quiet, windless weather! Of
+course, if she could have found sanctuary in the Church&mdash;&mdash;But her
+faith is not absolute and unwavering enough for that; she has read too
+many philosophies; she requires, too, open-air and vigorous life; the
+cloister would have been to her a prison. She is one of those whose
+religion lies in activity; she will worship God through her children.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran entered as she mused, and knelt down before her.</p>
+
+<p>'You have been my good angel, always,' he murmured. 'How can I thank
+you? I think she would never have let her eyes rest on me but for you.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'My friend, you are one of those on whom the eyes of women willingly
+rest, perhaps too willingly. But you&mdash;you will have no eyes for any
+other now? You must deserve my faith in you. Is it not so?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, madame,' he answered with deep emotion, 'all words seem so trite
+and empty; any fool can make phrases, but when I say that my life
+shall be consecrated to her, I mean it, in the uttermost royalty, the
+uttermost gratitude.'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe you,' said the Princess, as she laid her hand lightly
+on his bent head. 'Perhaps no man can understand entirely all that
+she surrenders in admitting that she loves you; for a proud woman
+to confess so much of weakness is very hard: but I think you will
+comprehend her better than any other would. I think you will not force
+her to pass the door of disillusion; and remember that though she will
+leave you free as air&mdash;for she is not made of that poor stuff which
+would enslave what it loves&mdash;she would not soon forgive too great abuse
+of freedom. I mean if you were ever&mdash;ever unfaithful&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'For what do you take me?' he cried, with indignant passion. 'Is there
+another woman in the world who could sit beside her, and not be
+dwarfed, paled, killed, as a candle by the sun?'</p>
+
+<p>'You are only her betrothed,' said the Princess, with a little sigh.
+'Men see their wives with different eyes; so I have been told, at
+least. Familiarity is no courtier, and time is always cruel.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, time shall be our dearest friend,' said Sabran, with a tenderness
+in his voice that spoke more constancy than a thousand oaths. 'She will
+be beautiful when she is old, as you are; age will neither alarm nor
+steal from her; her bodily beauty is like her spiritual, it is cast
+in lines too pure and clear not to defy the years. Oh, mother mine!
+(let me call you that) fear nothing; I will love her so well that, all
+unworthy now, I will grow worthy her, and cause her no moment's pain
+that human love can spare her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Her people shall be your people, and her God your God,' murmured the
+Princess, with her hand still lying lightly on his head, obediently
+bent.</p>
+
+<p>When late that night he went across the lake the monks were at their
+midnight orisons; their voices murmured as one man's the Latin words of
+praise and prayer, and made a sound like that of a great sea rolling
+slowly on a lonely shore.</p>
+
+<p>He believed naught that they believed. Deity was but a phrase to him;
+faith and a future life were empty syllables to him. Yet, in the
+fulness of his joy and the humiliation of his spirit, he felt his heart
+swell, his pride sink subdued. He knelt down in the hush and twilight
+of that humble place of prayer, and for the first moment in many years
+he also praised God.</p>
+
+<p>No one heeded him; he knelt behind them in the gloom unnoticed; he rose
+refreshed as men in barren lands in drought are soothed by hearing the
+glad fall of welcome rain. He had no place there, and in another hour
+would have smiled at his own weakness; but now he remembered nothing
+except that he, utterly beyond his deserts, was blessed. As the monks
+rose to their feet and their loud chanting began to vibrate in the air,
+he went out unheard, as he had entered, and stood on the narrow strip
+of land that parted the chapel from the lake. The green waters were
+rolling freshly in under a strong wind, the shadows of coming night
+were stealing on; in the south-west a pale yellow moonlight stretched
+broadly in a light serene as dawn, and against it there rose squarely
+and darkly with its many turrets the great keep of Hohenszalras.</p>
+
+<p>He looked, but it was not of that great pile and all which it
+represented and symbolised that he thought now.</p>
+
+<p>It was of the woman he loved as a woman, not as a great possessor of
+wealth and lands.</p>
+
+<p>'Almost I wish that she were poor as the saints she resembles!' he
+thought, with a tender passion that for the hour was true. It seemed
+to him that had he seen her standing in her shift in the snow, like
+our Lady of Hungary, discrowned and homeless, he would have been glad.
+He was honest with the honesty of passion. It was not the mistress of
+Hohenszalras that he loved, but his own wife.</p>
+
+<p>Such a marriage could not do otherwise than arouse by its announcement
+the most angry amazement, the most indignant protests from all the
+mighty houses with which for so many centuries the house of Szalras
+had allied itself. In a few tranquil sentences she made known her
+intentions to those of her relations whom she felt bound thus to
+honour; but she gave them clearly to understand that it was a formula
+of respect not an act of consultation. When they received her letters
+they knew that her marriage was already quite as irrevocable as though
+it had already taken place in the Hof-Kapelle of Vienna.</p>
+
+<p>All her relatives and all her order were opposed to her betrothal;
+a cold sufferance was the uttermost which any of them extended to
+Sabran. A foreigner and poor, and, with a troubled and uncertain
+past behind him, he was bitterly unwelcome to the haughty Prussian,
+Austrian, and Hungarian nobilities to which she belonged; neither his
+ancient name nor his recent political brilliancy and military service
+could place him on an equality with them in their eyes. Her trustees,
+the Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe and the Cardinal Vàsàrhely, with her
+cousin Kaulnitz, hurried in person as swiftly as special trains could
+bring them to the Iselthal, but they were too late to avert the blow.</p>
+
+<p>'It is not a marriage for her,' said Kaulnitz, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>'Why not? It is a very old family,' said the Princess, with no less
+irritation.</p>
+
+<p>'But quite decayed, long ruined,' he returned. 'This man was himself
+born in exile.'</p>
+
+<p>'As they exile everybody twice in every ten years in France!</p>
+
+<p>'And there have been stories&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Of whom are there not stories? Calumny is the parasite of character;
+the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never heard him accused of any strength, except of the wrist in
+<i>l'escrime!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know anything dishonourable of him? If you do you are bound to
+say it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dishonourable is a grave word. No, I cannot say that I do; the society
+he frequents is a guarantee against that; but his life has been
+indifferent, complicated, uncertain, not a life to be allied with that
+of such a woman as Wanda. My dear Princess, it has been a life <i>dans le
+milieu parisien</i>; what more would you have me say?'</p>
+
+<p>'Prince Archambaud's has been that. Yet three years since you earnestly
+pressed his suit on Wanda.'</p>
+
+<p>'Archambaud! He is one of the first alliances in Europe; he is of blood
+royal, and he has not been more vicious than other men.'</p>
+
+<p>'It would be better he should have been less so, since he lives so near
+'the fierce light that beats upon the throne;' an electric light which
+blackens while it illumines! My good Kaulnitz, you wander very far
+afield. If you know anything serious against M. de Sabran it is your
+duty to say it.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is a gambler.'</p>
+
+<p>'He has renounced gambling.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is a duellist.'</p>
+
+<p>'Society was of much better constitution when the duel was its habitual
+phlebotomy.'</p>
+
+<p>'He has been the lover of many women.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid that is nothing singular.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is hardly more than an adventurer.'</p>
+
+<p>'He counts his ancestry in unbroken succession from the clays of
+Dagobert.</p>
+
+<p>'He has nothing but a <i>pignon sur rue</i> in Paris, and a league or two of
+rocks and sand in Brittany; yet, though so poor, he made money enough
+by cards and speculation to be for three years the <i>amant en titre</i> of
+Cochonette.'</p>
+
+<p>Madame Ottilie rose with a little frown.</p>
+
+<p>'I think we will say no more, my dear Baron; the matter is, after all,
+not yours or mine to decide. Wanda will assuredly do as she likes.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you have so much influence with her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have none; no one has any: and I think you do not understand her in
+the least. It may cost her very much to avow to him that she loves him,
+but once having done that, it will cost her nothing at all to avow it
+to the world. She is much too proud a woman to care for the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is <i>gentilhomme de race</i>, I grant,' admitted with reluctance the
+Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe.</p>
+
+<p>'When has a noble of Brittany been otherwise?' asked the Princess
+Ottilie.</p>
+
+<p>'I know,' said the Prince; 'but you will admit that he occupies a
+difficult position&mdash;an invidious one.'</p>
+
+<p>'And he carries himself well through it. It is a difficult position
+which is the test of breeding,' said the Princess, triumphantly, 'and
+I deny entirely that it is what you call an invidious one. It is you
+who have the idea of the crowd when you lay so much stress on the mere
+absence of money.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is the idea of the crowd that dominates in this age.'</p>
+
+<p>'The more reason for us to resist it, if it be so.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you are in love with him yourself, my sister!'</p>
+
+<p>'I should be were I forty years younger.'</p>
+
+<p>The Countess Brancka alone wrote with any sort of sympathy and pleasure
+to congratulate them both.</p>
+
+<p>'I was sure that Parsifal would win soon or late,' she said. 'Only
+remember that he is a Parsifal <i>doublé</i> by a de Morny.'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than
+the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of
+the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied.
+De Morny!&mdash;a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The
+comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!</p>
+
+<p>She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or
+remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had
+so much of the '<i>éternel féminin</i>' in her that she was only the more
+resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and
+exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was
+natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All
+the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those
+who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances
+produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as
+Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again
+Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had
+no power of persuasion.</p>
+
+<p>The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more
+graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as
+might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were
+present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that
+he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The
+sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man,
+whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of
+many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had
+they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of
+this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of
+birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere
+difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or
+the inches of one's stature.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he
+is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always
+be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at
+large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'</p>
+
+<p>'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what
+matters the opinion of others?'</p>
+
+<p>'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt
+those motives?'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has
+been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him
+as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to
+him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the
+power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'</p>
+
+<p>As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was
+listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ
+within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of
+grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous
+years to come.</p>
+
+<p>When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:</p>
+
+<p>'I want you to promise me one thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'I promise you all things. What is this one?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those
+great fortunes which form the <i>acte d'accusation</i> of socialists against
+society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of
+Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It
+is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed
+by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious
+barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one
+of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!&mdash;Promise me that
+you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may
+enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'</p>
+
+<p>He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to
+speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still
+remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is
+too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against
+me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a
+few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too
+much!'</p>
+
+<p>He stooped and kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with
+passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that
+I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be
+right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away
+from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'</p>
+
+<p>A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her
+hands as he held them clasped in his.</p>
+
+<p>'We will drink that wafer together, and as long as we are together it
+will never be bitter, I think,' she said very softly.</p>
+
+<p>Her voice seemed to sink into his very soul, so much it said of faith,
+so much it aroused of remorse.</p>
+
+<p>Then the great joy which had entered his life, like a great dazzling
+flood of light suddenly let loose into a darkened chamber, so blinded
+consumed, and intoxicated him, that he forgot all else; all else save
+this one fact&mdash;she would be his, body and soul, night and day, in life
+and in death for ever; his children borne by her, his life spent with
+her, her whole existence surrendered to him.</p>
+
+<p>For some days after that she mused upon the possibility of rendering
+him entirely independent of herself, without insulting him by a direct
+offer of a share in her possessions. At last a solution occurred
+to her. The whole of the fiefs of Idrac constituted a considerable
+appanage apart; its title went with it. When it had come into the
+Szalras family by marriage, as far back as the fifteenth century, it
+had been a principality; it was still a seigneurie, and many curious
+feudal privileges and distinctions went with it.</p>
+
+<p>It was Idrac now that she determined to abandon to her lover.</p>
+
+<p>'He will be seigneur of Idrac,' she thought, 'and I shall be so glad
+for him to bear an Austrian name.'</p>
+
+<p>'She herself would always retain her own name, and would take no other.</p>
+
+<p>'We will go and revisit it together,' she thought, and though she
+was all alone' at that moment, a soft warmth came into her face, and
+a throb of emotion to her heart, as she remembered all that would lie
+in that one word 'together,' all the tender and intimate union of the
+years to come.</p>
+
+<p>Her trustees were furious, and sought the aid of the men of law to
+enable them to step in and arrest her in what they deemed a course
+of self-destruction, but the law could not give them so much power;
+she was her own mistress, and as sole inheritrix had received her
+possessions singularly untrammelled by restrictions. In vain Prince
+Lilienhöhe spent his severe and chilly anger, Kaulnitz his fine
+sarcasm and delicate insinuations, and the Cardinal his stately and
+authoritative wrath. She was not to be altered in her decision.</p>
+
+<p>Austrian law allowed her to give away an estate to her husband if she
+chose, and there was nothing in the private settlements of her property
+to prevent her availing herself of the law.</p>
+
+<p>Strenuous opposition was encountered by her to this project, by every
+one of her relatives, hardly excluding the Princess Ottilie; 'for,'
+said that sagacious recluse, 'your horses may show you, my dear, the
+dangers of a rein too loose.'</p>
+
+<p>'I want no rein at all,' said Wanda. 'You forget that, to my thinking,
+marriage should never be bondage; two people with independent wills,
+tastes, and habits should mutually concede a perfect independence of
+action to each other. When one must yield, it must be the woman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Those are very fine theories,' the Princess remarked with caution.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope we shall put them in practice,' said Wanda, with unruffled good
+humour. 'Dear mother, I am sure you can understand that I want him
+to feel he is wholly independent of me. To what I love best on earth
+shall I dole out a niggard largesse from my wealth? If I were capable
+of doing so he would grow in time to hate me, and his hatred would be
+justified.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never should have supposed you would become so romantic,' said the
+Princess.</p>
+
+<p>'It will make him independent of you,' objected Prince Lilienhöhe.</p>
+
+<p>'That is what, beyond all, I desire him to be,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>'It is an infatuation,' sighed Cardinal Vàsàrhely, out of her hearing,
+'when Egon would have brought to her a fortune as large as her own.'</p>
+
+<p>'You think water should always run to the sea,' said Princess Ottilie;
+'surely that is great waste sometimes?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you are as infatuated as she is,' murmured the Cardinal. 'You
+forget that had she not been inspired with this unhappy sentiment she
+would have most probably left Hohenszalras to the Church.'</p>
+
+<p>'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,'
+answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else,
+had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'</p>
+
+<p>That would have been better than to an adventurer.'</p>
+
+<p>'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest
+aristocracies of the world, if poor.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Ce que femme veut</i>,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the
+Church had been worsted by women.</p>
+
+<p>The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the
+marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any
+possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband,
+and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of
+action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the
+deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself,
+as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud
+to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your
+hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he
+will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always
+will. If not&mdash;if not&mdash;well, he must go!'</p>
+
+<p>One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment
+emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She
+spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He
+looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush
+that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow
+tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires.
+She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of
+the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before
+him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.</p>
+
+<p>'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you
+to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of
+Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their
+feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been
+lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the
+reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary
+passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'</p>
+
+<p>'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with
+those roses.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced
+flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment.
+It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'</p>
+
+<p>'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your
+coronet, to which I can add none!'</p>
+
+<p>But to please her he bent over the crabbed black letter and the antique
+blazonings of the great roll to which the great dead men had set their
+sign and seal. She watched him as he read it, then after a little time
+she put her hand with a caressing movement on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'My love, I can do just as I will with Idrac. The lawyers are agreed on
+that, and the Kaiser will confirm whatever I do. Now I want to give you
+Idrac, make you wholly lord of it; indeed, the thing is already done. I
+have signed all the documents needful, and, as I say, the Emperor will
+confirm any part of them that needs his assent. My Réné, you are a very
+proud man, but you will not be too proud to take Idrac and its title
+from your wife. But for that town who can say that our lives might not
+have been passed for ever apart? Why do you look so grave? The Kaiser
+and I both want you to be Austrian. When I transfer to you the fief of
+Idrac you are its Count for evermore.'</p>
+
+<p>He drew a quick deep breath as if he had been struck a blow, and stood
+gazing at her. He did not speak, his eyes darkened as with pain. For
+the moment she was afraid that she had wounded him. With exquisite
+softness of tone and touch she took his hand and said to him tenderly:</p>
+
+<p>'Why will you be so proud? After all, what are these things? Since
+we love one another, what is mine is yours; a formula more or less
+is no offence. It is my fancy that you should have the title and the
+fief. The people know you there, and your heroic courage will be for
+ever amongst their best traditions. Dear! once I read that it needs a
+greater soul to take generously than to give. Be great so, now, for my
+sake!'</p>
+
+<p>'Great!' he echoed the word hoarsely, and a smile of bitter irony
+passed for a moment over his features. But he controlled the passionate
+self-contempt that rose in him. He knew that whatever else he was,
+he was her lover, and her hero in her sight. If the magnitude and
+magnanimity of her gifts overwhelmed and oppressed him, he was recalled
+to self-control by the sense of her absolute faith in him. He pressed
+her hands against his heavily-beating heart.</p>
+
+<p>'All the greatness is with you, my beloved,' he said with effort.
+'Since you delight to honour me, I can but strive my utmost to deserve
+your honour. It is like your beautiful and lavish nature to be prodigal
+of gifts. But when you give yourself, what need is there for aught
+else?'</p>
+
+<p>'But Idrac is my caprice. You must gratify it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will take the title gladly at your hands then. The revenues&mdash;No.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must take it all, the town and the title, and all they bring,' she
+insisted. 'In truth, but for you there would possibly be no town at
+all. Nay, my dear, you must do me this little pleasure; it will become
+you so well that Countship of Idrac: it is as old a place as Vindobona
+itself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you not understand?' she added, with a flush on her face. 'I want
+you to feel that it is wholly yours; that if I die, or if you leave me,
+it remains yours still. Oh, I do not doubt you; not for one moment. But
+liberty is always good. And Idrac will make you an Austrian noble in
+your own right. If you persist in refusing it I will assign it to the
+Crown; you will pain me and mortify me.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is enough! Never wittingly in my life will I hurt you. But if you
+wish me to be lord of Idrac, invest me with the title, my Empress. I
+will take it and be proud of it; and as for the revenues&mdash;well, we will
+not quarrel for them. They shall go to make new dykes and new bastions
+for the town, or pile themselves one on another in waiting for your
+children.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled and her face grew warm as she turned aside and took up one
+of the great swords with jewelled hilts and damascened scabbards, which
+were ranged along the wall of the Rittersaal with other stands of arms.</p>
+
+<p>She drew the sword, and as he fell on his knee before her smote him
+lightly on the shoulder with its blade.</p>
+
+<p>'Rise, Graf von Idrac!' she said, stooping and touching his forehead
+with the bouquet that she wore at her breast. He loosened one of the
+roses and held it to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>'I swear my fealty now and for ever,' he said with emotion, and his
+face was paler and his tone was graver than the playfulness of the
+moment seemed to call for in him.</p>
+
+<p>'Would to Heaven I had had no other name than this one you give me,'
+he murmured as he rose. 'Oh, my love, my lady, my guardian angel!
+Forget that ever I lived before, forget all my life when I was unworthy
+you; let me live only from the day that will make me your vassal and
+your&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'That will make you my lord!' she said softly; then she stooped, and
+for the first time kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>What caused her the only pain that disturbed the tranquillity of these
+cloudless days was the refusal of her cousin Egon to be present at
+her marriage. He sent her, with some great jewels that had come from
+Persia, a few words of sad and wistful affection.</p>
+
+<p>'My presence,' he added in conclusion, 'is no more needed for your
+happiness than are these poor diamonds and pearls needed in your
+crowded jewel-cases. You will spare me a trial, which it could be of no
+benefit to you for me to suffer. I pray that the Marquis de Sabran may
+all his life be worthy of the immense trust and honour which you have
+seen fit to give to him. For myself, I have been very little always in
+your life. Henceforth I shall be nothing. But if ever you call on me
+for any service&mdash;which it is most unlikely you ever will do&mdash;I entreat
+you to remember that there is no one living who will more gladly or
+more humbly do your bidding at all cost than I, your cousin Egon.'</p>
+
+<p>The short letter brought tears to her eyes. She said nothing of it to
+Sabran. He had understood from Mdme. Ottilie that Prince Vàsàrhely had
+loved his cousin hopelessly for many years, and could not be expected
+to be present at her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>In a week from that time their nuptials were celebrated in the Court
+Chapel of the Hofburg at Vienna, with all the pomp and splendour that
+a brilliant and ceremonious Court could lend to the espousal of one of
+the greatest ladies of the old Duchy of Austria.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after the ceremony they left the capital for Hohenszalras.</p>
+
+<p>At the signing of the contract on the previous night, when he had taken
+up the pen he had grown very pale; he had hesitated a moment, and
+glanced around him on the magnificent crowd, headed by the Emperor and
+Empress, with a gleam of fear and of anxiety in his eyes, which Baron
+Kaulnitz, who was intently watching him, had alone perceived.</p>
+
+<p>'There is something. What is it?' had mused the astute German.</p>
+
+<p>It was too late to seek to know. Sabran had bent down over the
+parchment, and with a firm hand had signed his name and title.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>It was midsummer once more in the Iselthal, five years and a half after
+the celebration at the Imperial palace of those nuptials which had been
+so splendid that their magnificence had been noticeable even at that
+magnificent Court. The time had seemed to her like one long, happy,
+cloudless day, and if to him there had come any fatigue, any satiety,
+any unrest, such as almost always come to the man in the fruition of
+his passion, he suffered her to see none of them.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those rare marriages in which no gall of a chain is felt,
+but a quick and perfect sympathy insures that harmony which passion
+alone is insufficient to sustain. He devoted himself with ardour to the
+care of the immense properties that belonged to his wife; he brought
+to their administration a judgment and a precision that none had looked
+for in a man of pleasure; he entered cordially into all her schemes for
+the well-being of her people dependent on her, and carried them out
+with skill and firmness. The revenues of Idrac he never touched; he
+left them to accumulate for his younger son, or expended them on the
+township itself, where he was adored.</p>
+
+<p>If he were still the same man who had been the lover of Cochonette,
+the terror of Monte Carlo, the hero of night-long baccara and frontier
+duels, he had at least so banished the old Adam that it appeared wholly
+dead. Nor was the death of it feigned. He had flung away the slough
+of his old life with a firm hand, and the peace, the dignity of his
+present existence were very precious to him. He was glad to steep
+himself in them, as a tired and fevered wayfarer was glad to bathe his
+dusty and heated limbs in the cool, clear waters of the Szalrassee. And
+he loved his wife with a great love, in which reverence, and gratitude,
+and passion were all blent. Possession had not dulled, nor familiarity
+blunted it. She was still to him a sovereign, a saint, a half divine
+creature, who had stooped to become mortal for his sake, and his
+children's.</p>
+
+<p>The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls
+and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the
+Szalrassee.</p>
+
+<p>'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath
+the great yews beside the keep.</p>
+
+<p>'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but
+watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as
+ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty
+amphitheatre.</p>
+
+<p>She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of
+whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy
+with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The
+other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months
+of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were
+all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.</p>
+
+<p>'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the
+world called so proud.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near
+her wicker chair.</p>
+
+<p>'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it,
+at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you
+it will be he who will be dearest to me.'</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that
+we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all
+the world who have passed five years and more together without once
+disagreeing?'</p>
+
+<p>'In all the world there is not another Countess Wanda!'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! that is your only defect; you will always avoid argument by
+escaping through the side-door of compliment. It is true, to be sure,
+that your flattery is a very high and subtle art.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is like all high art then, based on what is eternally true.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will always have the last word, and it is always so graceful a
+one that it is impossible to quarrel with it. But, Réné, I want you
+to speak without compliment to me for once. Tell me, are you indeed
+never&mdash;never&mdash;a little weary of being here?'</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment and a slight flush came on his face.</p>
+
+<p>She observed both signs, slight as they were, and sighed; it was the
+first sigh she had ever breathed since her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course you are, of course you must be,' she said quickly. 'It has
+been selfish and blameable of me never to think of it before. It is
+paradise to me, but no doubt to you, used as you have been to the stir
+of the world, there, must be some tedium, some dulness in this mountain
+isolation. I ought to have remembered that before.'</p>
+
+<p>'You need do nothing of the kind, now,' he said. 'Who has been talking
+to you? Who has brought this little snake into our Eden?'</p>
+
+<p>'No one; and it is not a snake at all, but a natural reflection.
+Hohenszalras and you are the world to me, but I cannot expect that
+Hohenszalras and I can be quite as much to yourself. It is always the
+difference between the woman and the man. You have great talents; you
+are ambitious.'</p>
+
+<p>'Were I as ambitious as Alexander, surely I have gained wherewithal to
+be content!'</p>
+
+<p>'That is only compliment again, or if truth it is only a side of the
+truth. Nay, love, I do not think for a moment you are tired of me;
+I am too self-satisfied for that! But I think it is possible that
+this solitude may have grown, or may grow, wearisome to you; that you
+desire, perhaps without knowing it, to be more amidst the strife,
+the movement, and the pleasures of men. Aunt Ottilie calls this
+"confinement to a fortress;" now that is a mere pleasantry, but if ever
+you should feel tempted to feel what she feels, have confidence enough
+in my good sense and in my affection to say so to me, and then&mdash;&mdash;.'</p>
+
+<p>'And then? We will suppose I have this ingratitude and bad taste, what
+then?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why then, my own wishes should not stand for one instant in the way
+of yours, or rather I would make yours mine. And do not use the word
+ingratitude, my dearest; there can be no question of that betwixt you
+and me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' said Sabran, as he stooped towards her and touched her hair
+with his lips. 'When you gave me yourself, you made me your debtor
+for all time; would have made me so had you been as poor as you are
+rich. When I speak of gratitude it is of <i>that</i> gift, I think, not of
+Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>A warmth of pleasure flushed her cheek for a moment, and she smiled
+happily.</p>
+
+<p>'You shall not beg the question so,' she said, with gentle insistence
+after a moment's pause. 'I have not forgotten your eloquence in the
+French Chamber.' You are that rare thing a born orator. You are
+not perhaps fitted to be a statesman, for I doubt if you would have
+the application or bear the tedium necessary, but you have every
+qualification for a diplomatist, a foreign minister.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not the first qualification, I have no country!'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, in surprise&mdash;he spoke with bitterness and
+self-contempt; but in a moment he had added quickly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'France is nothing to me now, and though I am Austrian by all ties and
+affections, I am not an Austrian before the law.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is hardly true,' she answered, satisfied with the explanation.
+'Since France is little to you you could be naturalised here whenever
+you chose, even if Idrac have not made you a Croat noble, as I believe
+the lawyers would say it had; and the Emperor, who knows and admires
+you, would, I think, at once give you gladly any mission you preferred;
+you would make so graceful, so perfect, so envied an ambassador!
+Diplomacy has indeed little force now, yet tact still tells wherever
+it be found, and it is as rare as blue roses in the unweeded garden of
+the world. I do not speak for myself, dear; that you know. Hohenszalras
+is my beloved home, and it was enough for me before I knew you, and
+nowhere else could life ever seem to me so true, so high, so simple,
+and so near to God as here. But I do remember that men weary even of
+happiness when it is unwitnessed, and require the press and stir of
+emulation and excitation; and, if you feel that want, say so. Have
+confidence enough in me to believe that your welfare will be ever my
+highest law. Promise me this.'</p>
+
+<p>He changed colour slightly at her generous and trustful words, but he
+answered without a moment's pause:</p>
+
+<p>'Whenever I am so thankless to fate I will confess it. No; the world
+and I never valued one another much. I am far better here in the heart
+of your mountains. Here only have I known peace and rest.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with a certain effort and emotion, and he stooped over his
+little son and raised him on her knees.</p>
+
+<p>'These children shall grow up at Hohenszalras,' he continued, 'and you
+shall teach them your love of the open air, the mountain solitudes, the
+simple people, the forest creatures, the influences and the ways of
+nature. You care for all those things, and they make up true wisdom,
+true contentment. As for myself, if you always love me I shall ask no
+more of fate.'</p>
+
+<p>'If! Can you be afraid?'</p>
+
+<p>'Sometimes. One always fears to lose what one has never merited.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, my love, do not be so humble! If you saw yourself as I see you,
+you would be very proud.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled as she spoke, and stretched her hand out to him over the
+golden head of her child.</p>
+
+<p>He took it and held it against his heart, clasped in both his own.
+Bela, impatient, slipped off his mother's lap to pursue his capture of
+the daisies; the butterflies were forbidden joys, and he was obedient,
+though in his own little way he was proud and imperious. But there
+was a blue butterfly just in front of him, a Lycœna Adonis, like a
+little bit of the sky come down and dancing about; he could not resist,
+he darted at it. As he was about to seize it she caught his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>'I have told you, Bela, you are never to touch anything that flies or
+moves. You are cruel.'</p>
+
+<p>He tried to get away, and his face grew very warm and passionate.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will be cruel, if he like,' he said, knitting his pretty brows.</p>
+
+<p>Though he was not more than four years old he knew very well that he
+was the Count Bela, to whom all the people gave homage, crowding to
+kiss his tiny hand after Mass on holy-days. He was a very beautiful
+child, and all the prettier for his air of pride and resolution; he had
+been early put on a little mountain pony, and could ride fearlessly
+down the forest glades with Otto. All the imperiousness of the great
+race which had dealt out life and death so many centuries at their
+caprice through the Hohe Tauern seemed to have been inherited by him,
+coupled with a waywardness and a vanity that were not traits of the
+house of Szalras. It was impossible, even though those immediately
+about him were wise and prudent, to wholly prevent the effects of the
+adulation with which the whole household was eager to wait on every
+whim of the little heir.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his
+desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that
+to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it
+his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition,
+and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very
+affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.</p>
+
+<p>With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he
+said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'</p>
+
+<p>Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very
+frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been
+four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his
+father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his
+nurse, who came for him.</p>
+
+<p>'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him
+more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give
+you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'</p>
+
+<p>It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil
+qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son,
+and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was
+unworthy to beget <i>her</i> children,' he thought, with the self-reproach
+that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his
+satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what
+trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years
+to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his
+blood?</p>
+
+<p>'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to
+see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It
+hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own
+little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill;
+do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is
+your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud
+of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows
+older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to
+enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy
+that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry
+passions, of my degraded humanity?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think
+me.'</p>
+
+<p>'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'</p>
+
+<p>'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a <i>beau défaut</i>,
+and I would not have you lose it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and
+passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him surprised, and vaguely troubled at the self-reproach
+and the self-scorn of his passionate utterance. Seeing that surprise
+and trouble in her glance, he controlled the emotion that for the
+moment mastered him.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, love!' he said quickly and truly, 'if you could but guess how
+gross and base a man's life seems to him contrasted with the life of
+a pure and noble woman! Being born of you, those children, I think,
+should be as faultless and as soilless as those pearls that lie on your
+breast. But then they are mine also; so already on that boy's face one
+sees the sins of revolt, of self-will, of cruelty&mdash;being mine also,
+your living pearls are dulled and stained!'</p>
+
+<p>A greater remorse than she dreamed of made his heart ache as he said
+these words; but she heard in them only the utterance of that extreme
+and unwavering devotion to her which he had shown in all his acts and
+thoughts from the first hours of their union.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Princess Ottilie was scarcely less happy than they in the
+realisation of her dreams and prophecies. Those who had been most
+bitterly opposed to her alliance with him could find no fault in his
+actions and his affections.</p>
+
+<p>'I always said that Wanda ought to marry, since she had plainly no
+vocation for the cloister,' she said a hundred times a year. 'And I was
+certain that M. de Sabran was the person above all others to attract
+and to content her. She has much more imagination than she would be
+willing to allow and he is capable at once of fascinating her fancy
+and of satisfying her intellect. No one can be dull where he is; he is
+one of those who make <i>la pluie et le beau temps</i> by his absence or
+presence; and, besides that, no commonplace affection would have ever
+been enough for her. And he loves her like a poet, which he is at once
+whenever he leaves the world for Beethoven and Bach. I cannot imagine
+why you should have opposed the marriage, merely because he had not two
+millions in the Bank of France.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not for that,' answered the Grand Duke; 'rather because he broke the
+bank of Monte Carlo, and other similar reasons. A great player of
+baccara is scarcely the person to endow with the wealth of the Szalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'The wealth is tied up tightly enough at the least, and you will admit
+that he was yet more eager than you that it should be so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes! he behaved very well. I never denied it. But she has placed
+it in his power to make away with the whole of Idrac, if he should ever
+choose. That was very unwise, but we had no power to oppose.'</p>
+
+<p>'You may be quite sure that Idrac will go intact to the second son, as
+it has always done; and I believe but for his own exertions Idrac would
+now be beneath the Danube waters. Perhaps you never heard all that
+story of the flood?'</p>
+
+<p>'I only hope that if I have detractors you will defend me from them,'
+said Prince Lilienhöhe, giving up argument.</p>
+
+<p>Fair weather is always especially fair in the eyes of those who have
+foretold at sunset that the morrow would be fine; and so the married
+life of Wanda von Szalras was especially delightful as an object of
+contemplation, as a theme of exultation, to the Princess, who alone had
+been clear-sighted enough to foresee the future. She really also loved
+Sabran like a son, and took pride and pleasure in the filial tenderness
+he showed her, and in his children, with the beautiful blue eyes that
+had gleams of light in them like sapphires. The children themselves
+adored her; and even the bold and wilful Bela was as quiet as a
+startled fawn beside this lovely little lady, with her snow-white hair
+and her delicate smile, whose cascades of lace always concealed such
+wonderful bon-bon boxes, and gilded cosaques, and illuminated stories
+of the saints.</p>
+
+<p>Almost all their time was spent at Hohenszalras. A few winter months
+in Vienna was all they had ever passed away from it, except one visit
+to Idrac and the Hungarian estates. The children never left it for
+a day. He shared her affection for the place, and for the hardy and
+frank mountain people around them. He seemed to her to entirely forget
+Romaris, and beyond the transmission of moneys to its priest, he
+took no heed of it. She hesitated to recall it to him, since to do
+so might have seemed to remind him that it was she, not he, who was
+suzerain in the Hohe Tauern. Romaris was but a bleak rock, a strip of
+sea-swept sand; it was natural that it should have no great hold on his
+affections, only recalling as it did all that its lords had lost.</p>
+
+<p>'I hate its name,' he said impetuously once; and seeing the surprise
+upon her face, he added: 'I was very lonely and wretched there; I
+tried to take interest in it because you bade me, but I failed; all
+I saw, all I thought of, was yourself, and I believed you as far and
+for ever removed from me as though you had dwelt in some other planet.
+No! perhaps I am superstitious: I do not wish you to go to Romaris. I
+believe it would bring us misfortune. The sea is full of treachery, the
+sands are full of graves.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'Superstition is a sort of parody of faith; I am sure you are not
+superstitious. I do not care to go to Romaris; I like to cheat myself
+into the belief that you were born and bred in the Iselthal. Otto said
+to me the other day, "My lord must be a son of the soil, or how could
+he know our mountains so well as he does, and how could he anywhere
+have learned to shoot like that?"'</p>
+
+<p>'I am very glad that Otto does me so much honour. When he first met
+me, he would have shot me like a fox, if you had given the word. Ah, my
+love! how often I think of you that day, in your white serge, with your
+girdle of gold, and your long gold-headed staff, and your little ivory
+horn. You were truly a châtelaine of the old mystical German days.
+You had some <i>Schlüsselblumen</i> in your hand. They were indeed the key
+flower to my soul, though, alas! treasures, I fear, you found none on
+your entrance there.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not answer you, since to answer would be to flatter you, and
+Aunt Ottilie already, does that more than is good for you,' she said
+smiling, as she passed her fingers over the waves of his hair. 'By the
+way, whom shall we invite to meet the Lilienhöhe? Will you make out a
+list?'</p>
+
+<p>'The Grand Duke does not share Frau Ottilie's goodness for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'What would you? He has been made of buckram and parchment; besides
+which; nothing that is not German has, to his mind, any right to exist.
+By the way, Egon wrote to me this morning; he will be here at last.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked up quickly in unspoken alarm: 'Your cousin Egon? Here?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why are you so surprised? I was sure that sooner or later he would
+conquer that feeling of being unable to meet you. I begged him to come
+now; it is eight whole years since I have seen him. When once you have
+met you will be friends&mdash;for my sake.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent; a look of trouble and alarm was still upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>'Why should you suppose it any easier to him now than then?' he said at
+length. 'Men who love <i>you</i> do not change. There are women who compel
+constancy, <i>sans le vouloir</i>. The meeting can but be painful to Prince
+Vàsàrhely.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Réné,' she answered in some surprise, 'my nearest male relative
+and I cannot go on for ever without seeing each other. Even these years
+have done Egon a great deal of harm. He has been absent from the Court
+for fear of meeting us. He has lived with his hussars, or voluntarily
+confined to his estates, until he grows morose and solitary. I am
+deeply attached to him. I do not wish to have the remorse upon me of
+having caused the ruin of his gallant and brilliant life. When he
+has been once here he will like you: men who are brave have always
+a certain sympathy. When he has seen you here he will realise that
+destiny is unchangeable, and grow reconciled to the knowledge that I am
+your wife.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran gave an impatient gesture of denial, and began to write the list
+of invitations for the autumn circle of guests who were to meet the
+Prince and Princess of Lilienhöhe.</p>
+
+<p>Once every summer and every autumn Hohenszalras was filled with a
+brilliant house-party, for she sacrificed her own personal preferences
+to what she believed to be for the good of her husband. She knew that
+men cannot always live alone; that contact with the world is needful to
+their minds and bracing for it. She had a great dread lest the ghost
+<i>ennui</i> should show his pale face over her husband's shoulder, for
+she realised that from the life of the asphalte of the Champs-Élysées
+to the life amidst the pine forests of the Iselthal was an abrupt
+transition that might easily bring tedium in its train. And tedium is
+the most terrible and the most powerful foe love ever encounters.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran completed the list, and when he had corrected it into due
+accordance with all Lilienhöhe's personal and political sympathies and
+antipathies, despatched the invitations, 'for eight days,' written on
+cards that bore the joint arms of the Counts of Idrac and the Counts of
+Szalras. He had adopted the armorial bearings of the countship of Idrac
+as his own, and seemed disposed to abandon altogether those of the
+Sabrans of Romaris.</p>
+
+<p>When they were written he went out by himself and rode long and fast
+through the mists of a chilly afternoon, through dripping forest ways
+and over roads where little water-courses spread in shining shallows.
+The coming of Egon Vàsàrhely troubled him and alarmed him. He had
+always dreaded his first meeting with the Magyar noble; and as the
+years had dropped by one after another, and her cousin had failed
+to find courage to see her again, he had begun to believe that they
+and Vàsàrhely would remain always strangers. His wish had begotten
+his thought. He knew that she wrote at intervals to her cousin, and
+he to her; he knew that at the birth of each of their children some
+magnificent gift, with a formal letter of felicitation, had come from
+the Colonel of the White Hussars; but as time had gone on and Prince
+Egon had avoided all possibility of meeting them, he had grown to
+suppose that the wound given her rejected lover was too profound ever
+to close; nor did he wonder that it was so: it seemed to him that any
+man who loved her must do so for all eternity, if eternity there should
+be. To learn suddenly that within another month Vàsàrhely would be his
+guest, distressed and alarmed him in a manner she never dreamed. They
+had been so happy. On their cloud less heaven there seemed to him to
+rise a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but bearing with it disaster
+and a moonless night.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps he will have forgotten,' he thought, as he strove to shake off
+his forebodings. 'We were so young then. He was not even as old as I!'</p>
+
+<p>And he rode fast and furiously homewards as the day drew in, and the
+lighted windows of the great castle seemed to smile at him as lie saw
+it high up above the darkness of the woods and of the evening mists,
+his home, beloved, sacred, infinitely dear to him; dear as the soil of
+the mother country which the wrecked mariner reaches after facing death
+on the deep sea.</p>
+
+<p>'God save her from suffering by me!' he said, in an unconscious prayer,
+as he drew rein before the terrace of Hohenszalras. Almost he believed
+in God through her.</p>
+
+<p>When, after dressing, he went into, the Saxe room, the peace and
+beauty of the scene had never struck him so strongly as it did now,
+coming out of the shadows of the wet woods and the gloom of his own
+anxieties; anxieties the heavier and the more wearing because they
+could be shared by no one. The soft, full light of the wax candles fell
+on the Louis Seize embroideries and the white woodwork of the panelling
+and the china borders of the mirrors. The Princess Ottilie sat making
+silk-netting for the children's balls; his wife was reading, and Bela
+and Gela, who were there for their privileged half-hour before dinner,
+were fitting together on a white bearskin, playing with the coloured
+balls of the game of solitaire. The soft light from the chandeliers
+and sconces of the Saxe Royale china fell on the golden heads and the
+velvet frocks of the children, on the old laces and the tawny-coloured
+plush of their mothers skirts, on the great masses of flowers in the
+Saxe bowls, and on the sleeping forms of the big dogs Donau and Neva.
+It was an interior that would have charmed Chardin, that would have
+been worthy of Vandyck.</p>
+
+<p>As he looked at it he thought with a sort of ecstasy, 'All that is
+mine;' and then his heartstrings tightened as he thought again, 'If she
+knew&mdash;&mdash;?'</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at his entrance with a welcome on her face that needed no
+words.</p>
+
+<p>'Where have you been in the rain all this long afternoon?' You see we
+have a fire, even though it is midsummer. Bela, rise, and make your
+obeisance, and push that chair nearer the hearth.'</p>
+
+<p>The two little boys stood up and kissed his hand, one after another,
+with the pretty formality; of greeting on which she always insisted;
+then they went back to their coloured glass balls, and he sank into a
+low chair beside his wife with a sigh half of fatigue, half of content.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have been riding all the time,' he said to her. 'I am not sure
+that Siegfried approved it. But it does one good sometimes, and after
+the blackness and the wetness of that forest how charming it is to come
+home!'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with wistfulness.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish you were not vexed that Egon is coming! I am sure you have been
+thinking of it as you rode.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have; but I am ashamed of doing so. He is your cousin, that
+shall be enough for me. I will do my best to make him welcome. Only
+there is this difficulty; a welcome from me to him will seem in itself
+an insult.'</p>
+
+<p>'An insult! when you are my husband? One would think you were my
+<i>jägermeister.</i> Dear mother mine, help me to scold him.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am a stranger,' he said, under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled a little, but she said with a certain hauteur:</p>
+
+<p>'You are master of Hohenszalras, as your son will be when our places
+shall know us no more. Do not let the phantom of Egon come between us,
+I beseech you. His real presence never will do so, that is certain.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing shall come between us,' said Sabran, as his hand took and
+closed upon hers. 'Forgive me if I have brought some gloomy <i>nix</i> out
+of the dark woods with me; he will flee away in, the light of this
+beloved white-room. No evil spirits could dare stay by your hearth.'</p>
+
+<p>'There are <i>nixes</i> in the forests,' said Bela in a whisper to his
+brother.</p>
+
+<p>'Ja!' said Gela, not comprehending.</p>
+
+<p>'We will kill them all when we are big,' said Bela.</p>
+
+<p>'Ja! ja!' said Gela.</p>
+
+<p>Bela knew very well what a <i>nix</i> was. Otto had told him all about
+kobolds and sprites, as his pony trotted down the drives.</p>
+
+<p>'Or we will take them prisoners,' he added, remembering that his mother
+never allowed anything to be killed, not even butterflies.</p>
+
+<p>'Ja!' said Gela again, rolling the pretty blue and pink and amber balls
+about in the white fur of the bearskin.</p>
+
+<p>Gela's views of life were simplified by the disciple's law of
+imitation; they were restricted to doing whatever Bela did, when that
+was possible, when it was not possible he remained still adoring Bela,
+with his little serious face as calm as a god's.</p>
+
+<p>She used to think that when they should grow up Bela would be a great
+soldier like Wallenstein or Condé, and Gela would stay at home and
+take care of his people here in the green, lone, happy Iselthal.</p>
+
+<p>Time ran on and the later summer made the blooming hay grow brown on
+all the alpine meadows, and made the garden of Hohenszalras blossom
+with a million autumnal glories; it brought also the season of the
+first house-party. Egon Vàsàrhely was to arrive one day before the
+Lilienhöhe and the other guests.</p>
+
+<p>'I want Egon so much to see Bela!' she said, with the thoughtless
+cruelty of a happy mother forgetful of the pain of a rejected lover.</p>
+
+<p>'I fear Bela will find little favor in your cousin's eyes, since he is
+mine too,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Egon is content to be only our cousin by this&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'You think so? You do not know yourself if you imagine that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Egon is very loyal. He would not come here if he could not greet you
+honestly.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran's face flushed a little, and he turned away. He vaguely dreaded
+the advent of Egon Vàsàrhely, and there were so many innocent words
+uttered in the carelessness of intimate intercourse which stabbed him
+to the quick; she had so wounded him all unconscious of her act.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we have a game of billiards?' he asked her as they stood in the
+Rittersaal, whilst the rain fell fast without. She played billiards
+well, and could hold her own against him, though his game was one that
+had often been watched by a crowded <i>galerie</i> in Paris with eager
+speculation and heavy wager. An hour afterwards they were still playing
+when the clang of a great bell announced the approach of the carriage
+which had been sent to Windisch-Matrey.</p>
+
+<p>'Come!' she said joyously, as she put back her cue in its rest; but
+Sabran drew back.</p>
+
+<p>'Receive your cousin first alone,' he said. 'He must resent my presence
+here. I will not force it on him on the threshold of your house.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of our house! Why will you use wrong pronouns? Believe me, dear, Egon
+is too generous to bear you the animosity you think.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then he never loved you,' said Sabran, somewhat impatiently, as he
+sent one ball against another with a sharp collision. 'I will come if
+you wish it,' he added; 'but I think it is not in the best taste to so
+assert myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Egon is only my cousin and your guest. You are the master of
+Hohenszalras. Come! you were not so difficult when you received the
+Emperor.'</p>
+
+<p>'I had done the Emperor no wrong,' said Sabran, controlling the
+impatience and the reluctance he still felt.</p>
+
+<p>'You have done Egon none. I should not have been his wife had I never
+been yours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who knows?' murmured Sabran, as he followed her into the entrance
+hall. The stately figure of Egon Vàsàrhely enveloped in furs was just
+passing through the arched doorway.</p>
+
+<p>She went towards him with a glad welcome and both hands outstretched.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Egon bowed to the ground: then took both her hands in his and
+kissed her on the cheek.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran, who grew very pale, advanced and greeted him with ceremonious
+grace.</p>
+
+<p>'My wife has bade me welcome you, Prince, but it would be presumptuous
+in me, a stranger, to do that. All her kindred must be dear and sacred
+here.'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely, with an effort to which he had for years been vainly
+schooling himself, stretched out his hand to take her husband's; but
+as he did so, and his glance for the first time dwelt on Sabran, a
+look surprised and indefinitely perplexed came on his own features.
+Unconsciously he hesitated a moment; then, controlling himself, he
+replied with a few fitting words of courtesy and friendship. That
+there should be some embarrassment, some constraint, was almost
+inevitable, and did not surprise her: she saw both, but she also saw
+that both were hidden under the serenity of high breeding and worldly
+habit. The most difficult moment had passed: they went together into
+the Rittersaal, talked together a little on a few indifferent topics,
+and in a little space Prince Egon withdrew to his own apartments to
+change his travelling clothes. Sabran left him on the threshold of his
+chamber.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely locked the doors, locking out even his servant, threw off
+his furs and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. The meeting had
+cost him even more than he had feared that it would do. For five years
+he had dreaded this moment, and its pain was as sharp and as fresh to
+him as though it had been unforeseen. To sleep under the same roof
+with the husband of Wanda von Szalras! He had overrated his power of
+self-control, underrated his power of suffering, when to please her he
+had consented after five years to visit Hohenszalras. What were five
+years?&mdash;half a century would not have changed him.</p>
+
+<p>Under the plea of fatigue, he, who had sat in his saddle eighteen hours
+at a stretch, and was braced to every form of endurance in the forest
+chase and in the tented field, sent excuses to his host for remaining
+in his own rooms until the Ave Maria rung. When he at length went
+down to the blue-room where she was, he had recovered, outwardly at
+least, his tranquillity and his self-possession, though here, in this
+familiar, once beloved chamber, where every object had been dear to him
+from his boyhood, a keener trial than any he had passed through awaited
+him, as she led forward to meet him a little boy clad in white velvet,
+with a cloud of light golden hair above deep blue luminous eyes, and
+said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Egon, this is my Bela. You will love him a little, for my sake?'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely felt a chill run through him like the cold of death as he
+stooped towards the child; but he smiled and touched the boy's forehead
+with his lips.</p>
+
+<p>'May the spirit of our lost Bela be with him and dwell in his heart,'
+he murmured; 'better I cannot wish him.'</p>
+
+<p>With an effort he turned to Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'Your little son is a noble child; you may with reason be proud of him.
+He is very like you in feature. I see no trace of the Szalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'The other boy is more like Wanda,' replied Sabran, sensible of a
+certain tenacity of observation with which Vàsàrhely was gazing at
+him. 'As for my daughter, she is too young for anyone to say whom she
+will resemble. All I desire is that she should be like her mother,
+physically and spiritually.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course,' said the Prince, absently, still looking from Sabran to
+the child, as if in the endeavour to follow some remembrance that
+eluded-him. The little face of Bela was a miniature of his father's,
+they were as alike as it is possible for a child and a man to be so,
+and Egon Vàsàrhely perplexedly mused and wondered at vague memories
+which rose up to him as he gazed on each.</p>
+
+<p>'And what do you like best to do, my little one?' he asked of Bela, who
+was regarding him with curious and hostile eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'To ride,' answered Bela at once, in his pretty uncertain German.</p>
+
+<p>'There you are a true Szalras at least. And your brother Gela, can he
+ride yet? Where is Gela, by the way?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is asleep,' said Bela, with some contempt. 'He is a little thing.
+Yes; he rides, but it is in a chair-saddle. It is not real riding.'</p>
+
+<p>'I see. Well, when you come and see me you shall have some real riding,
+on wild horses if you like;' and he told the child stories of the great
+Magyar steppes, and the herds of young horses, and the infinite delight
+of the unending gallop over the wide hushed plain; and all the while
+his heart ached bitterly, and the sight of the child&mdash;who was her
+child, yet had that stranger's face&mdash;was to him like a jagged steel
+being turned and twisted inside a bleeding wound. Bela, however, was
+captivated by the new visions that rose before him.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will come to Hungary,' he said with condescension, and then with
+an added thought, continued: 'I think Bela has great lands there. Otto
+said so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela has nothing at all,' said Sabran, sternly. 'Bela talks great
+nonsense sometimes, and it would be better he should go to sleep with
+his brother.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela looked up shyly under his golden cloud of hair. 'Folko is Bela's,'
+he said under his breath. Folko was his pony.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' said Sabran; 'Folko belongs to your mother. She only allows you
+to have him so long as you are good to him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is always good to him,' he said decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is faultless in his own estimation,' said his mother, with a
+smile. 'He is too little to be wise enough to see himself as he is.'</p>
+
+<p>This view made Bela's blue eyes open very wide and fill very
+sorrowfully. It was humiliating. He longed to get back to Gela, who
+always listened to him dutifully, and never said anything in answer
+except an entirely acquiescent 'Ja! ja!' which was indeed about the
+limitation of Gela's lingual powers. In a few moments, indeed, his
+governess came for him and took him away, a little dainty figure in his
+ivory velvet and his blue silk stockings, with his long golden curls
+hanging to his waist.</p>
+
+<p>'It is so difficult to keep him from being spoilt,' she said, as the
+door closed on him. 'The people make a little prince, a little god, of
+him. He believes himself to be something wonderful. Gela, who is so
+gentle and quiet, is left quite in the shade.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose Gela takes your title?' said Vàsàrhely to his host. 'It
+is usual with the Austrian families for the second son to have some
+distant appellation?'</p>
+
+<p>'They are babies,' said Sabran, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'It will be time enough to settle those matters when they are old
+enough to be court-pages or cadets. They are Bela and Gela at present.
+The only real republic is childhood.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid Bela is the <i>tyrannus</i> to which all republics succumb,'
+said Wanda, with a smile. He is extremely autocratic in his notions,
+and in his family. In all his "make believe" games he is crowned.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is a beautiful child,' said her cousin, and she answered, still
+smiling:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes: he is so like Réné!'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely turned his face from her. The dinner was somewhat dull,
+and the evening seemed tedious, despite the efforts of Sabran to
+promote conversation, and the <i>écarté</i> which he and his guest played
+together. They, were all sensible that some chord was out of tune, and
+glad that on the morrow a large house-party would be there to spare
+them a continuation of this difficult intercourse.</p>
+
+<p>'Your cousin will never forgive me,' said Sabran to her when they were
+alone. 'I think, beside his feeling that I stand for ever between you
+and him there is an impatience of me as a stranger and one unworthy
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'You do yourself and him injustice,' she answered. 'I shall be unhappy
+if you and he be not friends.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then unhappy you will be, my beloved. We both adore you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not say that. He would not be here if it were so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! look at him when he looks at Bela!'</p>
+
+<p>She sighed; she had felt a strong emotion on the sight of her cousin,
+for Egon Vàsàrhely was much changed by these years of pain. His grand
+carriage and his martial beauty were unaltered, but all the fire and
+the light of earlier years were gone out of his face, and a certain
+gloom and austerity had come there. To all other women he would have
+been the more attractive for the melancholy which was in such apt
+contrast with the heroic adventures of his life, but to her the change
+in him was a mute reproach which filled her with remorse though she had
+done no wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Prince Egon, throwing open his window, leaned out into the
+cold rainy night, as though a hand were at his throat and suffocating
+him. And amidst all the tumult of his pain and revolt, one dim thought
+was incessantly intruding itself; he was always thinking, as he
+recalled the face of Sabran and of Sabran's little son, 'Where have I
+seen those blue eyes, those level brows, those delicate curved lips?'</p>
+
+<p>They were so familiar, yet so strange to him. When he would have given
+a name to them they receded into the shadows of some far away past of
+his own, so far away he could not follow them. He sat up half the night
+letting the wind beat and the rain fall on him. He could not sleep.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the morrow thirty or forty people arrived, amongst them Baron
+Kaulnitz <i>en congé</i> from his embassy.</p>
+
+<p>'What think you of Sabran?' he asked of Egon Vàsàrhely, who answered:</p>
+
+<p>'He is a perfect gentleman. He is a charming companion. He plays
+admirably at <i>écarté.</i></p>
+
+<p>'<i>Écarté</i>! I spoke of his moral worth: what is your impression of that?'</p>
+
+<p>'If he had not satisfied her as to that, Wanda would not be his wife,'
+answered the Prince gravely. 'He has given her beautiful children, and
+it seems to me that he renders her perfectly happy. We should all be
+grateful to him.'</p>
+
+<p>'The children are certainly very beautiful,' said Baron Kaulnitz, and
+said no more.</p>
+
+<p>'The people all around are unfeignedly attached to him,' Vàsàrhely
+continued with generous effort. 'I hear nothing but his praise. Nor do
+I think it the conventional compliment which loyalty leads them to pay
+the husband of their Countess; it is very genuine attachment. The men
+of the old Archduchy are not easily won; it is only qualities of daring
+and manliness which appeal to their sympathies. That he has gained
+their affections is as great testimony to his character in one way as
+that he has gained Wanda's is in another. At Idrac also the people
+adore him, and Croats are usually slow to see merit in strangers.'</p>
+
+<p>'In short, he is a paragon,' said the ambassador, with a little dubious
+smile. 'So much the better, since he is irrevocably connected with us.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran was at no time seen to greater advantage than when he was
+required to receive and entertain a large house-party. Always graceful,
+easily witty, endowed with that winning tact which is to society as
+cream is to the palate, the charm he possessed for women and the
+ascendency he could, at times, exercise over men&mdash;even men who were
+opposed to him&mdash;were never more admirably displayed than when he was
+the master of Hohenszalras, with crowned heads, and princes, and
+diplomatists, and beauties gathered beneath his roof. His mastery,
+moreover, of all field sports, and his skill at all games that demanded
+either intelligence or audacity, made him popular with a hardy and
+brilliant nobility; his daring in a boar hunt at noon was equalled by
+his science at whist in the evening. Strongly prejudiced against him at
+the onset, the great nobles who were his guests had long ceased to feel
+anything for him except respect and regard; whilst the women admired
+him none the less for that unwavering devotion to his wife which made
+even the conventionalities of ordinary flirtation wholly impossible to
+him. With all his easy gallantry and his elegant homage to them, they
+all knew that, at heart, he was as cold as the rocks to all women save
+one.</p>
+
+<p>'It is really the knight's love for his lady,' said the Countess
+Brancka once; and Sabran, overhearing, said: 'Yes, and, I think that if
+there were more like my lady on earth, knighthood might revive on other
+scenes than Wagner's.'</p>
+
+<p>Between him and the Countess Brancka there was a vague intangible
+enmity, veiled under the perfection of courtesy. They could ill have
+told why they disliked each other; but they did so. Beneath their
+polite or trivial or careless speech they often aimed at each other's
+feelings or foibles with accuracy and malice. She had stayed at
+Hohenszalras more or less time each year in the course of her flight
+between France and Vienna, and was there now. He admired his wife's
+equanimity and patience under the trial of Mdme. Olga's frivolities,
+but he did not himself forbear from as much sarcasm as was possible
+in a man of the world to one who was his guest, and by marriage his
+relative, and he was sensible of her enmity to himself, though she
+paid him many compliments, and sometimes too assiduously sought his
+companionship. '<i>Elle fait le ronron, mais gare à ses pattes!</i>' he said
+once to his wife concerning her.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran appraised her indeed with unflattering accuracy. He knew
+by heart all the wiles and wisdom of such a woman as she was. Her
+affectations did not blind him to her real danger, and her exterior
+frivolity did not conceal from him the keen and subtle self-interest
+and the strong passions which laboured beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>She felt that she had an enemy in him, and partly in self-protection,
+partly in malice, she set herself to convert a foe into a friend,
+perhaps, without altogether confessing it to herself, into a lover as
+well.</p>
+
+<p>The happiness that prevailed at Hohenszalrasburg annoyed her for
+no other reason than that it wearied her to witness it. She did
+not envy it, because she did not want happiness at all; she wanted
+perpetual change, distraction, temptation, passion, triumph&mdash;in a word,
+excitement, which becomes the drug most unobtainable to those who have
+early exhausted all the experiences and varieties of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Brancka had always an unacknowledged resentment against her
+sister-in-law, for being the owner of all the vast possessions of the
+Szalras. 'If Gela had lived!' she thought constantly. 'If I had only
+had a son by him before he died, this woman would have had her dower
+and nothing more.' That his sister should possess all, whilst she had
+by her later marriage lost her right even to a share in that vast
+wealth, was a perpetual bitterness to her.</p>
+
+<p>Stefan Brancka was indeed rich, but he was an insensate gambler. She
+was extravagant to the last degree, with all the costly caprices of
+a <i>cocodette</i> who reigned in the two most brilliant capitals of the
+world. They were often troubled by their own folly, and again and again
+the generosity of his elder brother had rescued them from humiliating
+embarrassments. At such moments she had almost hated Wanda von Szalras
+for these large possessions, of which, according to her own views,
+her sister-in-law made no use whatever. Meantime, she wished Egon
+Vàsàrhely to die childless, and to that end had not been unwilling
+for the woman he loved to marry anyone else. She had reasoned that the
+Szalras estates would go to the Crown or the Church if Wanda did not
+marry; whilst all the power and possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely must, if
+he had no sons, pass in due course to his brother. She had the subtle
+acuteness of her race, and she had the double power of being able at
+once to wait very patiently and to spring with swift rage on what she
+needed. To her sister-in-law she always appeared a mere flutterer on
+the breath of fashion. The grave and candid nature of the one could not
+follow or perceive the intricacies of the other.</p>
+
+<p>'She is a cruel woman and a perilous one,' Sabran said one day to his
+wife's surprise.</p>
+
+<p>She answered him that Olga Brancka had always seemed to her a mere
+frivolous <i>mondaine</i>, like so many others of their world.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' he persisted. 'You are wrong; she is not a butterfly. She has too
+much energy. She is a profoundly immoral woman also. Look at her eyes.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is Stefan's affair,' she answered, 'not ours. He is indifferent.'</p>
+
+<p>'Or unsuspicious? Did your brother care for her?'</p>
+
+<p>'He was madly in love with her. She was only sixteen when he married
+her. He fell at Solferino half a year later. When she married my
+cousin it shocked and disgusted me. Perhaps I was foolish to take it
+thus, but it seemed such a sin against Gela. To die <i>so</i>, and not to be
+even remembered!'</p>
+
+<p>'Did your cousin Egon approve this second marriage?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' he opposed it; he had our feeling about it. But Stefan, though
+very young, was beyond any control. He had the fortune as he had the
+title of his mother, the Countess Brancka, and Olga bewitched him as
+she had done my brother.'</p>
+
+<p>'She <i>is</i> a witch, a wicked witch,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>The great autumn party was brilliant and agreeable. All things went
+well, and the days were never monotonous. The people were well
+assorted, and the social talent of their host made their outdoor sports
+and their indoor pastimes constantly varied, whilst Hungarian musicians
+and Viennese comedians played waltzes that would have made a statue
+dance, and represented the little comedies for which he himself had
+been famous at the Mirlitons.</p>
+
+<p>He was not conscious of it, but he was passionately eager for Egon
+Vàsàrhely to be witness, not only of his entire happiness, but of his
+social powers. To Vàsàrhely he seemed to put forward the perfection
+of his life with almost insolence; with almost exaggeration to exhibit
+the joys and the gifts with which nature and chance had so liberally
+dowered him. The stately Magyar soldier, sitting silent and melancholy
+apart, watched him with a curious pang, that in a lesser nature would
+have been a consuming envy. Now and then, though Sabran and his wife
+spoke rarely to each other in the presence of others, a glance, a
+smile, a word passed between them that told of absolute unuttered
+tenderness, profound and inexhaustible as the deep seas; in the very
+sound of their laughter, in the mere accent of their voices, in a
+careless caress to one of their children, in a light touch of the hand
+to one another as they rode, or as they met in a room, there was the
+expression of a perfect joy, of a perfect faith between them, which
+pierced the heart of the watcher of it. Yet would he not have had it
+otherwise at her cost.</p>
+
+<p>'Since she has chosen him as the companion of her life, it is well
+that he should be what she can take pride in, and what all men can
+praise,' he thought, and yet the happiness of this man seemed to him an
+audacity, an insolence. What human lover could merit her?</p>
+
+<p>Between himself and Sabran there was the most perfect courtesy, but no
+intimacy. They both knew that if for fifty years they met continually
+they would never be friends. All her endeavours to produce sympathy
+between them failed. Sabran was conscious of a constant observation of
+him by her cousin, which seemed to him to have a hostile motive, and
+which irritated him extremely, though he did not allow his irritation
+any visible vent. Olga Brancka perceived, and with the objectless
+malice of women of her temperament, amused herself with fanning, the
+slumbering enmity, as children play at fire.</p>
+
+<p>'You cannot expect Egon to love you,' she said once to her host. 'You
+know he was the betrothed of Wanda from her childhood&mdash;at least in his
+own hopes, and in the future sketched for them by their families.'</p>
+
+<p>'I was quite aware of that before I married,' he answered her
+indifferently. 'But those family arrangements are tranquil disposals of
+destiny which, if they be disturbed, leave no great trace of trouble.
+The Prince is young still, and a famous soldier as well as a great
+noble. He has no lack of consolation if he need it, and I cannot
+believe that he does.'</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Olga laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'You know as well as I do that Egon adores the very stirrup your wife's
+foot touches!'</p>
+
+<p>'I know he is her much beloved cousin,' said Sabran, in a tone which
+admitted of no reply.</p>
+
+<p>To Vàsàrhely his sister-in-law said confidentially:</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Egon, why did you not stay on the <i>pusztas</i> or remain with your
+hussars? You make <i>le beau</i> Sabran jealous.'</p>
+
+<p>'Jealous!' asked Vàsàrhely, with a bitter smile. 'He has much cause,
+when she has neither eye nor ear, neither memory nor thought of any
+kind for any living thing except himself and those children who are
+all his very portraits! Why do you say these follies, Olga? You know
+that my cousin Wanda chose her lord out of all the world, and loves
+him as no one would have supposed she had it in her to love any mortal
+creature.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke imperiously, harshly, and she was silenced.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you think of him?' she said with hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>'Everyone asks me that question. I am not his keeper!'</p>
+
+<p>'But you must form some opinion. He is virtual lord of Hohenszalras,
+and I believe she has made over to him all the appanages of Idrac, and
+his children will have everything.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are they not her natural heirs? Who should inherit from her if not her
+sons?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, of course they will inherit, only they inherit nothing
+from him. It was certainly a great stroke of fortune for a landless
+gentleman to make. Why does the <i>gentilhomme pauvre</i> always so
+captivate women?'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean to insinuate, Olga?' he asked her, with a stern
+glance of his great black eyes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, nothing; only his history was peculiar. I remember his arrival
+in France, his first appearance in society; it is many years ago now.
+All the Faubourg received him, but some said at the time that it was
+too romantic to be true&mdash;those Mexican forests, that long exile of the
+Sabran, the sudden appearance of this beautiful young marquis; you
+will grant it was romantic. I suppose it was the romance that made
+even Wanda's clear head turn a little. It is a <i>vin capiteux</i> for many
+women. And then such a life in Paris after it&mdash;duels, baccara, bonnes
+fortunes, clever comedies, a touch like Liszt's, a sudden success in
+the Chamber&mdash;it was all so romantic; it was bound to bring him at
+last to his haven, the Prince Charmant of an enchanted castle! Only
+enchanted castles sometimes grow dull, and Princes Charmants are not
+always amusable by the same châtelaine!'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely, with his eyes sombre under their long black lashes,
+listened to the easy bantering phrases with the vague suspicion of an
+honest and slow-witted man that a woman is trying to drop poison into
+his ear which she wishes to pass as <i>eau sucrée.</i> He did not altogether
+follow her insinuation, but he understood something of her drift. They
+were alone in a corner of the ball-room, whilst the cotillon was at its
+height, conducted by Sabran, who had been famous for its leadership in
+Paris and Vienna. He stooped his head and looked her full in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Look here, Olga. I am not sure what you mean, but I believe you are
+tired of seeing my cousin's happiness, merely because it is something
+with which you cannot interfere. For myself I would protect her
+happiness as I would her honour if I thought either endangered. Whether
+you or I like the Marquis de Sabran is wholly beyond the question. She
+loves him, and she has made him one of us. His honour is now ours.
+For myself I would defend him in his absence as though he were my own
+brother. Not for his sake at all&mdash;for hers. I do not express myself
+very well, but you know what I mean. Here is Max returning to claim
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>Silenced and a little alarmed the Countess Brancka rose and went off to
+her place in the cotillon.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely, sitting where she had left him, watched the mazes of the
+cotillon, the rhythm of the tzigane musicians coming to his ear
+freighted with a thousand familiar memories of the czardas danced madly
+in the long Hungarian nights. Time had been when the throb of the
+tzigane strings had stirred all his pulses like magic, but now all his
+bold bright life seemed numb and frozen in him.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes rested on his cousin, where she stood conversing with a crown
+prince, who was her chief guest, and passed from her to follow the
+movements of Sabran, who with supreme ease and elegance was leading a
+new intricate measure down the ball-room.</p>
+
+<p>She was happy, that he could not doubt. Every action, every word, every
+glance said so with a meaning not to be doubted. He thought she had
+never looked so handsome as she did to-night since that far away day
+in her childhood when he had seen her with the red and white roses in
+her lap and the crown upon her curls. She had the look of her childhood
+in her eyes, that serene and glad light which had been dimmed by her
+brothers' death, but now shone there again tranquil, radiant, and pure
+as sunlight is. She wore white velvet and white brocade; her breast
+was hidden in white roses; she wore her famous pearls and the ribbons
+of the Starred Cross of Austria and of the Prussian Order of Merit;
+she held in her hand a large painted fan which had belonged to Maria
+Theresa. Every now and then, as she talked with her royal guest, her
+glance strayed down the room to where her husband was, and lingered
+there a moment with a little smile.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely watched her for awhile, then rose abruptly, and made his way
+out of the ball-room and the state apartments down the corridors of the
+old house he knew so well towards his own chamber. He thought he would
+write to her and leave upon the morrow. What need was there for him to
+stay on in this perpetual pain? He had done enough for the world, which
+had seen him under the roof of Hohenszalras.</p>
+
+<p>As he took his way through the long passages, tapestry-hung or
+oak-panelled, which led across the great building to his own set of
+rooms in the clock tower, he passed an open door out of which a light
+was streaming. As he glanced within he saw it was the children's
+sleeping apartment, of which the door was open because the night was
+warm, unusually warm for the heart of the Gross Glöckner mountains. An
+impulse he could not have explained made him pause and enter. The three
+little white beds of carved Indian work, with curtains of lace, looked
+very snowy and peaceful in the pale light from a hanging lamp. The
+children were all asleep; the one nearest the door was Bela.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely stood and looked at him. His head was thrown back on his
+pillow and his arms were above his head. His golden hair, which was
+cut straight and low over his forehead, had been pushed back in his
+slumber; he looked more like his father than in his waking hours,
+for as he dreamed there was a look of coldness and of scorn upon his
+childish face, which made him so resemble Sabran that the man who
+looked on him drew his breath hard with pain.</p>
+
+<p>The night-nurse rose from her seat, recognising Prince Egon, whom she
+had known from his childhood.</p>
+
+<p>'The little Count is so like the Marquis,' she said, approaching; 'so
+is Herr Gela. Ah, my Prince, you remember the noble gentlemen whose
+names they bear? God send they may be like them in their lives and not
+their deaths!'</p>
+
+<p>'An early death is good,' said Vàsàrhely, as he stood beside the
+child's bed. He thought how good it would have been if he had fallen
+at Sadowa or Königsgrätz, or earlier by the side of Gela and Victor,
+charging with his White Hussars.</p>
+
+<p>The old nurse rambled on, full of praise and stories of the children's
+beauty, and strength, and activity, and intelligence. Vàsàrhely did not
+hear her; he stood lost in thought looking down on the sleeping figure
+of Bela, who, as if conscious of strange eyes upon him, moved uneasily
+in his slumber, and ruffled his golden hair with his hands, and thrust
+off his coverings from his beautiful round white limbs.</p>
+
+<p>'Count Bela is not like our saint who died,' said the old nurse. 'He
+is always masterful, and loves his own way. My lady is strict with
+him, and wisely so, for he is a proud rebellious child. But he is very
+generous, and has noble ways. Count Gela is a little angel; he will be
+like the Heilige Graf.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely did not hear anything she said. His gaze was bent on the
+sleeping child, studying the lines of the delicate brows, of the
+curving lips, of the long black lashes. It was so familiar, so
+familiar! Suddenly as he gazed a light seemed to leap out of the
+darkness of long forgotten years, and the memory which had haunted him
+stood out clear before him.</p>
+
+<p>'He is like Vassia Kazán!' he cried, half aloud. The face of the child
+had recalled what in the face of the man had for ever eluded his
+remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>He thrust a gold coin in the nurse's hand, and hurried from the
+chamber. A sudden inconceivable, impossible suspicion had leaped up
+before him as he had gazed on the sleeping loveliness of Sabran's
+little son.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman saw his sudden pallor, his uncertain gesture, and
+thought, 'Poor gallant gentleman! He wishes these pretty boys were his
+own. Well, it might have been better if he had been master here, though
+there is nothing to say against the one who is so. Still, a stranger is
+always a stranger, and foreign blood is bad.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she drew the coverings over Bela's naked little limbs, and passed
+on to make sure that the little Ottilie, who had been born when the
+primroses where first out in the Iselthal woods, was sleeping soundly,
+and wanted nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely made his way to his own chamber, and there sat down heavily,
+mechanically, like a man waking out from a bad dream.</p>
+
+<p>His memory went back to twenty years before, when he, a little lad, had
+accompanied his father on a summer visit to the house of a Russian,
+Prince Paul Zabaroff. It was a house, gay, magnificent, full of idle
+men and women of facile charm; it was not a house for youth; but
+both the Prince Vàsàrhely and the Prince Zabaroff were men of easy
+morals&mdash;<i>viveurs</i>, gamesters, and philosophers, who at fifteen years
+old themselves had been lovers and men of the world. At that house
+had been present a youth, some years older than he was, who was known
+as Vassia Kazán: a youth whose beauty and wit made him the delight of
+the women there, and whose skill at games and daring in sports won him
+the admiration of the men. It was understood without even being said
+openly that Vassia Kazán was a natural son of the Prince Zabaroff. The
+little Hungarian prince, child as he was, had wit enough and enough
+knowledge of life to understand that this brilliant companion, of his
+was base-born. His kind heart moved him to pity, but his intense pride
+curbed his pity with contempt. Vassia Kazán had resented the latter too
+bitterly to even be conscious of the first. The gentlemen assembled had
+diverted themselves by the unspoken feud that had soon risen between
+the boys, and the natural intelligence of the little Magyar noble had
+been no match for the subtle and cultured brain of the Parisian Lycéen.</p>
+
+<p>One day one of the lovely ladies there, who plundered Zabaroff and
+caressed his son, amused herself with a war of words between the lads,
+and so heated, stung, spurred and tormented the Hungarian boy that,
+exasperated by the sallies and satires of his foe, and by the presence
+of this lovely goddess of discord, he so far forgot his chivalry that
+he turned on Vassia with a taunt. 'You would be a serf if you were in
+Russia!' he said, with his great black eyes flashing the scorn of the
+noble on the bastard. Without a word, Vassia, who had come in from
+riding and had his whip in his hand, sprang on him, held him in a grip
+of steel, and thrashed him. The fiery Magyar, writhing under the blows
+of one who to him was as a slave, as a hound, freed his right arm,
+snatched from a table near an oriental dagger lying there with other
+things of value, and plunged it into the shoulder of his foe. The
+cries of the lady, alarmed at her own work, brought the men in from
+the adjoining room; the boys were forced apart and carried to their
+chambers.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Vàsàrhely left the house that evening with his son, still
+furious and unappeased. Vassia Kazán remained, made a hero of and
+nursed by the lovely woman who had thrown the apple of strife. His
+wound was healed in three weeks' time; soon after his father's
+house-party was scattered, and he himself returned to his college. Not
+a syllable passed between him and Zabaroff as to his quarrel with the
+little Hungarian magnate. To the woman who had wrought the mischief
+Zabaroff said: 'Almost I wish he were my lawful son. He is a true wolf
+of the steppes. Paris has only combed his hide and given him a silken
+coat; he is still a wolf, like all true Russians.'</p>
+
+<p>Looking on the sleeping child of Sabran, all that half-forgotten scene
+had risen up before the eyes of Egon Vàsàrhely. He seemed to see the
+beautiful fair face of Vassia Kazán, with the anger on the knitted
+brows, and the ferocity on the delicate stern lips as he had raised his
+arm to strike. Twenty years had gone by; he himself, whenever he had
+remembered the scene, had long grown ashamed of the taunt he had cast,
+not of the blow he had given, for the sole reproof his father had ever
+made him was to say: 'A noble, only insults his equals. To insult an
+inferior is ungenerous, it is derogatory; whom you offend you raise for
+the hour to a level with yourself. Remember to choose your foes not
+less carefully than you choose your friends.'</p>
+
+<p>Why with the regard, the voice, the air of Sabran had some vague
+intangible remembrance always come before him?'</p>
+
+<p>Why, as he had gazed on the sleeping child had the vague uncertainty
+suddenly resolved itself into distinct revelation?</p>
+
+<p>'He is Vassia Kazán! He is Vassia Kazán!' he said to himself a score
+of times stupidly, persistently, as one speaks in a dream. Yet he knew
+he must be a prey to delusion, to phantasy, to accidental resemblance.
+He told himself so. He resisted his own folly, and all the while a
+subtler inner consciousness seemed to be speaking in him, and saying to
+him:</p>
+
+<p>'That man is Vassia Kazán. Surely he is Vassia Kazán.'</p>
+
+<p>And then the loyal soul of him strengthened itself and made him think:</p>
+
+<p>'Even if he be Vassia Kazán he is her husband. He is what she loves; he
+is the father of those children that are hers.'</p>
+
+<p>He never went to his bed that night. When the music ceased at an hour
+before dawn, and the great house grew silent, he still sat there by
+the open casement, glad of the cold air that blew in from over the
+Szalrassee, as with daybreak a fine film of rain began to come down the
+mountain sides.</p>
+
+<p>Once he heard the voice of Sabran, who passed the door on his way to
+his own apartment. Sabran was saying in German with a little laugh:</p>
+
+<p>'My lady!' I am jealous of your crown prince. When I left him now in
+his chamber I was disposed to immortalise myself by regicide. He adores
+you!'</p>
+
+<p>Then he heard Wanda laugh in answer, with some words that did not
+reach his ear as they passed on further down the corridor. Vàsàrhely
+shivered, and instinctively rose to his feet. He felt as if he must
+seek him out and cry out to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Am I mad or is it true? Let me see your shoulder&mdash;have you the mark of
+the wound that I gave? Your little child has the face of Vassia Kazán.
+Are you Vassia Kazán? Are you the bastard of Zabaroff? Are you the wolf
+of the steppes?'</p>
+
+<p>He had desired to go from Hohenszalras, where every hour was pain to
+him, but now he felt an irresistible fascination in the vicinity of
+Sabran. His mind was in that dual state which at once rejects a fact as
+incredible, and believes in it absolutely. His reason told him that his
+suspicion was a folly; his instinct told him that it was a truth.</p>
+
+<p>When in the forenoon the castle again became animated, and the guests
+met to the mid-day breakfast in the hall of the knights, he descended,
+moved by an eagerness that made him for the first time in his life
+nervous. When Sabran addressed him he felt himself grow pale; he
+followed the movements, he watched the features, he studied the tones
+of his successful rival, with an intense absorption in them. Through
+the hunting breakfast, at which only men were present, he was conscious
+of nothing that was addressed to him; he only seemed to hear a voice in
+his ear saying perpetually&mdash;&mdash;'Yonder is Vassia Kazán.'</p>
+
+<p>The day was spent in sport, sport rough and real, that gave fair play
+to the beasts and perilous exposure to the hunters. For the first time
+in his life, Egon Vàsàrhely let a brown bear go by him untouched,
+and missed more than one roebuck. His eyes were continually seeking
+his host; a mile off down a forest glade the figure of Sabran seemed
+to fill his vision, a figure full of grace and dignity, clad in a
+hunting-dress of russet velvet, with a hunting-horn slung at his side
+on a broad chain of gold, the gift of his wife in memory of the fateful
+day when he had aimed at the <i>kuttengeier</i> in her woods.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran of necessity devoted himself to the crown prince throughout
+the day's sport; only in the twilight as they returned he spoke to
+Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda is so full of regret that you wish to leave us,' he said, with
+graceful cordiality; 'if only I can persuade you to remain, I shall
+take her the most welcome of all tidings from the forest. Stay at the
+least another week, the weather has cleared.'</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he thought that Vàsàrhely looked at him strangely; but
+he knew that he could not be much loved by his wife's cousin, and
+continued with good humour to persist in his request. Abruptly, the
+other answered him at last.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda wishes me to stay? Well, I will stay then. It seems strange to
+hear a stranger invite <i>me</i> to Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran coloured; he said with hauteur:</p>
+
+<p>'That I am a stranger to Prince Vàsàrhely is not my fault. That I have
+the right to invite him to Hohenszalras is my happiness, due to his
+cousin's goodness, which has been far beyond my merit.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely's eyes dwelt on him gloomily; he was sensible of the dignity,
+the self-command, and the delicacy of reproof which were blent in the
+answer he had received; he felt humbled and convicted of ill-breeding.
+He said after a pause:</p>
+
+<p>'I should ask your pardon. My cousin would be the first to condemn my
+words; they sounded ill, but I meant them literally. Hohenszalras has
+been one of my homes from boyhood; it will be your son's when we are
+both dead. How like he is to you; he has nothing of his mother.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran, somewhat surprised, smiled as he answered:</p>
+
+<p>'He is very like me. I regret it; but you know the poets and the
+physiologists are for once agreed as to the cause of that. It is a
+truth proved a million times: <i>l'enfant de l'amour ressemble toujours
+au père.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely grew white under the olive hue of his sun-bronzed
+cheek. The <i>riposte</i> had been made with a thrust that went home. Otto
+at that moment approached his master for orders for the morrow. They
+were no more alone. They entered the house; the long and ceremonious
+dinner succeeded. Vàsàrhely was silent and stern. Sabran was the most
+brilliant of hosts, the happiest of men; all the women present were in
+love with him, his wife the most of all.</p>
+
+<p>'Réné tells me you will stay, Egon. I am so very glad,' his cousin said
+to him during the evening, and she added with a little hesitation, 'If
+you would take time to know him well, you would find him so worthy of
+your regard; he has all the qualities that most men esteem in each
+other. It would make me so happy if you were friends at heart, not only
+in mere courtesy.'</p>
+
+<p>'You know that can never be,' said Vàsàrhely, almost rudely. 'Even you
+cannot work miracles. He is your husband. It is a reason that I should
+respect him, but it is also a reason why I shall for ever hate him.'</p>
+
+<p>He said the last words in a tone scarcely audible, but low as it was,
+there was a force in it that affected her painfully.</p>
+
+<p>'What you say there is quite unworthy of you,' she said with gentleness
+but coldness. 'He has done you no wrong. Long ere I met him I told you
+that what you wished was not what I wished, never would be so. You are
+too great a gentleman, Egon, to nourish an injustice in your heart.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked down; every fibre in him thrilled and burned under the sound
+of her voice, the sense of her presence.</p>
+
+<p>'I saw your children asleep last night,' he said abruptly. 'They have
+nothing of you in them; they are his image.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is it so unusual for children to resemble their father?' she said with
+a smile, whilst vaguely disquieted by his tone.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I suppose not; but the Szalras have always been of one type. How
+came your husband by that face? I have seen it amongst the Circassians,
+the Persians, the Georgians; but you say he is a Breton.'</p>
+
+<p>'The Sabrans of Romaris are Bretons; you have only to consult history.
+Very beautiful faces like his have seldom much impress of nationality;
+they always seem as though they followed the old Greek laws, and were
+cast in the divine heroic mould of another time than ours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who was his mother?'</p>
+
+<p>'A Spanish Mexican.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely was silent.</p>
+
+<p>His cousin left him and went amongst her guests. A vague sense of
+uneasiness went with her at her consciousness of his hostility to
+Sabran. She wished she had not asked him to remain.</p>
+
+<p>'You have never offended Egon?' she asked Sabran anxiously that night.
+'You have always been forbearing and patient with him?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have obeyed you in that as all things, my angel,', he answered her
+lightly. 'What would you? He is in love with you still, and I have
+married you! It is even a crime in his eyes that my children resemble
+me! One can never argue with a passion that is unhappy. It is a kind of
+frenzy.'</p>
+
+<p>She heard with some impatience.</p>
+
+<p>'He has no right to cherish such a resentment. He keeps it alive by
+brooding on it. I had hoped that when he saw you here, saw how happy
+you render me, saw your children too, he would grow calmer, wiser, more
+reconciled to the inevitable.'</p>
+
+<p>'You did not know men, my love,' said Sabran, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>To him the unhappiness and the ill-will of Egon Vàsàrhely were matters
+of supreme indifference; in a manner they gratified him, they even
+supplied that stimulant of rivalry which a man's passion needs to keep
+at its height in the calm of safe possession. That Egon Vàsàrhely saw
+his perfect happiness lent it pungency and a keener sense of victory.
+When he kissed his wife's hand in the sight of her cousin, the sense
+of the pain it dealt to the spectator gave the trivial action to him
+all the sweetness and the ardour of the first caresses of his accepted
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>Of that she knew nothing. It would have seemed to her ignoble, as so
+much that makes up men's desire always does seem to a woman of her
+temperament, even whilst it dominates and solicits her, and forces her
+to share something of its own intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>'Egon is very unreasonable,' said Mdme. Ottilie. 'He believes that
+if you had not met Réné you would have in time loved himself. It is
+foolish. Love is a destiny. Had you married him you would not have
+loved him. He would soon have perceived that and been miserable, much
+more miserable than he is now, for he would have been unable to release
+you. I think he should not have come here at all if he could not have
+met M. de Sabran with at least equanimity.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think so, too,' said Wanda, and an impatience against her cousin
+began to grow into anger; without being conscious of it, she had placed
+Sabran so high in her own esteem that she could forgive none who did
+not adore her own idol. It was a weakness in her that was lovely and
+touching in a character that had had before hardly enough of the usual
+foibles of humanity. Every error of love is lovable.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely could not dismiss from his mind the impression which haunted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'I conclude you knew the Marquis de Sabran well in France?' he said one
+day to Baron Kaulnitz, who was still there.</p>
+
+<p>Kaulnitz demurred.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I cannot say that I did. I knew him by repute; that was not very
+pure. However, the Faubourg always received and sustained him; the
+Comte de Chambord did the same; they were the most interested. One
+cannot presume to think they could be deceived.'</p>
+
+<p>'Deceived!' echoed Prince Egon. 'What a singular word to use. Do you
+mean to imply the possibility of&mdash;of any falsity on his part&mdash;any
+intrigue to appear what he is not?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' said Kaulnitz, with hesitation. 'Honestly, I cannot say so much.
+An impression was given me at the moment of his signing his marriage
+contract that he concealed something; but it was a mere suspicion. As I
+told you, the whole Legitimist world, the most difficult to enter, the
+most incredulous of assumption, received him with open arms. All his
+papers were of unimpeachable regularity. There was never a doubt hinted
+by anyone, and yet I will confess to you, my dear Egon, since we are
+speaking in confidence, that I have had always my own doubts as to his
+marquisate of Sabran.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Grosser Gott!</i>' exclaimed Vàsàrhely, as he started from his seat.
+'Why did you not stop the marriage?'</p>
+
+<p>'One does not stop a marriage by a mere baseless suspicion,' replied
+Kaulnitz. 'I have not one shadow of reason for my probably quite
+unwarranted conjecture. It merely came into my mind also at the
+signing of the contracts. I had already done all I could to oppose
+the marriage, but Wanda was inflexible&mdash;you are witness of the charm
+he still possesses for her&mdash;and even the Princess was scarcely
+less infatuated. Besides, it must be granted that few men are more
+attractive in every way; and as he <i>is</i> one of us, whatever else he be,
+his honour is now our honour, as you said yourself the other day.'</p>
+
+<p>'One could always kill him,' muttered Vàsàrhely, 'and set her free so,
+if one were sure.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure of what?' said Kaulnitz, rather alarmed at the effect of his own
+words. 'You Magyar gentlemen always think that every knot can be cut
+with a sword. If he were a mere adventurer (which is hardly possible)
+it would not mend matters for you to run him through the heart; there
+are his children.'</p>
+
+<p>'Would the marriage be legal if his name were assumed?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no! She could have it annulled, of course, both by Church and Law.
+All those pretty children would have no rights and no name. But we are
+talking very wildly and in a theatrical fashion. He is as certainly
+Marquis de Sabran as I am Karl von Kaulnitz.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely said nothing; his mind was in tumult, his heart oppressed by
+a sense of secrecy and of a hope that was guilty and mean.</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak to his companion of Vassia Kazán, but his conjecture
+seemed to hover before his sight like a black cloud which grew bigger
+every hour.</p>
+
+<p>He remained at Hohenszalras throughout the autumnal festivities. He
+felt as if he could not go away with that doubt still unsolved, that
+suspicion either confirmed or uprooted. His cousin grew as uneasy at
+his presence there as she had before been uneasy at his absence. Her
+instinct told her that he was the foe of the one dearest to her on
+earth. She felt that the gallant and generous temper of him had changed
+and grown morose; he was taciturn, moody, solitary.</p>
+
+<p>He spent almost all his time out of doors, and devoted himself to the
+hardy sport of the mountains and forests with a sort of rage. Guests
+came and went at the castle; some were imperial, some royal people;
+there was always a brilliant circle of notable persons there, and
+Sabran played his part as their host, with admirable tact, talent, and
+good humour. His wit, his amiability, his many accomplishments, and
+his social charm were in striking contrast to the sombre indifference
+of Vàsàrhely, whom men had no power to amuse and women no power to
+interest. Prince Egon was like a magnificent picture by Rembrandt,
+as he sat in his superb uniform in a corner of a ball-room with the
+collars of his orders blazing with jewels, and his hands crossed on
+the diamond-studded hilt of his sword; but he was so mute, so gloomy,
+so austere, that the vainest, coquette there ceased to hope to please
+him, and his most cordial friends found his curt contemptuous replies
+destroy their desire for his companionship.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda, who was frankly and fondly attached to him, began to long for
+his departure. The gaze of his black eyes, fixed in their fire and
+gloom on the little gay figures of her children, filled her with a
+vague apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>'If he would only find some one and be happy,' she thought, with anger
+at this undesired and criminal love which clung to her so persistently.</p>
+
+<p>'Am I made of wax?' he said to her with scorn, when she ventured to
+hint at her wishes.</p>
+
+<p>'How I wish I had not asked him to remain here!' she said to herself
+many times. It was not possible for her to dismiss her cousin, who had
+been from his infancy accustomed to look on the Hohenszalrasburg as his
+second home. But as circle after circle of guests came, went, and were
+replaced by others, and Egon Vàsàrhely still retained the rooms in the
+west tower that had been his from boyhood, his continual presence grew
+irksome and irritating to her.</p>
+
+<p>'He forgets that it is now my husband's house!' she thought.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one living creature in all the place to whom Vàsàrhely
+unbent from his sullen and haughty reserve, and that one was the child
+Bela.</p>
+
+<p>Bela was as beautiful as the morning, with his shower of golden hair,
+and his eyes like sapphires, and his skin like a lily. With curious
+self-torture Vàsàrhely would attract the child to him by tales of
+daring and of sport, and would watch with intent eyes every line of
+the small face, trying therein to read the secret of the man by whom
+this child had been begotten. Bela, all unconscious, was proud of this
+interest displayed in him by this mighty soldier, of whose deeds in war
+Ulrich and Hubert and Otto told such Homeric tales.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will fight with you when he is big,' he would say, trying to
+inclose the jewelled hilt of Vàsàrhely's sword in his tiny fingers, or
+trotting after him through the silence of the tapestried corridors.
+When she saw them thus together she felt that she could understand the
+superstitious fear of oriental women when their children are looked at
+fixedly.</p>
+
+<p>'You are very good to my boy,' she said once to Vàsàrhely, when he had
+let the child chatter by his side for hours.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely turned away abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'There are times when I could kill your son, because he is his,' he
+muttered, 'and there are times when I could worship him, because he is
+yours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not talk so, Egon,'she said, gravely. 'If you will feel so, it is
+best&mdash;I must say it&mdash;it is best that you should see neither my child
+nor me.'</p>
+
+<p>He took no notice of her words.</p>
+
+<p>'The children would always be yours,' he muttered. 'You would never
+leave him, never disgrace him for their sake; even if one knew&mdash;it
+would be of no use.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Egon,' she said in real distress, 'what strange things are you
+saying? Are you mad? Whose disgrace do you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'Let us suppose an extreme case,' he said, with a hard laugh. 'Suppose
+their father were base, or vile, or faithless, would you hate the
+children? Surely you would.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not imagination enough to suppose any such thing,'she said very
+coldly. 'And you do not know what a mother's love is, my cousin.'</p>
+
+<p>He walked away, leaving her abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'How strange he grows!' she thought. 'Surely his mind must be touched;
+jealousy is a sort of madness.'</p>
+
+<p>She bade the children's attendants keep Count Bela more in the
+nurseries; she told them that the child teased her guests, and must
+not be allowed to run so often at his will and whim over the house.'
+She never seriously feared that Egon would harm the child: his noble
+and chivalrous nature could not have changed so cruelly as that; but
+it hurt her to see his eyes fixed on the son of Sabran with such
+persistent interrogation and so strange an intensity of observation. It
+made her think of old Italian tales of the evil eye.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know that Vàsàrhely had come thither with a sincere and
+devout intention to conquer his jealous hatred of her husband, and
+to habituate himself to the sight of her in the new relations of her
+life. She did not know that he would probably have honestly tried to
+do his duty, and honestly striven to feel at least esteem for one so
+near to her, if the suspicion which had become almost certainty in his
+own mind had not made him believe that he saw in Sabran a traitor,
+a bastard, and a criminal whose offences were the deepest of all
+possible offences, and whose degradation was the lowest of all possible
+degradation, in the sight of the haughty magnate of Hungary, steeped
+to the lips in all the traditions and the convictions of an unsullied
+nobility. If what he believed were, indeed, the truth, he would hold
+Sabran lower than any beggar crouching at the gate of his palace in
+Buda, than any gipsy wandering in the woods of his mountain fortress
+of Taróc. If what he believed were the truth, no leper would seem to
+him so loathsome as this brilliant and courtly gentleman to whom his
+cousin had given her hand, her honour, and her life.</p>
+
+<p>'Doubt, like a raging tooth,' gnawed at his heart, and a hope, which
+he knew was dishonourable to his chivalry, sprang up in him, vague,
+timid, and ashamed. If, indeed, it were as he believed, would not such
+crime, proven on the sinner, part him for ever from the pure, proud
+life of Wanda von Szalras? And then, as he thought thus, he groaned in
+spirit, remembering the children&mdash;the children with their father's face
+and their father's taint in them, for ever living witnesses of their
+mother's surrender to a lying hound.</p>
+
+<p>'Your cousin cannot be said to contribute to the gaiety of your
+house parties, my love,' Sabran observed with a smile one day, when
+they received the announcement of an intended visit from one of the
+archdukes. Egon Vàsàrhely was still there, and even his cousin, much
+as she longed for his departure, could not openly urge it upon him;
+relationship and hospitality alike forbade.</p>
+
+<p>'He is sadly changed,' she answered. 'He was always silent, but he is
+now morose. Perhaps he lives too much at Taróc, where all is very wild
+and solitary.'</p>
+
+<p>'He lives too much in your memory,' said Sabran, with no compassion.
+'Could he determine to forgive my marriage with you, there would be a
+chance for him to recover his peace of mind. Only, my Wanda, it is not
+possible for any man to be consoled for the loss of you.'</p>
+
+<p>'But that is nothing new,' she answered, with impatience. 'If he felt
+so strongly against you, why did he come here? It was not like his
+high, chivalrous honour.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps he came with the frank will to be reconciled to his fate,'
+said Sabran, not knowing how closely he struck the truth, 'and at the
+sight of you, of all that he lost and that I gained, he cannot keep his
+resolution.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then he should go away,' she said, with that indifference to all
+others save the one beloved which all love begets.</p>
+
+<p>'I think he should. But who can tell him so?'</p>
+
+<p>'I did myself the other day. I shall tell him so more plainly, if
+needful. Who cannot honour you shall be no friend of mine, no guest of
+ours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my love!' said Sabran, whose conscience was touched. 'Do not have
+feud with your relatives for my sake. They are worthier than I.'</p>
+
+<p>The Archduke, with his wife, arrived there on the following day, and
+Hohenszalras was gorgeous in the September sun, with all the pomp with
+which the lords of it had always welcomed their Imperial friends.
+Vàsàrhely looked on as a spectator at a play when he watched its
+present master receive the Imperial Prince with that supreme ease,
+grace, and dignity which were so admirably blent in him.</p>
+
+<p>'Can he be but a marvellous comedian?' wondered the man, to whom a
+bastard was less even than a peasant.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing of vanity, of effort, of assumption visible in the
+perfect manner of his host. He seemed to the backbone, in all the
+difficult subtleties of society, as in the simple, frank intercourse
+of man and man, that which even Kaulnitz had conceded that he was,
+<i>gentilhomme de race.</i> Could he have been born a serf&mdash;bred from the
+hour's caprice of a voluptuary for a serving-woman?</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely sat mute, sunk so deeply in his own thoughts that all the
+festivities round him went by like a pageantry on a stage, in which he
+had no part.</p>
+
+<p>'He looks like the statue of the Commendatore,' said Olga Brancka, who
+had returned for the archducal visit, as she glanced at the sombre,
+stately figure of her brother-in-law, Sabran, to whom she spoke,
+laughed with a little uneasiness. Would the hand of Egon Vàsàrhely ever
+seize him and drag him downward like the hand of the statue in <i>Don
+Giovanni?</i></p>
+
+<p>'What a pity that Wanda did not marry him, and that I did not marry
+you!' said Mdme. Brancka, saucily, but with a certain significance of
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p>'You do me infinite honour!' he answered. 'But, at the risk of seeming
+most ungallant, I must confess the truth. I am grateful that the gods
+arranged matters as they are. You are enchanting, Madame Olga, as a
+guest, but as a wife&mdash;alas! who can drink <i>kümmel</i> every day?'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled enchantingly, showing her pretty teeth, but she was bitterly
+angered. She had wished for a compliment at the least. 'What can these
+men see in Wanda?' she thought savagely. 'She is handsome, it is true;
+but she has no coquetry, no animation, no passion. She is dressed by
+Worth, and has a marvellous quantity of old jewels; but for that no one
+would say anything of her except that she was much too tall and had a
+German face!' And she persuaded herself that it was so; if the Venus
+de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her
+waist was large.</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Olga was still very lovely, and took care to be never seen except
+at her loveliest. She always treated Sabran with a great familiarity,
+which his wife was annoyed by, though she did not display her
+annoyance. Mdme Brancka always called him <i>mon cousin</i> or <i>beau cousin</i>
+in the language she usually used, and affected much more previous
+knowledge of him than their acquaintance warranted, since it had been
+merely such slight intimacy as results from moving in the same society.
+She was small and slight, but of great spirit; she shot, fished, rode,
+and played billiards with equal skill; she affected an adoration of
+the most dangerous sports, and even made a point of sharing the bear
+and the boar hunt. Wanda, who, though a person of much greater real
+courage, abhorred all the cruelties and ferocities that perforce
+accompany sport, saw her with some irritation go out with Sabran on
+these expeditions.</p>
+
+<p>'Women are utterly out of place in such sport as that, Olga,' she urged
+to her; 'and indeed are very apt to bring the men into peril, for of
+course no man can take care of himself whilst he has the safety of a
+woman to attend to; she must of necessity distract and trouble him.'</p>
+
+<p>But the Countess Stefan only laughed, and slipped with affectation her
+jewelled hunting-knife into its place in her girdle.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the Archduke's visit, and after the Prince's departure,
+Vàsàrhely continued to stay on, whilst a succession of other guests
+came and went, and the summer deepened into autumn. He felt that he
+could not leave his cousin's house with that doubt unsolved; yet he
+knew that he might stay on for ever with no more certainty to reward
+him and confirm his suspicions than he possessed now. His presence
+annoyed his host, but Sabran was too polished a gentleman to betray
+his irritation; sometimes Vàsàrhely shunned his presence and his
+conversation for days together, at other times he sought them and rode
+with him, shot with him, and played cards with him, in the vain hope of
+gathering from some chance admission or allusion some clue to Sabran's
+early days. But a perfectly happy man is not given at any time to
+retrospection, and Sabran less than most men loved his past. He would
+gladly have forgotten everything that he had ever done or said before
+his marriage at the Hofburg.</p>
+
+<p>The intellectual powers and accomplishments of Sabran dazzled Vàsàrhely
+with a saddened sense of inferiority. Like most great soldiers he
+had a genuine humility in his measurement of himself. He knew that he
+had no talents except as a leader of cavalry. 'It is natural that she
+never looked at me,' he thought, 'when she had once seen this man, with
+his wit, his grace, his facility.' He could not even regard the skill
+of Sabran in the arts, in the salon, in the theatre with the contempt
+which the 'Wild Boar of Taróc' might have felt for a mere maker of
+music, a squire of dames, a writer of sparkling little comedies, a
+painter of screens, because he knew that both at Idrac and in France
+Sabran had showed himself the possessor of those martial and virile
+qualities, by the presence or the absence of which the Hungarian noble
+measured all men. He himself could only love well and live well: he
+reflected sadly that honesty and honour are not alone enough to draw
+love in return.</p>
+
+<p>As the weeks passed on, his host grew so accustomed to his presence
+there that it ceased to give him offence or cause him anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>'He is not amusing, and he is not always polite,' he said to his
+wife, 'but if he likes to consume his soul in gazing at you, I am not
+jealous, my Wanda; and so taciturn a rival would hardly ever be a
+dangerous one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not jest about it,' she answered him, with some real pain. 'I
+should be very vexed at his remaining here, were it not that I feel
+sure he will in time learn to live down his regrets, and to esteem and
+appreciate you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who knows but his estimation of me may not be the right one?' said
+Sabran, with a pang of sad self-knowledge. And although he did not
+attach any significance to the prolonged sojourn of the lord of Taróc
+and Mohacs, he began to desire once more that his guest would return
+to the solitudes of the Carlowitz vineyards, or of the Karpathian
+mountains and gorges of snow.</p>
+
+<p>When over seven weeks had passed by, Vàsàrhely himself began to think
+that to stay in the Iselthal was useless and impossible, and he had
+heard from Taróc tidings which annoyed him&mdash;that his brother Stefan
+and his wife, availing themselves of his general permission to visit
+any one of his places when they chose had so strained the meaning of
+the permission that they had gone to his castle, with a score of their
+Parisian friends, and were there keeping high holiday and festival,
+to the scandal of his grave old stewards, and their own exceeding
+diversion. Hospitable to excess as he was, the liberty displeased him,
+especially as his, men wrote him word that his favourite horses; were
+being ruined by over-driving, and in the list of the guests which they
+sent him were the names of more than one too notorious lady, against
+whose acquaintance he had repeatedly counselled Olga Brancka. He would
+not have cared much what they had done at any other of his houses, but
+at Taróc, his mother, whom he had adored, had lived and died, and the
+place was sacred to him.</p>
+
+<p>He determined to tear himself away from Hohenszalras, and go and
+scatter these gay unbidden revellers in the dusky Karpathian ravines.
+'I cannot stay here for ever,' he thought, 'and I might be here for
+years without acquiring any more certainty than my own conviction.
+Either I am wrong, or he has nothing to conceal, or if I be right he is
+too wary to betray himself. If only I could see his shoulder where I
+struck the dagger&mdash;but I cannot go into his bath-room and say to him,
+"You are Vassia Kazán!"'</p>
+
+<p>He resolved to leave on the day after the morrow. For the next day
+there was organised on a large scale a hunting party, to which the
+nobility of the Tauern had been bidden. There were only some half-dozen
+men then staying in the Burg, most of them Austrian soldiers. The delay
+gave him the chance he longed for, which but for an accident he might
+never have had, though he had tarried there half a century.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning there was a great breakfast in the Rittersaal,
+at which Wanda did not appear. Sabran received the nobles and gentry
+of the province, and did the honours of his table with his habitual
+courtliness and grace. He was not hospitable in Vàsàrhely's sense of
+the word: he was too easily wearied by others, and too contemptuous of
+ordinary humanity; but he was alive to the pleasure of being lord of
+Hohenszalras, and sensible of the favour with which he was looked upon
+by a nobility commonly so exclusive and intolerant of foreign invasion.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast over, the whole party went out and up into the high woods.
+The sport at Hohenszalras always gave fair play to beast and bird. In
+deference to the wishes of his wife, Sabran would have none of those
+battues which make of the covert or the forest a slaughterhouse. He
+himself disdained that sort of sport, and liked danger and adventure
+to mingle with his out-of-door pastimes. Game fairly found by the
+spaniel or the pointer; the boar, the wolf, the bear, honestly started
+and given its fair chance of escape or revenge; the steinbock stalked
+in a long hard day with peril and effort&mdash;these were all delightful
+to him on occasion; but for the crowded drive, the horde of beaters,
+the terrified bewildered troop of forest denizens driven with sticks
+on to the very barrels of the gunners, for this he had the boundless
+contempt of a man who had chased the buffalo over the prairie, and
+lassoed the wild horse and the wild bull leaning down from the saddle
+of his mustang. The day passed off well, and his guests were all
+content: he alone was not, because a large brown bear which he had
+sighted and tired at twice had escaped him, and roused that blood-lust
+in him which is in the hearts of all men.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you come out alone with me to-morrow and try for that grand
+brute?' he said to Vàsàrhely, as the last of his guests took their
+departure.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since
+you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'</p>
+
+<p>He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught
+at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of
+Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had
+suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had
+intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving
+directions to the <i>jägermeister</i> for the next day.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is
+impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance
+resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a
+child.</p>
+
+<p>In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where
+the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a
+rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and
+mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in
+the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with
+no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their
+rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went
+through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a
+mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and
+capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big
+game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting
+and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and
+drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper
+woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian
+pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above
+some underground.</p>
+
+<p>'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper
+to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should
+be his host's.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my
+guest.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him
+to contrive to sting and wound him.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not
+observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed
+upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both
+in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron,
+good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about
+a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low
+hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and
+would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached.
+The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Well done,' cried Sabran, but scarcely were the words off his lips
+when another bear burst through the boughs ahead of him by fifty yards.
+He levelled his rifle and received its approach with two bullets in
+rapid succession. But neither had entered a vital part, and the animal,
+only rendered furious by pain, reared and came towards him with
+deadliest intent, its great fangs grinning. He fired again, and this
+shot struck home. The poor brute fell with a crash, the blood pouring
+from its mouth. It was not dead and its agony was great.</p>
+
+<p>'I will give it the <i>coup de grâce</i>,' said Sabran, who, for his wife's
+sake', was as humane as any hunter ever can be to the beasts he slew.</p>
+
+<p>'Take care,' said Vàsàrhely. 'It is dangerous to touch a wounded bear.
+I have known one that looked stone dead rise up and kill a man.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran did not heed. He went up to the poor, panting, groaning mass of
+fur and flesh, and drew his hunting-knife to give it the only mercy
+that it was now possible for it to receive. But as he stooped to
+plunge the knife into its heart the bear verified the warning he had
+been given. Gathering all its oozing strength in one dying effort to
+avenge its murder, it leaped on him, dashed him to the earth, and clung
+to him with claw and tooth fast in his flesh. He freed his right arm
+from its ponderous weight, its horrible grip, and stabbed it with his
+knife as it clung to and lacerated him where he lay upon the grass.
+In an instant, Vàsàrhely and the jäger who was with them were by his
+side, freed him from the animal, and raised him from the ground. He
+was deluged with its blood and his own. Vàsàrhely, for one moment of
+terrible joy, for which he loathed himself afterwards, thought, 'Is he
+dead?' Men had died of lesser things than this.</p>
+
+<p>He stood erect and smiled, and said that it was nothing, but even as he
+spoke a faintness came over him, and his lips turned grey.</p>
+
+<p>The jäger supported him tenderly, and would have had him sit down upon
+a boulder of rock, but he resisted.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me get to that water, he said feebly, looking to a spot a few
+yards off, where one of the many torrents of the Hohe Tauern tumbled
+from the wooded cliff above through birch and beechwood, and rushing
+underground left a clear round brown pool amongst the ferns. He took a
+draught from the flask of brandy; tendered him by the lad, and leaning
+on the youth, and struggling against the sinking swoon that was coming
+on him, walked to the edge of the pool, and dropped down there on one
+of the mossy stones which served as a rough chair.</p>
+
+<p>'Strip me, and wash the blood away, he said to the huntsman, whilst the
+green wood and the daylight, and the face of the man grew dim to him,
+and seemed to recede further and further in a misty darkness. The youth
+obeyed, and cut away the velvet coat, the cambric shirt, till he was
+naked to his waist; then, making sponges of handkerchiefs, the jäger
+began to wash the blood from him and staunch it as best he could.</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely stood by, without offering any aid; his eyes were
+fastened on the magnificent bust of Sabran, as the sunlight fell on the
+fair blue-veined flesh, the firm muscles, the symmetrical throat, the
+slender, yet sinewy arms, round one of which was clasped a bracelet of
+fair hair. He had the chance he needed.</p>
+
+<p>He approached and told the lad roughly to leave the Marquis to him,
+he was doing him more harm than good; he himself had seen many
+battle-fields, and many men bleeding to death upon their mother earth.
+By this time Sabran's eyes were closed; he was hardly conscious of
+anything, a great numbness and infinite exhaustion had fallen upon him;
+his lips moved feebly. 'Wanda!' he said once or twice,'Wanda!'</p>
+
+<p>The face of the man who leaned above him grew dark as night; he gnashed
+his teeth as he begun his errand of mercy.</p>
+
+<p>Leave me with your lord,' he said to the young jäger. 'Go you to the
+castle. Find Herr Greswold, bring him; do not alarm the Countess, and
+say nothing to the household.'</p>
+
+<p>The huntsman went, fleet as a roe. Vàsàrhely remained alone with
+Sabran, who only heard the sound of the rushing water magnified a
+million times on his dulled ear.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely tore the shirt in shreds, and laved and bathed the wounds,
+and then began to bind them with the skill of a soldier who had often
+aided his own wounded troopers. But first of all, when he had washed
+the blood away, he searched with keen and eager eyes for a scar on the
+white skin&mdash;and found it.</p>
+
+<p>On the right shoulder was a small triangular mark; the mark of what,
+to a soldier's eyes, told of an old wound. When he saw it he smiled a
+cruel smile, and went on with his work of healing.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran leaned against the rock behind him; his eyes were still closed,
+the pulsations of his heart were irregular. He had lost a great
+quantity of blood, and the pool at his feet was red. They were but
+flesh wounds, and there was no danger in them themselves, but great
+veins had been severed, and the stream of life had hurried forth in
+torrents. Vàsàrhely thrust the flask between his lips, but he could not
+swallow.</p>
+
+<p>All had been done that could be for the immediate moment. The stillness
+of the deep woods was around them; the body of the brown bear lay on
+the soaked grass; a vulture scenting death, was circling above against
+the blue sky. Over the mind of his foe swept at the sight of them one
+of those hideous temptations which assail the noblest natures in an
+hour of hatred. If he tore the bandages he had placed there off the
+rent veins of the unconscious man whom he watched, the blood would
+leap out again in floods, and so weaken the labouring heart that in
+ten minutes more its powers would fall so low that all aid would be
+useless. Never more would the lips of Sabran meet his wife! Never
+more would his dreams be dreamed upon her breast! For the moment the
+temptation seemed to curl about him like a flame; he shuddered, and
+crossed himself. Was he a soldier to slay in cold blood by treachery a
+powerless rival?</p>
+
+<p>He leaned over Sabran again, and again tried to force the mouthpiece
+of his wine-flask through his teeth. A few drops passed them, and
+he revived a little, and swallowed a few drops more. The blood was
+arrested in its escape, and the pulsations of the heart were returning
+to their normal measure; after a while he unclosed his eyes, and looked
+up at the green leaves, at the blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not alarm Wanda,' he said feebly. 'It is a scratch; it will be
+nothing. Take me home.'</p>
+
+<p>With his left hand he felt for the hair bracelet on his right arm,
+between the shoulder and the wrist. It was stiff with his own blood.</p>
+
+<p>Then Vàsàrhely leaned over him and met his upward gaze, and said in his
+ear, that seemed still filled with the rushing of many waters, 'You are
+Vassia Kazán!'</p>
+
+<p>When a little later the huntsman returned, bringing the physician, whom
+he had met a mile nearer the house in the woods, and some peasants
+bearing a litter made out of pine branches and wood moss, they found
+Sabran stretched insensible beside the water-pool; and Egon Vàsàrhely,
+who stood erect beside him, said in a strange tone:</p>
+
+<p>'I have stanched the blood, and he has swooned, you see. I commit him
+to your hands. I am not needed.'</p>
+
+<p>And, to their surprise, he turned and walked away with swift steps into
+the green gloom of the dense forest.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Sabran was still insensible when he was carried to the house.</p>
+
+<p>When he regained consciousness he was on his own bed, and his wife was
+bending over him. A convulsion of grief crossed his face as he lifted
+his eyelids and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda,' he murmured feebly, 'Wanda, you will forgive&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She kissed him passionately, while her tears fell like rain upon his
+forehead. She did not hear his words distinctly; she was only alive to
+the intense joy of his recovered consciousness, of the sound of his
+voice, of the sense of his safety. She kneeled by his bed, covering his
+hands with caresses, prodigal of a thousand names of love, given up to
+an abandonment of terror and of hope which broke down all the serenity
+and self-command of her habitual temper. She was not even aware of the
+presence of others. The over-mastering emotions of anguish and of joy
+filled her soul, and made her seem deaf, indifferent to all living
+things save one.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran lay motionless. He felt her lips, he heard her voice; he did not
+look up again, nor did he speak again. He shut his eyes, and slowly
+remembered all that had passed. Greswold approached him and held his
+fingers on his wrist, and held a little glass to his mouth. Sabran put
+it away. 'It is an opiate,' he said feebly; 'I will not have it.'</p>
+
+<p>He was resolute; he closed his teeth, he thrust the calming draught
+away.</p>
+
+<p>He was thinking to himself: 'Sometimes in unconsciousness one speaks.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are not in great pain?' asked the physician. He made a negative
+movement of his head. What were the fire and the smart of his lacerated
+flesh, of his torn muscles, to the torments of his fears, to the agony
+of his long stifled conscience?</p>
+
+<p>'Do not torment him, let him be still,' she said to the physician; she
+held his hand in both her own and pressed it to her heart. His languid
+eyes thanked her, then closed again.</p>
+
+<p>Herr Greswold withdrew to a little distance and waited. It seemed to
+him strange that a man of the high courage and strong constitution of
+Sabran should be thus utterly broken down by any wound that was not
+mortal; should be thus sunk into dejection and apathy, making no effort
+to raise himself, even to console and reassure his wife. It was not
+like his careless and gallant temper, his virile and healthful strength.</p>
+
+<p>It was true, the doctor reflected, that he had lost a great amount of
+blood. Such a loss he knew sometimes affects the heart and shatters the
+nervous system in many unlooked-for ways. Yet, he thought, there was
+something beyond this; the attitude and the regard of Egon Vàsàrhely
+had been unnatural at such an hour of peril. 'When he said just now
+"forgive," what did he mean?' reflected the old man, whose ear had
+caught the word which had escaped that of Wanda, who had been only
+alive to the voice she adored.</p>
+
+<p>The next four days were anxious and terrible. Sabran did not recover as
+the physician expected that he would, seeing the nature of his wounds
+and the naturally elastic and sanguine temperament he possessed. He
+slept little, had considerable fever, woke from the little rest he
+had, startled, alarmed, bathed in cold sweats; at other times he lay
+still in an apathy almost comatose, from which all the caresses and
+entreaties of his wife failed to rouse him. They began to fear that the
+discharge from the arteries had in some subtle and dangerous manner
+affected the action of the heart, the composition of the blood, and
+produced aneurism or pyæmia. 'The hero of Idrac to be prostrated by a
+mere flesh wound!' thought Herr Greswold in sore perplexity. He sent
+for a great man of science from Vienna, who, when he came, declared the
+treatment admirable, the wounds healthy, the heart in a normal state,
+but added it was evident the nervous system had received a severe
+shock, the effects of which still remained.</p>
+
+<p>'But it is that which I cannot understand,' said the old man in
+despair. 'If you only knew the Marquis de Sabran as I know him; the
+most courageous, the most gay, the most resolute of men! A man to laugh
+at death in its face! A man absolutely without fear!'</p>
+
+<p>The other assented.</p>
+
+<p>'Every one knows what he did in the floods at Idrac,' he answered; 'but
+he has a sensitive temperament for all that. If you did not tell me it
+is impossible, I should say that he had had some mental shock, some
+great grief. The prostration seems to me more of the mind than the
+body. But you have assured me it is impossible?'</p>
+
+<p>'Impossible! There does not live on earth a man so happy, so fortunate,
+so blessed in all the world as he.'</p>
+
+<p>'Men have a past that troubles them sometimes,' said the Vienna
+physician. 'Nay, I mean nothing, but I believe that M. de Sabran was a
+man of pleasure. The cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must
+drink long afterwards. I do not mean anything; I merely suggest. The
+prostration has to my view its most probable origin in mental trouble;
+but it would do him more harm than good to excite him by any effort to
+certify this. To the Countess von Szalras I have merely said, that his
+state is the result of the large loss of blood, and, indeed, after all
+it may be so.'</p>
+
+<p>On the fifth day, Sabran, still lying in that almost comatose silence
+which had been scarcely broken since his accident, said in a scarce
+audible voice to his wife:</p>
+
+<p>'Is your cousin here?'</p>
+
+<p>She stooped towards him and answered:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; he is here, love. All the others went immediately, but Egon
+remained. I suppose he thought it looked kinder to do so. I have
+scarcely seen him, of course.'</p>
+
+<p>The pallor of his face grew greyer; he turned his head away restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>'Why does he not go?' he muttered in his throat. 'Does he wait for my
+death?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Réné! hush, hush!' she said, with horror and amaze. 'My love, how
+can you say such things? You are in no danger; the doctor assures me
+so. In a week or two you will be well, you will be yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Send your cousin away.'</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated; troubled by his unreasoning, restless jealousy, which
+seemed to be the only consciousness of life remaining with him. 'I will
+obey you, love; you are lord here,' she said softly; 'but will it not
+look strange? No guest can well be told to go.'</p>
+
+<p>'A guest!&mdash;he is an enemy!'</p>
+
+<p>She sighed, knowing how hopelessly reason can struggle against the
+delusions of a sick bed. 'I will tell him to go to-morrow,' she said,
+to soothe him. 'To-night it is too late.'</p>
+
+<p>'Write to him&mdash;do not leave me.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a childlike appeal in his voice, that from a man so strong
+had a piteous pathos. Her eyes swam with tears as she heard.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my dearest, I will not leave you!' she said passionately, 'not for
+one moment whilst I live; and oh, my beloved! what could death ever
+change in <i>me</i>? Have you so little faith?'</p>
+
+<p>'You do not know,' he said, so low that his breath scarcely stirred the
+air.</p>
+
+<p>She thought that he was tormented by a doubt that she would not be
+faithful to him if he died. She stooped and kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>'My own, I would sooner be faithless to you in your life than after
+death. Surely you know me well enough to know that at the least?'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent. A great sigh struggled from his breast and escaped his
+pale lips like a parting breath.</p>
+
+<p>'Kiss me again,' he murmured; 'kiss me again, whilst&mdash;&mdash;That gives me
+life,' he said, as he drew her head down upon his bosom, where his
+heart throbbed labouredly. A little while later he fell asleep. He
+slept some hours. When he awoke he was consumed by a nameless fear.</p>
+
+<p>'Is your cousin gone?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She told him that it was one o'clock in the same night; she had not
+written yet.</p>
+
+<p>'Let him stay,' he said feverishly. 'He shall not think I fear him. Do
+you hear me? Let him stay.'</p>
+
+<p>The words seemed to her the causeless caprice of a jealousy magnified
+and distorted by the weakness of fever. She strove to answer him
+calmly. 'He shall go or stay as you please,' she assured him. 'What
+does it matter, dear, what Egon does? You always speak of Egon. You
+have never spoken of the children once.'</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to distract his thoughts. She was pained to think how deep,
+though unspoken, his antagonism to her cousin must have been, that now
+in his feebleness it&mdash;was the one paramount absorbing thought.</p>
+
+<p>A great sadness came upon his face as she spoke; his lips trembled a
+little.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! the children,' he repeated. 'Yes, bring them to me to-morrow. Bela
+is too like me. Poor Bela, it will be his curse.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is my joy of joys,' she murmured, afraid to see how his mind seemed
+astray.</p>
+
+<p>A shudder that was almost a spasm passed over him. He did not reply. He
+turned his face away from her, and seemed to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The day following he was somewhat calmer, somewhat stronger, though his
+fever was high.</p>
+
+<p>The species of paralysis that had seemed to; fall on all his faculties
+had in a great measure left him. 'You wish, me to recover,' he said to
+her. 'I will do so, though perhaps it were, better not?'</p>
+
+<p>'He says strange things,' she said to Greswold. 'I cannot think why he
+has such thoughts.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is not he, himself, that has them, it is his fever,' answered the
+doctor. 'Why, in fever, do people often hate what they most adore when
+they are in health?'</p>
+
+<p>She was reassured, but not contented.</p>
+
+<p>The children were brought to see him. Bela had with him an ivory
+air-gun, with which he was accustomed to blow down his metal soldiers;
+he looked at his father with awed, dilated eyes, and said that he would
+go out with the gun and kill the brothers of the bear that had done the
+harm.</p>
+
+<p>'The bear was quite right,' said Sabran. 'It was I who was wrong to
+take a life not my own.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is beyond Bela,' said his wife. 'But I will translate it to him
+into language he shall understand, though I fear very much, say what I
+will, he will be a hunter and a soldier one day.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela looked from one to the other, knitting, his fair brows as he sat
+on the edge of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will be like Egon,' he said, 'with all gold and fur to dress up
+in, and a big jewelled sword, and ten hundred men and horses, and Bela
+will be a great killer of things!'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran smiled languidly, but she saw that he flinched at her cousin's
+name.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not love you, Bela, if you are a killer of things that are
+God's dear creatures,' she said, as she sent the child away.</p>
+
+<p>His blue eyes grew dark with anger.</p>
+
+<p>'God only cares about Bela,' he said in innocent profanity, with
+a profound sense of his own vastness in the sight of heaven, 'and
+Gela,' he added, with the condescending tenderness wherewith he always
+associated his brother and himself.</p>
+
+<p>'Where could he get all that overwhelming pride?' she said, as he was
+led away. 'I have tried to rear him so simply. Do what I may he will
+grow arrogant and selfish.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear,' said Sabran, very bitterly, 'what avails that he was borne
+in your bosom? He is my son!'</p>
+
+<p>'Gela is your son, and he is so different,' she answered, not seeking
+to combat the self-censure to which she was accustomed in him, and
+which she attributed to faults or follies of a past life, magnified by
+a conscience too sensitive.</p>
+
+<p>'He is all yours then,' he said, with a wan smile. 'You have prevailed
+over evil.'</p>
+
+<p>In a few days later his recovery had progressed so far that he had
+regained his usual tone and look; his wounds were healing, and his
+strength was returning. He seemed to the keen eyes of Greswold to have
+made a supreme effort to conquer the moral depression into which he had
+sunk, and to have thrust away his malady almost by force of will. As he
+grew better he never spoke of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>On the fifteenth day from his accident he was restored enough to health
+for apprehension to cease. He passed some hours seated at an open
+window in his own room. He never asked if Vàsàrhely were still there or
+not.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda, who never left him, wondered at that silence, but she forbore to
+bring forward a name which had had such power to agitate him. She was
+troubled at the nervousness which still remained to him. The opening of
+a door, the sound of a step, the entrance of a servant made him start
+and turn pale. When she spoke of it with anxiety to Herr Joachim, he
+said vague sentences as to the nervousness which was consequent on
+great loss of blood, and brought forward instances of soldiers who had
+lost their nerve from the same cause. It did not satisfy her. She was
+the descendant of a long line of warriors; she could not easily believe
+that her husband's intrepid and careless courage could have been
+shattered by a flesh wound.</p>
+
+<p>'Did you really mean,' he said abruptly to her that afternoon, as he
+sat for the first time beside the open panes of the oriel; 'did you
+really mean that were I to die you would never forget me for any other?'</p>
+
+<p>She rose quickly as if she had been stung, and her face flushed.</p>
+
+<p>'Do I merit that doubt from you? she said. 'I think not.'</p>
+
+<p>She spoke rather in sadness than in anger. He had hurt her, he could
+not anger her. He felt the rebuke.</p>
+
+<p>'Even if I were dead, should I have all your life?' he murmured, in
+wonder at that priceless gift.</p>
+
+<p>'You and your children,' she said gravely. 'Ah! what can death do
+against great love? Make its bands stronger perhaps, its power purer.
+Nothing else.'</p>
+
+<p>'I thank you,' he said very low, with great humility, with intense
+emotion. For a moment he thought&mdash;&mdash;should he tell her, should he trust
+this deep tenderness which could brave death; and might brave even
+shame unblenching? He looked at her from under his drooped eyelids, and
+then&mdash;he dared not. He knew the pride which was in her better than she
+did&mdash;&mdash;her pride, which was inherited by her firstborn, and had been
+the sign manual of all her imperious race.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her where she stood with the light falling on her through
+the amber hues of painted glass; worn, wan, and tired by so many days
+and nights of anxious vigil, she yet looked a woman whom a nation
+might salute with the <i>pro rege nostro!</i> that Maria Theresa heard. All
+that a great race possesses and rejoices in of valour, of tradition,
+of dignity, of high honour, and of blameless truth were expressed in
+her; every movement, attitude, and gesture spoke of the aristocracy of
+blood. All that potent and subtle sense of patrician descent which had
+most allured and intoxicated him in other days now awed and daunted
+him. He dared not tell her of his treason. He dared not. He was as a
+false conspirator before a great queen he has betrayed.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you faint, my love?' she asked him, alarmed to see the change upon
+his face and the exhaustion with which he sunk, backward against the
+cushions of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>'Mere weakness; it will pass,' he said, smiling as best he might, to
+reassure her. He felt like a man who slides down a crevasse, and has
+time and consciousness enough to see the treacherous ice go by him,
+the black abyss yawning below him, the cold, dark death awaiting him
+beyond, whilst on the heights the sun is shining.</p>
+
+<p>That night he entreated her to leave him and rest. He assured her he
+felt well; he feigned a need of sleep. For fifteen nights she had not
+herself lain down. To please him she obeyed, and the deep slumber of
+tired nature soon fell upon her. When he thought she slept, he rose
+noiselessly and threw on a long velvet coat, sable-lined, that was by
+his bedside, and looked at his watch. It was midnight.</p>
+
+<p>He crossed the threshold of the open door into his wife's chamber and
+stood beside her bed for a moment, gazing at her as she slept. She
+seemed like the marble statue of some sleeping saint; she lay in the
+attitude of S. Cecilia on her bier at Home. The faint lamplight made
+her fair skin white as snow. Bound her arm was a bracelet of his hair
+like the one which he wore of hers. He stood and gazed on her, then
+slowly turned away. Great tears fell down his cheeks as he left her
+chamber. He opened the door of his own room, the outer one which led
+into the corridor, and walked down the long tapestry-hung gallery
+leading to the guest-chambers. It was the first time that he had walked
+without assistance; his limbs felt strange and broken, but he held on,
+leaning now and then to rest against the arras. The whole house was
+still.</p>
+
+<p>He took his way straight to the apartments set aside for guests. All
+was dark. The little lamp he carried shed a circle of light about his
+steps but none beyond him. When he reached the chamber which he knew
+was Egon Vàsàrhely's he did not pause. He struck on its panels with a
+firm hand.</p>
+
+<p>The voice of Vàsàrhely asked from within, 'Who is there? Is there
+anything wrong?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is I! Open,' answered Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment more the door unclosed. Vàsàrhely stood within it; he was
+not undressed. There were a dozen wax candles burning in silver sconces
+on the table within. The tapestried figures on the walls grew pale and
+colossal in their light. He did not speak, but waited.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran entered and closed the door behind him. His face was bloodless,
+but he carried himself erect despite the sense of faintness which
+assailed him.</p>
+
+<p>'You know who I am?' he said simply, without preface or supplication.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely gave a gesture of assent.</p>
+
+<p>'How did you know it?'</p>
+
+<p>'I remembered,' answered the other.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence. If Vàsàrhely could have withered to the
+earth by a gaze of scorn the man before him, Sabran would have fallen
+dead. As it was his eyes dropped beneath the look, but the courage and
+the dignity of his attitude did not alter. He had played his part of
+a great noble for so long that it had ceased to be assumption and had
+become his nature.</p>
+
+<p>'You will tell her?' he said, and his voice did not tremble, though his
+very soul seemed to swoon within him.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not tell her!'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely spoke with effort; his words were hoarse and stern.</p>
+
+<p>'You will not?'</p>
+
+<p>An immense joy, unlooked for, undreamed of, sprang up in him, checked
+as it rose by incredulity.</p>
+
+<p>'But you loved her!' he said, on an impulse which he regretted even
+as the exclamation escaped him. Vàsàrhely threw his head back with a
+gesture of fine anger.</p>
+
+<p>'If I loved' her what is that to you?' he said, with a restrained
+violence vibrating in his words. 'It is, perhaps, because I once loved
+her that your foul secret is safe with me now. I shall not tell her. I
+waited to say this to you. I could not write it lest it should meet her
+eyes. You came to ask me this? Be satisfied and go.'</p>
+
+<p>'I came to ask you this because, had you said otherwise, I would have
+shot myself ere she could have heard.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely said nothing; a great scorn was still set like the grimness
+of death upon his face. He looked far away at the dim figures on the
+tapestries; he shrunk from the sight of his boyhood's enemy as from
+some loathly unclean thing he must not kill.</p>
+
+<p>'Suicide!' he thought, 'the Slav's courage, the serf's refuge!</p>
+
+<p>Before the sight of Sabran the room went round, the lights grew dull,
+the figures on the walls became, fantastic and unreal. His heart beat
+with painful effort, yet his ears, his throat, his brain seemed full
+of blood. The nerves of his whole body seemed to shrink and thrill and
+quiver, but the force of habit kept him composed and erect before this
+man who was his foe, yet did for him what few friends would have done.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not thank you,' he said at last. 'I understand; you spare me for
+her sake, not mine.'</p>
+
+<p>'But for her, I would treat you so.'</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he broke in two a slender agate ruler which lay on the
+writing-table at his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>'Go,' he added, 'you have had my word; though we live fifty years you
+are safe from me, because&mdash;&mdash;because&mdash;&mdash;God forgive you! you are hers.'</p>
+
+<p>He made a gesture towards the door. Sabran shivered under the insult
+which his conscience could not resent, his hand dared not avenge.</p>
+
+<p>Hearing this there fell away from him the arrogance that had been his
+mask, the courage that had been his shield. He saw himself for the
+first time as this man saw him, as all the world would see him if once
+it knew his secret. For the first time his past offences rose up like
+ghosts naked from their graves. The calmness, the indifference, the
+cynicism, the pride which had been so long in his manner and in his
+nature deserted him. He felt base-born before a noble, a liar before a
+gentleman, a coward before a man of honour.</p>
+
+<p>Where he stood, leaning on a high caned chair to support himself
+against the sickly weakness which still came on him from his scarce
+healed wounds, he felt for the first time to cower and shrink before
+this man who was his judge, and might become his accuser did he choose.
+Something in the last words of Egon Vàsàrhely suddenly brought home
+to him the enormity of his own sin, the immensity of the other's
+forbearance. He suddenly realised all the offence to honour, all the
+outrage to pride, all the ineffaceable indignity which he had brought
+upon a great race: all that he had done, never to be undone by any
+expiation of his own, in making Wanda von Szalras the mother of his
+sons. Submissive, he turned without a word of gesture or of pleading,
+and felt his way out of the chamber through the dusky mists of the
+faintness stealing on him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against
+the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his
+clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.</p>
+
+<p>She was still asleep.</p>
+
+<p>When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever.
+He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a
+moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his
+desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.</p>
+
+<p>But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned
+to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had
+left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person,
+as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no
+importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said
+nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental
+impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian
+mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use
+to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife
+attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial
+always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength
+returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a
+gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened
+upon her with a strange appeal.</p>
+
+<p>One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was
+certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following
+words to his foe and his judge:</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,&mdash;&mdash;You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I
+send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical
+weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time
+or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof
+absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that
+the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue
+it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but
+shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of
+action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present
+permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have
+governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or
+chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern
+both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse
+at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia
+Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to
+nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the
+great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was
+taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never
+saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years
+old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I
+remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you,
+and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then
+returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him.
+One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the
+Prince Zabaroff was dead&mdash;my protector, as they termed him&mdash;and that
+I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make
+you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always
+been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family,
+could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts,
+the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then,
+thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father.
+I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my
+fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother
+Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year
+after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You
+see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things
+or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had
+a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices,
+like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the
+love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit
+which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of
+me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive
+tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in
+my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those
+three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me
+with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be
+rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did
+me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a
+word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis
+with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold
+some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque
+going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down
+with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone
+reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe,
+and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread,
+fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I
+neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me
+popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name
+of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went
+there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the
+moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I
+liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely
+more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his
+fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior.
+Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left
+for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his
+hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the
+Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the
+solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts
+the hiss of an Indian's arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he
+lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of
+him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows
+of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher
+in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been
+subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having
+wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died
+of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to
+think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life
+with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed
+me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the
+dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history
+of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was
+glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike
+as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on
+the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the
+steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men
+I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I
+loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican <i>ranch</i> near,
+within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us
+and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost
+inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps
+covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it
+all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be
+gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies
+which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight
+whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector
+and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose
+heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he
+died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything
+he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would
+collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France.
+For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss.
+I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and
+his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of
+cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave.
+I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the
+temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all
+those which had been brought with him from France by his Jesuit tutors,
+and the certificates of his own and his father's births and marriages,
+with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper
+containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and
+patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden
+in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had
+desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great
+sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine:
+he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human
+being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed
+to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots
+not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had
+the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was
+born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible
+reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years
+I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and
+purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris,
+yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in
+many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong
+which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that
+I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it
+seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had
+deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and
+had given me all he held most dear&mdash;&mdash;the fruits of his researches.
+To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation.
+I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as
+the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew
+that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke
+no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was
+recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned
+to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance
+with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to
+me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not
+having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I
+went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had
+been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The
+priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the
+name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing&mdash;&mdash;Bretons
+never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead
+men who had gone down when the <i>Estelle</i> had foundered off the Pinos.
+I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so
+much during my seven years' absence from Paris that I did not suppose
+anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran.
+And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known
+me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred
+of me as your cousin's husband; and had you even had suspicions you
+could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in
+the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down
+the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me
+take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune
+involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have
+done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and
+some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What
+was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over
+with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is
+my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious
+and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense
+perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it
+as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying
+ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to
+justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware
+that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true
+that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed
+me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to
+me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I
+had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely
+closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became
+almost by necessity a <i>fainéant</i>, and fate smiled upon me more than I
+merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all
+his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me.
+I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I
+can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so
+natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made
+me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to
+act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and
+irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call
+<i>flair.</i> I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on
+the Bourse. I was also, famous for <i>la main heureuse</i> in all forms of
+gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept
+always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed
+to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded
+the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should
+not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was
+a man of honour until&mdash;&mdash;I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to
+defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware
+of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied
+your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her.
+You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It
+is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions
+of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to
+me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia,
+but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am
+base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting
+elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and
+mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten
+by a great lord's momentary <i>ennui</i> and caprice! But if you will stoop
+so far&mdash;&mdash;if you will consider me ennobled by <i>her</i> enough to meet
+you as an equal would do&mdash;&mdash;we can find with facility some pretext
+of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me.
+You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are
+the only male champion&mdash;what her brothers would surely have taken had
+they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have
+passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your
+commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to
+their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet
+you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother's
+than their father's, and she will rear them in all noble ways.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return
+of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace
+with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his
+own cowardice and shame.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of
+Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief:&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for
+she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 60%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.'</p>
+
+<p>To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:</p>
+
+<p>'Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did
+not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has
+seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return.
+It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a
+prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go
+to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If
+ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope
+this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen
+you.' Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to
+be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name.
+Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your
+husband, and give me a remembrance in your prayers.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 70%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'EGON.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn
+shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and
+to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of
+her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to
+play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and
+eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this
+unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it
+plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian
+world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it
+was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman,
+which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon
+her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and
+what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at
+Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of
+it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation.
+If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again
+paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and
+her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda has ruined him!' she always thought angrily. 'He always expects
+every other woman to have a soul above <i>chiffons</i> and to bury herself
+in the country with children and horses.'</p>
+
+<p>Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which
+his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to
+her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the
+pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him.
+Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed
+measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to
+entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and
+was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law.
+She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only
+came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild
+forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely,
+and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope,
+which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for
+her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the
+post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and
+soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was
+called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish
+literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race
+of Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>What was in that letter?</p>
+
+<p>She attended to none of her own, so absorbed was she in the impression
+which gained upon her that the packet which had brought so much
+surprise and even emotion upon his face came from the hand of Wanda.
+'If even she should be no saint at all?' she thought, with a malicious
+amusement. She did not see Egon Vàsàrhely for many hours, but she
+did not lose her curiosity nor cease to cast about for a method of
+gratifying it. At the close of the day when she came back from hunting
+she went into the library, which was then empty. She did not seriously
+expect to see anything that would reward her enterprise, but she knew
+he read his letters there and wrote the few he was obliged to write:
+like most soldiers he disliked using pen and ink. It was dusk, and
+there were a few lights burning in the old silver sconces fixed upon
+the horns of forest animals against the walls. With a quick, calm
+touch, she moved all the litter of papers lying on the huge table
+where he was wont to do such business as he was compelled to transact.
+She found nothing that gratified her inquisitiveness. She was about
+to leave the room in baffled impatience&mdash;&mdash;impatience of she knew not
+what&mdash;&mdash;when her eyes fell upon a pile of charred paper lying on the
+stove.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those monumental polychrome stoves of fifteenth-century
+work in which the country-houses of Central Europe are so rich; a
+grand pile of fretted pottery, towering half way to the ceiling, with
+the crown and arms of the Vàsàrhely princes on its summit. There was
+no fire in it, for the weather was not cold, and Vàsàrhely, who alone
+used the room, was an ascetic in such matters; but upon its jutting
+step, which was guarded by lions of gilded bronze, there had been some
+paper burned: the ashes lay there in a little heap. Almost all of
+it was ash, but a few torn pieces were only blackened and coloured.
+With the eager curiosity of a woman who is longing to find another
+woman at fault, she kneeled down by the stove and patiently examined
+these pieces. Only one was so little burned that it had a word or two
+legible upon it; two of those words were Vassia Kazán. Nothing else was
+traceable; she recognised the handwriting of Sabran. She attached no
+importance to it, yet she slipped the little scrap, burnt and black as
+it was, within one of her gauntlets; then, as quickly as she had come
+there, she retreated and in another half hour, smiling and radiant,
+covered with jewels, and with no trace of fatigue or of weather, she
+descended the great banqueting-hall, clad as though the heart of the
+Greater Karpathians was the centre of the Boulevard S. Germain.</p>
+
+<p>Who was Vassia Kazán?</p>
+
+<p>The question floated above all her thoughts all that evening. Who was
+he, she, or it, and what could Sabran have to say of him, or her, or
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely? A less wise woman might have asked straightway
+what the unknown name might mean, but straight ways are not those
+which commend themselves to temperaments like hers. The pleasure and
+the purpose of her life was intrigue. In great things she deemed
+it necessity; in trifles it was an amusement; without it life was
+flavourless.</p>
+
+<p>The next day her brother-in-law abandoned Taróc, to join his hussars
+and prepare for the autumn manœuvres in the plains, and left her and
+Stefan in possession of the great place, half palace, half fortress,
+which had withstood more than one siege of Ottoman armies, where it
+stood across a deep gorge with the water foaming black below. But she
+kept the charred, torn, triangular scrap of paper; and she treasured
+in her memory the two words Vassia Kazán; and she said again and again
+and again to herself: 'Why should he write to Egon? Why should Egon
+burn what he writes?' Deep down in her mind there was always at work
+a bitter jealousy of Wanda von Szalras; jealousy of her regular and
+perfect beauty, of her vast possessions, of her influence at the Court,
+of her serene and unspotted repute, and now of her ascendency over the
+lives of Sabran and of Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>'Why should they both love that woman so much?' she thought very often.
+'She is always alike. She has no temptations. She goes over life as if
+it were frozen snow. She did one senseless thing, but then she was rich
+enough to do it with impunity. She is so habitually fortunate that she
+is utterly uninteresting; and yet they are both her slaves!'</p>
+
+<p>She went home and wrote to a cousin of her own who had been a member
+of the famous Third Section at Petersburg. She said in her letter: 'Is
+there anyone known in Russia as Vassia Kazán? I want you to learn for
+me to what or to whom this name belongs. It is certainly Russian, and
+appears to me to have been taken by some one who has been named <i>more
+hebrœo</i> from the city of Kazán. You, who know everything past,
+present, and to come, will be able to know this.'</p>
+
+<p>In a few days she received an answer from Petersburg. Her cousin wrote:
+'I cannot give you the information you desire. It must be a thing of
+the past. But I will keep it in mind, and sooner or later you shall
+have the knowledge you wish. You will do us the justice to admit that
+we are not easily baffled.'</p>
+
+<p>She was not satisfied, but knew how to be patient.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Strangely enough the consciousness that one person lived who knew
+his secret unnerved him. He had said truly that so much were all his
+instincts and temper those of an aristocrat that he had long ceased to
+remember that he was not the true Marquis de Sabran. The admiration men
+frankly gave him, and the ascendency he exercised over women, had alike
+concurred in fostering his self-delusion. Since his recognition by the
+foe of his boyhood a vivid sense of his own shamefulness, however, had
+come upon him; a morbid consciousness that he was not what he seemed,
+and what all the world believed him, had returned to him. Egon would
+never speak, but he himself could never forget. He said to himself in
+his solitude, 'I am Vassia Kazán! and what he had done appeared to him
+intolerable, infamous, beyond all expiation.</p>
+
+<p>It was like an impalpable but impassable wall built up between himself
+and her. Nothing was changed except that one man knew his secret, but
+this one fact seemed to change the face of the world. For the first
+time all the deference, all the homage with which the people of the
+Tauern treated him seemed to him a derision. Naturally of proud temper,
+and of an intellect which gave him ascendency over others, he had from
+the first moment he had assumed the marquisate of Sabran received
+all the acknowledgments of his rank with an honest unconsciousness
+of imposture. After all he had in his veins blood as patrician as
+that of the Sabrans; but now that Egon Vàsàrhely knew the truth he
+was perpetually conscious of not being what he seemed. The mere sense
+that about the world there was another living being who knew what he
+knew, shook down all the self-possession and philosophy which had so
+long made him assure himself that the assumption of a name was an
+immaterial circumstance, which, harming no one, could concern no one.
+Egon Vàsàrhely seemed to have seized his sophisms in a rude grasp, and
+shaken them down as blossoms fall in wind. He thought with bitter
+self-contempt how true the cynic was who said that no sin exists so
+long as it is not found out; that discovery is the sole form which
+remorse takes.</p>
+
+<p>At times his remorse made him almost afraid of Wanda, almost shrink
+from her, almost tremble at her regard; at other times it intensified
+his passion and infused into his embraces a kind of ferocity of
+triumph. He would show an almost brutal ardour in his caresses, and
+would think with an almost cruel exultation, 'I was born a serf, and I
+am her lover, her lord! Strangely enough, she began to lose something
+of her high influence upon him, of her spiritual superiority in his
+sight. She was so entirely, so perpetually his, that she became in a
+manner tainted with his own degradation. She could no longer check him
+with a word, calm him with a gesture of restraint. She was conscious of
+a change in him which she could not explain to herself. His sweetness
+of temper was broken by occasional irritability that she had never seen
+before. He was at times melancholy and absorbed; he at times displayed
+a jealousy which appeared unworthy of herself and him; at other moments
+he adored her, submitted to her with too great a humility. They were
+still happy, but their happiness was more uncertain, more disturbed by
+passing shadows. She told herself that it was always so in marriage,
+that in the old trite phrase nothing mortal was ever perfect long. But
+this philosophy failed to reconcile her. She found herself continually
+pondering on the alteration that she perceived in him, without being
+able to explain it to herself in any satisfactory manner.</p>
+
+<p>One day he announced to her without preface that he had decided to
+renounce the name of Sabran; that he preferred to any other the title
+which she had given him in the Countship of Idrac. She was astonished,
+but on reflection only saw, in his choice, devotion and deference to
+herself. Perhaps, too, she reflected with a pang, he desired some
+foreign mission such as she had once proposed to him; perhaps the life
+at Hohenszalras was monotonous and too quiet for a man so long used
+to the movement and excitation of Paris. She suggested the invitation
+of a circle of guests more often, but he rejected the idea with some
+impatience. He, who had previously amused himself so well with the
+part of host to a brilliant society, now professed that he saw nothing
+but trouble and <i>ennui</i> in a house full of people, who changed every
+week, and of royal personages who exacted ceremonious observances
+that were tedious and burdensome. So they remained alone, for even
+the Princess Ottilie had gone away to Lilienslust. For her own part
+she asked nothing better. Her people, her lands, her occupations, her
+responsibilities, were always interest enough. She loved the stately,
+serene tread of Time in these mountain solitudes. Life always seemed
+to her a purer, graver, more august thing when no echo of the world
+without jarred on the solemnity of the woods and hills. She wanted her
+children to grow up to love Hohenszalras, as she had always done, far
+above all pomps and pleasures of courts and cities.</p>
+
+<p>The winter went by, and he spent most of the days out of doors in
+violent exercise, sledging, skating, wolf hunting. In the evenings he
+made music for her in the white room: beautiful, dreamy music, that
+carried her soul from earth. He played for hours and hours far into the
+night; he seemed more willing to do anything than to converse. When he
+talked to her she was sensible of an effort of constraint; it was no
+longer the careless, happy, spontaneous conversation of a man certain
+of receiving sympathy in all his opinions, indulgence in all his
+errors, comprehension in even his vaguest or most eccentric ideas: a
+certain charm was gone out of their intercourse. She thought sometimes
+humbly enough, was it because a man always wearies of a woman? Yet
+she could scarcely think that, for his reverential deference to her
+alternated with a passion that had lost nothing of its voluptuous
+intensity.</p>
+
+<p>So the winter passed away. Madame Ottilie was in the South for her
+health, with her relatives of Lilienhöhe; they invited no one, and so
+no one could approach them. The children grew and throve. Bela and his
+brother had a little sledge of their own, drawn by two Spanish donkeys,
+white as the snows that wrapped the Iselthal in their serenity and
+silence. In their little sable coats and their sable-lined hoods the
+two little boys looked like rosebuds wrapped in brown moss. They were a
+pretty spectacle upon the ice, with their stately Heiduck, wrapped in
+his scarlet and black cloak, walking by the gilded shell-shaped sledge.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela loves the ice best. Bela wishes the summer never was!' said the
+little heir of the Counts of Szalras one day, as he leaped out from
+under the bearskin of his snow-carriage. His father heard him, and
+smiled a little bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>'You have the snow in your blood,' he thought. 'I, too, know how I
+loved the winter with all its privations, how I skimmed like a swallow
+down the frozen Volga, how I breasted the wind of the North Sea, sad
+with the dying cries of the swans! But I had an empty stomach and
+naked limbs under my rough goatskin, and you ride there in your sables
+and velvets, a proud little prince, and yet you are my son!'</p>
+
+<p>Was he almost angered against his own child for the great heirship to
+which he was born, as kings are often of their dauphins? Bela looked up
+at him a little timidly, always being in a certain awe of his father.</p>
+
+<p>'May Bela go with you some day with the big black horses, one day when
+you go very far?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ask your mother,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'She will like it,' said the child. 'Yesterday she said you never do
+think of Bela. She did not say it <i>to</i> Bela, but he heard.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will think of him,' said Sabran, with some emotion: he had a certain
+antagonism to the child, of which he was vaguely ashamed; he was sorry
+that she should have noticed it. He disliked him because Bela so
+visibly resembled himself that he was a perpetual reproach; a living
+sign of how the blood of a Russian lord and of a Persian peasant had
+been infused into the blood of the Austrian nobles.</p>
+
+<p>The next day he took the child with him on a drive of many leagues,
+through the frozen highways winding through the frosted forests under
+the huge snow-covered range of the Glöckner mountains. Bela was in
+raptures; the grand black Russian horses, whose speed was as the wind,
+were much more to his taste than the sedate and solemn Spanish asses.
+When they returned, and Sabran lifted him out of the sledge in the
+twilight, the child kissed his hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela loves you,' he said timidly.</p>
+
+<p>'Why do you?' said his father, surprised and touched. 'Because you are
+your mother's child?'</p>
+
+<p>Bela did not understand. He said, after a moment of reflection:</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is afraid, when you are angry; very afraid. But Bela does love
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran laid his hand on the child's shoulder. 'I shall never be angry
+if Bela obey his mother, and never pain her. Remember that.'</p>
+
+<p>'He will remember,' said Bela. 'And may he go with the big black horses
+very soon again?'</p>
+
+<p>'Your mother's horses are just as big, and just as black. Is it not the
+same thing to go with her?'</p>
+
+<p>'No. Because she takes Bela often; you never.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are ungrateful,' said Sabran, in the tone which always alarmed and
+awed the bold, bright spirit of his child. 'Your mother's love beside
+mine is like the great mountain beside the speck of dust. Can you
+understand? You will when you are a man. Obey her and adore her. So you
+will best please me.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela looked at him with troubled suffused eyes; he went within doors a
+little sadly, led away by Hubert, and when he reached his nursery and
+had his furs taken from off him he was still serious, and for once he
+did not tell his thoughts to Gela, for they were too many for him to
+be able to master them in words. His father was a beautiful, august,
+terrible, magnificent figure in his eyes; with the confused fancies
+of a child's scarce-opened mind he blended together in his admiration
+Sabran and the great marble form of S. Johann of Prague which stretched
+its arm towards the lake from the doors of the great entrance, and, as
+Bela always understood, controlled the waters and the storms at will.
+Bela feared no one else in all the world, but he feared his father,
+and for that reason loved him as he loved nothing else in his somewhat
+selfish and imperious little life.</p>
+
+<p>'It is so good of you to have given Bela that pleasure,' his wife said
+to him when he entered the white room. 'I know you cannot care to hear
+a child chatter as I do. It can only be tiresome to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will drive him every day if it please <i>you</i>,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no; that would be too much to exact from you. Besides, he would
+soon despise his donkeys, and desert poor Gela. I take him but seldom
+myself for that reason. He has an idea that he is immeasurably older
+than Gela. It is true a year at their ages is more difference than are
+ten years at ours.'</p>
+
+<p>'The child said something to me, as if he had heard you say I do not
+care for him?'</p>
+
+<p>'You do not, very much. Surely you are inclined to be harsh to him?'</p>
+
+<p>'If I be so, it is only because I see so much of myself in him.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her, assailed once more by the longing which at times came
+over him to tell her the truth of himself, to risk everything rather
+than deceive her longer, to throw himself upon her mercy, and cut short
+this life which had so much of duplicity, so much of concealment, that
+every year added to it was a stone added to the mountain of his sins.
+But when he looked at her he dared not. The very grace and serenity
+of her daunted him; all the signs of nobility in her, from the repose
+of her manner to the very beauty of her hands, with their great rings
+gleaming on the long and slender fingers, seemed to awe him into
+silence. She was so proud a woman, so great a lady, so patrician in
+all her prejudices, her habits, her hereditary qualities, he dared not
+tell her that he had betrayed her thus. An infidelity, a folly, even
+any other crime he thought he could have summoned courage to confess
+to her; but to say to her, the daughter of a line of princes: 'I, who
+have made you the mother of my children, I was born a bastard and a
+serf!' How could he dare say that? Anything else she might forgive,
+he thought, since love is great, but never that. Nay, a cold sickness
+stole over him as he thought again that she came of great lords who had
+meted justice out over whole provinces for a thousand years; and he
+had wronged her so deeply that the human tongue scarcely held any word
+of infamy enough to name his crime. The law would set her free, if she
+chose, from a man who had so betrayed her, and his children would be
+bastards like himself.</p>
+
+<p>He had stretched himself on a great couch, covered with white
+bear-skins. He was in shadow; she was in the light that came from the
+fire on the wide hearth, and from the oriel window near, a red warm
+dusky light, that fell on the jewels on her hands, the furs on her
+skirts, the very pearls about her throat.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at him anxiously, seeing how motionless he lay there, with
+his head turned backward on the cushions.</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid you are weak still from that wound,' she said, as she rose
+and approached him. 'Greswold assures me it has left no trace, but I am
+always afraid. And you look often so pale. Perhaps you exert yourself
+too much? Let the wolves be. Perhaps it is too cold for you? Would you
+like to go to the south? Do not think of me; my only happiness is to do
+whatever you wish.'</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand with deep unfeigned emotion. 'I believe in angels
+since I knew you,' he murmured. 'No; I will not take you away from the
+winter and the people that you love. I am well enough. Greswold is
+right. I could not master those horses if I were not strong; be sure of
+that.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I always fear that it is dull here for you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dull! with you? "Custom cannot stale her infinite variety." That was
+written in prophecy of your charm for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will always flatter me! And I am not "various" at all; I am too
+grave to be entertaining. I am just the German house-mother who cares
+for the children and for you.'</p>
+
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'Is that your portrait of yourself? I think Carolus Duran's is truer,
+my grand châtelaine. When you are at Court the whole circle seems to
+fade to nothing before your presence. Though there are so many women
+high-born and beautiful there, you eclipse them all.'</p>
+
+<p>'Only in your eyes! And you know I care nothing for courts. What I like
+is the life here, where one quiet day is the pattern of all the other
+days. If I were sure that you were content in it&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Why should you think of that?'</p>
+
+<p>'My love, tell me honestly, do you never miss the world?'</p>
+
+<p>He rose and walked to the hearth. He, whose life was a long lie, never
+lied to her if he could avoid it; and he knew very well that he did
+miss the world with all its folly, stimulant, and sin. Sometimes the
+moral air here seemed to him too pure, too clear.</p>
+
+<p>'Did I do so I should be thankless indeed&mdash;thankless as madmen are who
+do not know the good done to them. I am like a ship that has anchored
+in a fair haven after press of weather. I infinitely prefer to see
+none but yourself: when others are here we are of necessity so much
+apart. If the weather,' he added more lightly, 'did not so very often
+wear Milton's grey sandals, there would be nothing one could ever
+wish changed in the life here. For such great riders as we are, that
+is a matter of regret. Wet saddles are too often our fate, but in
+compensation our forests are so green.'</p>
+
+<p>She did not press the question.</p>
+
+<p>But the next day she wrote a letter to a relative who was a great
+minister and had preponderating influence in the council chamber of the
+Austrian Empire. She did not speak to Sabran of the letter that she
+sent.</p>
+
+<p>She had not known any of that disillusion which befalls most women in
+their love. Her husband had remained her lover, passionately, ardently,
+jealously; and the sincerity of his devotion to her had spared her
+all that terrible consciousness of the man's satiety which usually
+confronts a woman in the earliest years of union. She shrank now with
+horror from the fear which came to her that this passion might, like so
+many others, alter and fade under the dulness of habit. She had high
+courage and clear vision; she met half-way the evil that she dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring a Foreign Office despatch from Vienna came to him and
+surprised and moved him strongly. With it in his hand he sought her at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>'You did this!' he said quickly. 'They offer me the Russian mission.'</p>
+
+<p>She grew a little pale, but had courage to smile. She had seen by a
+glance at his face the pleasure the offer gave him.</p>
+
+<p>'I only told my cousin Kunst that I thought you might be persuaded to
+try public life, if he proposed it to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'When did you say that?'</p>
+
+<p>'One day in the winter, when I asked you if you did not miss the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never thought I betrayed that I did so.'</p>
+
+<p>'You were only over eager to deny it. And I know your generosity, my
+love. You miss the world; we will go back to it for a little. It will
+only make our life here dearer&mdash;I hope.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent; emotion mastered him. 'You have the most unselfish
+nature that was!' he said brokenly. 'It will be a cruel sacrifice to
+you, and yet you urge it for my sake.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear, will you not understand? What is for your sake is what is most
+for mine. I see you long, despite yourself, to be amidst men once more,
+and use your rare talents as you cannot use them here. It is only right
+that you should have the power to do so. If our life here has taken
+the hold on your heart then, I think you will come back to it all the
+more gladly. And then I too have my vanity; I shall be proud for the
+world to see how you can fill a great station, conduct a difficult
+negotiation, distinguish yourself in every way. When they praise you,
+I shall be repaid a thousand times for any sacrifice of my own tastes
+that there may be.'</p>
+
+<p>He heard her with many conflicting emotions, of which a passionate
+gratitude was the first and highest.</p>
+
+<p>'You make me ashamed,' he said in a low voice. 'No man can be worthy of
+such goodness as yours; and I&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Once more the avowal of the truth rose to his lips, but stayed
+unuttered. His want of courage took refuge in procrastination.</p>
+
+<p>'We need not decide for a day or two,' he added; 'they give me time; we
+will think well. When do you think I must reply?'</p>
+
+<p>'Surely soon; your delay would seem disrespect. You know we Austrians
+are very ceremonious.'</p>
+
+<p>'And if I accept, it will not make you unhappy?'</p>
+
+<p>'My love, no, a thousand times, no; your choice is always mine.'</p>
+
+<p>He stooped and kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'You are ever the same,' he murmured. 'The noblest, the most
+generous&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled bravely. 'I am quite sure you have decided already. Go to my
+table yonder, and write a graceful acceptance to my cousin Kunst. You
+will be happier when it is posted.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I will think a little. It is not a thing to be done in haste. It
+will be irrevocable.'</p>
+
+<p>'Irrevocable? A diplomatic mission? You can throw it up when you
+please. You are not bound to serve longer than you choose.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent: what he had thought himself had been of the irrevocable
+insult he would be held to have offered to the emperor, the nation, and
+the world, if ever they knew.</p>
+
+<p>'It will not be liked if I accept for a mere caprice. One must never
+treat a State as Bela treats his playthings,' he said as he rang, and
+when the servant answered the summons ordered them to saddle his horse.</p>
+
+<p>'No; there is no haste. Glearemberg is not definitely recalled, I
+think.'</p>
+
+<p>But as she spoke she knew very well that, unknown to himself, he had
+already decided; that the joy and triumph the offer had brought to him
+were both too great for him eventually to resist them. He sat down and
+re-read the letter.</p>
+
+<p>She had said the truth to him, but she had not said all the truth. She
+had a certain desire that he should justify her marriage in the eyes of
+the world by some political career brilliantly followed; but this was
+not her chief motive in wishing him to return to the life of cities.
+She had seen that he was in a manner disquieted, discontented, and
+attributed it to discontent at the even routine of their lives. The
+change in his moods and tempers, the arbitrary violence of his love
+for her, vaguely alarmed and troubled her; she seemed to see the germ
+of much that might render their lives far less happy. She realised
+that she had given herself to one who had the capacity of becoming a
+tyrannical possessor, and retained, even after six years of marriage,
+the irritable ardour of a lover. She knew that it was better for them
+both that the distraction and the restraint of the life of the world
+should occupy some of his thoughts, and check the over-indulgence of
+a passion which in solitude grew feverish and morbid. She had not the
+secret of the change in him, of which the result alone was apparent to
+her, and she could only act according to her light. If he grew morose,
+tyrannical, violent, all the joy of their life would be gone. She knew
+that men alter curiously under the sense of possession. She felt that
+her influence, though strong, was not paramount as it had been, and she
+perceived that he no longer took much interest in the administration
+of the estates, in which he had shown great ability in the first years
+of their marriage. She had been forced to resume her old governance
+of all those matters, and she knew that it was not good for him to
+live without occupation. She feared that the sameness of the days, to
+her so delightful, to him grew tiresome. To ride constantly, to hunt
+sometimes, to make music in the evenings&mdash;&mdash;this was scarcely enough to
+fill up the life of a man who had been a <i>viveur</i> on the bitumen of the
+boulevards for so long.</p>
+
+<p>A woman of a lesser nature would have been too vain to doubt the
+all-sufficiency of her own presence to enthral and to content him; but
+she was without vanity, and had more wisdom than most women. It did
+not even once occur to her, as it would have done incessantly to most,
+that the magnificence of all her gifts to him were title-deeds to his
+content for life.</p>
+
+<p>Public life would be her enemy, would take her from the solitudes she
+loved, would change her plans for her children's education, would bring
+the world continually betwixt herself and her husband; but since he
+wished it that was all she thought of, all her law.</p>
+
+<p>'Surely he will accept?' said Mdme. Ottilie, who had returned from the
+south of France.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, he will accept,' said his wife. 'He does not know it, but he
+will.'</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot imagine why he should affect to hesitate. It is the career
+he is made for, with his talents, his social graces.'</p>
+
+<p>'He does not affect; he hesitates for my sake. He knows I am never
+happy away from Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why did you write then to Kunst?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because it will be better for him; he is neither a poet nor a
+philosopher, to be able to live away from the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Which are you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the
+people she&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Reigns over,' added the Princess. 'Admit, my beloved, that a part of
+your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be
+quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda von Szalras smiled. 'Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed
+with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.'</p>
+
+<p>'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural
+life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.'</p>
+
+<p>At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great
+avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before
+coming into his wife's presence. He would no more have gone to her with
+the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in
+such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.</p>
+
+<p>When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with
+vivacity:</p>
+
+<p>'Well! you accept, of course?</p>
+
+<p>'I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the
+carpet.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda is a hermit,' she said; 'she should have dwelt in a cave, and
+lived on berries with S. Scholastica. What is the use of leaving it to
+her? She will say No. She loves her mountains.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then she shall stay amidst her mountains.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you will throw all your future away?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear mother, I have no future&mdash;&mdash;should have had none but for her.'</p>
+
+<p>'All that is very pretty, but after nearly six years of marriage it is
+not necessary to <i>faire des madrigaux.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess sat a little more erect, angrily, and continued to tap her
+foot upon the floor. His wife was silent for a little while; then she
+went over to her writing-table, and wrote with a firm hand a few lines
+in German. She rose and gave the sheet to Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'Copy that,' she said, 'or give it as many graces of style as you like.'</p>
+
+<p>His heart beat, his sight seemed dim as he read what she had written.</p>
+
+<p>It was an acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>'See, my dear Réné!' said the Princess, when she understood;
+'never combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon&mdash;
+unselfishness! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort.'</p>
+
+<p>The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of
+<i>faisant des madrigaux!</i>'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna,
+and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called
+her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who
+showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and
+welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the
+most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the
+prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified
+and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware
+that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands
+for <i>finesse</i> and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make
+upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his
+wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and
+splendour it required.</p>
+
+<p>He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when
+the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his
+nerve, his self-command, his <i>insouciance</i>; he was once more capable of
+honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman
+he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of
+his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates
+a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must
+always exist, <i>sub rosa</i>, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance
+with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for
+every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul
+Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen
+politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The
+prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of
+a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff
+as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle
+projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social
+honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the
+minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in
+all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the
+purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of
+Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked <i>moujik</i> in the
+<i>isba</i> of a Persian peasant.</p>
+
+<p>Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like
+all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify
+his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort
+that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and
+perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men
+was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public
+career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to
+be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor
+had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.</p>
+
+<p>'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition
+that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which
+had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from
+circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of
+his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the
+social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better
+moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess
+von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;'
+and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless
+and ill at ease.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold
+by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more
+prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if
+ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate,
+dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him
+with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed
+to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he
+been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his
+own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have
+always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion
+of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his
+own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any
+such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly,
+that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a
+suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always
+reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.</p>
+
+<p>This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life;
+not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a
+jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his
+ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it
+touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the
+felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the
+contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and
+witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and
+too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on
+his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed
+of constancy.</p>
+
+<p>'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of
+dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly
+degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is
+always hers and my love.'</p>
+
+<p>Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of
+her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty
+life led there under the show summits of her hills.</p>
+
+<p>He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's
+caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not
+infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most
+use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the
+daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.</p>
+
+<p>As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the
+Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and
+a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour
+and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he
+had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world
+beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had
+beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He
+went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now
+and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some
+portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some
+quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.</p>
+
+<p>On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:</p>
+
+<p>'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 70%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'WANDA.'</p>
+
+<p>No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches
+could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.</p>
+
+<p>The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the
+season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the
+sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and
+the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and
+magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present
+at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation,
+as the ambassador-designate to Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Court dress became him, and his great height and elegance of manner
+made him noticeable even in that brilliant crowd of notables. All the
+greatest ladies distinguished him with their smiles, but he gave them
+no more than courtesy. He saw only before the 'eye of memory' his wife
+as he had seen her at the last court ball, with the famous pearls about
+her throat, and her train of silver tissue sown with pearls and looped
+up with white lilac.</p>
+
+<p>'It is the flower I like best,' she had said to him. 'It brought me
+your first love-message in Paris, do you remember? It said little; it
+was very discreet, but it said enough!'</p>
+
+<p>'You are always thinking of Wanda!' said the Countess Brancka to him
+now, with a tinge of impatience in her tone.</p>
+
+<p>He coloured a little, and said with that hauteur with which he always
+repressed any passing jest at his love for his wife:</p>
+
+<p>'When both one's duty and joy point the same way it is easy to follow
+them in thought.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you follow them in action too,' said Mdme. Brancka.</p>
+
+<p>'If I do not, I am at least only responsible to Wanda.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who would be a lenient judge you mean? said the Countess, with a
+certain smile that displeased him. 'Do not be too sure; she is a von
+Szalras. They are not agreeable persons when they are angered.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not been so unhappy as to see her so,' said Sabran coldly,
+with a vague sense of uneasiness. As much as it is possible for a man
+to dislike a woman who is very lovely, and young enough to be still
+charming in the eyes of the world, he disliked Olga Brancka. He had
+known her for many years in Paris, not intimately, but by force of
+being in the same society, and, like many men who do not lead very
+decent lives themselves, he frankly detested <i>cocodettes.</i></p>
+
+<p>'If we want these manners we have our <i>lionnes</i>,' he was wont to say,
+at a time when Cochonette was seen every day behind his horses by the
+Cascade, and it had been the height of the Countess Olga's ambition at
+that time to be called like Cochonette. A certain resemblance there
+was between the great lady and the wicked one; they had the same small
+delicate sarcastic features, the same red gold curls, the same perfect
+colourless complexion; but where Cochonette had eyes of the slightest
+blue, the wife of Count Stefan had the luminous piercing black eyes of
+the Muscovite physiognomy. Still the likeness was there, and it made
+the sight of Mdme. Brancka distasteful to him, since his memories of
+the other were far from welcome. It was for Cochonette that he had
+broken the bank at Monte Carlo, and into her lap that he had thrown
+all the gold rouleaux at a time when in his soul he had already adored
+Wanda von Szalras, and had despised himself for returning to the slough
+of his old pleasures. It was Cochonette who had sold his secrets to
+the Prussians, and brought them down upon him in the farmhouse amongst
+the orchards of the Orléannais, whilst she passed safely through, the
+German lines and across the frontier, laden with her jewels and her
+<i>valeurs</i> of all kinds, saying in her teeth as she went: 'He will
+never see that Austrian woman again!' That had been the end of all he
+had known of Cochonette, and a presentiment of perfidy, of danger, of
+animosity always came over him whenever he saw the <i>joli petit minois</i>
+which in profile was so like Cochonette's, looking up from under the
+loose auburn curls that Mdme. Olga had copied from her.</p>
+
+<p>Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more
+admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds;
+and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette
+would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels
+flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams.
+There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her
+breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an <i>étourdissement</i>
+that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.</p>
+
+<p>'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda,
+<i>mon beau</i> cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are
+really going to Russia?'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe so.'</p>
+
+<p>'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in
+paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'</p>
+
+<p>'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy
+enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money
+that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played
+since my marriage.'</p>
+
+<p>'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A
+saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature,
+though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by
+marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean
+nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he
+was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.</p>
+
+<p>'Call me at least <i>cousinette</i>,' said Mdme. Olga; 'we are cousins, you
+know, thanks to Wanda. Oh! she will be very unhappy in St. Petersburg;
+she will not amuse herself, she never does. She is incapable of a
+flirtation; she never touches a card. When she dances it is only
+because she must, and then it is only a quadrille or a contre-dance.
+She always reminds me of Marie Thérèse's "In our position nothing is a
+trifle." You remember the Empress's letters to Versailles?'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran was very much angered, but he was afraid to express his anger
+lest it should seem to make him absurd.</p>
+
+<p>'Madame,' he said, with ill-repressed irritation, 'I know you speak
+only in jest, but I must take the liberty to tell you&mdash;&mdash;however
+bourgeois it appear&mdash;&mdash;that I do not allow a jest even from you upon my
+wife. Anything she does is perfect in my sight, and if she be imbued
+with the old traditions of gentle blood, too many ladies desert them in
+these days for me not to be grateful to her for her loyalty.'</p>
+
+<p>She listened, with her bright black eyes fixed on him; then she leaned
+a little more closely on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know that you said that very well? Most men are ridiculous
+when they are in love with their wives, but it becomes you, Wanda is
+perfect, we all know that; you are not alone in thinking so. Ask Egon!'</p>
+
+<p>The face of Sabran changed as he heard that name. As she saw the
+change she thought: 'Can it be possible that he is jealous?'</p>
+
+<p>Aloud she said with a little laugh: 'I almost wonder Egon did not
+run you through the heart before you married. Now, of course, he
+is reconciled to the inevitable; or, if not reconciled, he has to
+submit to it as we all have to do. He grows very <i>farouche</i>; he lives
+between his troopers and his castle of Taróc, like a barbaric lord
+of the Middle Ages. Were you ever at Taróc? It is worth seeing&mdash;&mdash;a
+huge fortress, old as the days of Ottokar, in the very heart of the
+Karpathians. He leads a wild, fierce life enough there. If he keep the
+memory of Wanda with him it is as some men keep an idolatry for what is
+dead.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran listened with a sombre irritation. 'Suppose we leave my wife's
+name in peace,' he said coldly. 'The <i>grosser cotillon</i> is about to
+begin; may I aspire to the honour?'</p>
+
+<p>As he led her out, and the light fell on her red gold curls, on her
+dazzling butterflies, her armour of diamonds, her snow-white skin, a
+thousand memories of Cochonette came over him, though the scene around
+him was the ball-room of the Hofburg, and the woman whose great bouquet
+of <i>rêve d'or</i> roses touched his hand was a great lady who had been the
+wife of Gela von Szalras, and the daughter of the Prince Serriatine.
+He distrusted her, he despised her, he disliked her so strongly that
+he was almost ashamed of his own antagonism; and yet her contact, her
+grace of movement, the mere scent of the bouquet of roses had a sort of
+painful and unwilling intoxication for the moment for him.</p>
+
+<p>He was glad when the long and gorgeous figures of the cotillon had
+tired out even her steel-like nerves, and he was free to leave the
+palace and go home to sleep. He looked at a miniature of his wife as
+he undressed; the face of it, with its tenderness and its nobility,
+seemed to him, after the face of this other woman, like the pure high
+air of the Iselthal after the heated and unhealthy atmosphere of a
+gambling-room.</p>
+
+<p>The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence
+was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which
+had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was
+brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural
+gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the
+sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some
+with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the
+empire.</p>
+
+<p>As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way
+slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through
+the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and
+odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After
+all, I may do her some honour before I die.'</p>
+
+<p>When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached
+him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said
+that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought
+it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the
+staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants
+away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.</p>
+
+<p>There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:</p>
+
+<p>'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to
+him, under secrecy, what I know.'</p>
+
+<p>They were fully signed&mdash;&mdash;'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a
+courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph.
+They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the
+Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>As the carriage of the Countess Olga rolled home through the Graben
+after the military spectacle, she stopped it suddenly, and signed to an
+old man in the crowd who was waiting to cross the road until a regiment
+of cuirassiers had rolled by. He was eyeing them critically, as only an
+old soldier does look at troops.</p>
+
+<p>'Is it you, Georg?' said Madame Olga. 'What brings you here?'</p>
+
+<p>'I came from Taróc with a letter from the Prince, my master,' answered
+the man, an old hussar who had carried Vàsàrhely in his arms off the
+field of Königsgrätz, after dragging him from under a heap of dead men
+and horses.</p>
+
+<p>'A letter! To whom?' asked Olga, who always was curious and persistent
+in investigation of all her brother-in-law's movements and actions.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely had not laid any injunction as to secrecy, only as to speed,
+upon his faithful servant; so that Georg replied, unwitting of harm,
+'To the Markgraf von Sabran, my Countess.'</p>
+
+<p>'A letter that could not go by post&mdash;how strange! And from Egon to
+Wanda's husband!' she thought, with her inquisitive eagerness awakened.
+Aloud she bade the old trooper call at her palace for a packet for
+Taróc, to make excuse for having stopped and questioned him, and drove
+onward lost in thought.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps it is a challenge late in the day!' she thought, with a laugh;
+but she was astonished and perplexed that any communication should take
+place between these men; she perplexed her mind in vain in the effort
+to imagine what tie could connect them, what mystery mutually affecting
+them could lie beneath the secret of Vassia Kazán.</p>
+
+<p>When, on the morrow, she heard at Court that the Emperor was deeply
+incensed at the caprice and disrespect of the Count von Idrac, as
+he was called at Court, who, at the eleventh hour, had declined a
+mission already accepted by him, and of which the offer had been in
+itself an unprecedented mark of honour and confidence, her swift
+sagacity instantly associated the action, apparently so excuseless and
+inexcusable, with the letter sent up from Taróc. It was still as great
+a mystery to her as it had been before what the contents of the letter
+could have been, but she had no doubt that in some way or another it
+had brought about the resignation of the appointment. It awakened a
+still more intense curiosity in her, but she was too wise to whisper
+her suspicion to anyone. To her friends at the Court she said, with
+laughter: 'A night or two ago I chanced to tell Sabran that his wife
+would be wretched at St. Petersburg. That is sure to have been enough
+for him. He is such a devoted husband.'</p>
+
+<p>No one of course believed her, but they received the impression that
+she knew the real cause of his resignation, though she could not be
+induced to say it.</p>
+
+<p>What did it matter to her? Nothing, indeed. But the sense of a secret
+withheld from her was to Mdme. Olga like the slot of the fox to a young
+hound. She might have a thousand secrets of her own if it pleased her,
+but she could not endure anyone else to guard one. Besides, in a vague,
+feverish, angry way, she was almost in love with the man who was so
+faithful to his wife that he had looked away from her as from some
+unclean thing when she had wished to dazzle him. She had no perception
+that the secret could concern him himself very nearly, but she thought
+it was probably one which he and Egon Vàsàrhely, for reasons of their
+own, chose to share and keep hidden. And if it were a secret that
+prevented Sabran from going to the Court of Russia? Then, surely, it
+was one worth knowing? And if she gained a knowledge of it, and his
+wife had none?&mdash;&mdash;what a superiority would be hers, what a weapon
+always to hand!</p>
+
+<p>She did not intend any especial cruelty or compass any especial end:
+she was actuated by a vague desire to interrupt a current of happiness
+that flowed on smoothly without her, to interfere where she had no
+earthly title or reason to do so, merely because she was disregarded
+by persons content with each other. It is not always definite motives
+which have the most influence; the subtlest poisons are those which
+enter the system we know not how, and penetrate it ere we are aware.
+The only thing which had ever held her back from any extremes of evil
+had been the mere habit of good-breeding and an absolute egotism which
+had saved her from all strong passions. Now something that was like
+passion had touched her under the sting of Sabran's indifference, and
+with it she became tenacious, malignant, and unsparing: adroit she had
+always been. Instinct is seldom at fault when we are conscious of an
+enemy, and Sabran's had not erred when it had warned him against the
+wife of Stefan Brancka as the serpent who would bring woe and disaster
+to his paradise.</p>
+
+<p>In some three months' time she received a more explicit answer from her
+cousin in St. Petersburg. Giving the precise dates, he told her that
+Vassia Kazán was the name given to the son of Count Paul Ivanovitch
+Zabaroff by a wayside amour with one of his own serfs at a village
+near the border line of Astrachan. He narrated the early history of
+the youth, and said that he had been amongst the passengers on board a
+Havre ship, which had foundered with all hands. So far the brief record
+of Vassia Kazán was clear and complete. But it told her nothing. She
+was unreasonably enraged, and looked at the little piece of burnt paper
+as though she would wrench the secret out of it.</p>
+
+<p>'There must be so much more to know,' she thought. 'What would a mere
+drowned boy be to either of those men&mdash;&mdash;a boy dead too all these years
+before?'</p>
+
+<p>She wrote insolently to her cousin, that the Third Section, with
+its eyes of Argus and its limbs of Vishnoo, had always been but an
+overgrown imbecile, and set her woman's wits to accomplish what the
+Third Section had failed to do for her. So much she thought of it that
+the name seemed forced into her very brain; she seemed to hear every
+one saying&mdash;&mdash;'Vassia Kazán.' It was a word to conjure with, at least:
+she could at the least try the effect of its utterance any day upon
+either of those who had made it the key of their correspondence. Russia
+had written down Vassia Kazán as dead, and the mystery which enveloped
+the name would not open to her. She knew her country too well not to
+know that this bold statement might cover some political secret, some
+story wholly unlike that which was given her. Vassia Kazán might have
+lived and have incurred the suspicions of the police, and be dwelling
+far away in the death in life of Siberian mines, or deep sunk in some
+fortress, like a stone at the bottom of a well. The reply not only
+did not beget her belief in it, but gave her range for the widest and
+wildest conjectures of imagination. 'It is some fault, some folly, some
+crime, who can tell? And Vassia Kazán is the victim or the associate,
+or the confidant of it. But what is it? And how does Egon know of it?'</p>
+
+<p>She passed the summer in pleasures of all kinds, but the subject did
+not lose its power over her, nor did she forget the face of Sabran as
+he had turned it away from her in the ball-room of the Hofburg.</p>
+
+<p>He himself had left the capital, after affirming to the minister that
+private reasons, which he could not enter into, had induced him to
+entreat the Imperial pardon for so sudden a change of resolve, and to
+solicit permission to decline the high honour that had been vouchsafed
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>'What shall I say to Wanda?' he asked himself incessantly, as the
+express train swung through the grand green country towards Salzburg.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting on the lake terrace with the Princess, when a telegram
+from her cousin Kunst was brought to her. Bela and Gela were playing
+near with squadrons of painted cuirassiers, and the great dogs were
+lying on the marble pavement at her feet. It was a golden close to a
+sunless but fine day; the snow peaks were growing rosy as the sun shone
+for an instant behind the Venediger range, and the lake was calm and
+still and green, one little boat going noiselessly across it from the
+Holy Isle to the further side.</p>
+
+<p>'What a pity to leave it all!' she thought as she took the telegram.</p>
+
+<p>The Minister's message was curt and angered:</p>
+
+<p>'Your husband has resigned; he makes himself and me ridiculous. Unable
+to guess his motive, I am troubled and embarrassed beyond expression.'</p>
+
+<p>The other, from Sabran, said simply: 'I am coming home. I give up
+Russia.'</p>
+
+<p>'Any bad news?' the Princess asked, seeing the seriousness of her face.
+Her niece rose and gave her the papers.</p>
+
+<p>'Is Réné mad!' she exclaimed as she read. His wife, who was startled
+and dismayed at the affront to her cousin and to her sovereign, yet had
+been unable to repress a movement of personal gladness, hastened to say
+in his defence:</p>
+
+<p>'Be sure he has some grave, good reason, dear mother. He knows the
+world too well to commit a folly. Unexplained, it looks strange,
+certainly; but he will be home to-night or in the early morning; then
+we shall know; and be sure we shall find him right.'</p>
+
+<p>'Right!' echoed the Princess, lifting the little girl who was her
+namesake off her knee, a child white as a snowdrop, with golden curls,
+who looked as if she had come out of a band of Correggio's baby angels.</p>
+
+<p>'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who
+had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard
+suspended in the air.</p>
+
+<p>'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme
+displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when
+through him you are probably <i>brouillée</i> with your Sovereign for life.'</p>
+
+<p>She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a
+caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon.
+I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible
+excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such
+vast importance.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would
+condemn Réné unheard?'</p>
+
+<p>'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps none. I know it is a very grave offence that he has committed,
+and yet I cannot help being happy,' said his wife with a smile, as she
+lifted up the little Ottilie, and murmured over the child's fair curls,
+'Ah, my dear little dove! We are not going to Russia after all. You
+little birds will not leave your nest!'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is not going to the snow palace?' said he, whose ears were very
+quick, and to whom his attendants had told marvellous narratives of an
+utterly imaginary Russia.</p>
+
+<p>'No; are not you glad, my dear?'</p>
+
+<p>He thought very gravely for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is not sure. Marc says Bela would have slaves in Russia, and
+might beat them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela would be beaten himself if he did, and by my own hand, said his
+mother very gravely. 'Oh, child! where did you get your cruelty?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is not cruel,' said the Princess. 'He is only masterful.'</p>
+
+<p>'Alas! it is the same thing.'</p>
+
+<p>She sent the children indoors, and remained after the sun-glow had all
+faded, and Mdme. Ottilie had gone away to her own rooms, and paced
+to and fro the length of the terrace, troubled by an anxiety which
+she would have owned to no one. What could have happened to make
+him so offend alike the State and the Court? She tormented herself
+with wondering again and again whether she had used any incautious
+expression in her letters which could have betrayed to him the poignant
+regret the coming exile gave her. No! she was sure she had not done
+so. She had only written twice, preferring telegrams as quicker, and,
+to a man, less troublesome than letters. She knew courts and cabinets
+too well not to know that the step her husband had taken was one which
+would wholly ruin the favour he enjoyed with the former, and wholly
+take away all chance of his being ever called again to serve the
+latter. Personally she was indifferent to that kind of ambition; but
+her attachment to the Imperial house was too strong, and her loyalty
+to it too hereditary, for her not to be alarmed at the idea of losing
+its good-will. Disquieted and afraid of all kinds of formless unknown
+ills, she went with a heavy heart into the Rittersaal to a dinner for
+which she could find no appetite. The Princess also, so talkative and
+vivacious at other times, was silent and pre-occupied. The evening
+passed tediously. He did not come.</p>
+
+<p>It was past midnight, and she had given up all hope of his arrival,
+when she heard the returning trot of the horses, who had been sent over
+to Matrey in the evening on the chance of his being there. She was in
+her own chamber, having dismissed her women, and was trying in vain to
+keep her thoughts to nightly prayer. At the sound of the horses' feet
+without, she threw on a <i>négligé</i> of white satin and lace, and went,
+out on to the staircase to meet him. As he came up the broad stairs,
+with Donau and Neva gladly leaping on him, he looked up and saw her
+against the background of oak and tapestry and old armour, with the
+light of a great Persian lamp in metal that swung above shed full upon
+her. She had never looked more lovely to him than as she stood so, her
+eyes eagerly searching the dim shadow for him, and the loose white
+folds embroidered in silk with pale roses flowing downward from her
+throat to her feet. He drew her within her chamber, and took her in his
+arms with a passionate gesture.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us forget everything,' he murmured, 'except that we have been
+parted nearly a month!'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the morning, after breakfast in the little Saxe room, she said to
+him with gentle firmness: 'Réné, you must tell me now&mdash;why have you
+refused Russia?'</p>
+
+<p>He had known that the question must come, and all the way on his
+homeward journey he had been revolving in his mind the answer he would
+give to it. He was very pale, but otherwise he betrayed no agitation as
+he turned and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>'That is what I cannot tell you,' he replied.</p>
+
+<p>She could not believe she heard aright.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'I have had a message from Kunst;
+he is deeply angered. I understand that, after all was arranged, you
+abruptly resigned the Russian mission. I ask your reasons. It is a very
+grave step to have taken. I suppose your motives must be very strong
+ones?'</p>
+
+<p>'They are so,' said Sabran; and he continued in the forced and measured
+tone of one who recites what he has taught himself to say: 'It is quite
+natural that your cousin Kunst should be offended; the Emperor also.
+You perhaps will be the same when I say to you that I cannot tell you,
+as I cannot tell them, the grounds of my withdrawal. Perhaps you, like
+them, will not forgive it.'</p>
+
+<p>Her nostrils dilated and her breast heaved: she was startled,
+mortified, amazed. 'You do not choose to tell <i>me</i>!' she said in
+stupefaction.</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot tell you.'</p>
+
+<p>'She gazed at him with the first bitterness of wrath that he had ever
+seen upon her face. She had been used to perfect submission of others
+all her life. She had the blood in her of stern princes, who had meted
+out rule and justice against which there had been no appeal. She was
+accustomed even in him to deference, homage, consideration, to be
+consulted always, deferred to often. His answer for the moment seemed
+to her an unwarrantable insult.</p>
+
+<p>Her influence, her relatives, her sovereign, had given him one of the
+highest honours conceivable, and he did not choose to even say why he
+was thankless for it! Passionate and withering words rose to her lips,
+but she restrained their utterance. Not even in that moment could she
+bring herself to speak what might seem to rebuke him with the weight
+of all his debt to her. She remained silent, but he understood all the
+intense indignation that held her speechless there. He approached her
+more nearly, and spoke with emotion, but with a certain sternness in
+his voice&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'I know very well that I must offend and even outrage you. But I
+cannot tell you my motives. It is the first time that I have ever
+acted independently of you or failed to consult your wishes. I only
+venture to remind you that marriage does give to the man the right to
+do so, though I have never availed myself of it. Nay, even now, I owe
+you too much to be ingrate enough to take refuge in my authority as
+your husband. I prefer to owe more, as I have owed so much, to your
+tenderness. I prefer to ask of you, by your love for me, not to press
+me for an answer that I am not in a position to make; to be content
+with what I say&mdash;that I have relinquished the Russian mission because I
+have no choice but to do so.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke firmly, because he spoke only the truth, although not all the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>A great anger rose up in her, the first that she had ever been moved to
+by him. All the pride of her temper and all her dignity were outraged
+by this refusal to have confidence in her. It seemed incredible
+to her. She still thought herself the prey of some dream, of some
+hallucination. Her lips parted to speak, but again she withheld the
+words she was about to utter. Her strong justice compelled her to admit
+that he was but within his rights, and her sense of duty was stronger
+than her sense of self-love.</p>
+
+<p>She did not look at him, nor could she trust her voice. She turned
+from him without a syllable, and left the room. She was afraid of the
+violence of the anger that she felt.</p>
+
+<p>'If it had been only to myself I would pardon it,' she thought; 'but an
+insult to my people, to my country, to my sovereign!&mdash;an insult without
+excuse, or explanation, or apology&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She shut herself alone within her oratory and passed the most bitter
+hour of her life. The imperious and violent temper of the Szalras
+was dormant in her character, though she had chastened and tamed it,
+and the natural sweetness and serenity of her disposition had been a
+counterpoise to it so strong that the latter had become the only thing
+visible in her. But all the wrath of her race was now aroused and in
+arms against what she loved best on earth.</p>
+
+<p>'If it had been anything else,' she thought; 'but a public act like
+this&mdash;an ingratitude to the Crown itself! A caprice for all the world
+to chatter of and blame!'</p>
+
+<p>It would have been hard enough to bear, difficult enough to explain
+away to others, if he had told her his reasons, however captious,
+unwise, or selfish they might be; but to have the door of his soul
+thus shut upon her, his thoughts thus closed to her, hurt her with
+intolerable pain, and filled her with a deep and burning indignation.</p>
+
+<p>She passed all the early morning hours alone in her little temple of
+prayer, striving in vain against the bitterness of her heart; above
+her the great ivory Crucifixion, the work of Angermayer, beneath which
+so many generations of the women of the House of Szalras had knelt in
+their hours of tribulation or bereavement.</p>
+
+<p>When she left the oratory she had conquered herself. Though she could
+not extinguish the human passions that smarted and throbbed within her,
+she knew her duty well enough to know that it must lie in submission
+and in silence.</p>
+
+<p>She sought for him at once. She found him in the library: he was
+playing to himself a long dreamy concerto of Schubert's, to soothe the
+irritation of his own nerves and pass away a time of keen suspense. He
+rose as she came into the room, and awaited her approach with a timid
+anxiety in his eyes, which she was too absorbed by her own emotions to
+observe. He had assumed a boldness that he had not, and had used his
+power to dominate her rather in desperation than in any sense of actual
+mastery. In his heart it was he who feared her.</p>
+
+<p>'You were quite right,' she said simply to him. 'Of course, you are
+master of your own actions, and owe no account of them to me. We will
+say no more about it. For myself, you know I am content enough to
+escape exile to any embassy.'</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand with an unfeigned reverence and humility.</p>
+
+<p>'You are as merciful as you are great,' he murmured. 'If I be silent it
+is my misfortune.' He paused abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden thought came over her as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'It is some State secret that he knows and cannot speak of, and that
+has made him unwilling to go. Why did I never think of that before?'</p>
+
+<p>An explanation that had its root in honour, a reticence that sprang
+from conscience, were so welcome to her, and to her appeared so
+natural, that they now consoled her at once, and healed the wounds to
+her own pride.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, if it be so, he is right not to speak even to me,' she
+mused, and her only desire was now to save him from the insistence and
+the indignation of the Princess, and the examination which these were
+sure to entail upon him when he should meet her at the noon breakfast
+now at hand.</p>
+
+<p>To that end she sought out her aunt in her own apartments, taking
+with her the tiny Ottilie, who always disarmed all irritation in her
+godmother by the mere presence of her little flower-like face.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear mother,' she said softly, when the child had made her morning
+obeisance, 'I am come to ask of you a great favour and kindness to me.
+Réné returned last night. He has done what he thought right. I do not
+even ask his reasons. He has acted from <i>force majeure</i> by dictate of
+his own honour. Will you do as I mean to do? Will you spare him any
+interrogation? I shall be so grateful to you, and so will he.'</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Ottilie, opening her bonbonnière for her namesake, drew up her
+fragile figure with a severity unusual to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Do I hear you aright? You do not even know the reasons of the insult
+M. de Sabran has passed upon the Crown and Cabinet, and you do not even
+mean to ask them?'</p>
+
+<p>'I do mean that; and what I do not ask I feel sure you will admit no
+one else has any right to ask of him.'</p>
+
+<p>'No one certainly except His Majesty.'</p>
+
+<p>'I presume His Majesty has had all information due to him as our
+Imperial master. All I entreat of you, dearest mother, is to do as
+I have done; assume, as we are bound to assume, that Réné has acted
+wisely and rightly, and not weary him with questions to which it will
+be painful to him not to respond.'</p>
+
+<p>'Questions! I never yet indulged in anything so vulgar as curiosity,
+that you should imagine I shall be capable of subjecting your husband
+to a cross-examination. If you be satisfied, I can have no right to
+be more exacting than yourself. The occurrence is to me lamentable,
+inexcusable, unintelligible; but if explanation be not offered me you
+may rest assured I shall not intrude my request for it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of that I am sure; but I am not contented only with that. I want you
+to feel no dissatisfaction, no doubt, no anger against him. You may be
+sure that he has acted from conviction, because he was most desirous to
+go to Russia, as you saw when you urged him to accept the mission.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have said the utmost that I can say,' replied the Princess, with a
+chill light in her blue eyes. 'This little child is no more likely to
+ask questions than I am, after what you have stated. But you must not
+regard my silence as any condonation of what must always appear to me a
+step disrespectful to the Crown, contrary to all usages of etiquette,
+and injurious to his own future and that of his children. His scruples
+of conscience came too late.'</p>
+
+<p>'I did not say they were exactly that. I believe he learned something
+which made him consider that his honour required him to withdraw.'</p>
+
+<p>'That may be,' said the Princess, frigidly. 'As I observed, it came
+lamentably late. You will excuse me if I breakfast in my own rooms this
+morning.'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda left her, gave the child to a nurse who waited without, and
+returned to the library. She had offended and pained Mdme. Ottilie,
+but she had saved her husband from annoyance. She knew that though
+the Princess was by no means as free from curiosity as she declared
+herself, she was too high-bred and too proud to solicit a confidence
+withheld from her.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran was seated at the piano where she had left him, but his forehead
+rested on the woodwork of it, and his whole attitude was suggestive
+of sad and absorbed thought and abandonment to regrets that were
+unavailing.</p>
+
+<p>'It has cost him so much,' she reflected as she looked at him. 'Perhaps
+it has been a self-sacrifice, a heroism even; and I, from mere wounded
+feeling, have been angered against him and almost cruel!'</p>
+
+<p>With the exaggeration in self-censure of all generous natures, she was
+full of remorse at having added any pain to the disappointment which
+had been his portion; a disappointment none the less poignant, as she
+saw, because it had been voluntarily, as she imagined, accepted.</p>
+
+<p>As he heard her approach he started and rose, and the expression of his
+face startled her for a moment; it was so full of pain, of melancholy,
+almost (could she have believed it) of despair. What could this matter
+be to affect him thus, since being of the State it could be at its
+worst only some painful and compromising secret of political life which
+could have no personal meaning for him? It was surely impossible that
+mere disappointment&mdash;&mdash;a disappointment self-inflicted&mdash;&mdash;could bring
+upon him such suffering? But she threw these thoughts away. In her
+great loyalty she had told herself that she must not even think of this
+thing, lest she should let it come between them once again and tempt
+her from her duty and obedience. Her trust in him was perfect.</p>
+
+<p>The abandonment of a coveted distinction was in itself a bitter
+disappointment, but it seemed to him as nothing beside the sense of
+submission and obedience compelled from him to Vàsàrhely. He felt as
+though an iron hand, invisible, weighed on his life, and forced it into
+subjection. When he had almost grown secure that his enemy's knowledge
+was a buried harmless thing, it had risen and barred his way, speaking
+with an authority which it was not possible to disobey. With all his
+errors he was a man of high courage, who had always held his own with
+all men. How the old forgotten humiliation of his earliest years
+revived, and enforced from him the servile timidity of the Slav blood
+which he had abjured. He had never for an instant conceived it possible
+to disregard the mandate he received; that an apparently voluntary
+resignation was permitted to him was, his conscience acknowledged, more
+mercy than he could have expected. That Vàsàrhely would act thus had
+not occurred to him; but before the act he could not do otherwise than
+admit its justice and obey.</p>
+
+<p>But the consciousness of that superior will compelling him, left in him
+a chill tremor of constant fear, of perpetual self-abasement. What was
+natural to him was the reckless daring which many Russians, such as
+Skobeleff, have shown in a thousand ways of peril. He was here forced
+only to crouch and to submit; it was more galling, more cruel to him
+than utter exposure would have been. The sense of coercion was always
+upon him like a dragging chain. It produced on him a despondency, which
+not even the presence of his wife or the elasticity of his own nature
+could dispel.</p>
+
+<p>He had to play a part to her, and to do this was unfamiliar and hateful
+to him. In all the years before he had concealed a fact from her, but
+he had never been otherwise false. Though to his knowledge there had
+been always between them the shadow of a secret untold, there had
+never been any sense upon him of obligation to measure his words, to
+feign sentiments he had not, to hide behind a carefully constructed
+screen of untruth. Now, though he had indeed not lied with his lips,
+he had to sustain a concealment which was a thousand times more trying
+to him than that concealment of his birth and station to which he had
+been so long accustomed that he hardly realised it as any error. The
+very nobility with which she had accepted his silence, and given it,
+unasked, a worthy construction, smote him with a deeper sense of shame
+than even that which galled him when he remembered the yoke laid on him
+by the will of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>He roused himself to meet her with composure.</p>
+
+<p>She rested her hand caressingly on his.</p>
+
+<p>'We will never speak of Russia any more. I should be sorry were the
+Kaiser to think you capricious or disloyal, but you have too much
+ability to have incurred this risk. Let it all be as though there had
+never arisen any question of public life for you. I have explained
+to Aunt Ottilie; she will not weary you with interrogation; she
+understands that you have acted as your honour bade you. That is enough
+for those who love you as do she and I.'</p>
+
+<p>Every word she spoke entered his very soul with the cruellest irony,
+the sharpest reproach. But of these he let her see nothing. Yet he
+was none the less abjectly ashamed, less passionately self-condemned,
+because he had to consume his pain in silence, and had the self-control
+to answer, still with a smile, as he touched a chord or two of music:</p>
+
+<p>'When the Israelites were free they hankered after the flesh-pots of
+Egypt. They deserved eternal exile, eternal bondage. So do I, for
+having ever been ingrate enough to dream of leaving Hohenszalras for
+the world of men!'</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned wholly towards the Erard keyboard, and with splendour
+and might there rolled forth under his touch the military march of
+Rákóczi: he was glad of the majesty and passion of the music which
+supplanted and silenced speech.</p>
+
+<p>'That is very grand,' she said, when the last notes had died away.
+'One seems to hear the <i>Eljén!</i> of the whole nation in it. But play me
+something more tender, more pathetic&mdash;&mdash;some <i>lieder</i> half sorrow and
+half gladness, you know so many of all countries.'</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment; then his hands wandered lightly across the notes,
+and called up the mournful folk-songs that he had heard so long, so
+long, before; songs of the Russian peasants, of the maidens borne off
+by the Tartar in war, of the blue-eyed children carried away to be
+slaves, of the homeless villagers beholding their straw-roofed huts
+licked up by the hungry hurrying flame lit by the Kossack or the Kurd;
+songs of a people without joy, that he had heard in his childish days,
+when the great rafts had drifted slowly down the Volga water, and
+across the plains the lines of chained prisoners had crept as slowly
+through the dust; or songs that he had sung to himself, not knowing
+why, where the winter was white on all the land, and the bay of the
+famished wolves afar off had blent with the shrill sad cry of the wild
+swans dying of cold and of hunger and of thirst on the frozen rivers,
+and the reeds were grown hard as spears of iron, and the waves were
+changed to stone.</p>
+
+<p>The intense melancholy penetrated her very heart. She listened with
+the tears in her eyes, and her whole being stirred and thrilled by a
+pain not her own. A kind of consciousness came to her, borne on that
+melancholy melody, of some unspoken sorrow which lived in this heart
+which beat so near her own, and whose every throb she had thought she
+knew. A sudden terror seized her lest all this while she who believed
+his whole life hers was in truth a stranger to his deepest grief, his
+dearest memories.</p>
+
+<p>When the last sigh of those plaintive songs without words had died
+away, she signed to him to approach her.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me,' she said very gently, 'tell me the truth. Réné, did you ever
+care for any woman, dead or lost, more than, or as much as, you care
+for me? I do not ask you if you loved others. I know all men have many
+caprices, but was any one of them so dear to you that you regret her
+still? Tell me the truth; I will be strong to bear it.'</p>
+
+<p>He, relieved beyond expression that she but asked him that on which his
+conscience was clear and his answer could be wholly sincere, sat down
+at her feet and leaned his head against her knee.</p>
+
+<p>'Never, so hear me God!' he said simply. 'I have loved no woman as I
+love you.'</p>
+
+<p>'And there is not one that you regret?'</p>
+
+<p>'There is not one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then what is it that you do regret? Something more weighs on you than
+the mere loss of diplomatic life, which; after all, to you is no more
+than the loss of a toy to Bela.'</p>
+
+<p>'If I do regret,' he said, with a smile, 'it is foolish and thankless.
+The happiness you give me here is worth all the fret and fever of
+the world's ambitions. You are so great and good to be so little
+angered with me for my reticence. All my life, such as it is, shall be
+dedicated to my gratitude.'</p>
+
+<p>Once more an impulse to tell her all passed over him&mdash;&mdash;a sense that
+he might trust her absolutely for all tenderness and all pity came
+upon him; but with the weakness which so constantly holds back human
+souls from their own deliverance, his courage once again failed him.
+He once more looking at her thought: 'Nay! I dare not. She would never
+understand, she would never pardon, she would never listen. At the
+first word she would abhor me.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not dare; he bent his face down on her knees as any child might
+have done.</p>
+
+<p>'What I ever must regret is not to be worthy of you!' he murmured; and
+the subterfuge was also a truth.</p>
+
+<p>She looked down at him wistfully with doubt and confusion mingled. She
+sighed, for she understood that buried in his heart there was some pain
+he would not share, perchance some half involuntary unfaithfulness he
+did not dare confess. She thrust this latter thought away quickly; it
+hurt her as the touch of a hot iron hurts tender flesh; she would not
+harbour it. It might well be, she knew.</p>
+
+<p>She was silent some little time, then she said calmly:</p>
+
+<p>'I think you worthy. Is not that enough? Never say to me what you do
+not wish to say. But&mdash;&mdash;but&mdash;&mdash;if there be anything you believe that I
+should blame, be sure of this, love: I am no fair weather friend. Try
+me in deep water, in dark storm!'</p>
+
+<p>And still he did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>His evil angel held him back and said to him, 'Nay! she would never
+forgive.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>One day in this winter time she sat alone in her octagon-room whilst he
+was out driving in the teeth of a strong wind blowing from the north
+and frequent bursts of snowstorm. Rapid exercise, eager movements, were
+necessary to him at once as tonic and as anodyne, and the northern
+blood that was in him made the bitter cold, the keen and angry air, the
+conflict with the frantic horses tearing at their curbs welcome and
+wholesome to him. Paul Zabaroff had many a day driven so over the hard
+snows of Russian plains.</p>
+
+<p>She sat at home as the twilight drew on, her feet buried in the furs
+before her chair, the fragrance shed about her from a basket of forced
+narcissus and bowls full of orange flowers and of violets, the light
+of the burning wood shining on the variegated and mellow hues of the
+tiles of the hearth. The last poems of Coppée were on her lap, but
+her thoughts had wandered away from those to Sabran, to her children,
+to a thousand happy trifles connected with one or the other. She was
+dreaming idly in that vague reverie which suits the last hour of the
+reclining day in the grey still winter of a mountain-land. She was
+almost sorry when Hubert entered and brought her the mail-bag, which
+had just come through the gloomy defiles and the frosted woods which
+stretched between them and Matrey.</p>
+
+<p>'It grows late,' she said to him. 'I fear it will be a stormy night.
+Have you heard the Marquis return?</p>
+
+<p>He told her that Sabran had not yet driven in, and ventured to add
+his hope that his master would not be out long; then he asked if she
+desired the lamps lit, and on being told she did not, withdrew, leaving
+the leather bag on a table close to one of the Saxe bowls of violets.
+There was plenty of light from the fire, and even from the windows, to
+read her letters by; she went first to one of the casements and looked
+at the night, which was growing very wild and dark. Though day still
+lingered, she could hear the wind go screaming down the lake, and
+the rush of the swollen water swirling against the terrace buttresses
+below. All beyond, woods, hills, mountains, were invisible under the
+grey mist.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope he will not be late,' she thought, but she was too keen a
+mountaineer to be apprehensive. Sabran now knew every road and path
+through all the Tauern as well as she did. She returned to her seat and
+unlocked the leather bag; there were several newspapers, two letters
+for the Princess, three or four for Sabran, and one only for herself.
+She laid his aside for him, sent those of the Princess to her room,
+and opened her own. The writing of it she did not recognise; it was
+anonymous, and was very brief.</p>
+
+
+<p>'If you wish to know why the Marquis de Sabran did not go to Russia,
+ask Egon Vàsàrhely.'</p>
+
+
+<p>That was all: so asps are little.</p>
+
+<p>She sat quite still, and felt as if a bolt had fallen on her from the
+leaden skies without. Vàsàrhely knew, the writer of the letter knew,
+and she&mdash;&mdash;<i>she&mdash;&mdash;</i> did not know! That was her first distinct thought.</p>
+
+<p>If Sabran had entered the room at that instant she would have held to
+him this letter, and would have said, 'I ask you, not him.' He was
+absent, and she sat motionless, keeping the unsigned note in her hand,
+and staring down on it. Then she turned and looked at the post-mark.
+It was 'Vienna,' A city of a million souls! What clue to the writer
+was there? She read it again and again, as even the wisest will read
+such poisonous things, as though by repeated study that mystery would
+be compelled to stand out clearly revealed. It did not say enough to
+have been the mere invention of the sender; it was not worded as an
+insinuation, but as a fact. For that reason it took a hold upon her
+mind which would at once have rejected a fouler or a darker suggestion.
+Although free from any baseness of suspicion there was yet that in the
+name of her cousin, in juxtaposition with her husband's, which could
+not do otherwise than startle and carry with it a corroboration of the
+statement made. A wave of the deep anger which had moved her on her
+husband's first refusal swept over her again. Her hand clenched, her
+eyes hashed, where she sat alone in the gathering shadows.</p>
+
+<p>There came a sound at the door of the room and a small golden head came
+from behind the tapestry.</p>
+
+<p>'May we come in?' said Bela; it was the children's hour.</p>
+
+<p>She rose, and put him backward.</p>
+
+<p>'Not now, my darling; I am occupied. Go away for a little while.'</p>
+
+<p>The women who were with them took the children back to their
+apartments. She sat down with the note still in her hand. What could
+it mean? No good thing was ever said thus. She pondered long, and was
+unable to imagine any sense or meaning it could have, though all the
+while memories thronged upon, her of words, and looks, and many trifles
+which had told her of the enmity that was existent between her cousin
+and Sabran. That she saw; but there her knowledge ceased, her vision
+failed. She could go no further, conjecture nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>'Ask Egon!' Did they think she would ask him or any living being that
+which Sabran had refused to confide in her? Whoever wrote this knew her
+little, she thought. Perhaps there were women who would have done so.
+She was not one of them.</p>
+
+<p>With a sudden impulse of scorn she cast the sheet of paper into the
+fire before her. Then she went to her writing-table and enclosed the
+envelope in another, which she addressed to her lawyers in Salzburg.
+She wrote with it: 'This is the cover to an anonymous letter which I
+have received. Try your uttermost to discover the sender.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she sat down again and thought long, and wearily, and vainly. She
+could make nothing of it. She could see no more than a wayfarer whom a
+blank wall faces as he goes. The violets and orange blossoms were close
+at her elbow; she never in after time smelt their perfume without a
+sick memory of the stunned, stupefied bewilderment of that hour.</p>
+
+<p>The door unclosed again, a voice again spoke behind as a hand drew back
+the folds of the tapestry.</p>
+
+<p>'What, are you in darkness here? I am very cold. Have you no tea for
+me?' said Sabran, as he entered, his eyes brilliant; his cheeks warm,
+from the long gallop against the wind. He had changed his clothes, and
+wore a loose suit of velvet; the servants, entering behind him, lit the
+candelabra, and brought in the lamps; warmth, and gladness, and light
+seemed to come with him; she looked up and thought, 'Ah! what does any
+thing matter? He is home in safety!'</p>
+
+<p>The impulse to ask of him what she had been bidden to ask of Egon
+Vàsàrhely had passed with the intense surprise of the first moment. She
+could not ask of him what she had promised never to seek to know; she
+could not reopen a long-closed wound. But neither could she forget the
+letter lying burnt there amongst the flames of the wood. He noticed
+that her usual perfect calm was broken as she welcomed him, gave him
+his letters, and bade the servants bring tea; but he thought it mere
+anxiety, and his belated drive; and being tired with a pleasant fatigue
+which made rest sweet, he stretched his limbs out on a low couch beside
+the hearth, and gave himself up to that delicious dreamy sense of
+<i>bien-être</i> which a beautiful woman, a beautiful room, tempered warmth
+and light, and welcome repose, bring to any man after some hours effort
+and exposure in wild weather and intense cold and increasing darkness.</p>
+
+<p>'I almost began to think I should not see you to-night,' he said
+happily, as he took from her hand the little cup of Frankenthal china
+which sparkled like a jewel in the light. 'I had fairly lost my way,
+and Josef knew it no better than I; the snow fell with incredible
+rapidity, and it seemed to grow night in an instant. I let the horses
+take their road, and they brought us home; but if there be any poor
+pedlars or carriers on the hills to-night I fear they will go to their
+last sleep.'</p>
+
+<p>She shuddered and looked at him with dim, fond eyes, 'He is here; he is
+mine,' she thought; 'what else matters?'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran stretched out his fingers and took some of the violets from the
+Saxe bowl and fastened them in his coat as he went on speaking of the
+weather, of the perils of the roads whose tracks were obliterated, and
+of the prowess and intelligence of his horses, who had found the way
+home when he and his groom, a man born and bred in the Tauern, had both
+been utterly at a loss. The octagon-room had never looked lovelier and
+gayer to him, and his wife had never looked more beautiful than both
+did now as he came to them out of the darkness and the snowstorm and
+the anxiety of the last hour.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not run those risks,' she murmured. 'You know all that your life is
+to me.'</p>
+
+<p>The letter which lay burnt in the fire, and the dusky night of ice
+and wind without, had made him dearer to her than ever. And yet the
+startled, shocked sense of some mystery, of some evil, was heavy upon
+her, and did not leave her that evening nor for many a day after.</p>
+
+<p>'You are not well?' he said to her anxiously later, as they left the
+dinner-table. She answered evasively.</p>
+
+<p>'You know I am not always quite well now. It is nothing. It will pass.'</p>
+
+<p>'I was wrong to alarm you by being out so late in such weather,' he
+said with self-reproach. 'I will go out earlier in future.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not wear those violets,' she said, with a trivial caprice wholly
+unlike her, as she took them from his coat. 'They are Bonapartist
+emblems&mdash;<i>fleurs de malheur</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, but he was surprised, for he had never seen in her any one
+of those fanciful whims and vagaries that are common to women.</p>
+
+<p>'Give me any others instead,' he said; 'I wear but your symbol, O my
+lady!'</p>
+
+<p>She took some myrtle and lilies of the valley from one of the large
+porcelain jars in the Rittersaal.</p>
+
+<p>'These are our flowers,' she said as she gave them to him. 'They mean
+love and peace.'</p>
+
+<p>He turned from her slightly as he fastened them where the others had
+been.</p>
+
+<p>All the evening she was pre-occupied and nervous. She could not forget
+the intimation she had received. It was intolerable to her to have
+anything of which she could not speak to her husband. Though they had
+their own affairs apart one from the other, there had been nothing
+of moment in hers that she had ever concealed from him. But here it
+was impossible for her to speak to him, since she had pledged herself
+never to seek to know the reason of an action which, however plausibly
+she explained it to herself, remained practically inexplicable and
+unintelligible. It was terrible to her, too, to feel that the lines
+of a coward who dared not sign them had sunk so deeply into her mind
+that she did not question their veracity. They had at once carried
+conviction to her that Egon Vàsàrhely did know what they said he did.
+She could not have told why this was, but it was so. It was what hurt
+her most&mdash;&mdash;others knew; she did not.</p>
+
+<p>She felt that if she could have spoken to Sabran of it, the matter
+would have become wholly indifferent to her; but the obligation of
+reticence, the sense of separation which it involved, oppressed her
+greatly. She was also haunted by the memory of the enmity which existed
+between these men, whose names were so strangely coupled in the
+anonymous counsel given her.</p>
+
+<p>She stayed long in her oratory that night, seeking vainly for calmness
+and patience under this temptation; seeking beyond all things for
+strength to put the poison of it wholly from her mind. She dreaded lest
+it should render her irritable and suspicious. She reproached herself
+for having been guilty of even so much insinuation of rebuke to him
+as her words with the flower had carried in them. She had ideas of
+the duties of a woman to her husband widely different to those which
+prevail in the world. She allowed herself neither irritation nor irony
+against him. 'When the thoughts rebel, the acts soon revolt,' she was
+wont to say to herself, and even in her thoughts she would never blame
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Prayer, even if it have no other issue or effect, rarely fails to
+tranquillise and fortify the heart which is lifted up ever so vaguely
+in search of a superhuman aid. She left her oratory strengthened and
+calmed, resolved in no way to allow such partial success to their
+unknown foe as would be given if the treacherous warning brought any
+suspicion or bitterness to her mind. She passed through the open
+archway in the wall which divided his rooms from hers, and looked at
+him where he lay already asleep upon his bed, early fatigued by the
+long cold drive from which he had returned at nightfall. He was never
+more handsome than sleeping calmly thus, with the mellow light of a
+distant lamp reaching the fairness of his face. She looked at him with
+all her heart in her eyes; then stooped and kissed him without awaking
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! my love,' she thought, 'what should ever come between us? Hardly
+even death, I think, for if I lost you I should not live long without
+you.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Salzburg lawyers employed all the resources of the Viennese police
+to discover the sender of the envelope, but vainly; nothing was
+learned by all the efforts made. But the letter constantly haunted her
+thoughts. It produced in her an uneasiness and an apprehensiveness
+wholly foreign to her temper. The impossibility also of saying anything
+about it increased the weight of it on her memory. Yet she never once
+thought of asking Vàsàrhely. She wrote to him now and then, as she had
+always done, to give him tidings of her health or of her movements,
+but she never once alluded in the most distant terms to the anonymous
+information she had received. If he had been there beside her she would
+not have spoken of it. Of the two, she would sooner have reopened the
+subject to her husband. But she never did so. She had promised him
+to be silent, and to her creed a promise was inviolate, never to be
+retracted, be the pressure or the desire to do so what it would.</p>
+
+<p>It was these grand lines on which her character and her habits were
+cast that awed him, and made him afraid to tell her his true history.
+Had he revered her less he would probably have deceived her less. Had
+she been of a less noble temperament she would also probably have been
+much less easy to deceive.</p>
+
+<p>Her health was at this time languid, and more uncertain than usual,
+and the two lines of the letter were often present to her thoughts,
+tormenting her with idle conjecture, painful doubt, none the less
+painful because it could take no definite shape. Sometimes when she
+was not well enough to accompany him out of doors or drive her own
+sleigh through the keen clear winter air, she sat doing nothing, and
+thinking only of this thing, in the same room, with the same smell of
+violets about her, musing on what it might by any possibility mean. Any
+secret was safe with Egon, but then since the anonymous writer was in
+possession of it the secret was not only his. She wondered sometimes in
+terror whether it could be anything that might in after years affect
+her children's future, and then as rapidly discarded the bare thought
+as so much dishonour to their father. 'It is only because I am now
+nervous and impressionable,' she said to herself,'that this folly takes
+such a hold upon me. When I am well again I shall not think of it. Who
+is it says of anonymous letters that they are like "<i>les immondices des
+rues: il faut boucher le nez, tourner la tête et passer outre?</i>"'</p>
+
+<p>But '<i>les immondices</i>' spoiled the odours of the new year violets to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>In the early spring of the year she gave birth to another son. She
+suffered more than she had ever done before, and recovered less
+quickly. The child was like all the others, fair, vigorous, and full
+of health. She wished to give him her husband's name, but Sabran so
+strenuously opposed the idea that she yielded, and named him after her
+brother Victor, who had fallen at Magenta.</p>
+
+<p>There were the usual rejoicings throughout the estates, rejoicings
+that were the outcome of genuine affection and fealty to the race of
+Szalras, whose hold on the people of the Tauern had resisted all the
+revolutionary movements of the earlier part of the century, and had
+fast root in the hearts of the staunch and conservative mountaineers.
+But for the first time as she heard the hearty '<i>Hoch!</i>' of the
+assembled peasantry echoing beneath her windows, and the salvos fired
+from the old culverins on the keep, a certain fear mingled with her
+maternal pride, and she thought: 'Will the people love them as well
+twenty years hence, fifty years hence, when I shall be no more? Will my
+memory be any shield to them? Will the traditions of our race outlast
+the devouring changes of the world?'</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the Princess, happy and smiling, showed the little new-born
+noble to the stalwart chamois hunters, the comely farmers and
+fishermen, the clear-eyed stout-limbed shepherds and labourers gathered
+bareheaded round the Schloss.</p>
+
+<p>Bela stood by contemplating the crowd he knew so well; he did not see
+why they should cheer any other child beside himself. He stood with his
+little velvet cap in his hand, because he was always told to do so, but
+he felt very inclined to put it on; if his father had not been present
+there he would have done so.</p>
+
+<p>'If I have ever so many brothers,' he said at last thoughtfully to
+Greswold, who was by his side, 'it will not make any difference, will
+it? I shall always be <i>the</i> one?'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean?' asked the physician.</p>
+
+<p>'They will none of them be like me? They will none of them be as great
+as I am? Not if I have twenty?'</p>
+
+<p>'You will be always the eldest son, of course,' said the old man,
+repressing a smile. 'Yes; you will be their head, their chief, their
+leading spirit; but for that reason you will have much more expected of
+you than will be expected of them; you will have to learn much more,
+and try to be always good. Do you follow me, Count Bela?'</p>
+
+<p>Bela's little rosy mouth shut itself up contemptuously. 'I shall be
+always the eldest, and I shall do whatever I like. I do not see why
+they want any others than me.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will not do always what you like, Count Bela.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who shall prevent me?'</p>
+
+<p>'The law, which you will have to obey like everyone else.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall make the laws when I am a little older,' said Bela. 'And they
+will be for my brothers and all the people, but not for me. I shall do
+what I like.'</p>
+
+<p>'That will be very ungenerous,' said Greswold, quietly. 'Your mother,
+the Countess, is very different. She is stern to herself, and indulgent
+to all others. That is why she is beloved. If you will think of
+yourself so much when you are grown up, you will be hated.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela flushed a little guiltily and angrily.</p>
+
+<p>'That will not matter,' he said sturdily. 'I shall please myself
+always.'</p>
+
+<p>'And be unkind to your brothers?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not if they do what I tell them; I will be very kind if they are good.
+Gela always does what I tell him,' he added after a little pause; 'I do
+not want any but Gela.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is natural you should be fondest of Gela, as he is nearest your
+age, but you must love all the brothers you may have, or you will
+distress your mother very greatly.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why does she want any but me?' said Bela, clinging to his sense of
+personal wrong. And he was not to be turned from that.</p>
+
+<p>'She wants others beside you,' said the physician, adroitly, 'because
+to be happy she needs children who are tender-hearted, unselfish, and
+obedient. You are none of those things, my Count Bela, so Heavens ends
+her consolation.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela opened his blue eyes very wide, and he coloured with mortification.</p>
+
+<p>'She always loves me best!' he said haughtily. 'She always will!'</p>
+
+<p>'That will depend on yourself, my little lord,' said Greswold, with a
+significance which was not lost on the quick intelligence of the child;
+and he never forgot this day when his brother Victor was shown to the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>'There will be no lack of heirs to Hohenszalras,' said the Princess
+meanwhile to his father.</p>
+
+<p>He thought as he heard:</p>
+
+<p>'And if ever she know she can break her marriage like a rotten thread!
+Those boys can all be made as nameless as I was! Would she do it?
+Perhaps not, for the children's sake. God knows&mdash;&mdash;she might change
+even to them; she might hate them as she loves them now, because they
+are mine.'</p>
+
+<p>Even as he sat beside her couch with her hand in his these thoughts
+pursued and haunted him. Remorse and fear consumed him. When she looked
+at the blue eyes of her new-born son, and said to him with a happy
+smile: 'He will be just as much like you as the others are,' he could
+only think with a burning sense of shame, 'Like me! like a traitor!
+like a liar! like a thief!'&mdash;&mdash;and the faces of these children seemed
+to him like those of avenging angels.</p>
+
+<p>He thought with irrepressible agony of the fact that her country's
+laws would divorce her from him if she chose, did ever the truth come
+to her ear. He had always known this indeed, as he had known all the
+other risks he ran in doing what he did. Put it had been far away,
+indistinct, unasserted; whenever the memory of it had passed over him
+he had thrust it away. Now when another knew his secret, he could
+not do so. He had a strange sensation of having fallen from some
+great height; of having all his life slide away like melting ice out
+of his hands. He never once doubted for an instant the good faith of
+Egon Vàsàrhely. He knew that his lips would no more unclose to tell
+his secret than the glaciers yonder would find human voice. But the
+consciousness that one man lived, moved, breathed, rose with each day,
+and went amongst other men, bearing with him that fatal knowledge,
+made it now impossible for himself ever to forget it. A dull remorse,
+a sharp apprehension, were for ever his companions, and never left him
+for long even in his sweetest hours. He did justice to the magnificent
+generosity of the one who spared him. Egon Vàsàrhely knew, as he knew,
+that she, hearing the truth, could annul the marriage if she chose.
+His children would have no rights, no name, if their mother chose to
+separate herself from him. The law would make her once more as free
+as though she had never wedded him. He knew that, and the other man
+who loved her knew it too. He could measure the force of Vàsàrhely's
+temptation as that simple and heroic soldier could not stoop to measure
+his.</p>
+
+<p>He was deeply unhappy, but he concealed it from her. Even when his
+heart beat against hers it seemed to him always that there was an
+invisible wall between himself and her. He longed to tell the whole
+truth to her, but he was afraid; if the whole pain and shame had been
+his own that the confession would have caused, he would have dared it;
+but he had not the heart to inflict on her such suffering, not the
+courage to destroy their happiness with his own hand. Egon Vàsàrhely
+alone knew, and he for her sake would never speak. As for the reproach
+of his own conscience, as for the remorse that the words of his
+children might at any moment call up in him, these lie must bear. He
+was a man of cool judgment and of ready resource, and though he had
+never foreseen the sharp repentance which his better nature now felt,
+he knew that he would be able to live it down as he had crushed out so
+many other scruples. He vowed to himself that as far as in him lay he
+would atone for his act. The moral influence of his wife had not been
+without effect on him. Not altogether, but partially, he had grown to
+believe in what she believed in, of the duty of human life to other
+lives; he had not her sympathy for others, but he had admired it, and
+in his own way followed it, though without her faith.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Life went on in its old pathways at Hohenszalras. Nothing more, was
+said by him, or to him, as to his rejection of the Russian mission. She
+was niggard in nothing, and when she offered her faith or pledged her
+silence, gave both entirely and ungrudgingly. Sabran to her showed an
+increase of devotion, an absolute adoration which would in themselves
+have sufficed to console any woman; and if the most observant member
+of their household, Greswold, perceived in him a preoccupation, a
+languor, a gloom, which boded ill for their future peace, the old man
+was too loyal in his attachment not to endeavour to shake off his own
+suspicions and discredit his own penetration.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess had been favoured by a note from Olga Brancka, in which
+that lady wrote: 'Have you discovered the nature of his refusal of
+Russia? Myself, I believe that I was to blame. I hinted to him that
+he would be tempted to his old sins in St. Petersburg, and that Wanda
+would be very miserable there. It seems that this was enough for the
+tender heart of this devoted lover, and too much for his wisdom and
+his judgment; he rejected the mission after accepting it. I believe
+the Court is furious. I am not <i>de service</i> now, so that I have no
+opportunity of endeavouring to restore him to favour; but I imagine the
+Emperor will not quarrel for ever with the Hohenszalrasburg.</p>
+
+<p>The letter restored him at least to the favour of Mdme. Ottilie.
+Exaggerated as such a scruple appeared it did not seem to her
+impossible in a man whose devotion to his wife she daily witnessed,
+shown in a hundred traits. She blamed him still severely in her own
+thoughts for what she held an inexcusable disrespect to the Crown, but
+she kept her word scrupulously and never spoke to him on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>'Where else in the wide world would any man have found such
+forbearance?' he thought with gratitude, and he knew that nowhere
+would such delicate sentiment have existed outside the pale of that
+fine patrician dignity which is as incapable of the vulgarity of
+inquisitiveness and interrogation as was the Spartan of lament.</p>
+
+<p>The months went by. They did not leave home; he seemed to have lost
+all wish for any absence, and even repulsed the idea of inviting the
+usual house parties of the year. She supposed that he was averse to
+meeting people who might recur to his rejection of the post he had
+once accepted. The summer passed and the autumn came; he spent his
+time in occasional sport, the keen and perilous sport of the Austrian
+mountains, and more often and more faithfully beguiled himself with
+those arts of which he was a brilliant master, though he would call
+himself no more than a mere amateur. From the administration of the
+estates he had altogether withdrawn himself.</p>
+
+<p>'You are so much wiser than I,' he always said to her; and when she
+would have referred to him, replied: 'You have your lawyers; they are
+all honest men. Consult them rather than me.'</p>
+
+<p>With the affairs of Idrac only he continued to concern himself a
+little, and was persistent in setting aside all its revenues to
+accumulate for his second son.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish you cared more about all these things,' she said to him one
+day, when she had in her hand the reports from the mines of Galicia.
+He answered angrily, 'I have no right to them. They are not mine. If
+you chose to give them all away to the Crown I should say nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not even for the children's sake?'</p>
+
+<p>'No: you would be entirely justified if you liked to give the children
+nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'I really do not understand you,' she said in great surprise.</p>
+
+<p>'Everything is yours,' he said abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'And the children too, surely!' she said, with a smile: but the
+strangeness of the remark disquieted her. 'It is over-sensitiveness,'
+she thought; 'he can never altogether forget that he was poor. It is
+for that reason public life would have been so good for him; dignities
+which he enjoyed of his own, honours that he arrived at through his own
+attainments.'</p>
+
+<p>Chagrined to have lost, the opportunity of winning personal honours
+in a field congenial to him, the sense that everything was hers could
+hardly fail to gall him sometimes constantly, though she strove to
+efface any remembrance or reminder that it was so.</p>
+
+<p>In the midsummer of that year, whilst they were quite alone, they were
+surprised by another letter from Mdme. Brancka, in which she proposed
+to take Hohenszalras on her way from France to Tsarköe Selo, where she
+was about to pay a visit which could not be declined by her.</p>
+
+<p>When in the spring he had written with formality to her to announce the
+birth of his son Victor, she had answered with a witty coquettish reply
+such as might well have been provocative of further correspondence.
+But he had not taken up the invitation. Mortified and irritated, she
+had compared his writing with the piece of burnt paper, and been more
+satisfied than ever that he had penned the name of Vassia Kazán. But
+even were it so, what, she wondered, had it to do with Russia? He
+and Egon Vàsàrhely were not friends so intimate that they had any
+common interests one with the other. The mystery had interested her
+intensely when her rapid intuition had connected the resignation of
+Sabran's appointment with the messenger sent to him from Taróc. Her
+impatience to be again in his presence grew intense. She imagined a
+thousand stories, to cast each aside in derision as impossible. All her
+suppositions were built upon no better basis than a fragment of charred
+paper; but her shrewd intuition bore her into the region of truth,
+though the actual truth of course never suggested itself to her even in
+her most fantastic and dramatic visions. Finally she thus proposed to
+visit Hohenszalras in the midsummer months.</p>
+
+<p>'Last year you had such a crowd about you,' she wrote, 'that I
+positively saw nothing of you, <i>liebe</i> Wanda. You are alone now, and
+I venture to propose myself for a fortnight. You cannot exactly be
+said to be in the way to anywhere, but I shall make you so. When one
+is going to Russia, a matter of another five hundred miles or so is a
+bagatelle.'</p>
+
+<p>'We must let her come,' said Wanda, as she gave the letter to Sabran,
+who, having read it, said with much sincerity&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'For heaven's sake, do not. A fortnight of Madame Olga! as well
+have&mdash;&mdash;a century of "Madame Angot!"'</p>
+
+<p>'Can I prevent her?'</p>
+
+<p>'You can make some excuse. I do not like Mdme. Brancka.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why?'</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated; he could not tell her what he had felt at the ball of
+the Hofburg. 'She reminds me of a woman who drew me into a thousand
+follies, and to cap her good deeds betrayed me to the Prussians. If you
+must let her come I will go away. I will go and see your haras on the
+Pusztas.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are you serious?'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite serious. Were I not ashamed of such a weakness, I should use a
+feminine expression. I should say "<i>elle me donne des nerfs.</i>"'</p>
+
+<p>'I think she has a great admiration for you, and she does not conceal
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Merely because she is sensible that I do not like her. Such women as
+she are discontented if only one person fail to admit their charm. She
+is accustomed to admiration, and she is not scrupulous as to how she
+obtains it.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear! pray remember that she is our guest, and doubly our relative.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will try and remember it; but, believe me, all honour is wholly
+wasted upon Mdme. Olga. You offer her a coin of which the person and
+the superscription are alike unknown to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very severe,' said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, and perceived that he was not jesting, that he
+was on the contrary disturbed and annoyed, and she remembered the
+persistence with which Olga Brancka had sought his companionship and
+accompanied him on his sport in the summer of her visit there.</p>
+
+<p>'If she had not married first my brother and then my cousin, she would
+never have been an intimate friend of mine,' she continued. 'She is of
+a world wholly opposed to all my tastes. For you to be absent, if she
+came, would be too marked, I think; but we can both leave, if you like.
+I am well enough for any movement now, and I can leave the child with
+his nurse. Shall we make a tour in Hungary? The haras will interest
+you. There are the mines, too, that one ought to visit.'</p>
+
+<p>He received her assent with gratitude and delight. He felt that he
+would have gone to the uttermost ends of the earth rather than run the
+risk of spending long lonely summer days in the excitation of Mdme.
+Brancka's presence. He detested her, he would always detest her; and
+yet when he shut his eyes he saw her so clearly, with the malicious
+light in her dusky glance, and the jewelled butterfly trembling about
+her breasts.</p>
+
+<p>'She shall never come under Wanda's roof if I can prevent it,' he
+thought, remembering her as she had been that night.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later the Countess Brancka, much to her rage, had a note
+from the Hohenszalrasburg, which said that they were on the point of
+leaving for Hungary and Galicia, but that if she would come there in
+their absence, the Princess Ottilie, who remained, would be charmed to
+receive her. Of course she excused herself, and did not go. A visit to
+the solitudes of the Iselthal, where she would, see no one but a lady
+of eighty years old and four little children, had few attractions for
+the adventurous and vivacious wife of Stefan Brancka.</p>
+
+<p>'It is only Wanda's jealousy,' she thought, and was furious; but she
+looked at herself in the mirror, and was almost consoled as she thought
+also, 'He avoids me. Therefore he is afraid of me!'</p>
+
+<p>She went to her god, <i>le monde</i>, and worshipped at all its shrines and
+in all its fashions; but in the midst of the turmoil and the triumphs,
+the worries and the intoxications of her life, she did not lose her
+hold on her purpose, nor forget that he had slighted her. His beautiful
+face, serene and scornful, was always before her. He might have been at
+her feet, and he chose to dwell beside his wife under those solitary
+forests, amongst those solitary mountains of the High Tauern!</p>
+
+<p>'With a woman he has lived with all these eight years!' she thought,
+with furious impatience. 'With a woman who has grafted the Lady of La
+Garaye on Libussa, who never gives him a moment's jealousy, who is
+as flawless as an ivory statue or a marble throne, who suckles her
+children and could spin their clothes if she wanted, who never cares
+to go outside the hills of her own home&mdash;&mdash;the Teuton <i>Hausfrau</i> to
+her finger-tips.' And she was all the more bitter and the more angered
+because, always as she tried to think thus, the image of Wanda rose up
+before her, as she had seen her so often at Vienna or Hohenszalras,
+with the great pearls on her hair and on her breast.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 20%;">
+A planet at whose passing, lo!<br />
+All lesser stars recede, and night<br />
+Grows clear as day thus lighted up<br />
+By all her loveliness, which burns<br />
+With pure white flame of chastity;<br />
+And fires of fair thought....<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h4>END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.</h4>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p style="margin-left: 20%; font-size: 0.8em;">
+CONTENTS<br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52136 ***</div>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Ouida
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3)
+
+Author: Ouida
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2016 [EBook #52136]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDA, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Wanda Lee, Laura Natal Rodriguez and Marc
+D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org (Images
+generouslly made available by the Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+WANDA
+
+BY
+
+OUIDA
+
+
+
+    _'Doch!--alles was dazu mich trieb;_
+    _Gott!--war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'_
+                                         Goethe
+
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES
+
+VOL. II.
+
+
+London
+
+CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
+
+1883
+
+
+
+
+WANDA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+On her return she spoke of her royal friends, of her cousins, of
+society, of her fears for the peace of Europe, and her doubts as to
+the strength of the empire; but she did not speak of the one person of
+whom, beyond all others, Mdme. Ottilie was desirous to hear. When some
+hours had passed, and still she had never alluded to the existence of,
+the Princess could bear silence no longer, and casting prudence to the
+winds, said boldly and with impatience:
+
+'And your late guest? Have you nothing to tell me? Surely you have seen
+him?'
+
+'He called once,' she answered, 'and I heard him speak at the Chamber.'
+
+'And was that all?' cried the Princess, disappointed.
+
+'He speaks very well in public,' added Wanda, 'and he said many tender
+and grateful things of you, and sent you many messages--such grateful
+ones that my memory is too clumsy a tray to hold such eggshell china.'
+
+She was angered with herself as she spoke, but the fragrance of the
+white lilac and the remembrance of its donor pursued her--angered
+with herself, too, because Hohenszalras seemed for the moment sombre,
+solitary, still, almost melancholy, wrapped in that winter whiteness
+and stillness which she had always loved so well.
+
+The next morning she saw all her people, visited her schools and her
+stables, and tried to persuade herself that she was as contented as
+ever.
+
+The aurist came from Paris shortly after her, and consoled the Princess
+by assuring her that the slight deafness she suffered from occasionally
+was due to cold.
+
+'Of course!' she said, with some triumph. 'These mountains, all this
+water, rain whenever there is not snow, snow whenever there is not
+rain; it is a miracle, and the mercy of Heaven, if one saves any of
+one's five senses uninjured in a residence here.'
+
+She had her satin hood trebly wadded, and pronounced the aurist a
+charming person. Herr Greswold in an incautious moment had said to her
+that deafness was one of the penalties of age and did not depend upon
+climate. A Paris doctor would not have earned his fee of two hundred
+napoleons if he had only produced so ungallant a truism. She heard a
+little worse after his visit, perhaps, but if so, she said that was
+caused by the additional wadding in her hood. He had told her to use a
+rose-water syringe, and Herr Greswold was forbidden her presence for a
+week because he averred that you might as well try to melt the glacier
+with a lighted pastille.
+
+The aurist gone, life at Hohenszalras resumed its even tenor; and
+except for, the post, the tea-cups, and the kind of dishes served at
+dinner, hardly differed from what life had been there in the sixteenth
+century, save that there were no saucy pages playing in the court, and
+no destriers stamping in the stalls, and no culverins loaded on the
+bastions.
+
+'It is like living between the illuminated leaves of one of the Hours,'
+thought the Princess, and though her conscience told her that to dwell
+so in a holy book like a pressed flower was the most desirable life
+that could be granted by Heaven to erring mortality, still she felt it
+was dull. A little gossip, a little movement, a little rolling of other
+carriage-wheels than her own, had always seemed desirable to her.
+
+Life here was laid down on broad lines. It was stately, austere,
+tranquil; one day was a mirror of all the rest. The Princess fretted
+for some little _frou-frou_ of the world to break its solemn silence.
+
+When Wanda returned from her ride one forenoon she said a little
+abruptly to her aunt:
+
+'I suppose you will be glad to hear you have convinced me. I have
+telegraphed to Ludwig to open and air the house in Vienna; we will go
+there for three months. It is, perhaps, time I should be seen at Court.'
+
+'It is a very sudden decision!' said Madame Ottilie, doubting that she
+could hear aright.
+
+'It is the fruit of your persuasions, dear mother mine! The only
+advantage in having houses in half a dozen different places is to be
+able to go to them without consideration. You think me obstinate,
+whimsical, barbaric; the Kaiserin thinks so too. I will endeavour to
+conquer my stubbornness. We will go to Vienna next week. You will see
+all your old friends, and I all my old jewels.'
+
+The determination once made, she adhered to it. She had felt a vague
+annoyance at the constancy and the persistency with which regret for
+the lost society of Sabran recurred to her. She had attributed it to
+the solitude in which she lived: that solitude which is the begetter
+and the nurse of thought may also be the hotbed of unwise fancies.
+It was indeed a solitude filled with grave duties, careful labours,
+high desires and endeavours; but perhaps, she thought, the world for a
+while, even in its folly, might be healthier, might preserve her from
+the undue share which the memory of a stranger had in her musings.
+
+Her people, her lands, her animals, would none of them suffer by
+a brief absence; and perhaps there were duties due as well to her
+position as to her order. She was the only representative of the great
+Counts of Szalras. With the whimsical ingratitude to fate common
+to human nature, she thought she would sooner have been obscure,
+unnoticed, free. Her rank began to drag on her with something like the
+sense of a chain. She felt that she was growing irritable, fanciful,
+thankless; so she ordered the huge old palace in the Herrengasse to be
+got ready, and sought the world as others sought the cloister.
+
+In a week's time she was installed in Vienna, with a score of horses,
+two score of servants, and all the stir and pomp that attend a great
+establishment in the most aristocratic city of Europe, and she made her
+first appearance at a ball at the Residenz covered with jewels from
+head to foot; the wonderful old jewels that for many seasons had lain
+unseen in their iron coffers--opals given by Rurik, sapphires taken
+from Kara Mustafa, pearls worn by her people at the wedding of Mary of
+Burgundy, diamonds that had been old when Maria Theresa had been young.
+
+She had three months of continual homage, of continual flattery, of
+what others called pleasure, and what none could have denied was
+splendour. Great nobles laid their heart and homage before her feet,
+and all the city looked after her for her beauty as she drove her
+horses round the Ringstrasse. It left her all very cold and unamused
+and indifferent.
+
+She was impatient to be back at Hohenszalras, amidst the stillness of
+the woods, the sound of the waters.
+
+'You cannot say now that I do not care for the world, because I have
+forgotten what it was like,' she observed to her aunt.
+
+'I wish you cared more,' said the Princess. 'Position has its duties.'
+
+'I never dispute that; only I do not see that being wearied by society
+constitutes one of them. I cannot understand why people are so afraid
+of solitude; the routine of the world is quite as monotonous.'
+
+'If you only appreciated the homage that you receive----'
+
+'Surely one's mind is something like one's conscience: if one can be
+not too utterly discontented with what it says one does not need the
+verdict of others.'
+
+'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with
+your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your
+overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the
+one I possess.'
+
+'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be
+pride--the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely
+better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'
+
+'They are not all simpletons.'
+
+'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very
+stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well
+as of the Wurstel-Prater.'
+
+The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the
+Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw
+the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she
+was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something
+wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up,
+nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.
+
+The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain,
+and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging
+primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of
+the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging
+with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass
+was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale
+sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras,
+and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she
+returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.
+
+'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold,
+as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the
+Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias
+and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between
+the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of
+their stalls.
+
+'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert,
+as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with
+tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with
+'_Willkommen_' written on it.
+
+She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single
+word.
+
+How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that
+day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been
+sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.
+
+'That is the Stanhopea tigrina,' said Herr Greswold, touching one with
+reverent fingers; 'they are all very rare. It is a welcome worthy of
+you, my lady.'
+
+'A very extravagant one,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a certain
+displeasure that mingled with a softened emotion. 'Who brought it?'
+
+'The Marquis de Sabran, by _extra-poste_, himself this morning,'
+answered Hubert--an answer she did not expect. 'But he would not wait;
+he would not even take a glass of tokayer, or let his horses stay for a
+feed of corn.'
+
+'What knight-errantry!' said the Princess well pleased.
+
+'What folly!' said Wanda, but she had the basket of orchids taken to
+her own octagon room.
+
+It seemed as if he had divined how much of late she had thought of him.
+She was touched, and yet she was angered a little.
+
+'Surely she will write to him,' thought the Princess wistfully very
+often: but she did not write. To a very proud woman the dawning
+consciousness of love is always an irritation, an offence, a failure, a
+weakness: the mistress of Hohenszalras could not quickly pardon herself
+for taking with pleasure the message of the orchids.
+
+A little while later she received a letter from Olga Brancka. In it she
+wrote from Paris:
+
+'Parsifal is doing wonders in the Chamber, that is, he is making Paris
+talk; his party will forbid him doing anything else. You certainly
+worked a miracle. I hear he never plays, never looks at an actress,
+never does anything wrong, and when a grand heiress was offered to
+him by her people refused her hand blandly but firmly. What is one to
+think? That he washed his soul white in the Szalrassee?'
+
+It was the subtlest flattery of all, the only flattery to which she
+would have been accessible, this entire alteration in the current
+of a man's whole life; this change in habit, inclination, temper,
+and circumstance. If he had approached her its charm would have been
+weakened, its motive suspected; but aloof and silent as he remained,
+his abandonment of all old ways, his adoption of a sterner and worthier
+career, moved her with its marked, mute homage of herself.
+
+When she read his discourses in the French papers she felt a glow
+of triumph, as if she had achieved some personal success; she felt
+a warmth at her heart as of something near and dear to her, which
+was doing well and wisely in the sight of men. His cause did not,
+indeed, as Olga Brancka had said, render tangible, practical, victory
+impossible for him, but he had the victories of eloquence, of
+patriotism, of high culture, of pure and noble language, and these
+blameless laurels seemed to her half of her own gathering.
+
+'Will you never reward him?' the Princess ventured to say at last,
+overcome by her own impatience to rashness. 'Never? Not even by a word?'
+
+'Hear mother,' said Wanda, with a smile which perplexed and baffled the
+Princess, 'if your hero wanted reward he would not be the leader of a
+lost cause. Pray do not suggest to me a doubt of his disinterestedness.
+You will do him very ill service.'
+
+The Princess was mute, vaguely conscious that she had said something
+ill-timed or ill-advised.
+
+Time passed on and brought beautiful weather in the month of June,
+which here in the High Tauern means what April does in the south.
+Millions of song-birds were shouting in the woods, and thousands of
+nests were suspended on the high branches of the forest trees, or
+hidden in the greenery of the undergrowth; water-birds perched and
+swung in the tall reeds where the brimming streams tumbled; the purple,
+the white, and the grey herons were all there, and the storks lately
+flown home from Asia or Africa were settling in bands by the more
+marshy grounds beside the northern shores of the Szalrassee.
+
+One afternoon she had been riding far and fast, and on her return a
+telegram from Vienna had been brought to her, sent on from Lienz.
+Having opened it, she approached her aunt and said with an unsteady
+voice:
+
+'War is declared between France and Prussia!'
+
+'We expected it; we are ready for it,' said the Princess, with all
+her Teutonic pride in her eyes. 'We shall show her that we cannot be
+insulted with impunity.'
+
+'It is a terrible calamity for the world,' said Wanda, and her face was
+very pale.
+
+The thought which was present to her was that Sabran would be foremost
+amidst volunteers. She did not hear a word of all the political
+exultation with which Princess Ottilie continued to make her militant
+prophecies. She shivered as with cold in the warmth of the midsummer
+sunset.
+
+'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her
+house.
+
+The Princess demurred.
+
+'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all
+the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial.
+You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the
+especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge
+Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'
+
+'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.
+
+She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from
+her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.
+
+In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War
+is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss
+of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I
+shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw
+bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every
+sword she has.'
+
+Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:
+
+'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her
+soil is bound to arm.'
+
+More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her
+grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.
+
+But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,'
+written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were
+filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that
+was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a
+child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian
+campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made
+her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal
+conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she
+became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had
+at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from
+the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the
+shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the
+command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their
+own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was
+congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of
+his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally,
+in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name
+mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That
+was all.
+
+The autumn began to deepen into winter, and complete silence covered
+all his life. She thought with a great remorse--if he were dead?
+Perhaps he was dead? Why had she been always so cold to him? She
+suffered intensely; all the more intensely because it was not a sorrow
+which she could not confess even to herself. When she ceased altogether
+to hear anything of or from him, she realised the hold which he had
+taken on her life.
+
+These months of suspense did more to attach her to him than years
+of assiduous and ardent homage could have done. She, a daughter of
+soldiers, had always felt any man almost unmanly who had not received
+the baptism of fire.
+
+Mdme. Ottilie talked of him constantly, wondered frequently if he were
+wounded, slain, or in prison; she never spoke his name, and dreaded to
+hear it.
+
+Greswold, who perceived an anxiety in her that, he did not dare to
+allude to, ransacked every journal that was published in German to find
+some trace of Sabran's name. At the first he saw often some mention of
+the Cuirassiers d'Orléans, and of their intrepid Colonel Commandant:
+some raid, skirmish, or charge in which they had been conspicuous for
+reckless gallantry. But after the month of November he could find
+nothing. The whole regiment seemed to have been obliterated from
+existence.
+
+Winter settled down on Central Austria with cold silence, with roads
+blocked and mountains impassable. The dumbness, the solitude around
+her, which she had always loved so well, now grew to her intolerable.
+It seemed like death.
+
+Paris capitulated. The news reached her at the hour of a violent
+snowstorm; the postillion of her post-sledge bringing it had his feet
+frozen.
+
+Though her cousins of Lilienhöhe were amongst those who entered the
+city as conquerors, the fate of Paris smote her with a heavy blow. She
+felt as if the cold of the outer world had chilled her very bones, her
+very soul. The Princess, looking at her, was afraid to rejoice.
+
+On the following day she wrote to her cousin Hugo of Lilienhöhe, who
+was in Paris with the Imperial Guard. She asked him to inquire for and
+tell her the fate of a friend, the Marquis de Sabran.
+
+In due time Prince Hugo answered:
+
+'The gentleman you asked for was one of the most dangerous of our
+enemies. He commanded a volunteer cavalry regiment, which was almost
+cut to pieces by the Bavarian horse in an engagement before Orleans.
+Two or three alone escaped; their Colonel was severely wounded in
+the thigh, and had his charger shot dead under him. He was taken
+prisoner by the Bavarians after a desperate resistance. Whilst he
+lay on the ground he shot three of our men with his revolver. He was
+sent to a fortress, I think Ehrenbreitstein, but I will inquire more
+particularly. I am sorry to think that you have any French friends.
+
+By-and-by she heard that he had been confined not at Ehrenbreitstein
+but at a more obscure and distant fortress on the Elbe; that his wounds
+had been cured, and that he would shortly be set free like other
+prisoners of war. In the month of March in effect she received a brief
+letter from his own hand, gloomy and profoundly dejected.
+
+'Our plans were betrayed,' he wrote. 'We were surprised and surrounded
+just as we had hobbled our horses and lain down to rest, after being
+the whole day in the saddle. Bavarian cavalry, outnumbering us four to
+one, attacked us almost ere we could mount our worn-out beasts. My
+poor troopers were cut to pieces. They hunted me down when my charger
+dropped, and I was made a prisoner. When they could they despatched
+me to one of their places on the Elbe. I have been here December and
+January. I am well. I suppose I must be very strong; nothing kills
+me. They are now about to send me back to the frontier. My beautiful
+Paris! What a fate! But I forget, I cannot hope for your sympathy; your
+kinsmen are our conquerors. I know not whether the house I lived in
+there exists, but if you will write me a word at Romaris, you will be
+merciful, and show me that you do not utterly despise a lost cause and
+a vanquished soldier.'
+
+She wrote to him at Romaris, and the paper she wrote on felt her tears.
+In conclusion she said:
+
+'Whenever you will, come and make sure for yourself that both the
+Princess Ottilie and I honour courage and heroism none the less because
+it is companioned by misfortune.'
+
+But he did not come.
+
+She understood why he did not. An infinite pity for him overflowed her
+heart. His public career interrupted, his country ruined, his future
+empty, what remained to him? Sometimes she thought, with a blush on her
+face, though she was all alone: 'I do.' But then, if he never came to
+hear that?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+The little hamlet of Romaris, on the coast of Finisterre, was very dull
+and dark and silent. A few grave peasant women knitted as they walked
+down the beach or sat at their doors; a few children did the same. Out
+on the _landes_ some cows were driven through the heather and broom;
+out on the sea some fishing-boats with rough, red sails were rocking to
+and fro. All was melancholy, silent, poor; life was hard at Romaris for
+all. The weatherbeaten church looked grey and naked on a black rock;
+the ruins of the old _manoir_ faced it amidst sands and surfs; the only
+thing of beauty was the bay, and that for the folk of Romaris had no
+beauty; they had seen it kill so many.
+
+There was never any change at Romaris, unless it were a change in the
+weather, a marriage, a birth, or a death. Therefore the women and
+children who were knitting had lifted up their heads as a stranger,
+accompanied by their priest, had come down over the black rocks, on
+which the church stood, towards the narrow lane that parted the houses
+where they clustered together face to face on the edge of the shore.
+
+Their priest, an old man much loved by them, came slowly towards them,
+conversing in low tones with the stranger, who had been young and
+handsome, and a welcome sight, since a traveller to Romaris always
+needed a sailing-boat or a rowing-boat, a guide over the moors, or a
+drive in an ox-waggon through the deep-cut lanes of the country.
+
+But they had ceased to think of such things as these when the curate,
+with his hands extended as when he blessed them, had said in _bas_
+Breton as he stood beside them:
+
+'My children, this is the last of the Sabrans of Romaris, come back to
+us from the far west that lies in the setting of the sun. Salute him,
+and show him that in Brittany we do not forget--nay, not in a hundred
+years.'
+
+Many years had gone by since then, and of the last of the old race,
+Romaris had scarcely seen more than when he had been hidden from
+their sight on the other side of the heaving ocean. Sabran rarely came
+thither. There was nothing to attract a man who loved the world and
+who was sought by it, in the stormy sea coast, the strip of sea-lashed
+oak forest, that one tall tower with its gaunt walls of stone which
+was all that was left of what had once been the fortress of his race.
+Now and then they saw him, chiefly when he had heard that there was
+wild weather on the western coast, and at such times he would go out
+in their boats to distressed vessels, or steer through churning waters
+to reach a fishing-smack in trouble, with a wild courage and an almost
+fierce energy which made him for the moment one of themselves. But
+such times had been few, and all that Romaris really knew of the last
+marquis was that he was a gay gentleman away there in distant Paris.
+
+He had been a mere name to them. Now and then he had sent fifty
+napoleons, or a hundred, to the old priest for such as were poor or
+sick amongst them. That was all. Now after the war he came hither.
+Paris had become hateful to him; his political career was ended, at
+all events for the time; the whole country groaned in anguish; the
+vices and follies that had accompanied his past life disgusted him
+in remembrance. He had been wounded and a prisoner; he had suffered
+betrayal at unworthy hands; Cochonette had sold him to the Prussians,
+in revenge of his desertion of her.
+
+He was further removed from the Countess von Szalras than ever. In the
+crash with which the Second Empire had fallen and sunk out of sight for
+evermore, his own hopes had gone down like a ship that sinks suddenly
+in a dark night. All his old associations were broken, half his old
+friends were dead or ruined; gay châteaux that he had ever been welcome
+at were smoking ruins or melancholy hospitals; the past had been
+felled to the ground like the poor avenues of the Bois. It affected
+him profoundly. As far as he was capable of an impersonal sentiment
+he loved France, which had been for so many years his home, and which
+had always seemed to smile at him with indulgent kindness. Her vices,
+her disgrace, her feebleness, her fall, hurt him with an intense pain
+that was not altogether selfish, but had in it a nobler indignation, a
+nobler regret.
+
+When he was released by the Prussians and sent across the frontier, he
+went at once to this sad sea village of Romaris, to collect as best
+he might the shattered fragments of his life, which seemed to him as
+though it had been thrown down by an earthquake. He had resigned his
+place as deputy when he had offered his sword to France; he had now no
+career, no outlet for ambition, no occupation. Many of his old friends
+were dead or ruined; although such moderate means as he possessed were
+safe, they were too slender to give him any position adequate to his
+rank. His old life in Paris, even if Paris arose from her tribulations,
+gay and glorious once more, seemed to him altogether impossible. He had
+lost taste for those pleasures and distractions which had before the
+war--or before his sojourn on the Holy Isle--seemed to him the Alpha
+and Omega of a man's existence. '_Que faire?_' he asked himself wearily
+again and again. He did not even know whether his rooms in Paris had
+been destroyed or spared; a few thousands of francs which he had
+made by a successful speculation years before, and placed in foreign
+funds, were all he had to live on. His keen sense told him that the
+opportunity which might have replaced the Bourbon throne had been lost
+through fatal hesitation. His own future appeared to him like a blank
+dead wall that rose up in front of him barring all progress; he was no
+longer young enough to select a career and commence it. With passionate
+self-reproach he lamented all the lost irrevocable years that he had
+wasted.
+
+Romaris was not a place to cheer a disappointed and dejected soldier
+who had borne the burning pain of bodily wounds and the intolerable
+shame of captivity in a hostile land. Its loneliness, its darkness,
+its storms, its poverty, had nothing in them with which to restore his
+spirit to hope or his sinews to ambition. In these cold, bleak, windy
+days of a dreary and joyless spring-time, the dusky moors and the
+gruesome sea were desolate, without compensating grandeur. The people
+around him were all taciturn, dull, stupid; they had not suffered by
+the war, but they understood that, poor as they were, they would have
+to bear their share in the burden of the nation's ransom. They barred
+their doors and counted their hoarded gains in the dark with throbbing
+hearts, and stole out in the raw, wet, gusty dawns to kneel at the
+bleeding feet of their Christ. He envied them their faith; he could not
+comfort them, they could not comfort him; they were too far asunder.
+
+The only solace he had was the knowledge that he had done his duty by
+France, and to the memory of those whose name he bore; that he had
+rendered what service he could; that he had not fled from pain and
+peril; that he had at least worn his sword well and blamelessly; that
+he had not abandoned his discrowned city of pleasure in the day of
+humiliation and martyrdom. The only solace he had was that he felt
+Wanda von Szalras herself could have commanded him to do no more than
+he had done in this the Année Terrible.
+
+But, though his character had been purified and strengthened by the
+baptism of fire, and though his egotism had been destroyed by the
+endless scenes of suffering and of heroism which he had witnessed, he
+could not in a year change so greatly that he could be content with the
+mere barren sense of duty done and honour redeemed. He was deeply and
+restlessly miserable. He knew not where to turn, either for occupation
+or for consolation. Time hung on his hands like a wearisome wallet of
+stones.
+
+When all the habits of life are suddenly rent asunder, they are like a
+rope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or they may be
+thrown altogether aside and a new strand woven, but they will never be
+the same thing again.
+
+Romaris, with its few wind-tortured trees and its leaden-hued dangerous
+seas, seemed to him, indeed, a _champ des trépassés_, as it was called,
+a field of death. The naked, ugly, half-ruined towers, which no ivy
+shrouded and no broken marble ennobled, as one or the other would have
+done had it been in England or in Italy, was a dreary residence for
+a man who was used to all the elegant and luxurious habits of a man
+of the world, who was also a lover of art and a collector of choice
+trifles. His rooms had been the envy of his friends, with all their
+eighteenth century furniture, and their innumerable and unclassified
+treasures; when he had opened his eyes of a morning a pastel of La
+Tour had smiled at him, rose-coloured windows had made even a grey
+sky smile. Without, there had been the sound of wheels going down
+the gay Boulevard Haussmann. All Paris had passed by, tripping and
+talking, careless and mirthful, beneath his gilded balconies bright
+with canariensis and volubilis; and on a little table, heaped in
+their hundreds, had been cards that bade him to all the best and most
+agreeable houses, whilst, betwixt them, slipped coyly in many an
+amorous note, many an unlooked-for declaration, many an eagerly-desired
+appointment.
+
+'_Quel beau temps!_' he thought, as he awoke in the chill, bare,
+unlively chamber of the old tower by the sea; and it seemed to him
+that he must be dreaming: that all the months of the war had been
+a nightmare; that if he fully awakened he would find himself once
+more with the April sunshine shining through the rose glass, and
+the carriages rolling beneath over the asphalt road. But it was no
+nightmare, it was a terrible, ghastly reality to him, as to so many
+thousands. There were the scars on his breast and his loins where
+the Prussian steel had hacked and the Prussian shot had pierced him;
+there was his sword in a corner all dinted, notched, stained; there
+was a crowd of hideous ineffaceable tumultuous memories; it was all
+true enough, only too true, and he was alone at Romaris, with all his
+dreams and ambitions faded into thin air, vanished like the blown burst
+bubbles of a child's sport.
+
+In time to come he might recover power and nerve to recommence his
+struggle for distinction, but at present it seemed to him that all was
+over. His imprisonment had shaken and depressed him as nothing else
+in the trials of war could have done. He had been shut up for months
+alone, with his own desperation. To a man of high courage and impatient
+appetite for action there is no injury so great and in its effect so
+lasting as captivity. Joined to this he had the fever of a strong, and
+now perfectly hopeless, passion.
+
+Pacing to and fro the brick floor of the tower looking down on the
+sands and rocks of the coast, his thoughts were incessantly with Wanda
+von Szalras in her stately ancient house, built so high up amidst the
+mountains and walled in by the great forests and the ice slopes of the
+glaciers. In the heat and stench of carnage he had longed for a breath
+of that mountain breeze, for a glance from those serene eyes; he longed
+for them still.
+
+As he passed to and fro in the wild wintry weather, his heart was sick
+with hope deferred, with unavailing regret and repentance, with useless
+longings.
+
+It was near noonday; there was no sun; a heavy wrack of cloud was
+sweeping up from the west; on the air the odour of rotting fish and
+of fish-oil, and of sewage trickling uncovered to the beach, were too
+strong to be driven away by the pungency of the sea.
+
+The sea was high and moaning loud; the dusk was full of rain; the
+wind-tormented trees groaned and seemed to sigh; their boughs were
+still scarce in bud though May had come. He felt cold, weary, hopeless.
+His walk brought no warmth to his veins, and his thoughts none to
+his heart. The moisture of the air seemed to chill him to the bone,
+and he went within and mounted the broken granite stairs to his
+solitary chamber, bare of all save the simplest necessaries, gloomy
+and cheerless with the winds and the bats beating together at the high
+iron-barred casement. He wearily lighted a little oil lamp, and threw
+a log or two of drift-wood on the hearth and set fire to them with a
+faggot of dried ling.
+
+He dreaded his long lonely evening.
+
+He had set the lamp on a table while he had set fire to the wood; its
+light fell palely on a small white square thing. It was a letter. He
+took it up eagerly; he, who in Paris had often tossed aside, with a
+passing glance, the social invitations of the highest personages and
+the flattering words of the loveliest women.
+
+Here, any letter seemed a friend, and as he took up this his pulse
+quickened; he saw that it was sealed with armorial bearings which he
+knew--a shield bearing three vultures with two knights as supporters,
+and with the motto '_Gott und mein Schwert_;' the same arms, the same
+motto as were borne upon the great red and gold banner floating from
+the keep on the north winds at the Hohenszalrasburg. He opened it with
+a hand which shook a little and a quick throb of pleasure at his heart.
+He had scarcely hoped that she would write again to him. The sight of
+her writing filled him with a boundless joy, the purest he had ever
+known called forth by the hand of woman.
+
+The letter was brief, grave, kind. As he read he seemed to hear the
+calm harmonious voice of the lady of Hohenszalras speaking to him in
+her mellowed and softened German tongue.
+
+She sent him words of consolation, of sympathy, of congratulation, on
+the course of action he had taken in a time of tribulation, which had
+been the touchstone of character to so many.
+
+'Tell me something of Romaris,' she said in conclusion. 'I am sure
+you will grow to care for the place and the people, now that you seek
+both in the hour of the martyrdom of France. Have you any friends near
+you? Have you books? How do your days pass? How do you fill up time,
+which must seem so dull and blank to you after the fierce excitations
+and the rapid changes of war? Tell me all about your present life, and
+remember that we at Hohenszalras know how to honour courage and heroic
+misfortune.'
+
+He laid the letter down after twice reading it. Life seemed no longer
+all over for him. He had earned her praise and her sympathy. It was
+doubtful if years of the most brilliant political successes would have
+done as much as his adversity, his misadventure, and his daring had
+done for him in her esteem. She had the blood of twenty generations of
+warriors in her, and nothing appealed so forcibly to her sympathies and
+her instincts as the heroism of the sword. Those few lines too were
+a permission to write to her. He replied at once, with a gratitude
+somewhat guardedly expressed, and with details almost wholly impersonal.
+
+She was disappointed that he said so little of himself, but she did
+justice to the delicacy of the carefully guarded words from a man
+whose passion appealed to her by its silence, where it would only have
+alienated her by any eloquence. Of Romaris he said nothing, save that,
+had Dante ever been upon their coast, he would have added another canto
+to the 'Purgatorio,' more desolate and more unrelieved in gloom than
+any other.
+
+'Does he regret Cochonette?' she thought, with a jealous
+contemptuousness of which she was ashamed as soon as she felt it.
+
+Having once written to her, however, he thought himself privileged
+to write again, and did so several times. He wrote with ease, grace,
+and elegance: he wrote as he spoke, which gives this charm to
+correspondence, seem close at hand to the reader in intimate communion.
+The high culture of his mind displayed itself without effort, and he
+had that ability of polished expression which is in our day too often
+a neglected one. His letters became welcome to her: she answered them
+briefly, but she let him see that they were agreeable to her. There
+was in them the note of a profound depression, of an unuttered, but
+suggested hopelessness which touched her. If he had expressed it in
+plain words, it would not have appealed to her one half so forcibly.
+
+They remained only the letters of a man of culture to a woman capable
+of comprehending the intellectual movement of the time, but it
+was because of this limitation that she allowed them. Any show of
+tenderness would have both alarmed and alienated her. There was no
+reason after all, she thought, why a frank friendship should not exist
+between them.
+
+Sometimes she was surprised at herself for having conceded so much,
+and angry that she had done so. Happily he had the good taste to take
+no advantage of it. Interesting as his letters were they might have
+been read from the housetops. With that inconsistency of her sex from
+which hitherto she had always flattered herself she had been free, she
+occasionally felt a passing disappointment that they were not more
+personal as regarded himself. Reticence is a fine quality; it is the
+marble of human nature. But sometimes it provokes the impatience that
+the marble awoke in Pygmalion.
+
+Once only he spoke of his own aims. Then he wrote:
+
+'You bade me do good at Romaris. Candidly, I see no way to do it
+except in saving a crew off a wreck, which is not an occasion that
+presents itself every week. I cannot benefit these people materially,
+since I am poor; I cannot benefit them morally, because I have not
+their faith in the things unseen, and I have not their morality in the
+things tangible. They are God-fearing, infinitely patient, faithful
+in their daily lives, and they reproach no one for their hard lot,
+cast on an iron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at risk
+of their lives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What
+should I say to them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience,
+one petulant mutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only
+take them what the world always takes into solitude--discontent. It
+would be a cruel gift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any
+other. It is a homely saying that no blood comes out of a stone; so,
+out of a life saturated with the ironies, the contempt, the disbelief,
+the frivolous philosophies, the hopeless negations of what we call
+society, there can be drawn no water of hope and charity, for the
+well-head--belief--is dried up at its source. Some pretend, indeed,
+to find in humanity what they deny to exist as deity, but I should
+be incapable of the illogical exchange. It is to deny that the seed
+sprang from a root; it is to replace a grand and illimitable theism by
+a finite and vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased
+mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the
+poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a _vibrion_,
+a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere
+bundle of phosphorus and carbon? how can it contain the elements of
+worship; what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the
+weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty.
+It becomes ridiculous. The _carpe diem_ of the classic sensualists, the
+morality of the "Satyricon" or the "Decamerone," are its only natural
+concomitants and outcome; but as yet it is not honest enough to say
+this. It affects the soothsayer's long robe, the sacerdotal frown, and
+is a hypocrite.'
+
+In answer she wrote back to him:
+
+'I do not urge you to have my faith: what is the use? Goethe was
+right. It is a question between a man and his own heart. No one should
+venture to intrude there. But taking life even as you do, it is surely
+a casket of mysteries. May we not trust that at the bottom of it, as
+at the bottom of Pandora's, there may be hope? I wish again to think
+with Goethe that immortality is not an inheritance, but a greatness
+to be achieved like any other greatness, by courage, self-denial, and
+purity of purpose--a reward allotted to the just. This is fanciful, may
+be, but it is not illogical. And without being either a Christian or a
+Materialist, without beholding either majesty or divinity in humanity,
+surely the best emotion that our natures know--pity--must be large
+enough to draw us to console where we can, and sustain where we can, in
+view of the endless suffering, the continual injustice, the appalling
+contrasts, with which the world is full. Whether man be the _vibrion_
+or the heir to immortality, the bundle of carbon or the care of angels,
+one fact is indisputable: he suffers agonies, mental and physical,
+that are wholly out of proportion to the brevity of his life, while he
+is too often weighted from infancy with hereditary maladies, both of
+body and of character. This is reason enough, I think, for us all to
+help each other, even though we feel, as you feel, that we are as lost
+children wandering in a great darkness, with no thread or clue to guide
+us to the end.'
+
+When Sabran read this answer, he mused to himself:
+
+'Pity! how far would her pity reach? How great offences would it cover?
+She has compassion for the evil-doers, but it is easy, since the evil
+does not touch her. She sits on the high white throne of her honour and
+purity, and surveys the world with beautiful but serene compassion.
+If the mud of its miry labyrinths reached and soiled her, would her
+theories prevail? They are noble, but they are the theories of one who
+sits in safety behind a gate of ivory and jasper, whilst outside, far
+below, the bitter tide of the human sea surges and moans too far off,
+too low down, for its sound to reach within. _Tout comprendre, c'est
+tout pardonner._ But since she would never understand, how could she
+ever pardon? There are things that the nature must understand rather
+than the mind; and her nature is as high, as calm, as pure as the snows
+of her high hills.'
+
+And then the impulse came over him for a passing moment to tell her
+what he had never told any living creature; to make confession to
+her and abide her judgment, even though he should never see her face
+again. But the impulse shrank and died away before the remembrance
+of her clear, proud eyes. He could not humiliate himself before her.
+He would have risked her anger; he could not brave her disdain.
+Moreover, straight and open ways were hot natural to him, though he was
+physically brave to folly. There was a subtlety and a reticence in him
+which were the enemies of candour.
+
+To her he was more frank than to any other because her influence
+was great on him, and a strong reverence was awakened in him that
+was touched by a timid fear quite alien to a character naturally
+contemptuously cynical and essentially proud. But even to her he could
+not bring himself to be entirely truthful in revelation of his past.
+Truthfulness is in much a habit, and he had never acquired its habit.
+When he was most sincere there was always some reserve lying behind
+it. This was perhaps one of the causes of the attraction he exercised
+on all women. All women are allured by the shadows and the suggestions
+of what is but imperfectly revealed. Even on the clear, strong nature
+of Wanda von Szalras it had its unconscious and intangible charm. She
+herself was like daylight, but the subtle vague charm of the shadows
+had their seduction for her; Night holds dreams and passions that fade
+and flee before the lucid noon, and who, at noonday wishes not for
+night?
+
+For himself, the letters he received from her seemed the only things
+that bound him to life at all.
+
+The betrayal of him by a base and mercenary woman had hurt him more
+than it was worthy to do; it had stung his pride and saddened him in
+this period of adversity with a sense of degradation. He had been sold
+by a courtezan; it seemed to him to make him ridiculous as Samson was
+ridiculous, and he had no gates of Gaza to pull down upon himself and
+her. He could only be idle, and stare at an unoccupied and valueless
+future. The summer went on, and he remained at Romaris. An old servant
+had sent him word that all his possessions were safe in Paris, and his
+apartments unharmed; but he felt no inclination to go there: he felt no
+sympathy with Communists or Versaillists, with Gambetta or Gallifet. He
+stayed on at the old storm-beaten sea-washed tower, counting his days
+chiefly by the coming to him of any line from the castle by the lake.
+
+She seemed to understand that and pity it, for each week brought him
+some tidings.
+
+At midsummer she wrote him word that she was about to be honoured again
+by a two days' visit of her Imperial friends.
+
+'We shall have, perforce, a large house party,' she said. 'Will you
+be inclined this time to join it? It is natural that you should
+sorrow without hope for your country, but the fault of her disasters
+lies not with you. It is, perhaps, time that you should enter the
+world again; will you commence with what for two days only will be
+worldly--Hohenszalras? Your old friends the monks will welcome you
+willingly and lovingly on the Holy Isle?'
+
+He replied with gratitude, but he refused. He did not make any plea or
+excuse; he thought it best to let the simple denial stand by itself.
+She would understand it.
+
+'Do not think, however,' he wrote, 'that I am the less profoundly
+touched by your admirable goodness to a worsted and disarmed combatant
+in a lost cause.'
+
+'It is the causes that are lost which are generally the noble ones,'
+she said in answer. 'I do not see why you should deem your life at an
+end because a sham empire, which you always despised, has fallen to
+pieces. If it had not perished by a blow from without, it would have
+crumbled to pieces from its own internal putrefaction.'
+
+'The visit has passed off very well,' she continued. 'Every one was
+content, which shows their kindness, for these things are all of
+necessity so much alike that it is difficult to make them entertaining.
+The weather was fortunately fine, and the old house looked bright.
+You did rightly not to be present, if you felt festivity out of tone
+with your thoughts. If, however, you are ever inclined for another
+self-imprisonment upon the island, you know that your friends, both at
+the monastery and at the burg, will be glad to see you, and the monks
+bid me salute you with affection.'
+
+A message from Mdme. Ottilie, a little news of the horses, a few
+phrases on the politics of the hour, and the letter was done. But,
+simple as it was, it seemed to him to be like a ray of sunshine amidst
+the gloom of his empty chamber.
+
+From her the permission to return to the monastery when he would
+seemed to say so much. He wrote her back calm and grateful words of
+congratulation and cordiality; he commenced with the German formality,
+'Most High Lady,' and ended them with the equally formal 'devoted and
+obedient servant;' but it seemed to him as if under that cover of
+ceremony she must see his heart beating, his blood throbbing; she must
+know very well, and if knowing, she suffered him to return to the Holy
+Isle, why then--he was all alone, but he felt the colour rise to his
+face.
+
+'And I must not go! I must not go!' he thought, and looked at his
+pistols.
+
+He ought sooner to blow his brains out, and leave a written confession
+for her.
+
+The hoarse sound of the sea surging amongst the rocks at the base of
+the tower was all that stirred the stillness; evening was spreading
+over all the monotonous inland country; a west wind was blowing and
+rustling amidst the gorse; a woman led a cow between the dolmen,
+stopping for it to crop grass here and there; the fishing-boats were
+far out to sea, hidden under the vapours and the shadows. It was all
+melancholy, sad-coloured, chill, lonesome. As he leaned against the
+embrasure of the window and looked down, other familiar scenes, long
+lost, rose up to his memory. He saw a wide green rolling river, long
+lines of willows and of larches bending under a steel-hued sky, a vast
+dim plain stretching away to touch blue mountains, a great solitude,
+a silence filled at intervals with the pathetic song of the swans,
+chanting sorrowfully because the nights grew cold, the ice began to
+gather, the food became scanty, and they were many in number.
+
+'I must not go!' he said to himself; 'I must never see Hohenszalras.'
+
+And he lit his study lamp, and held her letter to it and burnt it.
+It was his best way to do it honour, to keep it holy. He had the
+letters of so many worthless women locked in his drawers and caskets
+in his rooms in Paris. He held himself unworthy to retain hers. He
+had burned each written by her as it had come to him, in that sort
+of exaggeration of respect with which it seemed to him she was most
+fittingly treated by him. There are less worthy offerings than the
+first scruple of an unscrupulous life. It is like the first pure drops
+that fall from a long turbid and dust-choked fountain.
+
+As he walked the next day upon the windblown, rock-strewn strip of sand
+that parted the old oak wood from the sea, he thought restlessly of her
+in those days of stately ceremony which suited her so well. What did he
+do here, what chance had he to be remembered by her? He chafed at his
+absence, yet it seemed to him impossible that he could ever go to her.
+What had been at first keen calculation with him had now become a finer
+instinct, was now due to a more delicate sentiment, a truer and loftier
+emotion. What could he ever look to her if he sought her but a mere
+base fortune-seeker, a mere liar, with no pride and no manhood in him?
+And what else was he? he thought, with bitterness, as he paced to and
+fro the rough strip of beach, with the dusky heaving waves trembling
+under a cloudy sky, where a red glow told the place of the setting sun.
+
+There were few bolder men living than He, and he was cynical and
+reckless before many things that most men reverence; but at the thought
+of her possible scorn he felt himself tremble like a child. He thought
+he would rather never see her face again than risk her disdain; there
+was in him a vague romantic wishfulness rather to die, so that she
+might think well of his memory, than live in her love through any
+baseness that would be unworthy of her.
+
+Sin had always seemed a mere superstitious name to him, and if he had
+abstained from its coarser forms it had been rather from the revolt
+of the fine taste of a man of culture than from any principle or
+persuasion of duty. Men he believed were but ephemera, sporting their
+small hours, weaving their frail webs, and swept away by the great
+broom of destiny as spiders by the housewife. In the spineless doctrine
+of altruism he had had too robust a temperament, too clear a reason,
+to seek a guide for conduct. He had lived for himself, and had seen
+no cause to do otherwise. That he had not been more criminal had been
+due partly to indolence, partly to pride. In his love for Wanda von
+Szalras, a love with which considerable acrimony had mingled at the
+first, he yet, through all the envy and the impatience which alloyed
+it, reached a moral height which he had never touched before. Between
+her and him a great gulf yawned. He abstained from any effort to pass
+it. It was the sole act of self-denial of a selfish life, the sole
+obedience to conscience in a character which obeyed no moral laws, but
+was ruled by a divided tyranny of natural instinct and conventional
+honour.
+
+The long silent hours of thought in the willow-shaded cloisters of
+the Holy Isle had not been wholly without fruit. He desired, with
+passion and sincerity, that she should think well of him, but he did
+not dare to wish for more; love offered from him to her seemed to him
+as if it would be a kind of blasphemy. He remembered in his far-off
+childhood, which at times still seemed so near to him, nearer than all
+that was around him, the vague, awed, wistful reverence with which
+he had kneeled in solitary hours before the old dim picture of the
+Madonna with the lamp burning above it, a little golden flame in the
+midst of the gloom; he remembered so well how his fierce young soul and
+his ignorant yearning child's heart had gone out in a half-conscious
+supplication, how it had seemed to him that if he only knelt long
+enough, prayed well enough, she would come down to him and lay her
+hands on him. It was all so long ago, yet, when he thought of Wanda
+von Szalras, something of that same emotion rose up in him, something
+of the old instinctive worship awoke in him. In thought he prostrated
+himself once more whenever the memory of her came to him. He had no
+religion; she became one to him.
+
+Meanwhile, he was constantly thinking restlessly to himself, 'Did I do
+ill not to go?'
+
+His bodily life was at Romaris, but his mental life was at
+Hohenszalras. He was always thinking of her as she would look in those
+days of the Imperial visit; he could see the stately ceremonies of
+welcome, the long magnificence of the banquets, the great Rittersaal
+with cressets of light blazing on its pointed emblazoned roofs; he
+could see her as she would move down the first quadrille which she
+would dance with her Kaiser: she would wear her favourite ivory-white
+velvet most probably, and her wonderful old jewels, and all her orders.
+She would look as if she had stepped down off a canvas of Velasquez
+or Vandyck, and she would be a little tired, a little contemptuous, a
+little indifferent, despite her loyalty; she would be glad, he knew,
+when the brilliant gathering was broken up, and the old house, and the
+yew terrace, and the green lake were all once more quiet beneath the
+rays of the watery moon. She was so unlike other women. She would not
+care about a greatness, a compliment, a success more or less. Such
+triumphs were for the people risen yesterday, not for a Countess von
+Szalras.
+
+He knew the simplicity of her life and the pride of her temper,
+and they moved him to the stronger admiration because he knew also
+that those mere externals which she held in contempt had for him an
+exaggerated value. He was scarcely conscious himself of how great a
+share the splendour of her position, united to her great indifference
+to it, had in the hold she had taken on his imagination and his
+passions. He did know that there were so much greater nobilities in
+her that he was vaguely ashamed of the ascendency which her mere rank
+took in his thoughts of her. Yet he could not divest her of it, and
+it seemed to enhance both her bodily and spiritual beauty, as the
+golden calyx of the lily makes its whiteness seem the whiter by its
+neighbourhood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+In the Iselthal the summer was more brilliant and warm than usual. The
+rains were less frequent, and the roses on the great sloping lawns
+beneath the buttresses and terraces of Hohenszalras were blooming
+freely.
+
+Their mistress did not for once give them much heed. She rode long and
+fast through the still summer woods, and came back after nightfall. Her
+men of business, during their interviews with her, found her attention
+less perfect, her interest less keen. In stormy days she sat in the
+library, and read Heine and Schiller often, and all the philosophers
+and men of science rarely. A great teacher has said that the Humanities
+must outweigh the Sciences at all times, and he is unquestionably
+true, if it were only for the reason that in the sweet wise lore of
+ages every human heart in pain and perplexity finds a refuge; whilst in
+love or in sorrow the sciences seem the poorest and chilliest of mortal
+vanities that ever strove to measure the universe with a foot-rule.
+
+The Princess watched her with wistful, inquisitive eyes, but dared
+not name the person of whom they both thought most. Wanda was herself
+intolerant of the sense of impatience with which she awaited the coming
+of the sturdy pony that brought the post-bag from Windisch-Matrey.
+He in his loneliness and emptiness of life on the barren sea-shore
+of Romaris did not more anxiously await her letters than did the
+châtelaine of Hohenszalras, amidst all her state, her wealth, and her
+innumerable occupations, await his. She pitied him intensely; there was
+something pathetic to her in the earnestness with which he had striven
+to amend his ways of life, only to have his whole career shattered by
+an insensate and unlooked-for national war. She understood that his
+poverty stood in the path of his ambition, and she divined that his
+unhappiness had broken that spring of manhood in him which would have
+enabled him to construct a new career for himself out of the ruins of
+the old. She understood why he was listless and exhausted.
+
+There were moments when she was inclined to send him some invitation
+more cordial, some bidding more clear; but she hesitated to take a step
+which would bind her in her own honour to so much more. She knew that
+she ought not to suggest a hope to him to which she was not prepared
+to give full fruition. And again, how could he respond? It would be
+impossible for him to accept. She was one of the great alliances of
+Europe, and he was without fortune, without career, without a future.
+Even friendship was only possible whilst they were far asunder.
+
+Two years had gone by since he had come across from the monastery in
+the green and gold of a summer afternoon. The monks had not forgotten
+him; throughout the French war they had prayed for him. When their
+Prior saw her, he said anxiously sometimes: 'And the Markgraf von
+Sabran, will he never come to us again? Were we too dull for him?
+Will your Excellency remember us to him, if ever you can?' And she
+had answered with a strange emotion at her heart: 'His country is
+in trouble, holy father; a good son cannot leave his land in her
+adversity. No: I do not think he was dull with you; he was quite happy,
+I believe. Perhaps he may come again some day, who knows? He shall be
+told what you say.'
+
+Then a vision would rise up to her of herself and him, as they would
+be perhaps when they should be quite old. Perhaps he would retire into
+this holy retreat of the Augustines, and she would be a grave sombre
+woman, not gay and pretty and witty, as the Princess was. The picture
+was gloomy; she chased it away, and galloped her horse long and far
+through the forests.
+
+The summer had been so brilliant that the autumn which followed was
+cold and severe, earlier than usual, and heavy storms swept over the
+Tauern, almost ere the wheat harvest could be reaped. Many days were
+cheerless and filled only with the sound of incessant rains. In the
+Pinzgau and the Salzkammergut floods were frequent. The Ache and the
+Szalzach, with all their tributary streams and wide and lonely lakes,
+were carrying desolation and terror into many parts of the land which
+in summer they made beautiful. Almost every day brought her some
+tidings of some misfortunes in the villages on the farms belonging to
+her in the more distant parts of Austria; a mill washed away, a bridge
+down, a dam burst, a road destroyed, a harvest swept into the water,
+some damage or other done by the swollen river and torrents, she heard
+of by nearly every communication that her stewards and her lawyers made
+to her at this season.
+
+'Our foes the rivers are more insidious than your mighty enemy the
+salt water,' she wrote to Romaris. 'The sea deals open blows, and men
+know what they must expect if they go out on the vasty deep. But here
+a little brook that laughed and chirped at noon-day as innocently as
+a child may become at nightfall or dawn a roaring giant, devouring
+all that surrounds him. We pay heavily for the glory of our mountain
+waters.'
+
+These autumn weeks seemed very dreary to her. She visited her horses
+chafing at inaction in their roomy stalls, and attended to her affairs,
+and sat in the library or the octagon room hearing the rain beat
+against the emblazoned leaded panes, and felt the days, and above all
+the evenings, intolerably dull and melancholy. She had never heeded
+rain before, or minded the change of season.
+
+One Sunday a messenger rode through the drenching storm, and brought
+her a telegram from her lawyer in Salzburg. It said: 'Idrac flooded:
+many lives lost: great distress: fear town wholly destroyed. Please
+send instructions.'
+
+The call for action roused her as a trumpet sounding rouses a cavalry
+charger.
+
+'Instructions!' she echoed as she read. 'They write as if I could bid
+the Danube subside, or the Drave shrink in its bed!'
+
+She penned a hasty answer.
+
+'I will go to Idrac myself.'
+
+Then she sent a message also to S. Johann im Wald for a special train
+to be got in readiness for her, and told one of her women and a trusty
+servant to be ready to go with her to Vienna in an hour. It was still
+early in the forenoon.
+
+'Are you mad?' cried Madame Ottilie, when she was informed of the
+intended journey.
+
+Wanda kissed her hand.
+
+'There is no madness in what I shall do, dear mother, and Bela surely
+would have gone.'
+
+'Can you stay the torrents of heaven? Can you arrest a river in its
+wrath?'
+
+'No; but lives are often lost because poor people lose their senses in
+fright. I shall be calmer than anyone there. Besides, the place belongs
+to us; we are bound to share its danger. If only Egon were not away
+from Hungary!'
+
+'But he is away. You have driven him away.'
+
+'Do not dissuade me, dearest mother. It would be cowardice not to go.'
+
+'What can women do in such extremities?'
+
+'But we of Hohenszalras must not be mere women when we are wanted in
+any danger. Remember Luitgarde von Szalras, the _kuttengeier._'
+
+The Princess sighed, prayed, even wept, but Wanda was gently
+inflexible. The Princess could not see why a precious life should be
+endangered for the sake of a little half barbaric, half Jewish town,
+which was remarkable for nothing except for shipping timber and selling
+_salbling._ The population was scarcely Christian, so many Hebrews were
+there, and so benighted were the Sclavonian poor, who between them made
+up the two thousand odd souls that peopled Idrac. To send a special
+messenger there, and to give any quantity of money that the distress
+of the moment might demand, would be all right and proper; indeed,
+an obligation on the owner of the little feudal river-side town. But
+to go! A Countess von Szalras to go in person where not one out of a
+hundred of the citizens had been properly baptized or confirmed! The
+Princess could not view this Quixotism in any other light than that of
+an absolute insanity.
+
+'Bela lost his life in just such a foolish manner!' she pleaded.
+
+'So did the saints, dear mother,' said his sister, gently.
+
+The Princess coloured and coughed.
+
+'Of course, I am aware that many holy lives have been--have been--what
+appears to our finite senses wasted,' she said, with a little asperity.
+'But I am also aware, Wanda, that the duties most neglected are those
+which lie nearest home and have the least display; consideration for
+_me_ might be better, though less magnificent, than so much heroism for
+Idrac.'
+
+'It pains me that you should put it in that light, dearest mother,'
+said Wanda, with inexhaustible patience. 'Were you in any danger I
+would stay by you first, of course; but you are in none. These poor,
+forlorn, ignorant, cowardly creatures are in the very greatest. I
+draw large revenues from the place; I am in honour bound to share
+its troubles. Pray do not seek to dissuade me. It is a matter not of
+caprice but of conscience. I shall be in no possible peril myself. I
+shall go down the river in my own vessel, and I will telegraph to you
+from every town at which I touch.'
+
+The Princess ceased not to lament, to oppose, to bemoan her own
+powerlessness to check intolerable follies. Sitting in her easy chair
+in her warm blue-room, sipping her chocolate, the woes of a distant
+little place on the Danube, whose population was chiefly Semitic, were
+very bearable and altogether failed to appeal to her.
+
+Wanda kissed her, asked her blessing humbly, and took her way in the
+worst of a blinding storm along the unsafe and precipitous road which
+went over the hills to Windisch-Matrey.
+
+'What false sentiment it all is!' thought the Princess, left alone.
+'She has not seen this town since she was ten years old. She knows that
+they are nearly all Jews, or quite heathenish Sclavonians. She can do
+nothing at all--what should a woman do?--and yet she is so full of her
+conscience that she goes almost to the Iron Gates in quest of a duty in
+the wettest of weather, while she leaves a man like Egon and a man like
+Sabran wretched for want of a word! I must say,' thought the Princess,
+'false sentiment is almost worse than none at all!'
+
+The rains were pouring down from leaden skies, hiding all the sides of
+the mountains and filling the valleys with masses of vapour. The road
+was barely passable; the hill torrents dashed across it; the little
+brooks were swollen to water-courses; the protecting wall on more than
+one giddy height had been swept away; the gallop of the horses shook
+the frail swaying galleries and hurled the loosened stones over the
+precipice with loud resounding noise. The drive to Matrey and thence
+with post-horses to S. Johann im Wald, the nearest railway station, was
+in itself no little peril, but it was accomplished before the day had
+closed in, and the special train she had ordered being in readiness
+left at once for Vienna, running through the low portions of the
+Pinzgau, which were for the most part under water.
+
+All the way was dim and watery, and full of the sound of running
+or of falling water. The Ache and the Szalsach, both always deep
+and turbulent rivers, were swollen and boisterous, and swirled and
+thundered in their rocky beds; in the grand Pass of Lueg the gloom,
+always great, was dense as at midnight, and when they reached Salzburg
+the setting sun was bursting through ink-black clouds, and shed a
+momentary glow as of fire upon the dark sides of the Untersberg, and
+flamed behind the towers of the great castle on its rocky throne. All
+travellers know the grandeur of that scene; familiar as it was to her
+she looked upward at it with awe and pleasure commingled. Salzburg in
+the evening light needs Salvator Rosa and Rembrandt together to portray
+it.
+
+The train only paused to take in water; the station was crowded as
+usual, set as it is between the frontiers of empire and kingdom, but in
+the brief interval she saw one whom she recognised amongst the throng,
+and she felt the colour come into her own face as she did so.
+
+She saw Sabran; he did not see her. Her train moved out of the station
+rapidly, to make room for the express from Munich; the sun dropped down
+into the ink-black clouds; the golden and crimson pomp of Untersberg
+changed to black and grey; the ivory and amber and crystal of the
+castle became stone and brick and iron, that frowned sombrely over a
+city sunk in river-mists and in rain-vapours. She felt angrily that
+there was an affinity between the landscape and herself; that so, at
+sight of him, a light had come into her life which had no reality in
+fact, prismatic colours baseless as a dream.
+
+She had longed to speak to him; to stretch out her hand to him; to
+say at least how her thoughts and her sympathies had been with him
+throughout the war. But her carriage was already in full onward
+movement, and in another moment had passed at high speed out of the
+station into that grand valley of the Szalzach where Hohensalzburg
+seems to tower as though Friederich Barbarossa did indeed sleep there.
+With a sigh she sank backward amongst her furs and cushions, and saw
+the soaring fortress pass, into the clouds.
+
+The night had now closed in; the rain fell heavily. As the little
+train, oscillating greatly from its lightness, swung over the iron
+rails, there was a continual sound of splashing water audible above
+the noise of the wheels and the throb of the engine. She had often
+travelled at night and had always slept soundly; this evening she could
+not sleep. She remained wide awake watching the swaying of the lamp,
+listening to the shrill shriek of the wheels as they rushed through
+water where some hillside brook had broken bounds and spread out in a
+shallow lagoon. The skies were overcast in every direction; the rain
+was everywhere unceasing; the night seemed to her very long.
+
+She pondered perpetually on his presence at Salzburg, and wondered if
+he were going to the Holy Isle. Three months had gone by since she had
+sent him the semi-invitation to her country.
+
+The train sped on; the day dawned; she began to get glimpses of the
+grand blue river, now grey and ochre-coloured and thick with mud, its
+turbid waves heaving sullenly under the stormy October skies. She had
+always loved the great Donau; she knew its cradle well in the north
+land of the Teutons. She had often watched the baby-stream rippling
+over the stones, and felt the charm, as of some magical transformation,
+as she thought of the same stream stretching broadly under the monastic
+walls of Klosterneuberg, rolling in tempest by the Iron Gates, and
+gathering its mighty volume higher and deeper to burst at last into
+the sunlight of the eastern sea. Amidst the levelled monotony of
+modern Europe the Danube keeps something of savage grandeur, something
+of legendary power, something of oriental charm; it is still often
+tameless, a half-barbaric thing, still a Tamerlane amidst rivers: and
+yet yonder at its birthplace it is such a slender thread of rippling
+water! She and Bela had crossed it with bare feet to get forget-me-nots
+in Taunus, talking together of Chriemhilde and her pilgrimage to the
+land of the Huns.
+
+The little train swung on steadily through the water above and below,
+and after a night of no little danger came safely to Vienna as the dawn
+broke. She went straight to her yacht, which was in readiness off the
+Lobau and weighed anchor as the pale and watery morning broadened into
+day above the shores that had seen Aspern and Wagram. The yacht was
+a yawl, strongly built and drawing little water, made on purpose for
+the ascent and descent of the Danube, from Passau up in the north to
+as far south as the Bosphorus if needed. The voyage had been of the
+greatest joys of hers and of Bela's childhood; they had read on deck
+alternately the 'Nibelungen-Lied' and the 'Arabian Nights,' clinging
+together in delighted awe as they passed through the darkness of the
+defile of Kasan.
+
+Idrac was situated between Pesth and Peterwardein, lying low on marshy
+ground that was covered with willows and intersected by small streams
+flowing from the interior to the Danube.
+
+The little town gave its name and its seigneurie to the owner of its
+burg; an ancient place built on a steep rock that rose sheer out of
+the fast-running waves, and dominated the passage of the stream. The
+Counts of Idrac had been exceeding powerful in the old times, when
+they had stopped at their will the right of way of the river; and
+their appanages with their title had come by marriage into the House
+of Szalras some four centuries before, and although the dominion over
+the river was gone, the fortress and the little town and all that
+appertained thereto still formed a considerable possession; it had
+usually been given with its Countship to the second son of the Szalras.
+
+Making the passage to Pesth in fourteen hours, the yacht dropped
+anchor before the Franz Josef Quai as the first stars came out above
+the Blocksburg, for by this time the skies had lightened and the rains
+had ceased. Here she stayed the night perforce, as an accident had
+occurred to the machinery of the vessel. She did not leave the yacht,
+but sent into the inner city for stores of provisions and of the local
+cordial, the _slibowitza_, to distribute to the half-drowned people
+amongst whom she was about to go. It was noonday before the yawl got
+under weigh and left the twin-towns behind her. A little way further
+down the stream they passed a great castle, standing amidst beech woods
+on a rock that rose up from fields covered with the Carlowitz vine. She
+looked at it with a sigh: it was the fortress of Kohacs, one of the
+many possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely.
+
+The weather had now cleared, but the skies were overcast, and the
+plains, which began to spread away monotonously from either shore,
+were covered with white fog. Soon the fog spread also over the river,
+and the yacht was compelled to advance cautiously and slowly, so that
+the voyage was several hours longer than usual. When the light of the
+next day broke they had come in sight of the flooded districts on their
+right: the immense flat fields that bore the flax and grain which make
+the commerce of Baja, of Neusatz, and of other riverain towns, were
+all changed to shallow estuaries. The Theiss, the Drave, and many
+minor streams, swollen by the long autumnal rains, had burst their
+boundaries and laid all the country under water for hundreds of square
+leagues. The granaries, freshly filled with the late abundant harvest,
+had at many places been flooded or destroyed: thousands of stacks of
+grain were floating like shapeless, dismasted vessels. Timber and the
+thatched roofs of the one-storied houses were in many places drifting
+too, like the flotsam and the hulls of wrecked ships.
+
+There are few scenes more dreary, more sad, more monotonous than those
+of a flat country swamped by flood: the sky above them was leaden
+and heavy, the Danube beneath them was turgid and discoloured; the
+shrill winds whistled through the brakes of willow, the water-birds,
+frightened, flew from their osier-beds on the islands, the bells of
+churches and watch-towers tolled dismally.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when she came within sight of her little
+town on the Sclavonian shore, which Ernst von Szalras had fired on
+August 29, 1526, to save it from the shame of violation by the Turks.
+Though he had perished, and most of the soldiers and townsfolk with
+him, the fortress, the _têtes du pont_, and the old water-gates and
+walls had been too strong for the flames to devour, and the town had
+been built up again by the Turks and subsequently by the Hungarians.
+
+The slender minarets of the Ottomans' two mosques still raised
+themselves amidst the old Gothic architecture of the mediæval
+buildings, and the straw-covered roofs and the white-plastered walls
+of the modern houses. As they steamed near it the minarets and the
+castle towers rose above what looked a world of waters, all else seemed
+swallowed in the flood; the orchards, which had surrounded all save the
+river-side of the town; were immersed almost to the summits of their
+trees. The larger vessels could never approach Idrac in ordinary times,
+the creek being too shallow on which it stood; but now the water was
+so high that though it would be too imprudent to anchor there, the
+yacht easily passed in, and hove-to underneath the water-walls, a pilot
+taking careful soundings as they steered. It was about three in the
+afternoon. The short, grey day was near its end; a shout of welcome
+rose from some people on the walls as they recognised the build and the
+ensign of the yawl. Some crowded boats were pulling away from the town,
+laden with fugitives and their goods.
+
+'How soon people run away! They are like rats,' she thought. 'I would
+sooner be like the stork, and not quit my nest if it were in flames.'
+
+She landed at the water-stairs of the castle. Men, women, and children
+came scrambling along the walls, where they were huddled together out
+of temporary reach of the flood, and threw themselves down at her
+feet and kissed her skirts with abject servility. They were half mad
+with terror, and amongst the population there were many hundreds of
+Jews, the most cowardly people in all the world. The boats were quite
+inadequate in number to the work they had to do; the great steamers
+passing up and down did not pause to help them; the flood was so
+general below Pesth that on the right shore of the river each separate
+village and township was busy with its own case and had no help for
+neighbours: the only aid came from those on the opposite shore, but
+that was scanty and unwisely ministered. The chief citizens of Idrac
+had lost their wits, as she had foreseen they would do. To ring the
+bells madly night and day, and fire off the old culverins from the
+water-gate, was all they seemed to know how to do. They told her that
+many lives had been lost, as the inland waters had risen in the night,
+and most of the houses were of only one storey. In the outlying
+flax-farms it was supposed that whole households had perished. In the
+town itself there were six feet of water everywhere, and many of the
+inhabitants were huddled together in the two mosques, which were now
+granaries, in the towers, and in the fortress itself; but several
+families had been enabled to escape, and had climbed upon the roofs,
+clinging to the chimneys for bare life.
+
+Her mere presence brought reviving hope and energy to the primitive
+population. Their Lady had a romantic legendary reputation amongst
+them, and they were ready to cling round the pennon of the yacht as
+their ancestors had rallied round the standard of Ernst von Szalras.
+
+She ascended to the Rittersaal of the fortress, and assembled a few of
+the men about her, who had the most influence and energy in the little
+place. She soon introduced some kind of system and method into the
+efforts made, promised largesse to those who should be the most active,
+and had the provisions she had brought distributed amongst those who
+most needed them. The boats of the yawl took many away to a temporary
+refuge on the opposite shore. Many others were brought in to the
+state-room of the castle for shelter. Houses were constantly falling,
+undermined by the water, and there were dead and wounded to be attended
+to, as well as the hungry and terrified living creatures. Once before,
+Idrac had been thus devastated by flood, but it had been far away in
+the previous century, and the example was too distant to have been a
+warning to the present generation.
+
+She passed a fatiguing and anxious night. It was impossible to
+think of sleep with so much misery around. The yacht was obliged to
+descend, the river for safe anchorage, but the boats remained. She
+went herself, now in one, now in another, to endeavour to inspire the
+paralysed people with some courage and animation. A little wine, a
+little bread, were all she took; food was very scarce. The victuals of
+the yacht's provisioning did not last long amongst so many famishing
+souls. She ordered her skipper at dawn to go down as far as Neusatz
+and purchase largely. There were five thousand people, counting those
+of the neighbourhood, or more, homeless and bereft of all shelter. The
+telegraph was broken, the poles had been snapped by the force of the
+water in many places.
+
+With dawn a furious storm gathered and broke, and renewed rains added
+their quota to the inundation and their discomfort to the exposed
+sufferers. The cold was great, and the chill that made them shudder
+from head to foot was past all cure by cordials. She regretted not
+to have brought Greswold with her. She was indifferent to danger,
+indefatigable in exertion, and strong as Libussa, brave as Chriemhilde.
+Because the place belonged to her in almost a feudal manner, she held
+herself bound to give her life for it if need be. Bela would have done
+what she was doing.
+
+Twice or thrice during the two following days she heard the people
+speak of a stranger who had arrived fifteen hours before her, and had
+wrought miracles of deliverance. Unless the stories told her were
+greatly exaggerated, this foreigner had shown a courage and devotion
+quite unequalled. He had thrown himself into the work at once on his
+arrival there in a boat from Neusatz, and had toiled night and day,
+enduring extreme fatigue and running almost every hour some dire peril
+of his life. He had saved whole families of the poorest and most
+wretched quarter; he had sprung on to roofs that were splitting and
+sinking, on to walls that were trembling and tottering, and had borne
+away in safety men, women, and children, the old, and the sick, and the
+very animals; he had infused some of his own daring and devotedness
+into the selfish and paralysed Hebrew population; priests and rabbis
+were alike unanimous in his praise, and she, as she heard, felt that
+he who had fought for France had been here for her sake. They told
+her that he was now out amongst the more distant orchards and fields,
+amidst the flooded farms where the danger was even greater than in the
+town itself. Some Czechs said that he was S. John of Nepomuc himself.
+She bade them bring him to her, that she might thank him, whenever he
+should enter the town again, and then thought of him no more.
+
+Her whole mind and feeling were engrossed by the spectacle of a misery
+that even all her wealth could not do very much to alleviate. The
+waters as yet showed no sign of abatement. The crash of falling houses
+sounded heavily ever and again through the gloom. The melancholy sight
+of humble household things, of drowned cattle, of dead dogs, borne down
+the discoloured flood out to the Danube renewed itself every hour.
+The lamentations of the ruined people went up in an almost continuous
+wail like the moaning of a winter wind. There was nothing grand,
+nothing picturesque, nothing exciting to redeem the dreariness and the
+desolation. It was all ugly, miserable, dull. It was more trying than
+war, which even in its hideous senselessness lends a kind of brutal
+intoxication to all whom it surrounds.
+
+She was incessantly occupied and greatly fatigued, so that the time
+passed without her counting it. She sent a message each day to the
+Princess at home, and promised to return as soon as the waters had
+subsided and the peril passed. For the first time in her life she
+experienced real discomfort, real privation; she had surrendered nearly
+all the rooms in the burg to the sick people, and food ran short and
+there was none of good quality, though she knew that supplies would
+soon come from the steward at Kohacs and by the yacht.
+
+On the fourth day the waters had sunk an inch. As she heard the good
+tidings she was looking out inland over the waste of grey and yellow
+flood; a Jewish rabbi was beside her speaking of the exertions of the
+stranger, in whom the superstitious of the townsfolk saw a saint from
+heaven.
+
+'And does no one even know who he is?' she asked.
+
+'No one has asked,' answered the Jew. 'He has been always out where the
+peril was greatest.'
+
+'How came he here?'
+
+'He came by one of the big steamers that go to Turkey. He pulled
+himself here in a little boat that he had bought; the boat in which he
+has done such good service.'
+
+'What is he like in appearance?'
+
+'He is very tall, very fair, and handsome; I should think he is
+northern.'
+
+Her pulse beat quicker for a moment; then she rejected the idea as
+absurd, though indeed, she reflected, she had seen him at Salzburg.
+
+'He must at least be a brave man,' she said quietly. 'If you see him
+bring him to me that I may thank him. Is he in the town now?'
+
+'No; he is yonder, where the Rathwand farms are, or were; where your
+Excellency sees those dark, long islands which are not islands at all,
+but only the summits of cherry orchards. He has carried the people
+away, carried them down to Peterwardein; and he is now about to try and
+rescue some cattle which were driven up on to the roof of a tower, poor
+beasts--that tower to the east there, very far away: it is five miles
+as the crow flies.'
+
+'I suppose he will come into the town again?'
+
+'He was here last night; he had heard of your Excellency, and asked for
+her health.'
+
+'Ah! I will see and thank him if he come again.'
+
+But no one that day saw the stranger in Idrac.
+
+The rains fell again and the waters again rose. The maladies which
+come of damp and of bad exhalations spread amongst the people; they
+could not all be taken to other villages or towns, for there was no
+room for them. She had quinine, wines, good food ordered by the great
+steamers, but they were not yet arrived. What could be got at Neusatz
+or Peterwardein the yacht brought, but it was not enough for so many
+sick and starving people. The air began to grow fœtid from the many
+carcases of animals, though as they floated the vultures from the hills
+fed on them. She had a vessel turned into a floating hospital, and
+the most delicate of the sick folk carried to it, and had it anchored
+off the nearest port. Her patience, her calmness, and her courage did
+more to revive the sinking hearts of the homeless creatures than the
+cordials and the food. She was all day long out in her boat, being
+steered from one spot to another. At night she rested little and passed
+from one sick bed to another. She had never been so near to hopeless
+human misery before. At Hohenszalras no one was destitute.
+
+One twilight hour on the ninth day, as she was rowed back to the castle
+stairs, she passed another boat in which were two lads and a man. The
+man was rowing, a dusky shadow in the gloom of the wet evening and the
+uncouthness of his waterproof pilot's dress; but she had a lantern
+beside her, and she flashed its light full on the boat as it passed
+her. When she reached the burg, she said to her servant Anton: 'Herr
+von Sabran is in Idrac; go and say that I desire to see him.'
+
+Anton, who remembered him well, returned in an hour, and said he could
+neither find him nor hear of him.
+
+All the night long, a cheerless tedious night, with the rain falling
+without and the storm that was raging in the Bosphorus sending its
+shrill echoes up the Danube, she sat by the beds of the sick women
+or paced up and down the dimly-lit Rittersaal in an impatience which
+it humiliated her to feel. It touched her that he should be here,
+so silently, so sedulously avoiding her, and doing so much for the
+people of Idrac, because they were her people. The old misgiving that
+she had been ungenerous in her treatment of him returned to her. He
+seemed always to have the finer part--the _beau rôle._ To her, royal
+in giving, imperious in conduct, it brought a sense of failure, of
+inferiority. As she read the psalms in Hungarian to the sick Magyar
+women, her mind perpetually wandered away to him.
+
+She did not see Sabran again, but she heard often of him. The fair
+stranger, as the people called him, was always conspicuous wherever
+the greatest danger was to be encountered. There was always peril in
+almost every movement where the undermined houses, the tottering walls,
+the stagnant water, the fever-reeking marshes presented at every turn a
+perpetual menace to life. 'He is not vainly _un fils des preux_,' she
+thought, with a thrill of personal pride, as if someone near and dear
+to her were praised, as she listened to the stories of his intrepidity
+and his endurance. Whole nights spent in soaked clothes, in half
+swamped boats; whole days lost in impotent conflict with the ignorance
+or the poltroonery of an obstinate populace, continual risk encountered
+without counting its cost to rescue some poor man's sick beast, or pull
+a cripple from beneath falling beams, or a lad from choking mud; hour
+on hour of steady laborious rowing, of passage to and fro the sullen
+river with a freight of moaning, screaming peasantry--this was not
+child's play, nor had it any of the animation and excitation which in
+war or in adventure make of danger a strong wine that goes merrily and
+voluptuously to the head. It was all dull, stupid, unlovely, and he
+had come to it for her sake. For her sake certainly, though he never
+approached her; though when Anton at last found and took her message
+to him he excused himself from obedience to it by a plea that he was
+at that moment wet and weary, and had come from a hut where typhoid
+raged. She understood the excuse; she knew that he knew well she was no
+more afraid than he of that contagion. She admired him the more for his
+isolation; in these grey, rainy, tedious, melancholy days his figure
+seemed to grow into a luminous heroic shape like one of the heroes of
+the olden time. If he had once seemed to seek a guerdon for it the
+spell would have been broken. But he never did. She began to believe
+that such a knight deserved any recompense which she could give.
+
+'Egon himself could have done no more,' she said in her own thoughts,
+and it was the highest praise that she could give to any man, for
+her Magyar cousin was the embodiment of all martial daring, of all
+chivalrous ardour, and had led his glittering hussars down on to the
+French bayonets, as on to the Prussian Krupp guns, with a fury that
+bore all before it, impetuous and irresistible as a stream of fired
+naphtha.
+
+On the twelfth morning the river had sunk so much lower that the yacht
+arriving with medicines and stores of food from Neusatz signalled that
+she could not enter the creek on which Idrac stood, and waited orders.
+It had ceased to rain, but the winds were still strong and the skies
+heavy. She descended to her boat at the water-gate, and told the men to
+take her out to the yacht. It was early, the sun behind the clouds had
+barely climbed above the distant Wallachian woods, and the scene had
+lost nothing of its melancholy. A man was standing on the water-stairs
+as she descended them, and turned rapidly away, but she had seen him
+and stretched out her long staff and touched him lightly.
+
+'Why do you avoid me?' she said, as he uncovered his head; 'my men
+sought you in all directions; I wished to thank you.'
+
+He bowed low over the hand she held out to him. 'I ventured to be near
+at hand to be of use,' he answered. 'I was afraid the exposure, and,
+the damp, and all this pestilence would make you ill: you are not ill?'
+
+'No; I am quite well. I have heard of all your courage and endurance.
+Idrac owes you a great debt.'
+
+'I only pay my debt to Hohenszalras.'
+
+They were both silent; a certain constraint was upon them both.
+
+'How did you know of the inundation? It was unkind of you not to come
+to me,' she said, and her voice was unsteady as she spoke. 'I want so
+much to tell you, better than letters can do, all that we felt for you
+throughout that awful war.'
+
+He turned away slightly with a shudder. 'You are too good. Thousands of
+men much better than I suffered much more.'
+
+The tears rose to her eyes as she glanced at him. He was looking pale
+and worn. He had lost the graceful _insouciance_ of his earlier manner.
+He looked grave, weary, melancholy, like a man who had passed through
+dire disaster, unspeakable pain, and had seen his career snapped in
+two like a broken wand. But there was about him instead something
+soldierlike, proven, war-worn, which became him in her eyes, daughter
+of a race of warriors as she was.
+
+'You have much to tell me, and I have much to hear,' she said, after
+a pause. 'You should have come to the monastery to be cured of your
+wounds. Why were you so mistrustful of our friendship?'
+
+He coloured and was silent.
+
+'Indeed,' she said gravely, 'we can honour brave men in the Tauern and
+in Idrac too. You are very brave. I do not know how to thank you for my
+people or for myself.'
+
+'Pray do not speak so,' he said, in a very low voice. 'To see you again
+would be recompense for much worthier things than any I have done.'
+
+'But you might have seen me long ago,' she said, with a certain
+nervousness new to her, 'had you only chosen to come to the Isle. I
+asked you twice.'
+
+He looked at her with eyes of longing and pathetic appeal.
+
+'Do not tempt me,' he murmured. 'If I yielded, and if you despised
+me----'
+
+'How could I despise one who has so nobly saved the lives of my people?'
+
+'You would do so.'
+
+He spoke very low: he was silent a little while, then he said very
+softly:
+
+'One evening, when we spoke together on the terrace at Hohenszalras,
+you leant your hand upon the ivy there. I plucked the leaf you touched;
+you did not see. I had the leaf with me all through the war. It was
+a talisman. It was like a holy thing. When your cousin's soldiers
+stripped me in their ambulance, they took it from me.'
+
+His voice faltered. She listened and was moved to a profound emotion.
+
+'I will give you something better,' she said very gravely. He did not
+ask her what she would give.
+
+She looked away from him awhile, and her face flushed a little. She was
+thinking of what she would give him; a gift so great that the world
+would deem her mad to bestow it, and perhaps would deem him dishonoured
+to take it.
+
+'How did you hear of these floods along the Danube?' she asked him,
+recovering her wonted composure.
+
+'I read about them in telegrams in Paris,' he made answer. 'I had
+mustered courage to revisit my poor Paris; all I possess is there.
+Nothing has been injured; a shell burst quite close by but did not
+harm my apartments. I went to make arrangements for the sale of my
+collections, and on the second day that I arrived there I saw the news
+of the inundations of Idrac and the lower Danubian plains. I remembered
+the name of the town; I remembered it was yours. I remembered your
+saying once that where you had feudal rights you had feudal duties, so
+I came on the chance of being of service.'
+
+'You have been most devoted to the people.'
+
+'The people! What should I care though the whole town perished? Do not
+attribute to me a humanity that is not in my nature.'
+
+'Be as cynical as you like in words so long as you are heroic in
+action. I am going out to the yacht; will you come with me?'
+
+He hesitated. 'I merely came to hear from the warder of your health. I
+am going to catch the express steamer at Neusatz; all danger is over.'
+
+'The yacht can take you to Neusatz. Come with me.'
+
+He did not offer more opposition; he accompanied her to the boat and
+entered it.
+
+The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing more, but she could not
+forget that scores of her own people here had owed their lives to his
+intrepidity and patience, and that he had never hesitated to throw his
+life into the balance when needed. And it had been done for her sake
+alone. The love of humanity might have been a nobler and purer motive,
+but it would not have touched her so nearly as the self-abandonment of
+a man by nature selfish and cold.
+
+In a few moments they were taken to the yawl. He ascended the deck with
+her.
+
+The tidings the skipper brought, the examination of the stores, the
+discussion of ways and means, the arrangements for the general relief,
+were air dull, practical matters that claimed careful attention and
+thought. She sat in the little cabin that was brave with marqueterie
+work and blue satin and Dresden mirrors, and made memoranda and
+calculations, and consulted him, and asked his advice on this, on
+that. The government official, sent to make official estimates of the
+losses in the township, had come on board to salute and take counsel
+with her. The whole forenoon passed in these details. He wrote, and
+calculated, and drew up reports for her. No more tender or personal
+word was spoken between them; but there was a certain charm for them
+both in this intimate intercourse, even though it took no other shape
+than the study of how many boatloads of wheat were needed for so many
+hundred people, of how many florins a day might be passed to the head
+of each family, of how many of the flooded houses would still be
+serviceable with restoration, of how many had been entirely destroyed,
+of how the town would best be rebuilt, and of how the inland rivers
+could best be restrained in the future.
+
+To rebuild it she estimated that she would have to surrender for five
+years the revenues from her Galician and Hungarian mines, and she
+resolved to do it altogether at her own cost. She had no wish to see
+the town figure in public prints as the object of public subscription.
+
+'I am sure all my woman friends,' she said, 'would kindly make it
+occasion for a fancy fair or a lottery (with new costumes) in Vienna,
+but I do not care for that sort of thing, and I can very well do what
+is needed alone.'
+
+He was silent. He had always known that her riches were great, but
+he had never realised them as fully as he now did when she spoke of
+rebuilding an entire town as she might have spoken of building a
+carriage.
+
+'You would make a good prime minister,' she said, smiling; 'you have
+the knowledge of a specialist on so many subjects.'
+
+At noon they served her a little plain breakfast of Danubian
+_salbling_, with Carlowitzer wine and fruit sent by the steward of
+Mohacs. She bade him join her in it.
+
+'Had Egon himself been here he could not have done more for Idrac than
+you have done,' she said.
+
+'Is this Prince Egon's wine?' he said abruptly, and on hearing that it
+was so, he set the glass down untasted.
+
+She looked surprised, but she did not ask him his reason, for she
+divined it. There was an exaggeration in the unspoken hostility more
+like the days of Arthur and Lancelot than their own, but it did not
+displease her.
+
+They were both little disposed to converse during their meal; after the
+dreary and terrible scenes they had been witness of, the atmosphere
+of life seems grave and dark even to those whom the calamity had not
+touched. The most careless spirit is oppressed by a sense of the
+precariousness and the cruelty of existence.
+
+When they ascended to the deck the skies were lighter than they had
+been for many weeks; the fog had cleared, so that, in the distance, the
+towers of Neusatz and the fortress of Peterwardein were visible; vapour
+still hung over the vast Hungarian plain, but the Danube was clear and
+the affluents of it had sunk to their usual level.
+
+'You really go to-night?' she said, as they looked down the river.
+
+'There is no need for me to stay; the town is safe, and you are well,
+you say. If there be anything I can still do, command me.'
+
+She smiled a little and let her eye meet his for a moment.
+
+'Well, if I command you to remain then, will you do so as my viceroy?
+I want to return home; Aunt Ottilie grows daily more anxious, more
+alarmed, but I cannot leave these poor souls all alone with their
+priests, and their rabbi, who are all as timid as sheep and as stupid.
+Will you stay in the castle and govern them, and help them till they
+recover from their fright? It is much to ask, I know, but you have
+already done so much for Idrac that I am bold to ask you to do more?'
+
+He coloured with a mingled emotion.
+
+'You could ask me nothing that I would not do,' he said in a low tone.
+'I could wish you asked me something harder.'
+
+'Oh, it will be very hard,' she said, with an indifference she did not
+feel. 'It will be very dull, and you will have no one to speak to that
+knows anything save how to grow flax and cherries. You will have to
+talk the Magyar tongue all day, and you will have nothing to eat save
+_kartoffeln_ and _salbling_; and I do not know that I am even right,'
+she added, more gravely, 'to ask you to incur the risks that come from
+all that soaked, ground, which will be damp so long.'
+
+'The risks that you have borne yourself! Pray do not wound me by any
+such scruple as that. I shall be glad, I shall be proud, to be for ever
+so short or so long a time as you command, your representative, your
+servant.'
+
+'You are very good.'
+
+'No.'
+
+His eyes looked at hers with a quick flash, in which all the passion
+he dared not express was spoken. She averted her glance and continued
+calmly: 'You are very good indeed to Idrac. It will be a great
+assistance and comfort to me to know that you are here. The poor people
+already love you, and you will write to me and tell me all that may
+need to be done. I will leave you the yacht and Anton. I shall return
+by land with my woman; and when I reach home I will send you Herr
+Greswold. He is a good companion, and has a great admiration for you,
+though he wishes that you had not forsaken the science of botany.'
+
+'It is like all other dissection or vivisection; it spoils the artistic
+appreciation of the whole. I am yet unsophisticated enough to feel the
+charm of a bank of violets, of a cliff covered with alpen-roses. I may
+write to you?'
+
+'You must write to me! It is you who will know all the needs of Idrac.
+But are you sure that to remain here will not interfere with your own
+projects, your own wishes, your own duties?'
+
+'I have none. If I had any I would throw them away, with pleasure, to
+be of use to one of your dogs, to one of your birds.'
+
+She moved from his side a little.
+
+'Look how the sun has come out. I can see the sparkle of the brass on
+the cannon down yonder at Neusatz. We had better go now. I must see my
+sick people and then leave as soon as I can. The yacht must take me to
+Mohacs; from there I will send her back to you.'
+
+'Do as you will. I can have no greater happiness than to obey you.'
+
+'I am sure that I thank you in the way that you like best, when I say
+that I believe you.'
+
+She said the words in a very low tone, but so calmly that the calmness
+of them checked any other words he might have uttered. It was a royal
+acceptance of a loyal service; nothing more. The boat took them back
+to the fortress. Whilst she was occupied in her farewell to the sick
+people, and her instructions to those who attended on them, he, left
+to himself in the apartment she had made her own, instinctively went
+to an old harpsichord that stood there and touched the keys. It had a
+beautiful case, rich with the varnish of the Martins. He played with
+it awhile for its external beauty, and then let his fingers stray over
+its limited keyboard. It had still sweetness in it, like the spinet
+of Hohenszalras. It suited certain pathetic quaint old German airs he
+knew, and which he half unconsciously reproduced upon it, singing them
+as he did so in a low tone. The melody, very soft and subdued, suited
+to the place where death had been so busy and nature so unsparing, and
+where a resigned exhaustion had now succeeded to the madness of terror,
+reached the ears of the sick women in the Rittersaal and of Wanda von
+Szalras seated beside their beds.
+
+'It is like the saints in Heaven sighing in pity for us here,' said one
+of the women who was very feeble and old, and she smiled as she heard.
+The notes, tremulous from age but penetrating in their sweetness, came
+in slow calm movements of harmony through the stillness of the chamber;
+his voice, very low also, but clear, ascended with them. Wanda sat
+quite still, and listened with a strange pleasure. 'He alone,' she
+thought, 'can make the dumb strings speak.
+
+It was almost dusk when she descended to the room which she had made
+her own. In the passages of the castle oil wicks were lighted in the
+iron lamps and wall sconces, but here it was without any light, and
+in the gloom she saw the dim outline of his form as he sat by the
+harpsichord. He had ceased playing; his head was bent down and rested
+on the instrument; he was lost in thought, and his whole attitude was
+dejected. He did not hear her approach, and she looked at him some
+moments, herself unseen. A great tenderness came over her: he was
+unhappy, and he had been very brave, very generous, very loyal: she
+felt almost ashamed. She went nearer, and he raised himself abruptly.
+
+'I am going,' she said to him. 'Will you come with me to the yacht?'
+
+He rose, and though it was dusk, and in this chamber so dark that his
+face was indistinct to her, she was sure that tears had been in his
+eyes.
+
+'Your old harpsichord has the vernis Martin,' he said, with effort.
+'You should not leave it buried here. It has a melody in it too, faint
+and simple and full of the past, like the smell of dead rose-leaves.
+Yes, I will have the honour to come with you. I wish there were a full
+moon. It will be a dark night on the Danube.'
+
+'My men know the soundings of the river well. As for the harpsichord,
+you alone have found its voice. It shall go to your rooms in Paris.'
+
+'You are too good, but I would not take it. Let it go to Hohenszalras.'
+
+'Why would you not take it?
+
+'I would take nothing from you.'
+
+He spoke abruptly, and with some sternness.
+
+'I think there is such a thing as being too proud? she said, with
+hesitation.
+
+'Your ancestors would not say so,' he answered, with an effort; she
+understood the meaning that underlay the words. He turned away and
+closed the lid of the harpsichord, where little painted cupids wantoned
+in a border of metal scroll-work.
+
+All the men and women well enough to stand crowded on the water-stairs
+to see her departure; little children were held up in their mother's
+arms and bidden remember her for evermore; all feeble creatures lifted
+up their voices to praise her; Jew and Christian blessed her; the
+water-gate was cumbered with sobbing people, trying to see her face,
+to kiss her skirt for the last time. She could not be wholly unmoved
+before that unaffected, irrepressible emotion. Their poor lives were
+not worth much, but such as they were she, under Heaven, had saved them.
+
+'I will return and see you again,' she said to them, as she made a slow
+way through the eager crowd. 'Thank Heaven, my people, not me. And I
+leave my friend with you, who did much more for you than I. Respect him
+and obey him.'
+
+They raised with their thin trembling voices a loud _Eljén_! of homage
+and promise, and she passed away from their sight into the evening
+shadows on the wide river.
+
+Sabran accompanied her to the vessel, which was to take her to the town
+of Mohacs, thence to make her journey home by railway.
+
+'I shall not leave until you bid me, even though you should forget to
+call me all in my life!' he said, as the boat slipped through the dark
+water.
+
+'Such oblivion would be a poor reward.'
+
+'I have had reward enough. You have called me your friend.'
+
+She was silent. The boat ran through the dusk and the rippling rays of
+light streaming from the sides of the yacht, and they went on board. He
+stood a moment with uncovered head before her on the deck, and she gave
+him her hand.
+
+'You will come to the Holy Isle?' she said, as she did so.
+
+'If you bid me,' he said, as he bowed and kissed her hand. His lips
+trembled as he did so, and by the lamplight she saw that he was very
+pale.
+
+'I shall bid you,' she said, very softly, by-and-by. Farewell!'
+
+He bowed very low once more, then he dropped over the yacht's side into
+the boat waiting below; the splash of the oars told her he was gone
+back to Idrac. The yawl weighed anchor and began to go up the river,
+a troublesome and tedious passage at all seasons. She sat on deck
+watching the strong current of the Danube as it rolled on under the bow
+of the schooner. For more than a league she could see the beacon that
+burned by the water-gate of the fortress. When the curve of the stream
+hid it from her eyes she felt a pang of painful separation, of wistful
+attachment to the old dreary walls where she had seen so much suffering
+and so much courage, and where she had learned to read her own heart
+without any possibility of ignoring its secrets. A smile came on her
+mouth and a moisture in her eyes as she sat alone in the dark autumn
+night, while the schooner made her slow ascent through the swell that
+accompanies the influx of the Drave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+In two days' time Hohenszalras received its mistress home.
+
+She was not in any way harmed by the perils she had encountered, and
+the chills and fever to which she had been exposed. On the contrary,
+her eyes had a light and her face had a bloom which for many months had
+not been there.
+
+The Princess heard a brief sketch of what had passed in almost
+total silence. She had disapproved strongly, and she said that her
+disapproval could not change, though a merciful heavenly host had
+spared her the realisation of her worst fears.
+
+The name of Sabran was not spoken. Wanda was of a most truthful temper,
+but she could not bring herself to speak of his presence at Idrac; the
+facts would reveal themselves inevitably soon enough.
+
+She sent Greswold to the Danube laden with stores and medicines.
+She received a letter every morning from her delegate; but he wrote
+briefly, and with scrupulous care, the statements of facts connected
+with the town and reports of what had been done. Her engineer had
+arrived from the mines by Kremnitz, and the builders estimated that
+the waters would have subsided and settled enough, if no fresh rising
+took place, for them to begin the reconstruction of the town with the
+beginning of the new month. Ague and fever were still very common, and
+fresh cases were brought in every hour to the hospital in the fortress.
+He wrote on the arrival of Herr Greswold, that, with her permission, he
+himself would still stay on, for the people had grown used to him, and
+having some knowledge of hydraulics he would be interested to see the
+plans proposed by her engineers for preserving the town from similar
+calamities.
+
+Three weeks passed; all that time she spoke but little either of him or
+of any other subject. She took endless rides, and she sat many hours
+doing nothing in the white room, absorbed in thought. The Princess,
+who had learned what had passed, with admirable exercise of tact and
+self-restraint made neither suggestion nor innuendo, and accepted the
+presence of a French Marquis at a little obscure town in Sclavonia as
+if it were the most natural circumstance in the world.
+
+'All the Szalras have been imperious, arrogant, and of complicated
+character,' she thought; 'she has the same temper, though it is
+mitigated in her by great natural nobility of disposition and strong
+purity of motives. She will do as she chooses, let all the world do
+what it may to change her. If I say a word either way it may take
+effect in some wholly unforeseen manner that I should regret. It is
+better to abstain. In doubt do nothing, is the soundest of axioms.'
+
+And Princess Ottilie, who on occasion had the wisdom of the serpent
+with the sweetness of the dove, preserved a discreet silence, and
+devoured her really absorbing curiosity in her own heart.
+
+At the end of the fourth week she heard that all was well at Idrac,
+so far as it could be so in a place almost wholly destroyed. There
+was no sign of renewed rising of the inland streams. The illness was
+diminished, almost conquered; the people had begun to take heart and
+hope, and, being aided, wished to aid themselves. The works for new
+embankments, water-gates, and streets were already planned, though
+they could not be begun until the spring. Meanwhile, strong wooden
+houses were being erected on dry places, which which could shelter
+_ad interim_ many hundreds of families; the farmers were gradually
+venturing to return to their flooded lands. The town had suffered
+grievously and in much irreparably, but it began to resume its trade
+and its normal life.
+
+She hesitated a whole day when she heard this. Though Sabran did not
+hint at any desire of his own to leave the place, she knew it, was
+impossible to bid him remain longer, and that a moment of irrevocable
+decision was come. She hesitated all the day, slept little all the
+night, then sent him a brief telegram: 'Come to the Island.'
+
+Obey the summons as rapidly as he might, he could not travel by Vienna
+and Salzburg more quickly than in some thirty hours or more. The time
+passed to her in a curious confusion and anxiety. Outwardly she was
+calm enough; she visited the schools, wrote some letters, and took her
+usual long ride in the now leafless woods, but at heart she was unquiet
+and ill at ease, troubled more than by anything else at the force of
+the desire she felt to meet him once more. It was but a month since
+they had parted on the deck, and it seemed ten years. She had known
+what he had meant when he had said that he would come if she bade him;
+she had known that she would only do the sheerest cruelty and treachery
+if she called him thither only to dismiss him. It had not been a visit
+of the moment, but all his life that she had consented to take when she
+had written 'Come to the Island.'
+
+She would never have written it unless she had been prepared to fulfil
+all to which it tacitly pledged her. She was incapable of wantonly
+playing with any passion that moved another, least of all with his. The
+very difference of their position would have made indecision or coyness
+in her seem cruelty, humiliation. The decision hurt her curiously with
+a sense of abdication, mortification, and almost shame. To a very proud
+woman in whom the senses have never asserted their empire, there is
+inevitably an emotion of almost shame, of self-surrender, of loss of
+self-respect, in the first impulses of love. It made her abashed and
+humiliated to feel the excitation that the mere touch of his hand, the
+mere gaze of his eyes, had power to cause her. 'If this be love,' she
+thought, 'no wonder the world is lost for it.'
+
+Do what she would, the time seemed very long; the two evenings that
+passed were very tedious and oppressive. The Princess seemed to
+observe nothing of what she was perfectly conscious of, and her
+flute-like voice murmured on in an unending stream of commonplaces to
+which her niece replied much at random.
+
+In the afternoon of the third day she stood on the terrace looking down
+the lake and towards the Holy Isle, with an impatience of which she was
+in turn impatient. She was dressed in white woollen stuff with silver
+threads in it; she had about her throat an old necklace of the Golden
+Fleece, of golden shells enamelled, which had been a gift from Charles
+the Fifth to one of her house; over her shoulders, for the approach
+of evening was cold, she had thrown a cloak of black Russian sables.
+She made a figure beautiful, stately, patrician, in keeping with the
+background of the great donjon tower, and the pinnacled roofs, and the
+bronze warriors in their Gothic niches.
+
+When she had stood there a few minutes looking down the lake towards
+the willows of the monastery island, a boat came out from the willow
+thickets, and came over the mile-and-half of green shadowy water. There
+was only one person in it. She recognised him whilst he was still far
+off, and a smile came on her mouth that it was a pity he could not see.
+
+He was a bold man, but his heart stood still with awe of her, and his
+soul trembled within him at this supreme moment of his fate. For he
+believed that she would not have bidden him there unless her hand were
+ready to hold out destiny to him--the destiny of his maddest, of his
+sweetest, dreams.
+
+She came forward a few paces to meet him; her face was grave and pale,
+but her eyes had a soft suppressed light.
+
+'I have much for which to thank you,' she said, as she held out her
+hand to him. Her voice was tremulous though calm.
+
+He kissed her hand, then stood silent. It seemed to him that there was
+nothing to say. She knew what he would have said if he had been king,
+or hero, or meet mate for her. His pulses were beating feverishly, his
+self-possession was gone, his eyes did not dare to meet hers. He felt
+as if the green woods, the shining waters, the rain-burdened skies were
+wheeling round him. That dumbness, that weakness, in a man so facile
+of eloquence, so hardy and even cynical in courage, touched her to a
+wondering pitifulness.
+
+'After all,' she thought once more, 'if we love one another what is it
+to anyone else? We are both free.'
+
+If the gift she would give would be so great that the world would blame
+him for accepting it, what would that matter so long as she knew him
+blameless?
+
+They were both mute: he did not even look at her, and she might have
+heard the beating of his heart. She looked at him and the colour came
+back into her face, the smile back upon her mouth.
+
+'My friend,' she said very gently,'did never you think that I also----'
+
+She paused: it was very hard to her to say what she must say, and he
+could not help her, dared not help her, to utter it.
+
+They stood thus another moment mute, with the sunset glow upon the
+shining water, and upon the feudal majesty of the great castle.
+
+Then she looked at him with a straight, clear, noble glance, and with
+the rich blood mounting in her face, stretched out her hand to him with
+a royal gesture.
+
+'They robbed you of your ivy leaf, my cruel Prussian cousins. Will
+you--take--this--instead?'
+
+Then Heaven itself opened to his eyes. He did not take her hand. He
+fell at her feet and kissed them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Is it wisest after all to be very unwise, dear mother mine?' she said a
+little later, with a smile that was tender and happy.
+
+The Princess looked up quickly, and so looking understood.
+
+'Oh, my beloved, is it indeed so? Yes, you are wise to listen to your
+heart; God speaks in it!'
+
+With tears in her eyes she stretched out her pretty hands in solemn
+benediction.
+
+'Be His Spirit for ever with you,' she said with great emotion. 'I
+shall be so content to know that I leave you not alone when our Father
+calls me, for I think your very greatness and dominion, my dear, but
+make you the more lonely, as sovereigns are, and it is not well to be
+alone, Wanda; it is well to have human love close about us.'
+
+'It is to lean on a reed, perhaps,'murmured Wanda, in that persistent
+misgiving which possessed her. 'And when the reed breaks, then though
+it has been so weak before, it becomes of iron, barbed and poisoned.'
+
+'What gloomy thoughts! And you have made me so happy, and surely you
+are happy yourself?'
+
+'Yes. My reed is in full flower, but--but--yes, I am happy; I hope that
+Bela knows.'
+
+The Princess kissed her once again.
+
+'Ah! he loves you so well.'
+
+'That I am sure of; yet I might never have known it but for you.'
+
+'I did for the best.'
+
+'I will send him to you. I want to be alone a little. Dear mother, he
+cares for you as tenderly as though he were your son.'
+
+'I have been his friend always,' said the Princess, with a smile,
+whilst the tears still stood in her eyes. 'You cannot say so much,
+Wanda; you were very harsh.'
+
+'I know it. I will atone to him.'
+
+The eyes of the Princess followed her tenderly.'
+
+'And she will make her atonement generously, grandly,' she thought.
+'She is a woman of few protestations, but of fine impulses and of
+unerring magnanimity. She will be incapable of reminding him that
+their kingdom is hers. I have done this thing; may Heaven be with it!
+If she had loved no one, life would have grown so pale, so chill, so
+monotonous to her; she would have tired of herself, having nothing
+but herself for contemplation. Solitude has been only grand to her
+hitherto because she has been young, but as the years rolled on she
+would have died without ever having lived; now she will live. She may
+have to bear pains, griefs, infidelities, calamities that she would
+have escaped; but even so, how much better the summer day, even with
+the summer storm, than the dull, grey, quiet, windless weather! Of
+course, if she could have found sanctuary in the Church----But her
+faith is not absolute and unwavering enough for that; she has read too
+many philosophies; she requires, too, open-air and vigorous life; the
+cloister would have been to her a prison. She is one of those whose
+religion lies in activity; she will worship God through her children.'
+
+Sabran entered as she mused, and knelt down before her.
+
+'You have been my good angel, always,' he murmured. 'How can I thank
+you? I think she would never have let her eyes rest on me but for you.'
+
+The Princess smiled.
+
+'My friend, you are one of those on whom the eyes of women willingly
+rest, perhaps too willingly. But you--you will have no eyes for any
+other now? You must deserve my faith in you. Is it not so?'
+
+'Ah, madame,' he answered with deep emotion, 'all words seem so trite
+and empty; any fool can make phrases, but when I say that my life
+shall be consecrated to her, I mean it, in the uttermost royalty, the
+uttermost gratitude.'
+
+'I believe you,' said the Princess, as she laid her hand lightly
+on his bent head. 'Perhaps no man can understand entirely all that
+she surrenders in admitting that she loves you; for a proud woman
+to confess so much of weakness is very hard: but I think you will
+comprehend her better than any other would. I think you will not force
+her to pass the door of disillusion; and remember that though she will
+leave you free as air--for she is not made of that poor stuff which
+would enslave what it loves--she would not soon forgive too great abuse
+of freedom. I mean if you were ever--ever unfaithful----
+
+'For what do you take me?' he cried, with indignant passion. 'Is there
+another woman in the world who could sit beside her, and not be
+dwarfed, paled, killed, as a candle by the sun?'
+
+'You are only her betrothed,' said the Princess, with a little sigh.
+'Men see their wives with different eyes; so I have been told, at
+least. Familiarity is no courtier, and time is always cruel.'
+
+'Nay, time shall be our dearest friend,' said Sabran, with a tenderness
+in his voice that spoke more constancy than a thousand oaths. 'She will
+be beautiful when she is old, as you are; age will neither alarm nor
+steal from her; her bodily beauty is like her spiritual, it is cast
+in lines too pure and clear not to defy the years. Oh, mother mine!
+(let me call you that) fear nothing; I will love her so well that, all
+unworthy now, I will grow worthy her, and cause her no moment's pain
+that human love can spare her.'
+
+'Her people shall be your people, and her God your God,' murmured the
+Princess, with her hand still lying lightly on his head, obediently
+bent.
+
+When late that night he went across the lake the monks were at their
+midnight orisons; their voices murmured as one man's the Latin words of
+praise and prayer, and made a sound like that of a great sea rolling
+slowly on a lonely shore.
+
+He believed naught that they believed. Deity was but a phrase to him;
+faith and a future life were empty syllables to him. Yet, in the
+fulness of his joy and the humiliation of his spirit, he felt his heart
+swell, his pride sink subdued. He knelt down in the hush and twilight
+of that humble place of prayer, and for the first moment in many years
+he also praised God.
+
+No one heeded him; he knelt behind them in the gloom unnoticed; he rose
+refreshed as men in barren lands in drought are soothed by hearing the
+glad fall of welcome rain. He had no place there, and in another hour
+would have smiled at his own weakness; but now he remembered nothing
+except that he, utterly beyond his deserts, was blessed. As the monks
+rose to their feet and their loud chanting began to vibrate in the air,
+he went out unheard, as he had entered, and stood on the narrow strip
+of land that parted the chapel from the lake. The green waters were
+rolling freshly in under a strong wind, the shadows of coming night
+were stealing on; in the south-west a pale yellow moonlight stretched
+broadly in a light serene as dawn, and against it there rose squarely
+and darkly with its many turrets the great keep of Hohenszalras.
+
+He looked, but it was not of that great pile and all which it
+represented and symbolised that he thought now.
+
+It was of the woman he loved as a woman, not as a great possessor of
+wealth and lands.
+
+'Almost I wish that she were poor as the saints she resembles!' he
+thought, with a tender passion that for the hour was true. It seemed
+to him that had he seen her standing in her shift in the snow, like
+our Lady of Hungary, discrowned and homeless, he would have been glad.
+He was honest with the honesty of passion. It was not the mistress of
+Hohenszalras that he loved, but his own wife.
+
+Such a marriage could not do otherwise than arouse by its announcement
+the most angry amazement, the most indignant protests from all the
+mighty houses with which for so many centuries the house of Szalras
+had allied itself. In a few tranquil sentences she made known her
+intentions to those of her relations whom she felt bound thus to
+honour; but she gave them clearly to understand that it was a formula
+of respect not an act of consultation. When they received her letters
+they knew that her marriage was already quite as irrevocable as though
+it had already taken place in the Hof-Kapelle of Vienna.
+
+All her relatives and all her order were opposed to her betrothal;
+a cold sufferance was the uttermost which any of them extended to
+Sabran. A foreigner and poor, and, with a troubled and uncertain
+past behind him, he was bitterly unwelcome to the haughty Prussian,
+Austrian, and Hungarian nobilities to which she belonged; neither his
+ancient name nor his recent political brilliancy and military service
+could place him on an equality with them in their eyes. Her trustees,
+the Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe and the Cardinal Vàsàrhely, with her
+cousin Kaulnitz, hurried in person as swiftly as special trains could
+bring them to the Iselthal, but they were too late to avert the blow.
+
+'It is not a marriage for her,' said Kaulnitz, angrily.
+
+'Why not? It is a very old family,' said the Princess, with no less
+irritation.
+
+'But quite decayed, long ruined,' he returned. 'This man was himself
+born in exile.'
+
+'As they exile everybody twice in every ten years in France!
+
+'And there have been stories----'
+
+'Of whom are there not stories? Calumny is the parasite of character;
+the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler.'
+
+'I never heard him accused of any strength, except of the wrist in
+_l'escrime!_'
+
+'Do you know anything dishonourable of him? If you do you are bound to
+say it.'
+
+'Dishonourable is a grave word. No, I cannot say that I do; the society
+he frequents is a guarantee against that; but his life has been
+indifferent, complicated, uncertain, not a life to be allied with that
+of such a woman as Wanda. My dear Princess, it has been a life _dans le
+milieu parisien_; what more would you have me say?'
+
+'Prince Archambaud's has been that. Yet three years since you earnestly
+pressed his suit on Wanda.'
+
+'Archambaud! He is one of the first alliances in Europe; he is of blood
+royal, and he has not been more vicious than other men.'
+
+'It would be better he should have been less so, since he lives so near
+'the fierce light that beats upon the throne;' an electric light which
+blackens while it illumines! My good Kaulnitz, you wander very far
+afield. If you know anything serious against M. de Sabran it is your
+duty to say it.'
+
+'He is a gambler.'
+
+'He has renounced gambling.'
+
+'He is a duellist.'
+
+'Society was of much better constitution when the duel was its habitual
+phlebotomy.'
+
+'He has been the lover of many women.'
+
+'I am afraid that is nothing singular.'
+
+'He is hardly more than an adventurer.'
+
+'He counts his ancestry in unbroken succession from the clays of
+Dagobert.
+
+'He has nothing but a _pignon sur rue_ in Paris, and a league or two of
+rocks and sand in Brittany; yet, though so poor, he made money enough
+by cards and speculation to be for three years the _amant en titre_ of
+Cochonette.'
+
+Madame Ottilie rose with a little frown.
+
+'I think we will say no more, my dear Baron; the matter is, after all,
+not yours or mine to decide. Wanda will assuredly do as she likes.'
+
+'But you have so much influence with her.'
+
+'I have none; no one has any: and I think you do not understand her in
+the least. It may cost her very much to avow to him that she loves him,
+but once having done that, it will cost her nothing at all to avow it
+to the world. She is much too proud a woman to care for the world.'
+
+'He is _gentilhomme de race_, I grant,' admitted with reluctance the
+Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe.
+
+'When has a noble of Brittany been otherwise?' asked the Princess
+Ottilie.
+
+'I know,' said the Prince; 'but you will admit that he occupies a
+difficult position--an invidious one.'
+
+'And he carries himself well through it. It is a difficult position
+which is the test of breeding,' said the Princess, triumphantly, 'and
+I deny entirely that it is what you call an invidious one. It is you
+who have the idea of the crowd when you lay so much stress on the mere
+absence of money.'
+
+'It is the idea of the crowd that dominates in this age.'
+
+'The more reason for us to resist it, if it be so.'
+
+'I think you are in love with him yourself, my sister!'
+
+'I should be were I forty years younger.'
+
+The Countess Brancka alone wrote with any sort of sympathy and pleasure
+to congratulate them both.
+
+'I was sure that Parsifal would win soon or late,' she said. 'Only
+remember that he is a Parsifal _doublé_ by a de Morny.'
+
+Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than
+the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of
+the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied.
+De Morny!--a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The
+comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!
+
+She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or
+remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had
+so much of the '_éternel féminin_' in her that she was only the more
+resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and
+exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was
+natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All
+the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those
+who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances
+produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as
+Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again
+Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had
+no power of persuasion.
+
+The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more
+graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as
+might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were
+present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that
+he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The
+sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man,
+whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of
+many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had
+they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her
+hand.
+
+'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of
+this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of
+birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere
+difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or
+the inches of one's stature.'
+
+The Princess shook her head.
+
+'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he
+is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always
+be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at
+large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'
+
+'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what
+matters the opinion of others?'
+
+'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt
+those motives?'
+
+Wanda did not reply.
+
+'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has
+been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him
+as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to
+him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the
+power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'
+
+As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was
+listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ
+within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of
+grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous
+years to come.
+
+When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:
+
+'I want you to promise me one thing.'
+
+'I promise you all things. What is this one?'
+
+'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those
+great fortunes which form the _acte d'accusation_ of socialists against
+society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of
+Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It
+is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed
+by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious
+barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one
+of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!--Promise me that
+you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may
+enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'
+
+He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to
+speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still
+remained silent.
+
+'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is
+too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against
+me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a
+few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too
+much!'
+
+He stooped and kissed her hand.
+
+'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with
+passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that
+I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be
+right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away
+from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'
+
+A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her
+hands as he held them clasped in his.
+
+'We will drink that wafer together, and as long as we are together it
+will never be bitter, I think,' she said very softly.
+
+Her voice seemed to sink into his very soul, so much it said of faith,
+so much it aroused of remorse.
+
+Then the great joy which had entered his life, like a great dazzling
+flood of light suddenly let loose into a darkened chamber, so blinded
+consumed, and intoxicated him, that he forgot all else; all else save
+this one fact--she would be his, body and soul, night and day, in life
+and in death for ever; his children borne by her, his life spent with
+her, her whole existence surrendered to him.
+
+For some days after that she mused upon the possibility of rendering
+him entirely independent of herself, without insulting him by a direct
+offer of a share in her possessions. At last a solution occurred
+to her. The whole of the fiefs of Idrac constituted a considerable
+appanage apart; its title went with it. When it had come into the
+Szalras family by marriage, as far back as the fifteenth century, it
+had been a principality; it was still a seigneurie, and many curious
+feudal privileges and distinctions went with it.
+
+It was Idrac now that she determined to abandon to her lover.
+
+'He will be seigneur of Idrac,' she thought, 'and I shall be so glad
+for him to bear an Austrian name.'
+
+'She herself would always retain her own name, and would take no other.
+
+'We will go and revisit it together,' she thought, and though she
+was all alone' at that moment, a soft warmth came into her face, and
+a throb of emotion to her heart, as she remembered all that would lie
+in that one word 'together,' all the tender and intimate union of the
+years to come.
+
+Her trustees were furious, and sought the aid of the men of law to
+enable them to step in and arrest her in what they deemed a course
+of self-destruction, but the law could not give them so much power;
+she was her own mistress, and as sole inheritrix had received her
+possessions singularly untrammelled by restrictions. In vain Prince
+Lilienhöhe spent his severe and chilly anger, Kaulnitz his fine
+sarcasm and delicate insinuations, and the Cardinal his stately and
+authoritative wrath. She was not to be altered in her decision.
+
+Austrian law allowed her to give away an estate to her husband if she
+chose, and there was nothing in the private settlements of her property
+to prevent her availing herself of the law.
+
+Strenuous opposition was encountered by her to this project, by every
+one of her relatives, hardly excluding the Princess Ottilie; 'for,'
+said that sagacious recluse, 'your horses may show you, my dear, the
+dangers of a rein too loose.'
+
+'I want no rein at all,' said Wanda. 'You forget that, to my thinking,
+marriage should never be bondage; two people with independent wills,
+tastes, and habits should mutually concede a perfect independence of
+action to each other. When one must yield, it must be the woman.'
+
+'Those are very fine theories,' the Princess remarked with caution.
+
+'I hope we shall put them in practice,' said Wanda, with unruffled good
+humour. 'Dear mother, I am sure you can understand that I want him
+to feel he is wholly independent of me. To what I love best on earth
+shall I dole out a niggard largesse from my wealth? If I were capable
+of doing so he would grow in time to hate me, and his hatred would be
+justified.'
+
+'I never should have supposed you would become so romantic,' said the
+Princess.
+
+'It will make him independent of you,' objected Prince Lilienhöhe.
+
+'That is what, beyond all, I desire him to be,' she answered.
+
+'It is an infatuation,' sighed Cardinal Vàsàrhely, out of her hearing,
+'when Egon would have brought to her a fortune as large as her own.'
+
+'You think water should always run to the sea,' said Princess Ottilie;
+'surely that is great waste sometimes?'
+
+'I think you are as infatuated as she is,' murmured the Cardinal. 'You
+forget that had she not been inspired with this unhappy sentiment she
+would have most probably left Hohenszalras to the Church.'
+
+'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,'
+answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else,
+had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'
+
+That would have been better than to an adventurer.'
+
+'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest
+aristocracies of the world, if poor.'
+
+'_Ce que femme veut_,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the
+Church had been worsted by women.
+
+The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the
+marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any
+possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband,
+and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of
+action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the
+deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself,
+as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud
+to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your
+hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he
+will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always
+will. If not--if not--well, he must go!'
+
+One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment
+emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She
+spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He
+looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush
+that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow
+tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires.
+She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of
+the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before
+him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.
+
+'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you
+to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of
+Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their
+feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been
+lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the
+reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary
+passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'
+
+'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with
+those roses.'
+
+'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced
+flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment.
+It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'
+
+'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your
+coronet, to which I can add none!'
+
+But to please her he bent over the crabbed black letter and the antique
+blazonings of the great roll to which the great dead men had set their
+sign and seal. She watched him as he read it, then after a little time
+she put her hand with a caressing movement on his shoulder.
+
+'My love, I can do just as I will with Idrac. The lawyers are agreed on
+that, and the Kaiser will confirm whatever I do. Now I want to give you
+Idrac, make you wholly lord of it; indeed, the thing is already done. I
+have signed all the documents needful, and, as I say, the Emperor will
+confirm any part of them that needs his assent. My Réné, you are a very
+proud man, but you will not be too proud to take Idrac and its title
+from your wife. But for that town who can say that our lives might not
+have been passed for ever apart? Why do you look so grave? The Kaiser
+and I both want you to be Austrian. When I transfer to you the fief of
+Idrac you are its Count for evermore.'
+
+He drew a quick deep breath as if he had been struck a blow, and stood
+gazing at her. He did not speak, his eyes darkened as with pain. For
+the moment she was afraid that she had wounded him. With exquisite
+softness of tone and touch she took his hand and said to him tenderly:
+
+'Why will you be so proud? After all, what are these things? Since
+we love one another, what is mine is yours; a formula more or less
+is no offence. It is my fancy that you should have the title and the
+fief. The people know you there, and your heroic courage will be for
+ever amongst their best traditions. Dear! once I read that it needs a
+greater soul to take generously than to give. Be great so, now, for my
+sake!'
+
+'Great!' he echoed the word hoarsely, and a smile of bitter irony
+passed for a moment over his features. But he controlled the passionate
+self-contempt that rose in him. He knew that whatever else he was,
+he was her lover, and her hero in her sight. If the magnitude and
+magnanimity of her gifts overwhelmed and oppressed him, he was recalled
+to self-control by the sense of her absolute faith in him. He pressed
+her hands against his heavily-beating heart.
+
+'All the greatness is with you, my beloved,' he said with effort.
+'Since you delight to honour me, I can but strive my utmost to deserve
+your honour. It is like your beautiful and lavish nature to be prodigal
+of gifts. But when you give yourself, what need is there for aught
+else?'
+
+'But Idrac is my caprice. You must gratify it.'
+
+'I will take the title gladly at your hands then. The revenues--No.'
+
+'You must take it all, the town and the title, and all they bring,' she
+insisted. 'In truth, but for you there would possibly be no town at
+all. Nay, my dear, you must do me this little pleasure; it will become
+you so well that Countship of Idrac: it is as old a place as Vindobona
+itself.'
+
+'Do you not understand?' she added, with a flush on her face. 'I want
+you to feel that it is wholly yours; that if I die, or if you leave me,
+it remains yours still. Oh, I do not doubt you; not for one moment. But
+liberty is always good. And Idrac will make you an Austrian noble in
+your own right. If you persist in refusing it I will assign it to the
+Crown; you will pain me and mortify me.'
+
+'That is enough! Never wittingly in my life will I hurt you. But if you
+wish me to be lord of Idrac, invest me with the title, my Empress. I
+will take it and be proud of it; and as for the revenues--well, we will
+not quarrel for them. They shall go to make new dykes and new bastions
+for the town, or pile themselves one on another in waiting for your
+children.'
+
+She smiled and her face grew warm as she turned aside and took up one
+of the great swords with jewelled hilts and damascened scabbards, which
+were ranged along the wall of the Rittersaal with other stands of arms.
+
+She drew the sword, and as he fell on his knee before her smote him
+lightly on the shoulder with its blade.
+
+'Rise, Graf von Idrac!' she said, stooping and touching his forehead
+with the bouquet that she wore at her breast. He loosened one of the
+roses and held it to his lips.
+
+'I swear my fealty now and for ever,' he said with emotion, and his
+face was paler and his tone was graver than the playfulness of the
+moment seemed to call for in him.
+
+'Would to Heaven I had had no other name than this one you give me,'
+he murmured as he rose. 'Oh, my love, my lady, my guardian angel!
+Forget that ever I lived before, forget all my life when I was unworthy
+you; let me live only from the day that will make me your vassal and
+your----'
+
+'That will make you my lord!' she said softly; then she stooped, and
+for the first time kissed him.
+
+What caused her the only pain that disturbed the tranquillity of these
+cloudless days was the refusal of her cousin Egon to be present at
+her marriage. He sent her, with some great jewels that had come from
+Persia, a few words of sad and wistful affection.
+
+'My presence,' he added in conclusion, 'is no more needed for your
+happiness than are these poor diamonds and pearls needed in your
+crowded jewel-cases. You will spare me a trial, which it could be of no
+benefit to you for me to suffer. I pray that the Marquis de Sabran may
+all his life be worthy of the immense trust and honour which you have
+seen fit to give to him. For myself, I have been very little always in
+your life. Henceforth I shall be nothing. But if ever you call on me
+for any service--which it is most unlikely you ever will do--I entreat
+you to remember that there is no one living who will more gladly or
+more humbly do your bidding at all cost than I, your cousin Egon.'
+
+The short letter brought tears to her eyes. She said nothing of it to
+Sabran. He had understood from Mdme. Ottilie that Prince Vàsàrhely had
+loved his cousin hopelessly for many years, and could not be expected
+to be present at her marriage.
+
+In a week from that time their nuptials were celebrated in the Court
+Chapel of the Hofburg at Vienna, with all the pomp and splendour that
+a brilliant and ceremonious Court could lend to the espousal of one of
+the greatest ladies of the old Duchy of Austria.
+
+Immediately after the ceremony they left the capital for Hohenszalras.
+
+At the signing of the contract on the previous night, when he had taken
+up the pen he had grown very pale; he had hesitated a moment, and
+glanced around him on the magnificent crowd, headed by the Emperor and
+Empress, with a gleam of fear and of anxiety in his eyes, which Baron
+Kaulnitz, who was intently watching him, had alone perceived.
+
+'There is something. What is it?' had mused the astute German.
+
+It was too late to seek to know. Sabran had bent down over the
+parchment, and with a firm hand had signed his name and title.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+It was midsummer once more in the Iselthal, five years and a half after
+the celebration at the Imperial palace of those nuptials which had been
+so splendid that their magnificence had been noticeable even at that
+magnificent Court. The time had seemed to her like one long, happy,
+cloudless day, and if to him there had come any fatigue, any satiety,
+any unrest, such as almost always come to the man in the fruition of
+his passion, he suffered her to see none of them.
+
+It was one of those rare marriages in which no gall of a chain is felt,
+but a quick and perfect sympathy insures that harmony which passion
+alone is insufficient to sustain. He devoted himself with ardour to the
+care of the immense properties that belonged to his wife; he brought
+to their administration a judgment and a precision that none had looked
+for in a man of pleasure; he entered cordially into all her schemes for
+the well-being of her people dependent on her, and carried them out
+with skill and firmness. The revenues of Idrac he never touched; he
+left them to accumulate for his younger son, or expended them on the
+township itself, where he was adored.
+
+If he were still the same man who had been the lover of Cochonette,
+the terror of Monte Carlo, the hero of night-long baccara and frontier
+duels, he had at least so banished the old Adam that it appeared wholly
+dead. Nor was the death of it feigned. He had flung away the slough
+of his old life with a firm hand, and the peace, the dignity of his
+present existence were very precious to him. He was glad to steep
+himself in them, as a tired and fevered wayfarer was glad to bathe his
+dusty and heated limbs in the cool, clear waters of the Szalrassee. And
+he loved his wife with a great love, in which reverence, and gratitude,
+and passion were all blent. Possession had not dulled, nor familiarity
+blunted it. She was still to him a sovereign, a saint, a half divine
+creature, who had stooped to become mortal for his sake, and his
+children's.
+
+The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls
+and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the
+Szalrassee.
+
+'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath
+the great yews beside the keep.
+
+'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but
+watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as
+ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty
+amphitheatre.
+
+She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of
+whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy
+with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The
+other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months
+of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were
+all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.
+
+'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the
+world called so proud.
+
+'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near
+her wicker chair.
+
+'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it,
+at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you
+it will be he who will be dearest to me.'
+
+As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.
+
+She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.
+
+'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that
+we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all
+the world who have passed five years and more together without once
+disagreeing?'
+
+'In all the world there is not another Countess Wanda!'
+
+'Ah! that is your only defect; you will always avoid argument by
+escaping through the side-door of compliment. It is true, to be sure,
+that your flattery is a very high and subtle art.'
+
+'It is like all high art then, based on what is eternally true.'
+
+'You will always have the last word, and it is always so graceful a
+one that it is impossible to quarrel with it. But, Réné, I want you
+to speak without compliment to me for once. Tell me, are you indeed
+never--never--a little weary of being here?'
+
+He hesitated a moment and a slight flush came on his face.
+
+She observed both signs, slight as they were, and sighed; it was the
+first sigh she had ever breathed since her marriage.
+
+'Of course you are, of course you must be,' she said quickly. 'It has
+been selfish and blameable of me never to think of it before. It is
+paradise to me, but no doubt to you, used as you have been to the stir
+of the world, there, must be some tedium, some dulness in this mountain
+isolation. I ought to have remembered that before.'
+
+'You need do nothing of the kind, now,' he said. 'Who has been talking
+to you? Who has brought this little snake into our Eden?'
+
+'No one; and it is not a snake at all, but a natural reflection.
+Hohenszalras and you are the world to me, but I cannot expect that
+Hohenszalras and I can be quite as much to yourself. It is always the
+difference between the woman and the man. You have great talents; you
+are ambitious.'
+
+'Were I as ambitious as Alexander, surely I have gained wherewithal to
+be content!'
+
+'That is only compliment again, or if truth it is only a side of the
+truth. Nay, love, I do not think for a moment you are tired of me;
+I am too self-satisfied for that! But I think it is possible that
+this solitude may have grown, or may grow, wearisome to you; that you
+desire, perhaps without knowing it, to be more amidst the strife,
+the movement, and the pleasures of men. Aunt Ottilie calls this
+"confinement to a fortress;" now that is a mere pleasantry, but if ever
+you should feel tempted to feel what she feels, have confidence enough
+in my good sense and in my affection to say so to me, and then----.'
+
+'And then? We will suppose I have this ingratitude and bad taste, what
+then?'
+
+'Why then, my own wishes should not stand for one instant in the way
+of yours, or rather I would make yours mine. And do not use the word
+ingratitude, my dearest; there can be no question of that betwixt you
+and me.'
+
+'Yes,' said Sabran, as he stooped towards her and touched her hair
+with his lips. 'When you gave me yourself, you made me your debtor
+for all time; would have made me so had you been as poor as you are
+rich. When I speak of gratitude it is of _that_ gift, I think, not of
+Hohenszalras.'
+
+A warmth of pleasure flushed her cheek for a moment, and she smiled
+happily.
+
+'You shall not beg the question so,' she said, with gentle insistence
+after a moment's pause. 'I have not forgotten your eloquence in the
+French Chamber.' You are that rare thing a born orator. You are
+not perhaps fitted to be a statesman, for I doubt if you would have
+the application or bear the tedium necessary, but you have every
+qualification for a diplomatist, a foreign minister.'
+
+'I have not the first qualification, I have no country!'
+
+She looked at him, in surprise--he spoke with bitterness and
+self-contempt; but in a moment he had added quickly:--
+
+'France is nothing to me now, and though I am Austrian by all ties and
+affections, I am not an Austrian before the law.'
+
+'That is hardly true,' she answered, satisfied with the explanation.
+'Since France is little to you you could be naturalised here whenever
+you chose, even if Idrac have not made you a Croat noble, as I believe
+the lawyers would say it had; and the Emperor, who knows and admires
+you, would, I think, at once give you gladly any mission you preferred;
+you would make so graceful, so perfect, so envied an ambassador!
+Diplomacy has indeed little force now, yet tact still tells wherever
+it be found, and it is as rare as blue roses in the unweeded garden of
+the world. I do not speak for myself, dear; that you know. Hohenszalras
+is my beloved home, and it was enough for me before I knew you, and
+nowhere else could life ever seem to me so true, so high, so simple,
+and so near to God as here. But I do remember that men weary even of
+happiness when it is unwitnessed, and require the press and stir of
+emulation and excitation; and, if you feel that want, say so. Have
+confidence enough in me to believe that your welfare will be ever my
+highest law. Promise me this.'
+
+He changed colour slightly at her generous and trustful words, but he
+answered without a moment's pause:
+
+'Whenever I am so thankless to fate I will confess it. No; the world
+and I never valued one another much. I am far better here in the heart
+of your mountains. Here only have I known peace and rest.'
+
+He spoke with a certain effort and emotion, and he stooped over his
+little son and raised him on her knees.
+
+'These children shall grow up at Hohenszalras,' he continued, 'and you
+shall teach them your love of the open air, the mountain solitudes, the
+simple people, the forest creatures, the influences and the ways of
+nature. You care for all those things, and they make up true wisdom,
+true contentment. As for myself, if you always love me I shall ask no
+more of fate.'
+
+'If! Can you be afraid?'
+
+'Sometimes. One always fears to lose what one has never merited.'
+
+'Ah, my love, do not be so humble! If you saw yourself as I see you,
+you would be very proud.'
+
+She smiled as she spoke, and stretched her hand out to him over the
+golden head of her child.
+
+He took it and held it against his heart, clasped in both his own.
+Bela, impatient, slipped off his mother's lap to pursue his capture of
+the daisies; the butterflies were forbidden joys, and he was obedient,
+though in his own little way he was proud and imperious. But there
+was a blue butterfly just in front of him, a Lycœna Adonis, like a
+little bit of the sky come down and dancing about; he could not resist,
+he darted at it. As he was about to seize it she caught his fingers.
+
+'I have told you, Bela, you are never to touch anything that flies or
+moves. You are cruel.'
+
+He tried to get away, and his face grew very warm and passionate.
+
+'Bela will be cruel, if he like,' he said, knitting his pretty brows.
+
+Though he was not more than four years old he knew very well that he
+was the Count Bela, to whom all the people gave homage, crowding to
+kiss his tiny hand after Mass on holy-days. He was a very beautiful
+child, and all the prettier for his air of pride and resolution; he had
+been early put on a little mountain pony, and could ride fearlessly
+down the forest glades with Otto. All the imperiousness of the great
+race which had dealt out life and death so many centuries at their
+caprice through the Hohe Tauern seemed to have been inherited by him,
+coupled with a waywardness and a vanity that were not traits of the
+house of Szalras. It was impossible, even though those immediately
+about him were wise and prudent, to wholly prevent the effects of the
+adulation with which the whole household was eager to wait on every
+whim of the little heir.
+
+'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his
+desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that
+to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it
+his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition,
+and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very
+affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.
+
+With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he
+said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'
+
+Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very
+frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been
+four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.
+
+Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.
+
+'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'
+
+Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.
+
+'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'
+
+Then he burst into tears.
+
+'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his
+father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his
+nurse, who came for him.
+
+'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him
+more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give
+you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'
+
+It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil
+qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son,
+and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was
+unworthy to beget _her_ children,' he thought, with the self-reproach
+that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his
+satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what
+trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years
+to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his
+blood?
+
+'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to
+see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It
+hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own
+little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill;
+do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is
+your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud
+of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'
+
+'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows
+older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to
+enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy
+that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry
+passions, of my degraded humanity?'
+
+'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think
+me.'
+
+'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'
+
+'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a _beau défaut_,
+and I would not have you lose it.'
+
+'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and
+passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'
+
+She looked at him surprised, and vaguely troubled at the self-reproach
+and the self-scorn of his passionate utterance. Seeing that surprise
+and trouble in her glance, he controlled the emotion that for the
+moment mastered him.
+
+'Ah, love!' he said quickly and truly, 'if you could but guess how
+gross and base a man's life seems to him contrasted with the life of
+a pure and noble woman! Being born of you, those children, I think,
+should be as faultless and as soilless as those pearls that lie on your
+breast. But then they are mine also; so already on that boy's face one
+sees the sins of revolt, of self-will, of cruelty--being mine also,
+your living pearls are dulled and stained!'
+
+A greater remorse than she dreamed of made his heart ache as he said
+these words; but she heard in them only the utterance of that extreme
+and unwavering devotion to her which he had shown in all his acts and
+thoughts from the first hours of their union.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The Princess Ottilie was scarcely less happy than they in the
+realisation of her dreams and prophecies. Those who had been most
+bitterly opposed to her alliance with him could find no fault in his
+actions and his affections.
+
+'I always said that Wanda ought to marry, since she had plainly no
+vocation for the cloister,' she said a hundred times a year. 'And I was
+certain that M. de Sabran was the person above all others to attract
+and to content her. She has much more imagination than she would be
+willing to allow and he is capable at once of fascinating her fancy
+and of satisfying her intellect. No one can be dull where he is; he is
+one of those who make _la pluie et le beau temps_ by his absence or
+presence; and, besides that, no commonplace affection would have ever
+been enough for her. And he loves her like a poet, which he is at once
+whenever he leaves the world for Beethoven and Bach. I cannot imagine
+why you should have opposed the marriage, merely because he had not two
+millions in the Bank of France.'
+
+'Not for that,' answered the Grand Duke; 'rather because he broke the
+bank of Monte Carlo, and other similar reasons. A great player of
+baccara is scarcely the person to endow with the wealth of the Szalras.'
+
+'The wealth is tied up tightly enough at the least, and you will admit
+that he was yet more eager than you that it should be so.'
+
+'Oh, yes! he behaved very well. I never denied it. But she has placed
+it in his power to make away with the whole of Idrac, if he should ever
+choose. That was very unwise, but we had no power to oppose.'
+
+'You may be quite sure that Idrac will go intact to the second son, as
+it has always done; and I believe but for his own exertions Idrac would
+now be beneath the Danube waters. Perhaps you never heard all that
+story of the flood?'
+
+'I only hope that if I have detractors you will defend me from them,'
+said Prince Lilienhöhe, giving up argument.
+
+Fair weather is always especially fair in the eyes of those who have
+foretold at sunset that the morrow would be fine; and so the married
+life of Wanda von Szalras was especially delightful as an object of
+contemplation, as a theme of exultation, to the Princess, who alone had
+been clear-sighted enough to foresee the future. She really also loved
+Sabran like a son, and took pride and pleasure in the filial tenderness
+he showed her, and in his children, with the beautiful blue eyes that
+had gleams of light in them like sapphires. The children themselves
+adored her; and even the bold and wilful Bela was as quiet as a
+startled fawn beside this lovely little lady, with her snow-white hair
+and her delicate smile, whose cascades of lace always concealed such
+wonderful bon-bon boxes, and gilded cosaques, and illuminated stories
+of the saints.
+
+Almost all their time was spent at Hohenszalras. A few winter months
+in Vienna was all they had ever passed away from it, except one visit
+to Idrac and the Hungarian estates. The children never left it for
+a day. He shared her affection for the place, and for the hardy and
+frank mountain people around them. He seemed to her to entirely forget
+Romaris, and beyond the transmission of moneys to its priest, he
+took no heed of it. She hesitated to recall it to him, since to do
+so might have seemed to remind him that it was she, not he, who was
+suzerain in the Hohe Tauern. Romaris was but a bleak rock, a strip of
+sea-swept sand; it was natural that it should have no great hold on his
+affections, only recalling as it did all that its lords had lost.
+
+'I hate its name,' he said impetuously once; and seeing the surprise
+upon her face, he added: 'I was very lonely and wretched there; I
+tried to take interest in it because you bade me, but I failed; all
+I saw, all I thought of, was yourself, and I believed you as far and
+for ever removed from me as though you had dwelt in some other planet.
+No! perhaps I am superstitious: I do not wish you to go to Romaris. I
+believe it would bring us misfortune. The sea is full of treachery, the
+sands are full of graves.'
+
+She smiled.
+
+'Superstition is a sort of parody of faith; I am sure you are not
+superstitious. I do not care to go to Romaris; I like to cheat myself
+into the belief that you were born and bred in the Iselthal. Otto said
+to me the other day, "My lord must be a son of the soil, or how could
+he know our mountains so well as he does, and how could he anywhere
+have learned to shoot like that?"'
+
+'I am very glad that Otto does me so much honour. When he first met
+me, he would have shot me like a fox, if you had given the word. Ah, my
+love! how often I think of you that day, in your white serge, with your
+girdle of gold, and your long gold-headed staff, and your little ivory
+horn. You were truly a châtelaine of the old mystical German days.
+You had some _Schlüsselblumen_ in your hand. They were indeed the key
+flower to my soul, though, alas! treasures, I fear, you found none on
+your entrance there.'
+
+'I shall not answer you, since to answer would be to flatter you, and
+Aunt Ottilie already, does that more than is good for you,' she said
+smiling, as she passed her fingers over the waves of his hair. 'By the
+way, whom shall we invite to meet the Lilienhöhe? Will you make out a
+list?'
+
+'The Grand Duke does not share Frau Ottilie's goodness for me.'
+
+'What would you? He has been made of buckram and parchment; besides
+which; nothing that is not German has, to his mind, any right to exist.
+By the way, Egon wrote to me this morning; he will be here at last.'
+
+He looked up quickly in unspoken alarm: 'Your cousin Egon? Here?'
+
+'Why are you so surprised? I was sure that sooner or later he would
+conquer that feeling of being unable to meet you. I begged him to come
+now; it is eight whole years since I have seen him. When once you have
+met you will be friends--for my sake.'
+
+He was silent; a look of trouble and alarm was still upon his face.
+
+'Why should you suppose it any easier to him now than then?' he said at
+length. 'Men who love _you_ do not change. There are women who compel
+constancy, _sans le vouloir_. The meeting can but be painful to Prince
+Vàsàrhely.'
+
+'Dear Réné,' she answered in some surprise, 'my nearest male relative
+and I cannot go on for ever without seeing each other. Even these years
+have done Egon a great deal of harm. He has been absent from the Court
+for fear of meeting us. He has lived with his hussars, or voluntarily
+confined to his estates, until he grows morose and solitary. I am
+deeply attached to him. I do not wish to have the remorse upon me of
+having caused the ruin of his gallant and brilliant life. When he
+has been once here he will like you: men who are brave have always
+a certain sympathy. When he has seen you here he will realise that
+destiny is unchangeable, and grow reconciled to the knowledge that I am
+your wife.'
+
+Sabran gave an impatient gesture of denial, and began to write the list
+of invitations for the autumn circle of guests who were to meet the
+Prince and Princess of Lilienhöhe.
+
+Once every summer and every autumn Hohenszalras was filled with a
+brilliant house-party, for she sacrificed her own personal preferences
+to what she believed to be for the good of her husband. She knew that
+men cannot always live alone; that contact with the world is needful to
+their minds and bracing for it. She had a great dread lest the ghost
+_ennui_ should show his pale face over her husband's shoulder, for
+she realised that from the life of the asphalte of the Champs-Élysées
+to the life amidst the pine forests of the Iselthal was an abrupt
+transition that might easily bring tedium in its train. And tedium is
+the most terrible and the most powerful foe love ever encounters.
+
+Sabran completed the list, and when he had corrected it into due
+accordance with all Lilienhöhe's personal and political sympathies and
+antipathies, despatched the invitations, 'for eight days,' written on
+cards that bore the joint arms of the Counts of Idrac and the Counts of
+Szalras. He had adopted the armorial bearings of the countship of Idrac
+as his own, and seemed disposed to abandon altogether those of the
+Sabrans of Romaris.
+
+When they were written he went out by himself and rode long and fast
+through the mists of a chilly afternoon, through dripping forest ways
+and over roads where little water-courses spread in shining shallows.
+The coming of Egon Vàsàrhely troubled him and alarmed him. He had
+always dreaded his first meeting with the Magyar noble; and as the
+years had dropped by one after another, and her cousin had failed
+to find courage to see her again, he had begun to believe that they
+and Vàsàrhely would remain always strangers. His wish had begotten
+his thought. He knew that she wrote at intervals to her cousin, and
+he to her; he knew that at the birth of each of their children some
+magnificent gift, with a formal letter of felicitation, had come from
+the Colonel of the White Hussars; but as time had gone on and Prince
+Egon had avoided all possibility of meeting them, he had grown to
+suppose that the wound given her rejected lover was too profound ever
+to close; nor did he wonder that it was so: it seemed to him that any
+man who loved her must do so for all eternity, if eternity there should
+be. To learn suddenly that within another month Vàsàrhely would be his
+guest, distressed and alarmed him in a manner she never dreamed. They
+had been so happy. On their cloud less heaven there seemed to him to
+rise a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but bearing with it disaster
+and a moonless night.
+
+'Perhaps he will have forgotten,' he thought, as he strove to shake off
+his forebodings. 'We were so young then. He was not even as old as I!'
+
+And he rode fast and furiously homewards as the day drew in, and the
+lighted windows of the great castle seemed to smile at him as lie saw
+it high up above the darkness of the woods and of the evening mists,
+his home, beloved, sacred, infinitely dear to him; dear as the soil of
+the mother country which the wrecked mariner reaches after facing death
+on the deep sea.
+
+'God save her from suffering by me!' he said, in an unconscious prayer,
+as he drew rein before the terrace of Hohenszalras. Almost he believed
+in God through her.
+
+When, after dressing, he went into, the Saxe room, the peace and
+beauty of the scene had never struck him so strongly as it did now,
+coming out of the shadows of the wet woods and the gloom of his own
+anxieties; anxieties the heavier and the more wearing because they
+could be shared by no one. The soft, full light of the wax candles fell
+on the Louis Seize embroideries and the white woodwork of the panelling
+and the china borders of the mirrors. The Princess Ottilie sat making
+silk-netting for the children's balls; his wife was reading, and Bela
+and Gela, who were there for their privileged half-hour before dinner,
+were fitting together on a white bearskin, playing with the coloured
+balls of the game of solitaire. The soft light from the chandeliers
+and sconces of the Saxe Royale china fell on the golden heads and the
+velvet frocks of the children, on the old laces and the tawny-coloured
+plush of their mothers skirts, on the great masses of flowers in the
+Saxe bowls, and on the sleeping forms of the big dogs Donau and Neva.
+It was an interior that would have charmed Chardin, that would have
+been worthy of Vandyck.
+
+As he looked at it he thought with a sort of ecstasy, 'All that is
+mine;' and then his heartstrings tightened as he thought again, 'If she
+knew----?'
+
+She looked up at his entrance with a welcome on her face that needed no
+words.
+
+'Where have you been in the rain all this long afternoon?' You see we
+have a fire, even though it is midsummer. Bela, rise, and make your
+obeisance, and push that chair nearer the hearth.'
+
+The two little boys stood up and kissed his hand, one after another,
+with the pretty formality; of greeting on which she always insisted;
+then they went back to their coloured glass balls, and he sank into a
+low chair beside his wife with a sigh half of fatigue, half of content.
+
+'Yes, I have been riding all the time,' he said to her. 'I am not sure
+that Siegfried approved it. But it does one good sometimes, and after
+the blackness and the wetness of that forest how charming it is to come
+home!'
+
+She looked at him with wistfulness.
+
+'I wish you were not vexed that Egon is coming! I am sure you have been
+thinking of it as you rode.'
+
+'Yes, I have; but I am ashamed of doing so. He is your cousin, that
+shall be enough for me. I will do my best to make him welcome. Only
+there is this difficulty; a welcome from me to him will seem in itself
+an insult.'
+
+'An insult! when you are my husband? One would think you were my
+_jägermeister._ Dear mother mine, help me to scold him.'
+
+'I am a stranger,' he said, under his breath.
+
+She smiled a little, but she said with a certain hauteur:
+
+'You are master of Hohenszalras, as your son will be when our places
+shall know us no more. Do not let the phantom of Egon come between us,
+I beseech you. His real presence never will do so, that is certain.'
+
+'Nothing shall come between us,' said Sabran, as his hand took and
+closed upon hers. 'Forgive me if I have brought some gloomy _nix_ out
+of the dark woods with me; he will flee away in, the light of this
+beloved white-room. No evil spirits could dare stay by your hearth.'
+
+'There are _nixes_ in the forests,' said Bela in a whisper to his
+brother.
+
+'Ja!' said Gela, not comprehending.
+
+'We will kill them all when we are big,' said Bela.
+
+'Ja! ja!' said Gela.
+
+Bela knew very well what a _nix_ was. Otto had told him all about
+kobolds and sprites, as his pony trotted down the drives.
+
+'Or we will take them prisoners,' he added, remembering that his mother
+never allowed anything to be killed, not even butterflies.
+
+'Ja!' said Gela again, rolling the pretty blue and pink and amber balls
+about in the white fur of the bearskin.
+
+Gela's views of life were simplified by the disciple's law of
+imitation; they were restricted to doing whatever Bela did, when that
+was possible, when it was not possible he remained still adoring Bela,
+with his little serious face as calm as a god's.
+
+She used to think that when they should grow up Bela would be a great
+soldier like Wallenstein or Condé, and Gela would stay at home and
+take care of his people here in the green, lone, happy Iselthal.
+
+Time ran on and the later summer made the blooming hay grow brown on
+all the alpine meadows, and made the garden of Hohenszalras blossom
+with a million autumnal glories; it brought also the season of the
+first house-party. Egon Vàsàrhely was to arrive one day before the
+Lilienhöhe and the other guests.
+
+'I want Egon so much to see Bela!' she said, with the thoughtless
+cruelty of a happy mother forgetful of the pain of a rejected lover.
+
+'I fear Bela will find little favor in your cousin's eyes, since he is
+mine too,' said Sabran.
+
+'Oh, Egon is content to be only our cousin by this----'
+
+'You think so? You do not know yourself if you imagine that.'
+
+'Egon is very loyal. He would not come here if he could not greet you
+honestly.'
+
+Sabran's face flushed a little, and he turned away. He vaguely dreaded
+the advent of Egon Vàsàrhely, and there were so many innocent words
+uttered in the carelessness of intimate intercourse which stabbed him
+to the quick; she had so wounded him all unconscious of her act.
+
+'Shall we have a game of billiards?' he asked her as they stood in the
+Rittersaal, whilst the rain fell fast without. She played billiards
+well, and could hold her own against him, though his game was one that
+had often been watched by a crowded _galerie_ in Paris with eager
+speculation and heavy wager. An hour afterwards they were still playing
+when the clang of a great bell announced the approach of the carriage
+which had been sent to Windisch-Matrey.
+
+'Come!' she said joyously, as she put back her cue in its rest; but
+Sabran drew back.
+
+'Receive your cousin first alone,' he said. 'He must resent my presence
+here. I will not force it on him on the threshold of your house.'
+
+'Of our house! Why will you use wrong pronouns? Believe me, dear, Egon
+is too generous to bear you the animosity you think.'
+
+'Then he never loved you,' said Sabran, somewhat impatiently, as he
+sent one ball against another with a sharp collision. 'I will come if
+you wish it,' he added; 'but I think it is not in the best taste to so
+assert myself.'
+
+'Egon is only my cousin and your guest. You are the master of
+Hohenszalras. Come! you were not so difficult when you received the
+Emperor.'
+
+'I had done the Emperor no wrong,' said Sabran, controlling the
+impatience and the reluctance he still felt.
+
+'You have done Egon none. I should not have been his wife had I never
+been yours.'
+
+'Who knows?' murmured Sabran, as he followed her into the entrance
+hall. The stately figure of Egon Vàsàrhely enveloped in furs was just
+passing through the arched doorway.
+
+She went towards him with a glad welcome and both hands outstretched.
+
+Prince Egon bowed to the ground: then took both her hands in his and
+kissed her on the cheek.
+
+Sabran, who grew very pale, advanced and greeted him with ceremonious
+grace.
+
+'My wife has bade me welcome you, Prince, but it would be presumptuous
+in me, a stranger, to do that. All her kindred must be dear and sacred
+here.'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely, with an effort to which he had for years been vainly
+schooling himself, stretched out his hand to take her husband's; but
+as he did so, and his glance for the first time dwelt on Sabran, a
+look surprised and indefinitely perplexed came on his own features.
+Unconsciously he hesitated a moment; then, controlling himself, he
+replied with a few fitting words of courtesy and friendship. That
+there should be some embarrassment, some constraint, was almost
+inevitable, and did not surprise her: she saw both, but she also saw
+that both were hidden under the serenity of high breeding and worldly
+habit. The most difficult moment had passed: they went together into
+the Rittersaal, talked together a little on a few indifferent topics,
+and in a little space Prince Egon withdrew to his own apartments to
+change his travelling clothes. Sabran left him on the threshold of his
+chamber.
+
+Vàsàrhely locked the doors, locking out even his servant, threw off
+his furs and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. The meeting had
+cost him even more than he had feared that it would do. For five years
+he had dreaded this moment, and its pain was as sharp and as fresh to
+him as though it had been unforeseen. To sleep under the same roof
+with the husband of Wanda von Szalras! He had overrated his power of
+self-control, underrated his power of suffering, when to please her he
+had consented after five years to visit Hohenszalras. What were five
+years?--half a century would not have changed him.
+
+Under the plea of fatigue, he, who had sat in his saddle eighteen hours
+at a stretch, and was braced to every form of endurance in the forest
+chase and in the tented field, sent excuses to his host for remaining
+in his own rooms until the Ave Maria rung. When he at length went
+down to the blue-room where she was, he had recovered, outwardly at
+least, his tranquillity and his self-possession, though here, in this
+familiar, once beloved chamber, where every object had been dear to him
+from his boyhood, a keener trial than any he had passed through awaited
+him, as she led forward to meet him a little boy clad in white velvet,
+with a cloud of light golden hair above deep blue luminous eyes, and
+said to him:
+
+'Egon, this is my Bela. You will love him a little, for my sake?'
+
+Vàsàrhely felt a chill run through him like the cold of death as he
+stooped towards the child; but he smiled and touched the boy's forehead
+with his lips.
+
+'May the spirit of our lost Bela be with him and dwell in his heart,'
+he murmured; 'better I cannot wish him.'
+
+With an effort he turned to Sabran.
+
+'Your little son is a noble child; you may with reason be proud of him.
+He is very like you in feature. I see no trace of the Szalras.'
+
+'The other boy is more like Wanda,' replied Sabran, sensible of a
+certain tenacity of observation with which Vàsàrhely was gazing at
+him. 'As for my daughter, she is too young for anyone to say whom she
+will resemble. All I desire is that she should be like her mother,
+physically and spiritually.'
+
+'Of course,' said the Prince, absently, still looking from Sabran to
+the child, as if in the endeavour to follow some remembrance that
+eluded-him. The little face of Bela was a miniature of his father's,
+they were as alike as it is possible for a child and a man to be so,
+and Egon Vàsàrhely perplexedly mused and wondered at vague memories
+which rose up to him as he gazed on each.
+
+'And what do you like best to do, my little one?' he asked of Bela, who
+was regarding him with curious and hostile eyes.
+
+'To ride,' answered Bela at once, in his pretty uncertain German.
+
+'There you are a true Szalras at least. And your brother Gela, can he
+ride yet? Where is Gela, by the way?'
+
+'He is asleep,' said Bela, with some contempt. 'He is a little thing.
+Yes; he rides, but it is in a chair-saddle. It is not real riding.'
+
+'I see. Well, when you come and see me you shall have some real riding,
+on wild horses if you like;' and he told the child stories of the great
+Magyar steppes, and the herds of young horses, and the infinite delight
+of the unending gallop over the wide hushed plain; and all the while
+his heart ached bitterly, and the sight of the child--who was her
+child, yet had that stranger's face--was to him like a jagged steel
+being turned and twisted inside a bleeding wound. Bela, however, was
+captivated by the new visions that rose before him.
+
+'Bela will come to Hungary,' he said with condescension, and then with
+an added thought, continued: 'I think Bela has great lands there. Otto
+said so.'
+
+'Bela has nothing at all,' said Sabran, sternly. 'Bela talks great
+nonsense sometimes, and it would be better he should go to sleep with
+his brother.'
+
+Bela looked up shyly under his golden cloud of hair. 'Folko is Bela's,'
+he said under his breath. Folko was his pony.
+
+'No,' said Sabran; 'Folko belongs to your mother. She only allows you
+to have him so long as you are good to him.'
+
+'Bela is always good to him,' he said decidedly.
+
+'Bela is faultless in his own estimation,' said his mother, with a
+smile. 'He is too little to be wise enough to see himself as he is.'
+
+This view made Bela's blue eyes open very wide and fill very
+sorrowfully. It was humiliating. He longed to get back to Gela, who
+always listened to him dutifully, and never said anything in answer
+except an entirely acquiescent 'Ja! ja!' which was indeed about the
+limitation of Gela's lingual powers. In a few moments, indeed, his
+governess came for him and took him away, a little dainty figure in his
+ivory velvet and his blue silk stockings, with his long golden curls
+hanging to his waist.
+
+'It is so difficult to keep him from being spoilt,' she said, as the
+door closed on him. 'The people make a little prince, a little god, of
+him. He believes himself to be something wonderful. Gela, who is so
+gentle and quiet, is left quite in the shade.'
+
+'I suppose Gela takes your title?' said Vàsàrhely to his host. 'It
+is usual with the Austrian families for the second son to have some
+distant appellation?'
+
+'They are babies,' said Sabran, impatiently.
+
+'It will be time enough to settle those matters when they are old
+enough to be court-pages or cadets. They are Bela and Gela at present.
+The only real republic is childhood.'
+
+'I am afraid Bela is the _tyrannus_ to which all republics succumb,'
+said Wanda, with a smile. He is extremely autocratic in his notions,
+and in his family. In all his "make believe" games he is crowned.'
+
+'He is a beautiful child,' said her cousin, and she answered, still
+smiling:
+
+'Oh, yes: he is so like Réné!'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely turned his face from her. The dinner was somewhat dull,
+and the evening seemed tedious, despite the efforts of Sabran to
+promote conversation, and the _écarté_ which he and his guest played
+together. They, were all sensible that some chord was out of tune, and
+glad that on the morrow a large house-party would be there to spare
+them a continuation of this difficult intercourse.
+
+'Your cousin will never forgive me,' said Sabran to her when they were
+alone. 'I think, beside his feeling that I stand for ever between you
+and him there is an impatience of me as a stranger and one unworthy
+you.'
+
+'You do yourself and him injustice,' she answered. 'I shall be unhappy
+if you and he be not friends.'
+
+'Then unhappy you will be, my beloved. We both adore you.'
+
+'Do not say that. He would not be here if it were so.'
+
+'Ah! look at him when he looks at Bela!'
+
+She sighed; she had felt a strong emotion on the sight of her cousin,
+for Egon Vàsàrhely was much changed by these years of pain. His grand
+carriage and his martial beauty were unaltered, but all the fire and
+the light of earlier years were gone out of his face, and a certain
+gloom and austerity had come there. To all other women he would have
+been the more attractive for the melancholy which was in such apt
+contrast with the heroic adventures of his life, but to her the change
+in him was a mute reproach which filled her with remorse though she had
+done no wrong.
+
+Meantime Prince Egon, throwing open his window, leaned out into the
+cold rainy night, as though a hand were at his throat and suffocating
+him. And amidst all the tumult of his pain and revolt, one dim thought
+was incessantly intruding itself; he was always thinking, as he
+recalled the face of Sabran and of Sabran's little son, 'Where have I
+seen those blue eyes, those level brows, those delicate curved lips?'
+
+They were so familiar, yet so strange to him. When he would have given
+a name to them they receded into the shadows of some far away past of
+his own, so far away he could not follow them. He sat up half the night
+letting the wind beat and the rain fall on him. He could not sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+In the morrow thirty or forty people arrived, amongst them Baron
+Kaulnitz _en congé_ from his embassy.
+
+'What think you of Sabran?' he asked of Egon Vàsàrhely, who answered:
+
+'He is a perfect gentleman. He is a charming companion. He plays
+admirably at _écarté._
+
+'_Écarté_! I spoke of his moral worth: what is your impression of that?'
+
+'If he had not satisfied her as to that, Wanda would not be his wife,'
+answered the Prince gravely. 'He has given her beautiful children, and
+it seems to me that he renders her perfectly happy. We should all be
+grateful to him.'
+
+'The children are certainly very beautiful,' said Baron Kaulnitz, and
+said no more.
+
+'The people all around are unfeignedly attached to him,' Vàsàrhely
+continued with generous effort. 'I hear nothing but his praise. Nor do
+I think it the conventional compliment which loyalty leads them to pay
+the husband of their Countess; it is very genuine attachment. The men
+of the old Archduchy are not easily won; it is only qualities of daring
+and manliness which appeal to their sympathies. That he has gained
+their affections is as great testimony to his character in one way as
+that he has gained Wanda's is in another. At Idrac also the people
+adore him, and Croats are usually slow to see merit in strangers.'
+
+'In short, he is a paragon,' said the ambassador, with a little dubious
+smile. 'So much the better, since he is irrevocably connected with us.'
+
+Sabran was at no time seen to greater advantage than when he was
+required to receive and entertain a large house-party. Always graceful,
+easily witty, endowed with that winning tact which is to society as
+cream is to the palate, the charm he possessed for women and the
+ascendency he could, at times, exercise over men--even men who were
+opposed to him--were never more admirably displayed than when he was
+the master of Hohenszalras, with crowned heads, and princes, and
+diplomatists, and beauties gathered beneath his roof. His mastery,
+moreover, of all field sports, and his skill at all games that demanded
+either intelligence or audacity, made him popular with a hardy and
+brilliant nobility; his daring in a boar hunt at noon was equalled by
+his science at whist in the evening. Strongly prejudiced against him at
+the onset, the great nobles who were his guests had long ceased to feel
+anything for him except respect and regard; whilst the women admired
+him none the less for that unwavering devotion to his wife which made
+even the conventionalities of ordinary flirtation wholly impossible to
+him. With all his easy gallantry and his elegant homage to them, they
+all knew that, at heart, he was as cold as the rocks to all women save
+one.
+
+'It is really the knight's love for his lady,' said the Countess
+Brancka once; and Sabran, overhearing, said: 'Yes, and, I think that if
+there were more like my lady on earth, knighthood might revive on other
+scenes than Wagner's.'
+
+Between him and the Countess Brancka there was a vague intangible
+enmity, veiled under the perfection of courtesy. They could ill have
+told why they disliked each other; but they did so. Beneath their
+polite or trivial or careless speech they often aimed at each other's
+feelings or foibles with accuracy and malice. She had stayed at
+Hohenszalras more or less time each year in the course of her flight
+between France and Vienna, and was there now. He admired his wife's
+equanimity and patience under the trial of Mdme. Olga's frivolities,
+but he did not himself forbear from as much sarcasm as was possible
+in a man of the world to one who was his guest, and by marriage his
+relative, and he was sensible of her enmity to himself, though she
+paid him many compliments, and sometimes too assiduously sought his
+companionship. '_Elle fait le ronron, mais gare à ses pattes!_' he said
+once to his wife concerning her.
+
+Sabran appraised her indeed with unflattering accuracy. He knew
+by heart all the wiles and wisdom of such a woman as she was. Her
+affectations did not blind him to her real danger, and her exterior
+frivolity did not conceal from him the keen and subtle self-interest
+and the strong passions which laboured beneath it.
+
+She felt that she had an enemy in him, and partly in self-protection,
+partly in malice, she set herself to convert a foe into a friend,
+perhaps, without altogether confessing it to herself, into a lover as
+well.
+
+The happiness that prevailed at Hohenszalrasburg annoyed her for
+no other reason than that it wearied her to witness it. She did
+not envy it, because she did not want happiness at all; she wanted
+perpetual change, distraction, temptation, passion, triumph--in a word,
+excitement, which becomes the drug most unobtainable to those who have
+early exhausted all the experiences and varieties of pleasure.
+
+Mdme. Brancka had always an unacknowledged resentment against her
+sister-in-law, for being the owner of all the vast possessions of the
+Szalras. 'If Gela had lived!' she thought constantly. 'If I had only
+had a son by him before he died, this woman would have had her dower
+and nothing more.' That his sister should possess all, whilst she had
+by her later marriage lost her right even to a share in that vast
+wealth, was a perpetual bitterness to her.
+
+Stefan Brancka was indeed rich, but he was an insensate gambler. She
+was extravagant to the last degree, with all the costly caprices of
+a _cocodette_ who reigned in the two most brilliant capitals of the
+world. They were often troubled by their own folly, and again and again
+the generosity of his elder brother had rescued them from humiliating
+embarrassments. At such moments she had almost hated Wanda von Szalras
+for these large possessions, of which, according to her own views,
+her sister-in-law made no use whatever. Meantime, she wished Egon
+Vàsàrhely to die childless, and to that end had not been unwilling
+for the woman he loved to marry anyone else. She had reasoned that the
+Szalras estates would go to the Crown or the Church if Wanda did not
+marry; whilst all the power and possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely must, if
+he had no sons, pass in due course to his brother. She had the subtle
+acuteness of her race, and she had the double power of being able at
+once to wait very patiently and to spring with swift rage on what she
+needed. To her sister-in-law she always appeared a mere flutterer on
+the breath of fashion. The grave and candid nature of the one could not
+follow or perceive the intricacies of the other.
+
+'She is a cruel woman and a perilous one,' Sabran said one day to his
+wife's surprise.
+
+She answered him that Olga Brancka had always seemed to her a mere
+frivolous _mondaine_, like so many others of their world.
+
+'No,' he persisted. 'You are wrong; she is not a butterfly. She has too
+much energy. She is a profoundly immoral woman also. Look at her eyes.'
+
+'That is Stefan's affair,' she answered, 'not ours. He is indifferent.'
+
+'Or unsuspicious? Did your brother care for her?'
+
+'He was madly in love with her. She was only sixteen when he married
+her. He fell at Solferino half a year later. When she married my
+cousin it shocked and disgusted me. Perhaps I was foolish to take it
+thus, but it seemed such a sin against Gela. To die _so_, and not to be
+even remembered!'
+
+'Did your cousin Egon approve this second marriage?'
+
+'No,' he opposed it; he had our feeling about it. But Stefan, though
+very young, was beyond any control. He had the fortune as he had the
+title of his mother, the Countess Brancka, and Olga bewitched him as
+she had done my brother.'
+
+'She _is_ a witch, a wicked witch,' said Sabran.
+
+The great autumn party was brilliant and agreeable. All things went
+well, and the days were never monotonous. The people were well
+assorted, and the social talent of their host made their outdoor sports
+and their indoor pastimes constantly varied, whilst Hungarian musicians
+and Viennese comedians played waltzes that would have made a statue
+dance, and represented the little comedies for which he himself had
+been famous at the Mirlitons.
+
+He was not conscious of it, but he was passionately eager for Egon
+Vàsàrhely to be witness, not only of his entire happiness, but of his
+social powers. To Vàsàrhely he seemed to put forward the perfection
+of his life with almost insolence; with almost exaggeration to exhibit
+the joys and the gifts with which nature and chance had so liberally
+dowered him. The stately Magyar soldier, sitting silent and melancholy
+apart, watched him with a curious pang, that in a lesser nature would
+have been a consuming envy. Now and then, though Sabran and his wife
+spoke rarely to each other in the presence of others, a glance, a
+smile, a word passed between them that told of absolute unuttered
+tenderness, profound and inexhaustible as the deep seas; in the very
+sound of their laughter, in the mere accent of their voices, in a
+careless caress to one of their children, in a light touch of the hand
+to one another as they rode, or as they met in a room, there was the
+expression of a perfect joy, of a perfect faith between them, which
+pierced the heart of the watcher of it. Yet would he not have had it
+otherwise at her cost.
+
+'Since she has chosen him as the companion of her life, it is well
+that he should be what she can take pride in, and what all men can
+praise,' he thought, and yet the happiness of this man seemed to him an
+audacity, an insolence. What human lover could merit her?
+
+Between himself and Sabran there was the most perfect courtesy, but no
+intimacy. They both knew that if for fifty years they met continually
+they would never be friends. All her endeavours to produce sympathy
+between them failed. Sabran was conscious of a constant observation of
+him by her cousin, which seemed to him to have a hostile motive, and
+which irritated him extremely, though he did not allow his irritation
+any visible vent. Olga Brancka perceived, and with the objectless
+malice of women of her temperament, amused herself with fanning, the
+slumbering enmity, as children play at fire.
+
+'You cannot expect Egon to love you,' she said once to her host. 'You
+know he was the betrothed of Wanda from her childhood--at least in his
+own hopes, and in the future sketched for them by their families.'
+
+'I was quite aware of that before I married,' he answered her
+indifferently. 'But those family arrangements are tranquil disposals of
+destiny which, if they be disturbed, leave no great trace of trouble.
+The Prince is young still, and a famous soldier as well as a great
+noble. He has no lack of consolation if he need it, and I cannot
+believe that he does.'
+
+Mdme. Olga laughed.
+
+'You know as well as I do that Egon adores the very stirrup your wife's
+foot touches!'
+
+'I know he is her much beloved cousin,' said Sabran, in a tone which
+admitted of no reply.
+
+To Vàsàrhely his sister-in-law said confidentially:
+
+'Dear Egon, why did you not stay on the _pusztas_ or remain with your
+hussars? You make _le beau_ Sabran jealous.'
+
+'Jealous!' asked Vàsàrhely, with a bitter smile. 'He has much cause,
+when she has neither eye nor ear, neither memory nor thought of any
+kind for any living thing except himself and those children who are
+all his very portraits! Why do you say these follies, Olga? You know
+that my cousin Wanda chose her lord out of all the world, and loves
+him as no one would have supposed she had it in her to love any mortal
+creature.'
+
+He spoke imperiously, harshly, and she was silenced.
+
+'What do you think of him?' she said with hesitation.
+
+'Everyone asks me that question. I am not his keeper!'
+
+'But you must form some opinion. He is virtual lord of Hohenszalras,
+and I believe she has made over to him all the appanages of Idrac, and
+his children will have everything.'
+
+'Are they not her natural heirs? Who should inherit from her if not her
+sons?'
+
+'Of course, of course they will inherit, only they inherit nothing
+from him. It was certainly a great stroke of fortune for a landless
+gentleman to make. Why does the _gentilhomme pauvre_ always so
+captivate women?'
+
+'What do you mean to insinuate, Olga?' he asked her, with a stern
+glance of his great black eyes.'
+
+'Oh, nothing; only his history was peculiar. I remember his arrival
+in France, his first appearance in society; it is many years ago now.
+All the Faubourg received him, but some said at the time that it was
+too romantic to be true--those Mexican forests, that long exile of the
+Sabran, the sudden appearance of this beautiful young marquis; you
+will grant it was romantic. I suppose it was the romance that made
+even Wanda's clear head turn a little. It is a _vin capiteux_ for many
+women. And then such a life in Paris after it--duels, baccara, bonnes
+fortunes, clever comedies, a touch like Liszt's, a sudden success in
+the Chamber--it was all so romantic; it was bound to bring him at
+last to his haven, the Prince Charmant of an enchanted castle! Only
+enchanted castles sometimes grow dull, and Princes Charmants are not
+always amusable by the same châtelaine!'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely, with his eyes sombre under their long black lashes,
+listened to the easy bantering phrases with the vague suspicion of an
+honest and slow-witted man that a woman is trying to drop poison into
+his ear which she wishes to pass as _eau sucrée._ He did not altogether
+follow her insinuation, but he understood something of her drift. They
+were alone in a corner of the ball-room, whilst the cotillon was at its
+height, conducted by Sabran, who had been famous for its leadership in
+Paris and Vienna. He stooped his head and looked her full in her eyes.
+
+'Look here, Olga. I am not sure what you mean, but I believe you are
+tired of seeing my cousin's happiness, merely because it is something
+with which you cannot interfere. For myself I would protect her
+happiness as I would her honour if I thought either endangered. Whether
+you or I like the Marquis de Sabran is wholly beyond the question. She
+loves him, and she has made him one of us. His honour is now ours.
+For myself I would defend him in his absence as though he were my own
+brother. Not for his sake at all--for hers. I do not express myself
+very well, but you know what I mean. Here is Max returning to claim
+you.'
+
+Silenced and a little alarmed the Countess Brancka rose and went off to
+her place in the cotillon.
+
+Vàsàrhely, sitting where she had left him, watched the mazes of the
+cotillon, the rhythm of the tzigane musicians coming to his ear
+freighted with a thousand familiar memories of the czardas danced madly
+in the long Hungarian nights. Time had been when the throb of the
+tzigane strings had stirred all his pulses like magic, but now all his
+bold bright life seemed numb and frozen in him.
+
+His eyes rested on his cousin, where she stood conversing with a crown
+prince, who was her chief guest, and passed from her to follow the
+movements of Sabran, who with supreme ease and elegance was leading a
+new intricate measure down the ball-room.
+
+She was happy, that he could not doubt. Every action, every word, every
+glance said so with a meaning not to be doubted. He thought she had
+never looked so handsome as she did to-night since that far away day
+in her childhood when he had seen her with the red and white roses in
+her lap and the crown upon her curls. She had the look of her childhood
+in her eyes, that serene and glad light which had been dimmed by her
+brothers' death, but now shone there again tranquil, radiant, and pure
+as sunlight is. She wore white velvet and white brocade; her breast
+was hidden in white roses; she wore her famous pearls and the ribbons
+of the Starred Cross of Austria and of the Prussian Order of Merit;
+she held in her hand a large painted fan which had belonged to Maria
+Theresa. Every now and then, as she talked with her royal guest, her
+glance strayed down the room to where her husband was, and lingered
+there a moment with a little smile.
+
+Vàsàrhely watched her for awhile, then rose abruptly, and made his way
+out of the ball-room and the state apartments down the corridors of the
+old house he knew so well towards his own chamber. He thought he would
+write to her and leave upon the morrow. What need was there for him to
+stay on in this perpetual pain? He had done enough for the world, which
+had seen him under the roof of Hohenszalras.
+
+As he took his way through the long passages, tapestry-hung or
+oak-panelled, which led across the great building to his own set of
+rooms in the clock tower, he passed an open door out of which a light
+was streaming. As he glanced within he saw it was the children's
+sleeping apartment, of which the door was open because the night was
+warm, unusually warm for the heart of the Gross Glöckner mountains. An
+impulse he could not have explained made him pause and enter. The three
+little white beds of carved Indian work, with curtains of lace, looked
+very snowy and peaceful in the pale light from a hanging lamp. The
+children were all asleep; the one nearest the door was Bela.
+
+Vàsàrhely stood and looked at him. His head was thrown back on his
+pillow and his arms were above his head. His golden hair, which was
+cut straight and low over his forehead, had been pushed back in his
+slumber; he looked more like his father than in his waking hours,
+for as he dreamed there was a look of coldness and of scorn upon his
+childish face, which made him so resemble Sabran that the man who
+looked on him drew his breath hard with pain.
+
+The night-nurse rose from her seat, recognising Prince Egon, whom she
+had known from his childhood.
+
+'The little Count is so like the Marquis,' she said, approaching; 'so
+is Herr Gela. Ah, my Prince, you remember the noble gentlemen whose
+names they bear? God send they may be like them in their lives and not
+their deaths!'
+
+'An early death is good,' said Vàsàrhely, as he stood beside the
+child's bed. He thought how good it would have been if he had fallen
+at Sadowa or Königsgrätz, or earlier by the side of Gela and Victor,
+charging with his White Hussars.
+
+The old nurse rambled on, full of praise and stories of the children's
+beauty, and strength, and activity, and intelligence. Vàsàrhely did not
+hear her; he stood lost in thought looking down on the sleeping figure
+of Bela, who, as if conscious of strange eyes upon him, moved uneasily
+in his slumber, and ruffled his golden hair with his hands, and thrust
+off his coverings from his beautiful round white limbs.
+
+'Count Bela is not like our saint who died,' said the old nurse. 'He
+is always masterful, and loves his own way. My lady is strict with
+him, and wisely so, for he is a proud rebellious child. But he is very
+generous, and has noble ways. Count Gela is a little angel; he will be
+like the Heilige Graf.'
+
+Vàsàrhely did not hear anything she said. His gaze was bent on the
+sleeping child, studying the lines of the delicate brows, of the
+curving lips, of the long black lashes. It was so familiar, so
+familiar! Suddenly as he gazed a light seemed to leap out of the
+darkness of long forgotten years, and the memory which had haunted him
+stood out clear before him.
+
+'He is like Vassia Kazán!' he cried, half aloud. The face of the child
+had recalled what in the face of the man had for ever eluded his
+remembrance.
+
+He thrust a gold coin in the nurse's hand, and hurried from the
+chamber. A sudden inconceivable, impossible suspicion had leaped up
+before him as he had gazed on the sleeping loveliness of Sabran's
+little son.
+
+The old woman saw his sudden pallor, his uncertain gesture, and
+thought, 'Poor gallant gentleman! He wishes these pretty boys were his
+own. Well, it might have been better if he had been master here, though
+there is nothing to say against the one who is so. Still, a stranger is
+always a stranger, and foreign blood is bad.'
+
+Then she drew the coverings over Bela's naked little limbs, and passed
+on to make sure that the little Ottilie, who had been born when the
+primroses where first out in the Iselthal woods, was sleeping soundly,
+and wanted nothing.
+
+Vàsàrhely made his way to his own chamber, and there sat down heavily,
+mechanically, like a man waking out from a bad dream.
+
+His memory went back to twenty years before, when he, a little lad, had
+accompanied his father on a summer visit to the house of a Russian,
+Prince Paul Zabaroff. It was a house, gay, magnificent, full of idle
+men and women of facile charm; it was not a house for youth; but
+both the Prince Vàsàrhely and the Prince Zabaroff were men of easy
+morals--_viveurs_, gamesters, and philosophers, who at fifteen years
+old themselves had been lovers and men of the world. At that house
+had been present a youth, some years older than he was, who was known
+as Vassia Kazán: a youth whose beauty and wit made him the delight of
+the women there, and whose skill at games and daring in sports won him
+the admiration of the men. It was understood without even being said
+openly that Vassia Kazán was a natural son of the Prince Zabaroff. The
+little Hungarian prince, child as he was, had wit enough and enough
+knowledge of life to understand that this brilliant companion, of his
+was base-born. His kind heart moved him to pity, but his intense pride
+curbed his pity with contempt. Vassia Kazán had resented the latter too
+bitterly to even be conscious of the first. The gentlemen assembled had
+diverted themselves by the unspoken feud that had soon risen between
+the boys, and the natural intelligence of the little Magyar noble had
+been no match for the subtle and cultured brain of the Parisian Lycéen.
+
+One day one of the lovely ladies there, who plundered Zabaroff and
+caressed his son, amused herself with a war of words between the lads,
+and so heated, stung, spurred and tormented the Hungarian boy that,
+exasperated by the sallies and satires of his foe, and by the presence
+of this lovely goddess of discord, he so far forgot his chivalry that
+he turned on Vassia with a taunt. 'You would be a serf if you were in
+Russia!' he said, with his great black eyes flashing the scorn of the
+noble on the bastard. Without a word, Vassia, who had come in from
+riding and had his whip in his hand, sprang on him, held him in a grip
+of steel, and thrashed him. The fiery Magyar, writhing under the blows
+of one who to him was as a slave, as a hound, freed his right arm,
+snatched from a table near an oriental dagger lying there with other
+things of value, and plunged it into the shoulder of his foe. The
+cries of the lady, alarmed at her own work, brought the men in from
+the adjoining room; the boys were forced apart and carried to their
+chambers.
+
+Prince Vàsàrhely left the house that evening with his son, still
+furious and unappeased. Vassia Kazán remained, made a hero of and
+nursed by the lovely woman who had thrown the apple of strife. His
+wound was healed in three weeks' time; soon after his father's
+house-party was scattered, and he himself returned to his college. Not
+a syllable passed between him and Zabaroff as to his quarrel with the
+little Hungarian magnate. To the woman who had wrought the mischief
+Zabaroff said: 'Almost I wish he were my lawful son. He is a true wolf
+of the steppes. Paris has only combed his hide and given him a silken
+coat; he is still a wolf, like all true Russians.'
+
+Looking on the sleeping child of Sabran, all that half-forgotten scene
+had risen up before the eyes of Egon Vàsàrhely. He seemed to see the
+beautiful fair face of Vassia Kazán, with the anger on the knitted
+brows, and the ferocity on the delicate stern lips as he had raised his
+arm to strike. Twenty years had gone by; he himself, whenever he had
+remembered the scene, had long grown ashamed of the taunt he had cast,
+not of the blow he had given, for the sole reproof his father had ever
+made him was to say: 'A noble, only insults his equals. To insult an
+inferior is ungenerous, it is derogatory; whom you offend you raise for
+the hour to a level with yourself. Remember to choose your foes not
+less carefully than you choose your friends.'
+
+Why with the regard, the voice, the air of Sabran had some vague
+intangible remembrance always come before him?'
+
+Why, as he had gazed on the sleeping child had the vague uncertainty
+suddenly resolved itself into distinct revelation?
+
+'He is Vassia Kazán! He is Vassia Kazán!' he said to himself a score
+of times stupidly, persistently, as one speaks in a dream. Yet he knew
+he must be a prey to delusion, to phantasy, to accidental resemblance.
+He told himself so. He resisted his own folly, and all the while a
+subtler inner consciousness seemed to be speaking in him, and saying to
+him:
+
+'That man is Vassia Kazán. Surely he is Vassia Kazán.'
+
+And then the loyal soul of him strengthened itself and made him think:
+
+'Even if he be Vassia Kazán he is her husband. He is what she loves; he
+is the father of those children that are hers.'
+
+He never went to his bed that night. When the music ceased at an hour
+before dawn, and the great house grew silent, he still sat there by
+the open casement, glad of the cold air that blew in from over the
+Szalrassee, as with daybreak a fine film of rain began to come down the
+mountain sides.
+
+Once he heard the voice of Sabran, who passed the door on his way to
+his own apartment. Sabran was saying in German with a little laugh:
+
+'My lady!' I am jealous of your crown prince. When I left him now in
+his chamber I was disposed to immortalise myself by regicide. He adores
+you!'
+
+Then he heard Wanda laugh in answer, with some words that did not
+reach his ear as they passed on further down the corridor. Vàsàrhely
+shivered, and instinctively rose to his feet. He felt as if he must
+seek him out and cry out to him:
+
+'Am I mad or is it true? Let me see your shoulder--have you the mark of
+the wound that I gave? Your little child has the face of Vassia Kazán.
+Are you Vassia Kazán? Are you the bastard of Zabaroff? Are you the wolf
+of the steppes?'
+
+He had desired to go from Hohenszalras, where every hour was pain to
+him, but now he felt an irresistible fascination in the vicinity of
+Sabran. His mind was in that dual state which at once rejects a fact as
+incredible, and believes in it absolutely. His reason told him that his
+suspicion was a folly; his instinct told him that it was a truth.
+
+When in the forenoon the castle again became animated, and the guests
+met to the mid-day breakfast in the hall of the knights, he descended,
+moved by an eagerness that made him for the first time in his life
+nervous. When Sabran addressed him he felt himself grow pale; he
+followed the movements, he watched the features, he studied the tones
+of his successful rival, with an intense absorption in them. Through
+the hunting breakfast, at which only men were present, he was conscious
+of nothing that was addressed to him; he only seemed to hear a voice in
+his ear saying perpetually----'Yonder is Vassia Kazán.'
+
+The day was spent in sport, sport rough and real, that gave fair play
+to the beasts and perilous exposure to the hunters. For the first time
+in his life, Egon Vàsàrhely let a brown bear go by him untouched,
+and missed more than one roebuck. His eyes were continually seeking
+his host; a mile off down a forest glade the figure of Sabran seemed
+to fill his vision, a figure full of grace and dignity, clad in a
+hunting-dress of russet velvet, with a hunting-horn slung at his side
+on a broad chain of gold, the gift of his wife in memory of the fateful
+day when he had aimed at the _kuttengeier_ in her woods.
+
+Sabran of necessity devoted himself to the crown prince throughout
+the day's sport; only in the twilight as they returned he spoke to
+Vàsàrhely.
+
+'Wanda is so full of regret that you wish to leave us,' he said, with
+graceful cordiality; 'if only I can persuade you to remain, I shall
+take her the most welcome of all tidings from the forest. Stay at the
+least another week, the weather has cleared.'
+
+As he spoke he thought that Vàsàrhely looked at him strangely; but
+he knew that he could not be much loved by his wife's cousin, and
+continued with good humour to persist in his request. Abruptly, the
+other answered him at last.
+
+'Wanda wishes me to stay? Well, I will stay then. It seems strange to
+hear a stranger invite _me_ to Hohenszalras.'
+
+Sabran coloured; he said with hauteur:
+
+'That I am a stranger to Prince Vàsàrhely is not my fault. That I have
+the right to invite him to Hohenszalras is my happiness, due to his
+cousin's goodness, which has been far beyond my merit.'
+
+Vàsàrhely's eyes dwelt on him gloomily; he was sensible of the dignity,
+the self-command, and the delicacy of reproof which were blent in the
+answer he had received; he felt humbled and convicted of ill-breeding.
+He said after a pause:
+
+'I should ask your pardon. My cousin would be the first to condemn my
+words; they sounded ill, but I meant them literally. Hohenszalras has
+been one of my homes from boyhood; it will be your son's when we are
+both dead. How like he is to you; he has nothing of his mother.'
+
+Sabran, somewhat surprised, smiled as he answered:
+
+'He is very like me. I regret it; but you know the poets and the
+physiologists are for once agreed as to the cause of that. It is a
+truth proved a million times: _l'enfant de l'amour ressemble toujours
+au père._'
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely grew white under the olive hue of his sun-bronzed
+cheek. The _riposte_ had been made with a thrust that went home. Otto
+at that moment approached his master for orders for the morrow. They
+were no more alone. They entered the house; the long and ceremonious
+dinner succeeded. Vàsàrhely was silent and stern. Sabran was the most
+brilliant of hosts, the happiest of men; all the women present were in
+love with him, his wife the most of all.
+
+'Réné tells me you will stay, Egon. I am so very glad,' his cousin said
+to him during the evening, and she added with a little hesitation, 'If
+you would take time to know him well, you would find him so worthy of
+your regard; he has all the qualities that most men esteem in each
+other. It would make me so happy if you were friends at heart, not only
+in mere courtesy.'
+
+'You know that can never be,' said Vàsàrhely, almost rudely. 'Even you
+cannot work miracles. He is your husband. It is a reason that I should
+respect him, but it is also a reason why I shall for ever hate him.'
+
+He said the last words in a tone scarcely audible, but low as it was,
+there was a force in it that affected her painfully.
+
+'What you say there is quite unworthy of you,' she said with gentleness
+but coldness. 'He has done you no wrong. Long ere I met him I told you
+that what you wished was not what I wished, never would be so. You are
+too great a gentleman, Egon, to nourish an injustice in your heart.'
+
+He looked down; every fibre in him thrilled and burned under the sound
+of her voice, the sense of her presence.
+
+'I saw your children asleep last night,' he said abruptly. 'They have
+nothing of you in them; they are his image.'
+
+'Is it so unusual for children to resemble their father?' she said with
+a smile, whilst vaguely disquieted by his tone.
+
+'No, I suppose not; but the Szalras have always been of one type. How
+came your husband by that face? I have seen it amongst the Circassians,
+the Persians, the Georgians; but you say he is a Breton.'
+
+'The Sabrans of Romaris are Bretons; you have only to consult history.
+Very beautiful faces like his have seldom much impress of nationality;
+they always seem as though they followed the old Greek laws, and were
+cast in the divine heroic mould of another time than ours.'
+
+'Who was his mother?'
+
+'A Spanish Mexican.'
+
+Vàsàrhely was silent.
+
+His cousin left him and went amongst her guests. A vague sense of
+uneasiness went with her at her consciousness of his hostility to
+Sabran. She wished she had not asked him to remain.
+
+'You have never offended Egon?' she asked Sabran anxiously that night.
+'You have always been forbearing and patient with him?'
+
+'I have obeyed you in that as all things, my angel,', he answered her
+lightly. 'What would you? He is in love with you still, and I have
+married you! It is even a crime in his eyes that my children resemble
+me! One can never argue with a passion that is unhappy. It is a kind of
+frenzy.'
+
+She heard with some impatience.
+
+'He has no right to cherish such a resentment. He keeps it alive by
+brooding on it. I had hoped that when he saw you here, saw how happy
+you render me, saw your children too, he would grow calmer, wiser, more
+reconciled to the inevitable.'
+
+'You did not know men, my love,' said Sabran, with a smile.
+
+To him the unhappiness and the ill-will of Egon Vàsàrhely were matters
+of supreme indifference; in a manner they gratified him, they even
+supplied that stimulant of rivalry which a man's passion needs to keep
+at its height in the calm of safe possession. That Egon Vàsàrhely saw
+his perfect happiness lent it pungency and a keener sense of victory.
+When he kissed his wife's hand in the sight of her cousin, the sense
+of the pain it dealt to the spectator gave the trivial action to him
+all the sweetness and the ardour of the first caresses of his accepted
+passion.
+
+Of that she knew nothing. It would have seemed to her ignoble, as so
+much that makes up men's desire always does seem to a woman of her
+temperament, even whilst it dominates and solicits her, and forces her
+to share something of its own intoxication.
+
+'Egon is very unreasonable,' said Mdme. Ottilie. 'He believes that
+if you had not met Réné you would have in time loved himself. It is
+foolish. Love is a destiny. Had you married him you would not have
+loved him. He would soon have perceived that and been miserable, much
+more miserable than he is now, for he would have been unable to release
+you. I think he should not have come here at all if he could not have
+met M. de Sabran with at least equanimity.'
+
+'I think so, too,' said Wanda, and an impatience against her cousin
+began to grow into anger; without being conscious of it, she had placed
+Sabran so high in her own esteem that she could forgive none who did
+not adore her own idol. It was a weakness in her that was lovely and
+touching in a character that had had before hardly enough of the usual
+foibles of humanity. Every error of love is lovable.
+
+Vàsàrhely could not dismiss from his mind the impression which haunted
+him.
+
+'I conclude you knew the Marquis de Sabran well in France?' he said one
+day to Baron Kaulnitz, who was still there.
+
+Kaulnitz demurred.
+
+'No, I cannot say that I did. I knew him by repute; that was not very
+pure. However, the Faubourg always received and sustained him; the
+Comte de Chambord did the same; they were the most interested. One
+cannot presume to think they could be deceived.'
+
+'Deceived!' echoed Prince Egon. 'What a singular word to use. Do you
+mean to imply the possibility of--of any falsity on his part--any
+intrigue to appear what he is not?'
+
+'No,' said Kaulnitz, with hesitation. 'Honestly, I cannot say so much.
+An impression was given me at the moment of his signing his marriage
+contract that he concealed something; but it was a mere suspicion. As I
+told you, the whole Legitimist world, the most difficult to enter, the
+most incredulous of assumption, received him with open arms. All his
+papers were of unimpeachable regularity. There was never a doubt hinted
+by anyone, and yet I will confess to you, my dear Egon, since we are
+speaking in confidence, that I have had always my own doubts as to his
+marquisate of Sabran.'
+
+'_Grosser Gott!_' exclaimed Vàsàrhely, as he started from his seat.
+'Why did you not stop the marriage?'
+
+'One does not stop a marriage by a mere baseless suspicion,' replied
+Kaulnitz. 'I have not one shadow of reason for my probably quite
+unwarranted conjecture. It merely came into my mind also at the
+signing of the contracts. I had already done all I could to oppose
+the marriage, but Wanda was inflexible--you are witness of the charm
+he still possesses for her--and even the Princess was scarcely
+less infatuated. Besides, it must be granted that few men are more
+attractive in every way; and as he _is_ one of us, whatever else he be,
+his honour is now our honour, as you said yourself the other day.'
+
+'One could always kill him,' muttered Vàsàrhely, 'and set her free so,
+if one were sure.'
+
+'Sure of what?' said Kaulnitz, rather alarmed at the effect of his own
+words. 'You Magyar gentlemen always think that every knot can be cut
+with a sword. If he were a mere adventurer (which is hardly possible)
+it would not mend matters for you to run him through the heart; there
+are his children.'
+
+'Would the marriage be legal if his name were assumed?'
+
+'Oh, no! She could have it annulled, of course, both by Church and Law.
+All those pretty children would have no rights and no name. But we are
+talking very wildly and in a theatrical fashion. He is as certainly
+Marquis de Sabran as I am Karl von Kaulnitz.'
+
+Vàsàrhely said nothing; his mind was in tumult, his heart oppressed by
+a sense of secrecy and of a hope that was guilty and mean.
+
+He did not speak to his companion of Vassia Kazán, but his conjecture
+seemed to hover before his sight like a black cloud which grew bigger
+every hour.
+
+He remained at Hohenszalras throughout the autumnal festivities. He
+felt as if he could not go away with that doubt still unsolved, that
+suspicion either confirmed or uprooted. His cousin grew as uneasy at
+his presence there as she had before been uneasy at his absence. Her
+instinct told her that he was the foe of the one dearest to her on
+earth. She felt that the gallant and generous temper of him had changed
+and grown morose; he was taciturn, moody, solitary.
+
+He spent almost all his time out of doors, and devoted himself to the
+hardy sport of the mountains and forests with a sort of rage. Guests
+came and went at the castle; some were imperial, some royal people;
+there was always a brilliant circle of notable persons there, and
+Sabran played his part as their host, with admirable tact, talent, and
+good humour. His wit, his amiability, his many accomplishments, and
+his social charm were in striking contrast to the sombre indifference
+of Vàsàrhely, whom men had no power to amuse and women no power to
+interest. Prince Egon was like a magnificent picture by Rembrandt,
+as he sat in his superb uniform in a corner of a ball-room with the
+collars of his orders blazing with jewels, and his hands crossed on
+the diamond-studded hilt of his sword; but he was so mute, so gloomy,
+so austere, that the vainest, coquette there ceased to hope to please
+him, and his most cordial friends found his curt contemptuous replies
+destroy their desire for his companionship.
+
+Wanda, who was frankly and fondly attached to him, began to long for
+his departure. The gaze of his black eyes, fixed in their fire and
+gloom on the little gay figures of her children, filled her with a
+vague apprehension.
+
+'If he would only find some one and be happy,' she thought, with anger
+at this undesired and criminal love which clung to her so persistently.
+
+'Am I made of wax?' he said to her with scorn, when she ventured to
+hint at her wishes.
+
+'How I wish I had not asked him to remain here!' she said to herself
+many times. It was not possible for her to dismiss her cousin, who had
+been from his infancy accustomed to look on the Hohenszalrasburg as his
+second home. But as circle after circle of guests came, went, and were
+replaced by others, and Egon Vàsàrhely still retained the rooms in the
+west tower that had been his from boyhood, his continual presence grew
+irksome and irritating to her.
+
+'He forgets that it is now my husband's house!' she thought.
+
+There was only one living creature in all the place to whom Vàsàrhely
+unbent from his sullen and haughty reserve, and that one was the child
+Bela.
+
+Bela was as beautiful as the morning, with his shower of golden hair,
+and his eyes like sapphires, and his skin like a lily. With curious
+self-torture Vàsàrhely would attract the child to him by tales of
+daring and of sport, and would watch with intent eyes every line of
+the small face, trying therein to read the secret of the man by whom
+this child had been begotten. Bela, all unconscious, was proud of this
+interest displayed in him by this mighty soldier, of whose deeds in war
+Ulrich and Hubert and Otto told such Homeric tales.
+
+'Bela will fight with you when he is big,' he would say, trying to
+inclose the jewelled hilt of Vàsàrhely's sword in his tiny fingers, or
+trotting after him through the silence of the tapestried corridors.
+When she saw them thus together she felt that she could understand the
+superstitious fear of oriental women when their children are looked at
+fixedly.
+
+'You are very good to my boy,' she said once to Vàsàrhely, when he had
+let the child chatter by his side for hours.
+
+Vàsàrhely turned away abruptly.
+
+'There are times when I could kill your son, because he is his,' he
+muttered, 'and there are times when I could worship him, because he is
+yours.'
+
+'Do not talk so, Egon,'she said, gravely. 'If you will feel so, it is
+best--I must say it--it is best that you should see neither my child
+nor me.'
+
+He took no notice of her words.
+
+'The children would always be yours,' he muttered. 'You would never
+leave him, never disgrace him for their sake; even if one knew--it
+would be of no use.'
+
+'Dear Egon,' she said in real distress, 'what strange things are you
+saying? Are you mad? Whose disgrace do you mean?'
+
+'Let us suppose an extreme case,' he said, with a hard laugh. 'Suppose
+their father were base, or vile, or faithless, would you hate the
+children? Surely you would.'
+
+'I have not imagination enough to suppose any such thing,'she said very
+coldly. 'And you do not know what a mother's love is, my cousin.'
+
+He walked away, leaving her abruptly.
+
+'How strange he grows!' she thought. 'Surely his mind must be touched;
+jealousy is a sort of madness.'
+
+She bade the children's attendants keep Count Bela more in the
+nurseries; she told them that the child teased her guests, and must
+not be allowed to run so often at his will and whim over the house.'
+She never seriously feared that Egon would harm the child: his noble
+and chivalrous nature could not have changed so cruelly as that; but
+it hurt her to see his eyes fixed on the son of Sabran with such
+persistent interrogation and so strange an intensity of observation. It
+made her think of old Italian tales of the evil eye.
+
+She did not know that Vàsàrhely had come thither with a sincere and
+devout intention to conquer his jealous hatred of her husband, and
+to habituate himself to the sight of her in the new relations of her
+life. She did not know that he would probably have honestly tried to
+do his duty, and honestly striven to feel at least esteem for one so
+near to her, if the suspicion which had become almost certainty in his
+own mind had not made him believe that he saw in Sabran a traitor,
+a bastard, and a criminal whose offences were the deepest of all
+possible offences, and whose degradation was the lowest of all possible
+degradation, in the sight of the haughty magnate of Hungary, steeped
+to the lips in all the traditions and the convictions of an unsullied
+nobility. If what he believed were, indeed, the truth, he would hold
+Sabran lower than any beggar crouching at the gate of his palace in
+Buda, than any gipsy wandering in the woods of his mountain fortress
+of Taróc. If what he believed were the truth, no leper would seem to
+him so loathsome as this brilliant and courtly gentleman to whom his
+cousin had given her hand, her honour, and her life.
+
+'Doubt, like a raging tooth,' gnawed at his heart, and a hope, which
+he knew was dishonourable to his chivalry, sprang up in him, vague,
+timid, and ashamed. If, indeed, it were as he believed, would not such
+crime, proven on the sinner, part him for ever from the pure, proud
+life of Wanda von Szalras? And then, as he thought thus, he groaned in
+spirit, remembering the children--the children with their father's face
+and their father's taint in them, for ever living witnesses of their
+mother's surrender to a lying hound.
+
+'Your cousin cannot be said to contribute to the gaiety of your
+house parties, my love,' Sabran observed with a smile one day, when
+they received the announcement of an intended visit from one of the
+archdukes. Egon Vàsàrhely was still there, and even his cousin, much
+as she longed for his departure, could not openly urge it upon him;
+relationship and hospitality alike forbade.
+
+'He is sadly changed,' she answered. 'He was always silent, but he is
+now morose. Perhaps he lives too much at Taróc, where all is very wild
+and solitary.'
+
+'He lives too much in your memory,' said Sabran, with no compassion.
+'Could he determine to forgive my marriage with you, there would be a
+chance for him to recover his peace of mind. Only, my Wanda, it is not
+possible for any man to be consoled for the loss of you.'
+
+'But that is nothing new,' she answered, with impatience. 'If he felt
+so strongly against you, why did he come here? It was not like his
+high, chivalrous honour.'
+
+'Perhaps he came with the frank will to be reconciled to his fate,'
+said Sabran, not knowing how closely he struck the truth, 'and at the
+sight of you, of all that he lost and that I gained, he cannot keep his
+resolution.'
+
+'Then he should go away,' she said, with that indifference to all
+others save the one beloved which all love begets.
+
+'I think he should. But who can tell him so?'
+
+'I did myself the other day. I shall tell him so more plainly, if
+needful. Who cannot honour you shall be no friend of mine, no guest of
+ours.'
+
+'Oh, my love!' said Sabran, whose conscience was touched. 'Do not have
+feud with your relatives for my sake. They are worthier than I.'
+
+The Archduke, with his wife, arrived there on the following day, and
+Hohenszalras was gorgeous in the September sun, with all the pomp with
+which the lords of it had always welcomed their Imperial friends.
+Vàsàrhely looked on as a spectator at a play when he watched its
+present master receive the Imperial Prince with that supreme ease,
+grace, and dignity which were so admirably blent in him.
+
+'Can he be but a marvellous comedian?' wondered the man, to whom a
+bastard was less even than a peasant.
+
+There was nothing of vanity, of effort, of assumption visible in the
+perfect manner of his host. He seemed to the backbone, in all the
+difficult subtleties of society, as in the simple, frank intercourse
+of man and man, that which even Kaulnitz had conceded that he was,
+_gentilhomme de race._ Could he have been born a serf--bred from the
+hour's caprice of a voluptuary for a serving-woman?
+
+Vàsàrhely sat mute, sunk so deeply in his own thoughts that all the
+festivities round him went by like a pageantry on a stage, in which he
+had no part.
+
+'He looks like the statue of the Commendatore,' said Olga Brancka, who
+had returned for the archducal visit, as she glanced at the sombre,
+stately figure of her brother-in-law, Sabran, to whom she spoke,
+laughed with a little uneasiness. Would the hand of Egon Vàsàrhely ever
+seize him and drag him downward like the hand of the statue in _Don
+Giovanni?_
+
+'What a pity that Wanda did not marry him, and that I did not marry
+you!' said Mdme. Brancka, saucily, but with a certain significance of
+meaning.
+
+'You do me infinite honour!' he answered. 'But, at the risk of seeming
+most ungallant, I must confess the truth. I am grateful that the gods
+arranged matters as they are. You are enchanting, Madame Olga, as a
+guest, but as a wife--alas! who can drink _kümmel_ every day?'
+
+She smiled enchantingly, showing her pretty teeth, but she was bitterly
+angered. She had wished for a compliment at the least. 'What can these
+men see in Wanda?' she thought savagely. 'She is handsome, it is true;
+but she has no coquetry, no animation, no passion. She is dressed by
+Worth, and has a marvellous quantity of old jewels; but for that no one
+would say anything of her except that she was much too tall and had a
+German face!' And she persuaded herself that it was so; if the Venus
+de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her
+waist was large.
+
+Mdme. Olga was still very lovely, and took care to be never seen except
+at her loveliest. She always treated Sabran with a great familiarity,
+which his wife was annoyed by, though she did not display her
+annoyance. Mdme Brancka always called him _mon cousin_ or _beau cousin_
+in the language she usually used, and affected much more previous
+knowledge of him than their acquaintance warranted, since it had been
+merely such slight intimacy as results from moving in the same society.
+She was small and slight, but of great spirit; she shot, fished, rode,
+and played billiards with equal skill; she affected an adoration of
+the most dangerous sports, and even made a point of sharing the bear
+and the boar hunt. Wanda, who, though a person of much greater real
+courage, abhorred all the cruelties and ferocities that perforce
+accompany sport, saw her with some irritation go out with Sabran on
+these expeditions.
+
+'Women are utterly out of place in such sport as that, Olga,' she urged
+to her; 'and indeed are very apt to bring the men into peril, for of
+course no man can take care of himself whilst he has the safety of a
+woman to attend to; she must of necessity distract and trouble him.'
+
+But the Countess Stefan only laughed, and slipped with affectation her
+jewelled hunting-knife into its place in her girdle.
+
+Throughout the Archduke's visit, and after the Prince's departure,
+Vàsàrhely continued to stay on, whilst a succession of other guests
+came and went, and the summer deepened into autumn. He felt that he
+could not leave his cousin's house with that doubt unsolved; yet he
+knew that he might stay on for ever with no more certainty to reward
+him and confirm his suspicions than he possessed now. His presence
+annoyed his host, but Sabran was too polished a gentleman to betray
+his irritation; sometimes Vàsàrhely shunned his presence and his
+conversation for days together, at other times he sought them and rode
+with him, shot with him, and played cards with him, in the vain hope of
+gathering from some chance admission or allusion some clue to Sabran's
+early days. But a perfectly happy man is not given at any time to
+retrospection, and Sabran less than most men loved his past. He would
+gladly have forgotten everything that he had ever done or said before
+his marriage at the Hofburg.
+
+The intellectual powers and accomplishments of Sabran dazzled Vàsàrhely
+with a saddened sense of inferiority. Like most great soldiers he
+had a genuine humility in his measurement of himself. He knew that he
+had no talents except as a leader of cavalry. 'It is natural that she
+never looked at me,' he thought, 'when she had once seen this man, with
+his wit, his grace, his facility.' He could not even regard the skill
+of Sabran in the arts, in the salon, in the theatre with the contempt
+which the 'Wild Boar of Taróc' might have felt for a mere maker of
+music, a squire of dames, a writer of sparkling little comedies, a
+painter of screens, because he knew that both at Idrac and in France
+Sabran had showed himself the possessor of those martial and virile
+qualities, by the presence or the absence of which the Hungarian noble
+measured all men. He himself could only love well and live well: he
+reflected sadly that honesty and honour are not alone enough to draw
+love in return.
+
+As the weeks passed on, his host grew so accustomed to his presence
+there that it ceased to give him offence or cause him anxiety.
+
+'He is not amusing, and he is not always polite,' he said to his
+wife, 'but if he likes to consume his soul in gazing at you, I am not
+jealous, my Wanda; and so taciturn a rival would hardly ever be a
+dangerous one.'
+
+'Do not jest about it,' she answered him, with some real pain. 'I
+should be very vexed at his remaining here, were it not that I feel
+sure he will in time learn to live down his regrets, and to esteem and
+appreciate you.'
+
+'Who knows but his estimation of me may not be the right one?' said
+Sabran, with a pang of sad self-knowledge. And although he did not
+attach any significance to the prolonged sojourn of the lord of Taróc
+and Mohacs, he began to desire once more that his guest would return
+to the solitudes of the Carlowitz vineyards, or of the Karpathian
+mountains and gorges of snow.
+
+When over seven weeks had passed by, Vàsàrhely himself began to think
+that to stay in the Iselthal was useless and impossible, and he had
+heard from Taróc tidings which annoyed him--that his brother Stefan
+and his wife, availing themselves of his general permission to visit
+any one of his places when they chose had so strained the meaning of
+the permission that they had gone to his castle, with a score of their
+Parisian friends, and were there keeping high holiday and festival,
+to the scandal of his grave old stewards, and their own exceeding
+diversion. Hospitable to excess as he was, the liberty displeased him,
+especially as his, men wrote him word that his favourite horses; were
+being ruined by over-driving, and in the list of the guests which they
+sent him were the names of more than one too notorious lady, against
+whose acquaintance he had repeatedly counselled Olga Brancka. He would
+not have cared much what they had done at any other of his houses, but
+at Taróc, his mother, whom he had adored, had lived and died, and the
+place was sacred to him.
+
+He determined to tear himself away from Hohenszalras, and go and
+scatter these gay unbidden revellers in the dusky Karpathian ravines.
+'I cannot stay here for ever,' he thought, 'and I might be here for
+years without acquiring any more certainty than my own conviction.
+Either I am wrong, or he has nothing to conceal, or if I be right he is
+too wary to betray himself. If only I could see his shoulder where I
+struck the dagger--but I cannot go into his bath-room and say to him,
+"You are Vassia Kazán!"'
+
+He resolved to leave on the day after the morrow. For the next day
+there was organised on a large scale a hunting party, to which the
+nobility of the Tauern had been bidden. There were only some half-dozen
+men then staying in the Burg, most of them Austrian soldiers. The delay
+gave him the chance he longed for, which but for an accident he might
+never have had, though he had tarried there half a century.
+
+Early in the morning there was a great breakfast in the Rittersaal,
+at which Wanda did not appear. Sabran received the nobles and gentry
+of the province, and did the honours of his table with his habitual
+courtliness and grace. He was not hospitable in Vàsàrhely's sense of
+the word: he was too easily wearied by others, and too contemptuous of
+ordinary humanity; but he was alive to the pleasure of being lord of
+Hohenszalras, and sensible of the favour with which he was looked upon
+by a nobility commonly so exclusive and intolerant of foreign invasion.
+
+Breakfast over, the whole party went out and up into the high woods.
+The sport at Hohenszalras always gave fair play to beast and bird. In
+deference to the wishes of his wife, Sabran would have none of those
+battues which make of the covert or the forest a slaughterhouse. He
+himself disdained that sort of sport, and liked danger and adventure
+to mingle with his out-of-door pastimes. Game fairly found by the
+spaniel or the pointer; the boar, the wolf, the bear, honestly started
+and given its fair chance of escape or revenge; the steinbock stalked
+in a long hard day with peril and effort--these were all delightful
+to him on occasion; but for the crowded drive, the horde of beaters,
+the terrified bewildered troop of forest denizens driven with sticks
+on to the very barrels of the gunners, for this he had the boundless
+contempt of a man who had chased the buffalo over the prairie, and
+lassoed the wild horse and the wild bull leaning down from the saddle
+of his mustang. The day passed off well, and his guests were all
+content: he alone was not, because a large brown bear which he had
+sighted and tired at twice had escaped him, and roused that blood-lust
+in him which is in the hearts of all men.
+
+'Will you come out alone with me to-morrow and try for that grand
+brute?' he said to Vàsàrhely, as the last of his guests took their
+departure.
+
+Vàsàrhely hesitated.
+
+'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since
+you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'
+
+He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught
+at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of
+Sabran.
+
+'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had
+suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had
+intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving
+directions to the _jägermeister_ for the next day.
+
+Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is
+impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance
+resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a
+child.
+
+In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where
+the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a
+rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and
+mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in
+the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with
+no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their
+rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went
+through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a
+mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and
+capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big
+game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting
+and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and
+drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper
+woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian
+pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above
+some underground.
+
+'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper
+to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should
+be his host's.
+
+'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my
+guest.'
+
+Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him
+to contrive to sting and wound him.
+
+Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not
+observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed
+upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both
+in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron,
+good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about
+a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low
+hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and
+would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached.
+The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.
+
+'Well done,' cried Sabran, but scarcely were the words off his lips
+when another bear burst through the boughs ahead of him by fifty yards.
+He levelled his rifle and received its approach with two bullets in
+rapid succession. But neither had entered a vital part, and the animal,
+only rendered furious by pain, reared and came towards him with
+deadliest intent, its great fangs grinning. He fired again, and this
+shot struck home. The poor brute fell with a crash, the blood pouring
+from its mouth. It was not dead and its agony was great.
+
+'I will give it the _coup de grâce_,' said Sabran, who, for his wife's
+sake', was as humane as any hunter ever can be to the beasts he slew.
+
+'Take care,' said Vàsàrhely. 'It is dangerous to touch a wounded bear.
+I have known one that looked stone dead rise up and kill a man.'
+
+Sabran did not heed. He went up to the poor, panting, groaning mass of
+fur and flesh, and drew his hunting-knife to give it the only mercy
+that it was now possible for it to receive. But as he stooped to
+plunge the knife into its heart the bear verified the warning he had
+been given. Gathering all its oozing strength in one dying effort to
+avenge its murder, it leaped on him, dashed him to the earth, and clung
+to him with claw and tooth fast in his flesh. He freed his right arm
+from its ponderous weight, its horrible grip, and stabbed it with his
+knife as it clung to and lacerated him where he lay upon the grass.
+In an instant, Vàsàrhely and the jäger who was with them were by his
+side, freed him from the animal, and raised him from the ground. He
+was deluged with its blood and his own. Vàsàrhely, for one moment of
+terrible joy, for which he loathed himself afterwards, thought, 'Is he
+dead?' Men had died of lesser things than this.
+
+He stood erect and smiled, and said that it was nothing, but even as he
+spoke a faintness came over him, and his lips turned grey.
+
+The jäger supported him tenderly, and would have had him sit down upon
+a boulder of rock, but he resisted.
+
+'Let me get to that water, he said feebly, looking to a spot a few
+yards off, where one of the many torrents of the Hohe Tauern tumbled
+from the wooded cliff above through birch and beechwood, and rushing
+underground left a clear round brown pool amongst the ferns. He took a
+draught from the flask of brandy; tendered him by the lad, and leaning
+on the youth, and struggling against the sinking swoon that was coming
+on him, walked to the edge of the pool, and dropped down there on one
+of the mossy stones which served as a rough chair.
+
+'Strip me, and wash the blood away, he said to the huntsman, whilst the
+green wood and the daylight, and the face of the man grew dim to him,
+and seemed to recede further and further in a misty darkness. The youth
+obeyed, and cut away the velvet coat, the cambric shirt, till he was
+naked to his waist; then, making sponges of handkerchiefs, the jäger
+began to wash the blood from him and staunch it as best he could.
+
+Egon Vàsàrhely stood by, without offering any aid; his eyes were
+fastened on the magnificent bust of Sabran, as the sunlight fell on the
+fair blue-veined flesh, the firm muscles, the symmetrical throat, the
+slender, yet sinewy arms, round one of which was clasped a bracelet of
+fair hair. He had the chance he needed.
+
+He approached and told the lad roughly to leave the Marquis to him,
+he was doing him more harm than good; he himself had seen many
+battle-fields, and many men bleeding to death upon their mother earth.
+By this time Sabran's eyes were closed; he was hardly conscious of
+anything, a great numbness and infinite exhaustion had fallen upon him;
+his lips moved feebly. 'Wanda!' he said once or twice,'Wanda!'
+
+The face of the man who leaned above him grew dark as night; he gnashed
+his teeth as he begun his errand of mercy.
+
+Leave me with your lord,' he said to the young jäger. 'Go you to the
+castle. Find Herr Greswold, bring him; do not alarm the Countess, and
+say nothing to the household.'
+
+The huntsman went, fleet as a roe. Vàsàrhely remained alone with
+Sabran, who only heard the sound of the rushing water magnified a
+million times on his dulled ear.
+
+Vàsàrhely tore the shirt in shreds, and laved and bathed the wounds,
+and then began to bind them with the skill of a soldier who had often
+aided his own wounded troopers. But first of all, when he had washed
+the blood away, he searched with keen and eager eyes for a scar on the
+white skin--and found it.
+
+On the right shoulder was a small triangular mark; the mark of what,
+to a soldier's eyes, told of an old wound. When he saw it he smiled a
+cruel smile, and went on with his work of healing.
+
+Sabran leaned against the rock behind him; his eyes were still closed,
+the pulsations of his heart were irregular. He had lost a great
+quantity of blood, and the pool at his feet was red. They were but
+flesh wounds, and there was no danger in them themselves, but great
+veins had been severed, and the stream of life had hurried forth in
+torrents. Vàsàrhely thrust the flask between his lips, but he could not
+swallow.
+
+All had been done that could be for the immediate moment. The stillness
+of the deep woods was around them; the body of the brown bear lay on
+the soaked grass; a vulture scenting death, was circling above against
+the blue sky. Over the mind of his foe swept at the sight of them one
+of those hideous temptations which assail the noblest natures in an
+hour of hatred. If he tore the bandages he had placed there off the
+rent veins of the unconscious man whom he watched, the blood would
+leap out again in floods, and so weaken the labouring heart that in
+ten minutes more its powers would fall so low that all aid would be
+useless. Never more would the lips of Sabran meet his wife! Never
+more would his dreams be dreamed upon her breast! For the moment the
+temptation seemed to curl about him like a flame; he shuddered, and
+crossed himself. Was he a soldier to slay in cold blood by treachery a
+powerless rival?
+
+He leaned over Sabran again, and again tried to force the mouthpiece
+of his wine-flask through his teeth. A few drops passed them, and
+he revived a little, and swallowed a few drops more. The blood was
+arrested in its escape, and the pulsations of the heart were returning
+to their normal measure; after a while he unclosed his eyes, and looked
+up at the green leaves, at the blue sky.
+
+'Do not alarm Wanda,' he said feebly. 'It is a scratch; it will be
+nothing. Take me home.'
+
+With his left hand he felt for the hair bracelet on his right arm,
+between the shoulder and the wrist. It was stiff with his own blood.
+
+Then Vàsàrhely leaned over him and met his upward gaze, and said in his
+ear, that seemed still filled with the rushing of many waters, 'You are
+Vassia Kazán!'
+
+When a little later the huntsman returned, bringing the physician, whom
+he had met a mile nearer the house in the woods, and some peasants
+bearing a litter made out of pine branches and wood moss, they found
+Sabran stretched insensible beside the water-pool; and Egon Vàsàrhely,
+who stood erect beside him, said in a strange tone:
+
+'I have stanched the blood, and he has swooned, you see. I commit him
+to your hands. I am not needed.'
+
+And, to their surprise, he turned and walked away with swift steps into
+the green gloom of the dense forest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+Sabran was still insensible when he was carried to the house.
+
+When he regained consciousness he was on his own bed, and his wife was
+bending over him. A convulsion of grief crossed his face as he lifted
+his eyelids and looked at her.
+
+'Wanda,' he murmured feebly, 'Wanda, you will forgive----'
+
+She kissed him passionately, while her tears fell like rain upon his
+forehead. She did not hear his words distinctly; she was only alive to
+the intense joy of his recovered consciousness, of the sound of his
+voice, of the sense of his safety. She kneeled by his bed, covering his
+hands with caresses, prodigal of a thousand names of love, given up to
+an abandonment of terror and of hope which broke down all the serenity
+and self-command of her habitual temper. She was not even aware of the
+presence of others. The over-mastering emotions of anguish and of joy
+filled her soul, and made her seem deaf, indifferent to all living
+things save one.
+
+Sabran lay motionless. He felt her lips, he heard her voice; he did not
+look up again, nor did he speak again. He shut his eyes, and slowly
+remembered all that had passed. Greswold approached him and held his
+fingers on his wrist, and held a little glass to his mouth. Sabran put
+it away. 'It is an opiate,' he said feebly; 'I will not have it.'
+
+He was resolute; he closed his teeth, he thrust the calming draught
+away.
+
+He was thinking to himself: 'Sometimes in unconsciousness one speaks.'
+
+'You are not in great pain?' asked the physician. He made a negative
+movement of his head. What were the fire and the smart of his lacerated
+flesh, of his torn muscles, to the torments of his fears, to the agony
+of his long stifled conscience?
+
+'Do not torment him, let him be still,' she said to the physician; she
+held his hand in both her own and pressed it to her heart. His languid
+eyes thanked her, then closed again.
+
+Herr Greswold withdrew to a little distance and waited. It seemed to
+him strange that a man of the high courage and strong constitution of
+Sabran should be thus utterly broken down by any wound that was not
+mortal; should be thus sunk into dejection and apathy, making no effort
+to raise himself, even to console and reassure his wife. It was not
+like his careless and gallant temper, his virile and healthful strength.
+
+It was true, the doctor reflected, that he had lost a great amount of
+blood. Such a loss he knew sometimes affects the heart and shatters the
+nervous system in many unlooked-for ways. Yet, he thought, there was
+something beyond this; the attitude and the regard of Egon Vàsàrhely
+had been unnatural at such an hour of peril. 'When he said just now
+"forgive," what did he mean?' reflected the old man, whose ear had
+caught the word which had escaped that of Wanda, who had been only
+alive to the voice she adored.
+
+The next four days were anxious and terrible. Sabran did not recover as
+the physician expected that he would, seeing the nature of his wounds
+and the naturally elastic and sanguine temperament he possessed. He
+slept little, had considerable fever, woke from the little rest he
+had, startled, alarmed, bathed in cold sweats; at other times he lay
+still in an apathy almost comatose, from which all the caresses and
+entreaties of his wife failed to rouse him. They began to fear that the
+discharge from the arteries had in some subtle and dangerous manner
+affected the action of the heart, the composition of the blood, and
+produced aneurism or pyæmia. 'The hero of Idrac to be prostrated by a
+mere flesh wound!' thought Herr Greswold in sore perplexity. He sent
+for a great man of science from Vienna, who, when he came, declared the
+treatment admirable, the wounds healthy, the heart in a normal state,
+but added it was evident the nervous system had received a severe
+shock, the effects of which still remained.
+
+'But it is that which I cannot understand,' said the old man in
+despair. 'If you only knew the Marquis de Sabran as I know him; the
+most courageous, the most gay, the most resolute of men! A man to laugh
+at death in its face! A man absolutely without fear!'
+
+The other assented.
+
+'Every one knows what he did in the floods at Idrac,' he answered; 'but
+he has a sensitive temperament for all that. If you did not tell me it
+is impossible, I should say that he had had some mental shock, some
+great grief. The prostration seems to me more of the mind than the
+body. But you have assured me it is impossible?'
+
+'Impossible! There does not live on earth a man so happy, so fortunate,
+so blessed in all the world as he.'
+
+'Men have a past that troubles them sometimes,' said the Vienna
+physician. 'Nay, I mean nothing, but I believe that M. de Sabran was a
+man of pleasure. The cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must
+drink long afterwards. I do not mean anything; I merely suggest. The
+prostration has to my view its most probable origin in mental trouble;
+but it would do him more harm than good to excite him by any effort to
+certify this. To the Countess von Szalras I have merely said, that his
+state is the result of the large loss of blood, and, indeed, after all
+it may be so.'
+
+On the fifth day, Sabran, still lying in that almost comatose silence
+which had been scarcely broken since his accident, said in a scarce
+audible voice to his wife:
+
+'Is your cousin here?'
+
+She stooped towards him and answered:
+
+'Yes; he is here, love. All the others went immediately, but Egon
+remained. I suppose he thought it looked kinder to do so. I have
+scarcely seen him, of course.'
+
+The pallor of his face grew greyer; he turned his head away restlessly.
+
+'Why does he not go?' he muttered in his throat. 'Does he wait for my
+death?'
+
+'Oh, Réné! hush, hush!' she said, with horror and amaze. 'My love, how
+can you say such things? You are in no danger; the doctor assures me
+so. In a week or two you will be well, you will be yourself.'
+
+'Send your cousin away.'
+
+She hesitated; troubled by his unreasoning, restless jealousy, which
+seemed to be the only consciousness of life remaining with him. 'I will
+obey you, love; you are lord here,' she said softly; 'but will it not
+look strange? No guest can well be told to go.'
+
+'A guest!--he is an enemy!'
+
+She sighed, knowing how hopelessly reason can struggle against the
+delusions of a sick bed. 'I will tell him to go to-morrow,' she said,
+to soothe him. 'To-night it is too late.'
+
+'Write to him--do not leave me.'
+
+There was a childlike appeal in his voice, that from a man so strong
+had a piteous pathos. Her eyes swam with tears as she heard.
+
+'Oh, my dearest, I will not leave you!' she said passionately, 'not for
+one moment whilst I live; and oh, my beloved! what could death ever
+change in _me_? Have you so little faith?'
+
+'You do not know,' he said, so low that his breath scarcely stirred the
+air.
+
+She thought that he was tormented by a doubt that she would not be
+faithful to him if he died. She stooped and kissed him.
+
+'My own, I would sooner be faithless to you in your life than after
+death. Surely you know me well enough to know that at the least?'
+
+He was silent. A great sigh struggled from his breast and escaped his
+pale lips like a parting breath.
+
+'Kiss me again,' he murmured; 'kiss me again, whilst----That gives me
+life,' he said, as he drew her head down upon his bosom, where his
+heart throbbed labouredly. A little while later he fell asleep. He
+slept some hours. When he awoke he was consumed by a nameless fear.
+
+'Is your cousin gone?' he asked.
+
+She told him that it was one o'clock in the same night; she had not
+written yet.
+
+'Let him stay,' he said feverishly. 'He shall not think I fear him. Do
+you hear me? Let him stay.'
+
+The words seemed to her the causeless caprice of a jealousy magnified
+and distorted by the weakness of fever. She strove to answer him
+calmly. 'He shall go or stay as you please,' she assured him. 'What
+does it matter, dear, what Egon does? You always speak of Egon. You
+have never spoken of the children once.'
+
+She wanted to distract his thoughts. She was pained to think how deep,
+though unspoken, his antagonism to her cousin must have been, that now
+in his feebleness it--was the one paramount absorbing thought.
+
+A great sadness came upon his face as she spoke; his lips trembled a
+little.
+
+'Ah! the children,' he repeated. 'Yes, bring them to me to-morrow. Bela
+is too like me. Poor Bela, it will be his curse.'
+
+'It is my joy of joys,' she murmured, afraid to see how his mind seemed
+astray.
+
+A shudder that was almost a spasm passed over him. He did not reply. He
+turned his face away from her, and seemed to sleep.
+
+The day following he was somewhat calmer, somewhat stronger, though his
+fever was high.
+
+The species of paralysis that had seemed to; fall on all his faculties
+had in a great measure left him. 'You wish, me to recover,' he said to
+her. 'I will do so, though perhaps it were, better not?'
+
+'He says strange things,' she said to Greswold. 'I cannot think why he
+has such thoughts.'
+
+'It is not he, himself, that has them, it is his fever,' answered the
+doctor. 'Why, in fever, do people often hate what they most adore when
+they are in health?'
+
+She was reassured, but not contented.
+
+The children were brought to see him. Bela had with him an ivory
+air-gun, with which he was accustomed to blow down his metal soldiers;
+he looked at his father with awed, dilated eyes, and said that he would
+go out with the gun and kill the brothers of the bear that had done the
+harm.
+
+'The bear was quite right,' said Sabran. 'It was I who was wrong to
+take a life not my own.'
+
+'That is beyond Bela,' said his wife. 'But I will translate it to him
+into language he shall understand, though I fear very much, say what I
+will, he will be a hunter and a soldier one day.'
+
+Bela looked from one to the other, knitting, his fair brows as he sat
+on the edge of the bed.
+
+'Bela will be like Egon,' he said, 'with all gold and fur to dress up
+in, and a big jewelled sword, and ten hundred men and horses, and Bela
+will be a great killer of things!'
+
+Sabran smiled languidly, but she saw that he flinched at her cousin's
+name.
+
+'I shall not love you, Bela, if you are a killer of things that are
+God's dear creatures,' she said, as she sent the child away.
+
+His blue eyes grew dark with anger.
+
+'God only cares about Bela,' he said in innocent profanity, with
+a profound sense of his own vastness in the sight of heaven, 'and
+Gela,' he added, with the condescending tenderness wherewith he always
+associated his brother and himself.
+
+'Where could he get all that overwhelming pride?' she said, as he was
+led away. 'I have tried to rear him so simply. Do what I may he will
+grow arrogant and selfish.'
+
+'My dear,' said Sabran, very bitterly, 'what avails that he was borne
+in your bosom? He is my son!'
+
+'Gela is your son, and he is so different,' she answered, not seeking
+to combat the self-censure to which she was accustomed in him, and
+which she attributed to faults or follies of a past life, magnified by
+a conscience too sensitive.
+
+'He is all yours then,' he said, with a wan smile. 'You have prevailed
+over evil.'
+
+In a few days later his recovery had progressed so far that he had
+regained his usual tone and look; his wounds were healing, and his
+strength was returning. He seemed to the keen eyes of Greswold to have
+made a supreme effort to conquer the moral depression into which he had
+sunk, and to have thrust away his malady almost by force of will. As he
+grew better he never spoke of Egon Vàsàrhely.
+
+On the fifteenth day from his accident he was restored enough to health
+for apprehension to cease. He passed some hours seated at an open
+window in his own room. He never asked if Vàsàrhely were still there or
+not.
+
+Wanda, who never left him, wondered at that silence, but she forbore to
+bring forward a name which had had such power to agitate him. She was
+troubled at the nervousness which still remained to him. The opening of
+a door, the sound of a step, the entrance of a servant made him start
+and turn pale. When she spoke of it with anxiety to Herr Joachim, he
+said vague sentences as to the nervousness which was consequent on
+great loss of blood, and brought forward instances of soldiers who had
+lost their nerve from the same cause. It did not satisfy her. She was
+the descendant of a long line of warriors; she could not easily believe
+that her husband's intrepid and careless courage could have been
+shattered by a flesh wound.
+
+'Did you really mean,' he said abruptly to her that afternoon, as he
+sat for the first time beside the open panes of the oriel; 'did you
+really mean that were I to die you would never forget me for any other?'
+
+She rose quickly as if she had been stung, and her face flushed.
+
+'Do I merit that doubt from you? she said. 'I think not.'
+
+She spoke rather in sadness than in anger. He had hurt her, he could
+not anger her. He felt the rebuke.
+
+'Even if I were dead, should I have all your life?' he murmured, in
+wonder at that priceless gift.
+
+'You and your children,' she said gravely. 'Ah! what can death do
+against great love? Make its bands stronger perhaps, its power purer.
+Nothing else.'
+
+'I thank you,' he said very low, with great humility, with intense
+emotion. For a moment he thought----should he tell her, should he trust
+this deep tenderness which could brave death; and might brave even
+shame unblenching? He looked at her from under his drooped eyelids, and
+then--he dared not. He knew the pride which was in her better than she
+did----her pride, which was inherited by her firstborn, and had been
+the sign manual of all her imperious race.
+
+He looked at her where she stood with the light falling on her through
+the amber hues of painted glass; worn, wan, and tired by so many days
+and nights of anxious vigil, she yet looked a woman whom a nation
+might salute with the _pro rege nostro!_ that Maria Theresa heard. All
+that a great race possesses and rejoices in of valour, of tradition,
+of dignity, of high honour, and of blameless truth were expressed in
+her; every movement, attitude, and gesture spoke of the aristocracy of
+blood. All that potent and subtle sense of patrician descent which had
+most allured and intoxicated him in other days now awed and daunted
+him. He dared not tell her of his treason. He dared not. He was as a
+false conspirator before a great queen he has betrayed.
+
+'Are you faint, my love?' she asked him, alarmed to see the change upon
+his face and the exhaustion with which he sunk, backward against the
+cushions of his chair.
+
+'Mere weakness; it will pass,' he said, smiling as best he might, to
+reassure her. He felt like a man who slides down a crevasse, and has
+time and consciousness enough to see the treacherous ice go by him,
+the black abyss yawning below him, the cold, dark death awaiting him
+beyond, whilst on the heights the sun is shining.
+
+That night he entreated her to leave him and rest. He assured her he
+felt well; he feigned a need of sleep. For fifteen nights she had not
+herself lain down. To please him she obeyed, and the deep slumber of
+tired nature soon fell upon her. When he thought she slept, he rose
+noiselessly and threw on a long velvet coat, sable-lined, that was by
+his bedside, and looked at his watch. It was midnight.
+
+He crossed the threshold of the open door into his wife's chamber and
+stood beside her bed for a moment, gazing at her as she slept. She
+seemed like the marble statue of some sleeping saint; she lay in the
+attitude of S. Cecilia on her bier at Home. The faint lamplight made
+her fair skin white as snow. Bound her arm was a bracelet of his hair
+like the one which he wore of hers. He stood and gazed on her, then
+slowly turned away. Great tears fell down his cheeks as he left her
+chamber. He opened the door of his own room, the outer one which led
+into the corridor, and walked down the long tapestry-hung gallery
+leading to the guest-chambers. It was the first time that he had walked
+without assistance; his limbs felt strange and broken, but he held on,
+leaning now and then to rest against the arras. The whole house was
+still.
+
+He took his way straight to the apartments set aside for guests. All
+was dark. The little lamp he carried shed a circle of light about his
+steps but none beyond him. When he reached the chamber which he knew
+was Egon Vàsàrhely's he did not pause. He struck on its panels with a
+firm hand.
+
+The voice of Vàsàrhely asked from within, 'Who is there? Is there
+anything wrong?'
+
+'It is I! Open,' answered Sabran.
+
+In a moment more the door unclosed. Vàsàrhely stood within it; he was
+not undressed. There were a dozen wax candles burning in silver sconces
+on the table within. The tapestried figures on the walls grew pale and
+colossal in their light. He did not speak, but waited.
+
+Sabran entered and closed the door behind him. His face was bloodless,
+but he carried himself erect despite the sense of faintness which
+assailed him.
+
+'You know who I am?' he said simply, without preface or supplication.
+
+Vàsàrhely gave a gesture of assent.
+
+'How did you know it?'
+
+'I remembered,' answered the other.
+
+There was a moment's silence. If Vàsàrhely could have withered to the
+earth by a gaze of scorn the man before him, Sabran would have fallen
+dead. As it was his eyes dropped beneath the look, but the courage and
+the dignity of his attitude did not alter. He had played his part of
+a great noble for so long that it had ceased to be assumption and had
+become his nature.
+
+'You will tell her?' he said, and his voice did not tremble, though his
+very soul seemed to swoon within him.
+
+'I shall not tell her!'
+
+Vàsàrhely spoke with effort; his words were hoarse and stern.
+
+'You will not?'
+
+An immense joy, unlooked for, undreamed of, sprang up in him, checked
+as it rose by incredulity.
+
+'But you loved her!' he said, on an impulse which he regretted even
+as the exclamation escaped him. Vàsàrhely threw his head back with a
+gesture of fine anger.
+
+'If I loved' her what is that to you?' he said, with a restrained
+violence vibrating in his words. 'It is, perhaps, because I once loved
+her that your foul secret is safe with me now. I shall not tell her. I
+waited to say this to you. I could not write it lest it should meet her
+eyes. You came to ask me this? Be satisfied and go.'
+
+'I came to ask you this because, had you said otherwise, I would have
+shot myself ere she could have heard.'
+
+Vàsàrhely said nothing; a great scorn was still set like the grimness
+of death upon his face. He looked far away at the dim figures on the
+tapestries; he shrunk from the sight of his boyhood's enemy as from
+some loathly unclean thing he must not kill.
+
+'Suicide!' he thought, 'the Slav's courage, the serf's refuge!
+
+Before the sight of Sabran the room went round, the lights grew dull,
+the figures on the walls became, fantastic and unreal. His heart beat
+with painful effort, yet his ears, his throat, his brain seemed full
+of blood. The nerves of his whole body seemed to shrink and thrill and
+quiver, but the force of habit kept him composed and erect before this
+man who was his foe, yet did for him what few friends would have done.
+
+'I do not thank you,' he said at last. 'I understand; you spare me for
+her sake, not mine.'
+
+'But for her, I would treat you so.'
+
+As he spoke he broke in two a slender agate ruler which lay on the
+writing-table at his elbow.
+
+'Go,' he added, 'you have had my word; though we live fifty years you
+are safe from me, because----because----God forgive you! you are hers.'
+
+He made a gesture towards the door. Sabran shivered under the insult
+which his conscience could not resent, his hand dared not avenge.
+
+Hearing this there fell away from him the arrogance that had been his
+mask, the courage that had been his shield. He saw himself for the
+first time as this man saw him, as all the world would see him if once
+it knew his secret. For the first time his past offences rose up like
+ghosts naked from their graves. The calmness, the indifference, the
+cynicism, the pride which had been so long in his manner and in his
+nature deserted him. He felt base-born before a noble, a liar before a
+gentleman, a coward before a man of honour.
+
+Where he stood, leaning on a high caned chair to support himself
+against the sickly weakness which still came on him from his scarce
+healed wounds, he felt for the first time to cower and shrink before
+this man who was his judge, and might become his accuser did he choose.
+Something in the last words of Egon Vàsàrhely suddenly brought home
+to him the enormity of his own sin, the immensity of the other's
+forbearance. He suddenly realised all the offence to honour, all the
+outrage to pride, all the ineffaceable indignity which he had brought
+upon a great race: all that he had done, never to be undone by any
+expiation of his own, in making Wanda von Szalras the mother of his
+sons. Submissive, he turned without a word of gesture or of pleading,
+and felt his way out of the chamber through the dusky mists of the
+faintness stealing on him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against
+the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his
+clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.
+
+She was still asleep.
+
+When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever.
+He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a
+moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his
+desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.
+
+But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.
+
+Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned
+to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had
+left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person,
+as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no
+importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said
+nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental
+impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian
+mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use
+to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife
+attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial
+always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength
+returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a
+gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened
+upon her with a strange appeal.
+
+One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was
+certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following
+words to his foe and his judge:
+
+'Sir,----You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I
+send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical
+weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time
+or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof
+absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that
+the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue
+it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but
+shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of
+action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present
+permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have
+governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or
+chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern
+both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse
+at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia
+Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to
+nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the
+great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was
+taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never
+saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years
+old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I
+remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you,
+and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then
+returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him.
+One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the
+Prince Zabaroff was dead--my protector, as they termed him--and that
+I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make
+you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always
+been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family,
+could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts,
+the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then,
+thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father.
+I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my
+fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother
+Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year
+after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You
+see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things
+or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had
+a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices,
+like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the
+love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit
+which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of
+me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive
+tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in
+my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those
+three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me
+with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be
+rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did
+me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a
+word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis
+with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold
+some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque
+going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down
+with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone
+reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe,
+and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread,
+fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I
+neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me
+popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name
+of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went
+there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the
+moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I
+liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely
+more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his
+fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior.
+Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left
+for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his
+hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the
+Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the
+solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts
+the hiss of an Indian's arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he
+lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of
+him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows
+of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher
+in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been
+subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having
+wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died
+of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to
+think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life
+with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed
+me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the
+dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history
+of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was
+glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike
+as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on
+the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the
+steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men
+I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I
+loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican _ranch_ near,
+within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us
+and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost
+inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps
+covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it
+all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be
+gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies
+which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight
+whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector
+and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose
+heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he
+died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything
+he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would
+collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France.
+For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss.
+I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and
+his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of
+cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave.
+I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the
+temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all
+those which had been brought with him from France by his Jesuit tutors,
+and the certificates of his own and his father's births and marriages,
+with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper
+containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and
+patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden
+in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had
+desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great
+sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine:
+he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human
+being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed
+to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots
+not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had
+the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was
+born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible
+reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years
+I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and
+purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris,
+yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in
+many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong
+which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that
+I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it
+seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had
+deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and
+had given me all he held most dear----the fruits of his researches.
+To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation.
+I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as
+the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew
+that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke
+no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was
+recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned
+to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance
+with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to
+me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not
+having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I
+went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had
+been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The
+priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the
+name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing----Bretons
+never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead
+men who had gone down when the _Estelle_ had foundered off the Pinos.
+I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so
+much during my seven years' absence from Paris that I did not suppose
+anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran.
+And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known
+me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred
+of me as your cousin's husband; and had you even had suspicions you
+could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in
+the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down
+the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me
+take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune
+involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have
+done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and
+some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What
+was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over
+with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is
+my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious
+and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense
+perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it
+as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying
+ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to
+justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware
+that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true
+that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed
+me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to
+me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I
+had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely
+closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became
+almost by necessity a _fainéant_, and fate smiled upon me more than I
+merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all
+his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me.
+I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I
+can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so
+natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made
+me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to
+act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and
+irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call
+_flair._ I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on
+the Bourse. I was also, famous for _la main heureuse_ in all forms of
+gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept
+always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed
+to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded
+the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should
+not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was
+a man of honour until----I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to
+defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware
+of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied
+your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her.
+You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It
+is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions
+of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to
+me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia,
+but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am
+base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting
+elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and
+mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten
+by a great lord's momentary _ennui_ and caprice! But if you will stoop
+so far----if you will consider me ennobled by _her_ enough to meet
+you as an equal would do----we can find with facility some pretext
+of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me.
+You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are
+the only male champion--what her brothers would surely have taken had
+they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have
+passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your
+commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to
+their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet
+you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother's
+than their father's, and she will rear them in all noble ways.'
+
+Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return
+of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace
+with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his
+own cowardice and shame.
+
+It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of
+Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief:----
+
+'I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for
+she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.
+
+(Signed) 'PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.'
+
+To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:
+
+'Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did
+not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has
+seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return.
+It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a
+prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go
+to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If
+ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope
+this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen
+you.' Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to
+be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name.
+Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your
+husband, and give me a remembrance in your prayers.
+
+(Signed) 'EGON.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn
+shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and
+to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of
+her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to
+play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and
+eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this
+unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it
+plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian
+world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it
+was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman,
+which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon
+her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and
+what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at
+Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of
+it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation.
+If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again
+paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and
+her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.
+
+'Wanda has ruined him!' she always thought angrily. 'He always expects
+every other woman to have a soul above _chiffons_ and to bury herself
+in the country with children and horses.'
+
+Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which
+his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to
+her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the
+pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him.
+Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed
+measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to
+entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and
+was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law.
+She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only
+came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild
+forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely,
+and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope,
+which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for
+her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the
+post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and
+soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was
+called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish
+literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race
+of Vàsàrhely.
+
+What was in that letter?
+
+She attended to none of her own, so absorbed was she in the impression
+which gained upon her that the packet which had brought so much
+surprise and even emotion upon his face came from the hand of Wanda.
+'If even she should be no saint at all?' she thought, with a malicious
+amusement. She did not see Egon Vàsàrhely for many hours, but she
+did not lose her curiosity nor cease to cast about for a method of
+gratifying it. At the close of the day when she came back from hunting
+she went into the library, which was then empty. She did not seriously
+expect to see anything that would reward her enterprise, but she knew
+he read his letters there and wrote the few he was obliged to write:
+like most soldiers he disliked using pen and ink. It was dusk, and
+there were a few lights burning in the old silver sconces fixed upon
+the horns of forest animals against the walls. With a quick, calm
+touch, she moved all the litter of papers lying on the huge table
+where he was wont to do such business as he was compelled to transact.
+She found nothing that gratified her inquisitiveness. She was about
+to leave the room in baffled impatience----impatience of she knew not
+what----when her eyes fell upon a pile of charred paper lying on the
+stove.
+
+It was one of those monumental polychrome stoves of fifteenth-century
+work in which the country-houses of Central Europe are so rich; a
+grand pile of fretted pottery, towering half way to the ceiling, with
+the crown and arms of the Vàsàrhely princes on its summit. There was
+no fire in it, for the weather was not cold, and Vàsàrhely, who alone
+used the room, was an ascetic in such matters; but upon its jutting
+step, which was guarded by lions of gilded bronze, there had been some
+paper burned: the ashes lay there in a little heap. Almost all of
+it was ash, but a few torn pieces were only blackened and coloured.
+With the eager curiosity of a woman who is longing to find another
+woman at fault, she kneeled down by the stove and patiently examined
+these pieces. Only one was so little burned that it had a word or two
+legible upon it; two of those words were Vassia Kazán. Nothing else was
+traceable; she recognised the handwriting of Sabran. She attached no
+importance to it, yet she slipped the little scrap, burnt and black as
+it was, within one of her gauntlets; then, as quickly as she had come
+there, she retreated and in another half hour, smiling and radiant,
+covered with jewels, and with no trace of fatigue or of weather, she
+descended the great banqueting-hall, clad as though the heart of the
+Greater Karpathians was the centre of the Boulevard S. Germain.
+
+Who was Vassia Kazán?
+
+The question floated above all her thoughts all that evening. Who was
+he, she, or it, and what could Sabran have to say of him, or her, or
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely? A less wise woman might have asked straightway
+what the unknown name might mean, but straight ways are not those
+which commend themselves to temperaments like hers. The pleasure and
+the purpose of her life was intrigue. In great things she deemed
+it necessity; in trifles it was an amusement; without it life was
+flavourless.
+
+The next day her brother-in-law abandoned Taróc, to join his hussars
+and prepare for the autumn manœuvres in the plains, and left her and
+Stefan in possession of the great place, half palace, half fortress,
+which had withstood more than one siege of Ottoman armies, where it
+stood across a deep gorge with the water foaming black below. But she
+kept the charred, torn, triangular scrap of paper; and she treasured
+in her memory the two words Vassia Kazán; and she said again and again
+and again to herself: 'Why should he write to Egon? Why should Egon
+burn what he writes?' Deep down in her mind there was always at work
+a bitter jealousy of Wanda von Szalras; jealousy of her regular and
+perfect beauty, of her vast possessions, of her influence at the Court,
+of her serene and unspotted repute, and now of her ascendency over the
+lives of Sabran and of Vàsàrhely.
+
+'Why should they both love that woman so much?' she thought very often.
+'She is always alike. She has no temptations. She goes over life as if
+it were frozen snow. She did one senseless thing, but then she was rich
+enough to do it with impunity. She is so habitually fortunate that she
+is utterly uninteresting; and yet they are both her slaves!'
+
+She went home and wrote to a cousin of her own who had been a member
+of the famous Third Section at Petersburg. She said in her letter: 'Is
+there anyone known in Russia as Vassia Kazán? I want you to learn for
+me to what or to whom this name belongs. It is certainly Russian, and
+appears to me to have been taken by some one who has been named _more
+hebrœo_ from the city of Kazán. You, who know everything past,
+present, and to come, will be able to know this.'
+
+In a few days she received an answer from Petersburg. Her cousin wrote:
+'I cannot give you the information you desire. It must be a thing of
+the past. But I will keep it in mind, and sooner or later you shall
+have the knowledge you wish. You will do us the justice to admit that
+we are not easily baffled.'
+
+She was not satisfied, but knew how to be patient.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+Strangely enough the consciousness that one person lived who knew
+his secret unnerved him. He had said truly that so much were all his
+instincts and temper those of an aristocrat that he had long ceased to
+remember that he was not the true Marquis de Sabran. The admiration men
+frankly gave him, and the ascendency he exercised over women, had alike
+concurred in fostering his self-delusion. Since his recognition by the
+foe of his boyhood a vivid sense of his own shamefulness, however, had
+come upon him; a morbid consciousness that he was not what he seemed,
+and what all the world believed him, had returned to him. Egon would
+never speak, but he himself could never forget. He said to himself in
+his solitude, 'I am Vassia Kazán! and what he had done appeared to him
+intolerable, infamous, beyond all expiation.
+
+It was like an impalpable but impassable wall built up between himself
+and her. Nothing was changed except that one man knew his secret, but
+this one fact seemed to change the face of the world. For the first
+time all the deference, all the homage with which the people of the
+Tauern treated him seemed to him a derision. Naturally of proud temper,
+and of an intellect which gave him ascendency over others, he had from
+the first moment he had assumed the marquisate of Sabran received
+all the acknowledgments of his rank with an honest unconsciousness
+of imposture. After all he had in his veins blood as patrician as
+that of the Sabrans; but now that Egon Vàsàrhely knew the truth he
+was perpetually conscious of not being what he seemed. The mere sense
+that about the world there was another living being who knew what he
+knew, shook down all the self-possession and philosophy which had so
+long made him assure himself that the assumption of a name was an
+immaterial circumstance, which, harming no one, could concern no one.
+Egon Vàsàrhely seemed to have seized his sophisms in a rude grasp, and
+shaken them down as blossoms fall in wind. He thought with bitter
+self-contempt how true the cynic was who said that no sin exists so
+long as it is not found out; that discovery is the sole form which
+remorse takes.
+
+At times his remorse made him almost afraid of Wanda, almost shrink
+from her, almost tremble at her regard; at other times it intensified
+his passion and infused into his embraces a kind of ferocity of
+triumph. He would show an almost brutal ardour in his caresses, and
+would think with an almost cruel exultation, 'I was born a serf, and I
+am her lover, her lord! Strangely enough, she began to lose something
+of her high influence upon him, of her spiritual superiority in his
+sight. She was so entirely, so perpetually his, that she became in a
+manner tainted with his own degradation. She could no longer check him
+with a word, calm him with a gesture of restraint. She was conscious of
+a change in him which she could not explain to herself. His sweetness
+of temper was broken by occasional irritability that she had never seen
+before. He was at times melancholy and absorbed; he at times displayed
+a jealousy which appeared unworthy of herself and him; at other moments
+he adored her, submitted to her with too great a humility. They were
+still happy, but their happiness was more uncertain, more disturbed by
+passing shadows. She told herself that it was always so in marriage,
+that in the old trite phrase nothing mortal was ever perfect long. But
+this philosophy failed to reconcile her. She found herself continually
+pondering on the alteration that she perceived in him, without being
+able to explain it to herself in any satisfactory manner.
+
+One day he announced to her without preface that he had decided to
+renounce the name of Sabran; that he preferred to any other the title
+which she had given him in the Countship of Idrac. She was astonished,
+but on reflection only saw, in his choice, devotion and deference to
+herself. Perhaps, too, she reflected with a pang, he desired some
+foreign mission such as she had once proposed to him; perhaps the life
+at Hohenszalras was monotonous and too quiet for a man so long used
+to the movement and excitation of Paris. She suggested the invitation
+of a circle of guests more often, but he rejected the idea with some
+impatience. He, who had previously amused himself so well with the
+part of host to a brilliant society, now professed that he saw nothing
+but trouble and _ennui_ in a house full of people, who changed every
+week, and of royal personages who exacted ceremonious observances
+that were tedious and burdensome. So they remained alone, for even
+the Princess Ottilie had gone away to Lilienslust. For her own part
+she asked nothing better. Her people, her lands, her occupations, her
+responsibilities, were always interest enough. She loved the stately,
+serene tread of Time in these mountain solitudes. Life always seemed
+to her a purer, graver, more august thing when no echo of the world
+without jarred on the solemnity of the woods and hills. She wanted her
+children to grow up to love Hohenszalras, as she had always done, far
+above all pomps and pleasures of courts and cities.
+
+The winter went by, and he spent most of the days out of doors in
+violent exercise, sledging, skating, wolf hunting. In the evenings he
+made music for her in the white room: beautiful, dreamy music, that
+carried her soul from earth. He played for hours and hours far into the
+night; he seemed more willing to do anything than to converse. When he
+talked to her she was sensible of an effort of constraint; it was no
+longer the careless, happy, spontaneous conversation of a man certain
+of receiving sympathy in all his opinions, indulgence in all his
+errors, comprehension in even his vaguest or most eccentric ideas: a
+certain charm was gone out of their intercourse. She thought sometimes
+humbly enough, was it because a man always wearies of a woman? Yet
+she could scarcely think that, for his reverential deference to her
+alternated with a passion that had lost nothing of its voluptuous
+intensity.
+
+So the winter passed away. Madame Ottilie was in the South for her
+health, with her relatives of Lilienhöhe; they invited no one, and so
+no one could approach them. The children grew and throve. Bela and his
+brother had a little sledge of their own, drawn by two Spanish donkeys,
+white as the snows that wrapped the Iselthal in their serenity and
+silence. In their little sable coats and their sable-lined hoods the
+two little boys looked like rosebuds wrapped in brown moss. They were a
+pretty spectacle upon the ice, with their stately Heiduck, wrapped in
+his scarlet and black cloak, walking by the gilded shell-shaped sledge.
+
+'Bela loves the ice best. Bela wishes the summer never was!' said the
+little heir of the Counts of Szalras one day, as he leaped out from
+under the bearskin of his snow-carriage. His father heard him, and
+smiled a little bitterly.
+
+'You have the snow in your blood,' he thought. 'I, too, know how I
+loved the winter with all its privations, how I skimmed like a swallow
+down the frozen Volga, how I breasted the wind of the North Sea, sad
+with the dying cries of the swans! But I had an empty stomach and
+naked limbs under my rough goatskin, and you ride there in your sables
+and velvets, a proud little prince, and yet you are my son!'
+
+Was he almost angered against his own child for the great heirship to
+which he was born, as kings are often of their dauphins? Bela looked up
+at him a little timidly, always being in a certain awe of his father.
+
+'May Bela go with you some day with the big black horses, one day when
+you go very far?'
+
+'Ask your mother,' said Sabran.
+
+'She will like it,' said the child. 'Yesterday she said you never do
+think of Bela. She did not say it _to_ Bela, but he heard.'
+
+'I will think of him,' said Sabran, with some emotion: he had a certain
+antagonism to the child, of which he was vaguely ashamed; he was sorry
+that she should have noticed it. He disliked him because Bela so
+visibly resembled himself that he was a perpetual reproach; a living
+sign of how the blood of a Russian lord and of a Persian peasant had
+been infused into the blood of the Austrian nobles.
+
+The next day he took the child with him on a drive of many leagues,
+through the frozen highways winding through the frosted forests under
+the huge snow-covered range of the Glöckner mountains. Bela was in
+raptures; the grand black Russian horses, whose speed was as the wind,
+were much more to his taste than the sedate and solemn Spanish asses.
+When they returned, and Sabran lifted him out of the sledge in the
+twilight, the child kissed his hand.
+
+'Bela loves you,' he said timidly.
+
+'Why do you?' said his father, surprised and touched. 'Because you are
+your mother's child?'
+
+Bela did not understand. He said, after a moment of reflection:
+
+'Bela is afraid, when you are angry; very afraid. But Bela does love
+you.'
+
+Sabran laid his hand on the child's shoulder. 'I shall never be angry
+if Bela obey his mother, and never pain her. Remember that.'
+
+'He will remember,' said Bela. 'And may he go with the big black horses
+very soon again?'
+
+'Your mother's horses are just as big, and just as black. Is it not the
+same thing to go with her?'
+
+'No. Because she takes Bela often; you never.'
+
+'You are ungrateful,' said Sabran, in the tone which always alarmed and
+awed the bold, bright spirit of his child. 'Your mother's love beside
+mine is like the great mountain beside the speck of dust. Can you
+understand? You will when you are a man. Obey her and adore her. So you
+will best please me.'
+
+Bela looked at him with troubled suffused eyes; he went within doors a
+little sadly, led away by Hubert, and when he reached his nursery and
+had his furs taken from off him he was still serious, and for once he
+did not tell his thoughts to Gela, for they were too many for him to
+be able to master them in words. His father was a beautiful, august,
+terrible, magnificent figure in his eyes; with the confused fancies
+of a child's scarce-opened mind he blended together in his admiration
+Sabran and the great marble form of S. Johann of Prague which stretched
+its arm towards the lake from the doors of the great entrance, and, as
+Bela always understood, controlled the waters and the storms at will.
+Bela feared no one else in all the world, but he feared his father,
+and for that reason loved him as he loved nothing else in his somewhat
+selfish and imperious little life.
+
+'It is so good of you to have given Bela that pleasure,' his wife said
+to him when he entered the white room. 'I know you cannot care to hear
+a child chatter as I do. It can only be tiresome to you.'
+
+'I will drive him every day if it please _you_,' said Sabran.
+
+'No, no; that would be too much to exact from you. Besides, he would
+soon despise his donkeys, and desert poor Gela. I take him but seldom
+myself for that reason. He has an idea that he is immeasurably older
+than Gela. It is true a year at their ages is more difference than are
+ten years at ours.'
+
+'The child said something to me, as if he had heard you say I do not
+care for him?'
+
+'You do not, very much. Surely you are inclined to be harsh to him?'
+
+'If I be so, it is only because I see so much of myself in him.'
+
+He looked at her, assailed once more by the longing which at times came
+over him to tell her the truth of himself, to risk everything rather
+than deceive her longer, to throw himself upon her mercy, and cut short
+this life which had so much of duplicity, so much of concealment, that
+every year added to it was a stone added to the mountain of his sins.
+But when he looked at her he dared not. The very grace and serenity
+of her daunted him; all the signs of nobility in her, from the repose
+of her manner to the very beauty of her hands, with their great rings
+gleaming on the long and slender fingers, seemed to awe him into
+silence. She was so proud a woman, so great a lady, so patrician in
+all her prejudices, her habits, her hereditary qualities, he dared not
+tell her that he had betrayed her thus. An infidelity, a folly, even
+any other crime he thought he could have summoned courage to confess
+to her; but to say to her, the daughter of a line of princes: 'I, who
+have made you the mother of my children, I was born a bastard and a
+serf!' How could he dare say that? Anything else she might forgive,
+he thought, since love is great, but never that. Nay, a cold sickness
+stole over him as he thought again that she came of great lords who had
+meted justice out over whole provinces for a thousand years; and he
+had wronged her so deeply that the human tongue scarcely held any word
+of infamy enough to name his crime. The law would set her free, if she
+chose, from a man who had so betrayed her, and his children would be
+bastards like himself.
+
+He had stretched himself on a great couch, covered with white
+bear-skins. He was in shadow; she was in the light that came from the
+fire on the wide hearth, and from the oriel window near, a red warm
+dusky light, that fell on the jewels on her hands, the furs on her
+skirts, the very pearls about her throat.
+
+She glanced at him anxiously, seeing how motionless he lay there, with
+his head turned backward on the cushions.
+
+'I am afraid you are weak still from that wound,' she said, as she rose
+and approached him. 'Greswold assures me it has left no trace, but I am
+always afraid. And you look often so pale. Perhaps you exert yourself
+too much? Let the wolves be. Perhaps it is too cold for you? Would you
+like to go to the south? Do not think of me; my only happiness is to do
+whatever you wish.'
+
+He kissed her hand with deep unfeigned emotion. 'I believe in angels
+since I knew you,' he murmured. 'No; I will not take you away from the
+winter and the people that you love. I am well enough. Greswold is
+right. I could not master those horses if I were not strong; be sure of
+that.'
+
+'But I always fear that it is dull here for you?'
+
+'Dull! with you? "Custom cannot stale her infinite variety." That was
+written in prophecy of your charm for me.'
+
+'You will always flatter me! And I am not "various" at all; I am too
+grave to be entertaining. I am just the German house-mother who cares
+for the children and for you.'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Is that your portrait of yourself? I think Carolus Duran's is truer,
+my grand châtelaine. When you are at Court the whole circle seems to
+fade to nothing before your presence. Though there are so many women
+high-born and beautiful there, you eclipse them all.'
+
+'Only in your eyes! And you know I care nothing for courts. What I like
+is the life here, where one quiet day is the pattern of all the other
+days. If I were sure that you were content in it----'
+
+'Why should you think of that?'
+
+'My love, tell me honestly, do you never miss the world?'
+
+He rose and walked to the hearth. He, whose life was a long lie, never
+lied to her if he could avoid it; and he knew very well that he did
+miss the world with all its folly, stimulant, and sin. Sometimes the
+moral air here seemed to him too pure, too clear.
+
+'Did I do so I should be thankless indeed--thankless as madmen are who
+do not know the good done to them. I am like a ship that has anchored
+in a fair haven after press of weather. I infinitely prefer to see
+none but yourself: when others are here we are of necessity so much
+apart. If the weather,' he added more lightly, 'did not so very often
+wear Milton's grey sandals, there would be nothing one could ever
+wish changed in the life here. For such great riders as we are, that
+is a matter of regret. Wet saddles are too often our fate, but in
+compensation our forests are so green.'
+
+She did not press the question.
+
+But the next day she wrote a letter to a relative who was a great
+minister and had preponderating influence in the council chamber of the
+Austrian Empire. She did not speak to Sabran of the letter that she
+sent.
+
+She had not known any of that disillusion which befalls most women in
+their love. Her husband had remained her lover, passionately, ardently,
+jealously; and the sincerity of his devotion to her had spared her
+all that terrible consciousness of the man's satiety which usually
+confronts a woman in the earliest years of union. She shrank now with
+horror from the fear which came to her that this passion might, like so
+many others, alter and fade under the dulness of habit. She had high
+courage and clear vision; she met half-way the evil that she dreaded.
+
+In the spring a Foreign Office despatch from Vienna came to him and
+surprised and moved him strongly. With it in his hand he sought her at
+once.
+
+'You did this!' he said quickly. 'They offer me the Russian mission.'
+
+She grew a little pale, but had courage to smile. She had seen by a
+glance at his face the pleasure the offer gave him.
+
+'I only told my cousin Kunst that I thought you might be persuaded to
+try public life, if he proposed it to you.'
+
+'When did you say that?'
+
+'One day in the winter, when I asked you if you did not miss the world.'
+
+'I never thought I betrayed that I did so.'
+
+'You were only over eager to deny it. And I know your generosity, my
+love. You miss the world; we will go back to it for a little. It will
+only make our life here dearer--I hope.'
+
+He was silent; emotion mastered him. 'You have the most unselfish
+nature that was!' he said brokenly. 'It will be a cruel sacrifice to
+you, and yet you urge it for my sake.'
+
+'Dear, will you not understand? What is for your sake is what is most
+for mine. I see you long, despite yourself, to be amidst men once more,
+and use your rare talents as you cannot use them here. It is only right
+that you should have the power to do so. If our life here has taken
+the hold on your heart then, I think you will come back to it all the
+more gladly. And then I too have my vanity; I shall be proud for the
+world to see how you can fill a great station, conduct a difficult
+negotiation, distinguish yourself in every way. When they praise you,
+I shall be repaid a thousand times for any sacrifice of my own tastes
+that there may be.'
+
+He heard her with many conflicting emotions, of which a passionate
+gratitude was the first and highest.
+
+'You make me ashamed,' he said in a low voice. 'No man can be worthy of
+such goodness as yours; and I----'
+
+Once more the avowal of the truth rose to his lips, but stayed
+unuttered. His want of courage took refuge in procrastination.
+
+'We need not decide for a day or two,' he added; 'they give me time; we
+will think well. When do you think I must reply?'
+
+'Surely soon; your delay would seem disrespect. You know we Austrians
+are very ceremonious.'
+
+'And if I accept, it will not make you unhappy?'
+
+'My love, no, a thousand times, no; your choice is always mine.'
+
+He stooped and kissed her hand.
+
+'You are ever the same,' he murmured. 'The noblest, the most
+generous----'
+
+She smiled bravely. 'I am quite sure you have decided already. Go to my
+table yonder, and write a graceful acceptance to my cousin Kunst. You
+will be happier when it is posted.'
+
+'No, I will think a little. It is not a thing to be done in haste. It
+will be irrevocable.'
+
+'Irrevocable? A diplomatic mission? You can throw it up when you
+please. You are not bound to serve longer than you choose.'
+
+He was silent: what he had thought himself had been of the irrevocable
+insult he would be held to have offered to the emperor, the nation, and
+the world, if ever they knew.
+
+'It will not be liked if I accept for a mere caprice. One must never
+treat a State as Bela treats his playthings,' he said as he rang, and
+when the servant answered the summons ordered them to saddle his horse.
+
+'No; there is no haste. Glearemberg is not definitely recalled, I
+think.'
+
+But as she spoke she knew very well that, unknown to himself, he had
+already decided; that the joy and triumph the offer had brought to him
+were both too great for him eventually to resist them. He sat down and
+re-read the letter.
+
+She had said the truth to him, but she had not said all the truth. She
+had a certain desire that he should justify her marriage in the eyes of
+the world by some political career brilliantly followed; but this was
+not her chief motive in wishing him to return to the life of cities.
+She had seen that he was in a manner disquieted, discontented, and
+attributed it to discontent at the even routine of their lives. The
+change in his moods and tempers, the arbitrary violence of his love
+for her, vaguely alarmed and troubled her; she seemed to see the germ
+of much that might render their lives far less happy. She realised
+that she had given herself to one who had the capacity of becoming a
+tyrannical possessor, and retained, even after six years of marriage,
+the irritable ardour of a lover. She knew that it was better for them
+both that the distraction and the restraint of the life of the world
+should occupy some of his thoughts, and check the over-indulgence of
+a passion which in solitude grew feverish and morbid. She had not the
+secret of the change in him, of which the result alone was apparent to
+her, and she could only act according to her light. If he grew morose,
+tyrannical, violent, all the joy of their life would be gone. She knew
+that men alter curiously under the sense of possession. She felt that
+her influence, though strong, was not paramount as it had been, and she
+perceived that he no longer took much interest in the administration
+of the estates, in which he had shown great ability in the first years
+of their marriage. She had been forced to resume her old governance
+of all those matters, and she knew that it was not good for him to
+live without occupation. She feared that the sameness of the days, to
+her so delightful, to him grew tiresome. To ride constantly, to hunt
+sometimes, to make music in the evenings----this was scarcely enough to
+fill up the life of a man who had been a _viveur_ on the bitumen of the
+boulevards for so long.
+
+A woman of a lesser nature would have been too vain to doubt the
+all-sufficiency of her own presence to enthral and to content him; but
+she was without vanity, and had more wisdom than most women. It did
+not even once occur to her, as it would have done incessantly to most,
+that the magnificence of all her gifts to him were title-deeds to his
+content for life.
+
+Public life would be her enemy, would take her from the solitudes she
+loved, would change her plans for her children's education, would bring
+the world continually betwixt herself and her husband; but since he
+wished it that was all she thought of, all her law.
+
+'Surely he will accept?' said Mdme. Ottilie, who had returned from the
+south of France.
+
+'Yes, he will accept,' said his wife. 'He does not know it, but he
+will.'
+
+'I cannot imagine why he should affect to hesitate. It is the career
+he is made for, with his talents, his social graces.'
+
+'He does not affect; he hesitates for my sake. He knows I am never
+happy away from Hohenszalras.'
+
+'Why did you write then to Kunst?'
+
+'Because it will be better for him; he is neither a poet nor a
+philosopher, to be able to live away from the world.'
+
+'Which are you?'
+
+'Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the
+people she----'
+
+'Reigns over,' added the Princess. 'Admit, my beloved, that a part of
+your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be
+quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!'
+
+Wanda von Szalras smiled. 'Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed
+with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.'
+
+'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural
+life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.'
+
+At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great
+avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before
+coming into his wife's presence. He would no more have gone to her with
+the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in
+such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.
+
+When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with
+vivacity:
+
+'Well! you accept, of course?
+
+'I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.'
+
+The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the
+carpet.
+
+'Wanda is a hermit,' she said; 'she should have dwelt in a cave, and
+lived on berries with S. Scholastica. What is the use of leaving it to
+her? She will say No. She loves her mountains.'
+
+'Then she shall stay amidst her mountains.'
+
+'And you will throw all your future away?'
+
+'Dear mother, I have no future----should have had none but for her.'
+
+'All that is very pretty, but after nearly six years of marriage it is
+not necessary to _faire des madrigaux._'
+
+The Princess sat a little more erect, angrily, and continued to tap her
+foot upon the floor. His wife was silent for a little while; then she
+went over to her writing-table, and wrote with a firm hand a few lines
+in German. She rose and gave the sheet to Sabran.
+
+'Copy that,' she said, 'or give it as many graces of style as you like.'
+
+His heart beat, his sight seemed dim as he read what she had written.
+
+It was an acceptance.
+
+'See, my dear Réné!' said the Princess, when she understood;
+'never combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon--
+unselfishness! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort.'
+
+The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her----
+
+'Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of
+_faisant des madrigaux!_'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna,
+and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called
+her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who
+showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and
+welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the
+most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the
+prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified
+and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware
+that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands
+for _finesse_ and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make
+upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his
+wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and
+splendour it required.
+
+He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when
+the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his
+nerve, his self-command, his _insouciance_; he was once more capable of
+honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman
+he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of
+his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates
+a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must
+always exist, _sub rosa_, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance
+with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for
+every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul
+Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen
+politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The
+prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of
+a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff
+as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle
+projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social
+honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the
+minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in
+all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the
+purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of
+Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked _moujik_ in the
+_isba_ of a Persian peasant.
+
+Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like
+all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify
+his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort
+that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and
+perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men
+was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public
+career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to
+be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor
+had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.
+
+'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition
+that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which
+had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from
+circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of
+his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the
+social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better
+moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess
+von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;'
+and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless
+and ill at ease.
+
+He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold
+by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more
+prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if
+ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate,
+dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him
+with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed
+to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he
+been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his
+own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have
+always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion
+of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his
+own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any
+such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly,
+that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a
+suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always
+reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.
+
+This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life;
+not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a
+jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his
+ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it
+touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the
+felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the
+contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and
+witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and
+too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on
+his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed
+of constancy.
+
+'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of
+dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly
+degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is
+always hers and my love.'
+
+Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of
+her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty
+life led there under the show summits of her hills.
+
+He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's
+caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not
+infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most
+use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the
+daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.
+
+As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the
+Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and
+a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour
+and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he
+had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world
+beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had
+beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He
+went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now
+and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some
+portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some
+quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.
+
+On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:
+
+'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.
+
+(Signed) 'WANDA.'
+
+No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches
+could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful
+affection.
+
+'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.
+
+The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the
+season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the
+sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and
+the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and
+magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present
+at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation,
+as the ambassador-designate to Russia.
+
+Court dress became him, and his great height and elegance of manner
+made him noticeable even in that brilliant crowd of notables. All the
+greatest ladies distinguished him with their smiles, but he gave them
+no more than courtesy. He saw only before the 'eye of memory' his wife
+as he had seen her at the last court ball, with the famous pearls about
+her throat, and her train of silver tissue sown with pearls and looped
+up with white lilac.
+
+'It is the flower I like best,' she had said to him. 'It brought me
+your first love-message in Paris, do you remember? It said little; it
+was very discreet, but it said enough!'
+
+'You are always thinking of Wanda!' said the Countess Brancka to him
+now, with a tinge of impatience in her tone.
+
+He coloured a little, and said with that hauteur with which he always
+repressed any passing jest at his love for his wife:
+
+'When both one's duty and joy point the same way it is easy to follow
+them in thought.'
+
+'I hope you follow them in action too,' said Mdme. Brancka.
+
+'If I do not, I am at least only responsible to Wanda.'
+
+'Who would be a lenient judge you mean? said the Countess, with a
+certain smile that displeased him. 'Do not be too sure; she is a von
+Szalras. They are not agreeable persons when they are angered.'
+
+'I have not been so unhappy as to see her so,' said Sabran coldly,
+with a vague sense of uneasiness. As much as it is possible for a man
+to dislike a woman who is very lovely, and young enough to be still
+charming in the eyes of the world, he disliked Olga Brancka. He had
+known her for many years in Paris, not intimately, but by force of
+being in the same society, and, like many men who do not lead very
+decent lives themselves, he frankly detested _cocodettes._
+
+'If we want these manners we have our _lionnes_,' he was wont to say,
+at a time when Cochonette was seen every day behind his horses by the
+Cascade, and it had been the height of the Countess Olga's ambition at
+that time to be called like Cochonette. A certain resemblance there
+was between the great lady and the wicked one; they had the same small
+delicate sarcastic features, the same red gold curls, the same perfect
+colourless complexion; but where Cochonette had eyes of the slightest
+blue, the wife of Count Stefan had the luminous piercing black eyes of
+the Muscovite physiognomy. Still the likeness was there, and it made
+the sight of Mdme. Brancka distasteful to him, since his memories of
+the other were far from welcome. It was for Cochonette that he had
+broken the bank at Monte Carlo, and into her lap that he had thrown
+all the gold rouleaux at a time when in his soul he had already adored
+Wanda von Szalras, and had despised himself for returning to the slough
+of his old pleasures. It was Cochonette who had sold his secrets to
+the Prussians, and brought them down upon him in the farmhouse amongst
+the orchards of the Orléannais, whilst she passed safely through, the
+German lines and across the frontier, laden with her jewels and her
+_valeurs_ of all kinds, saying in her teeth as she went: 'He will
+never see that Austrian woman again!' That had been the end of all he
+had known of Cochonette, and a presentiment of perfidy, of danger, of
+animosity always came over him whenever he saw the _joli petit minois_
+which in profile was so like Cochonette's, looking up from under the
+loose auburn curls that Mdme. Olga had copied from her.
+
+Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more
+admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds;
+and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette
+would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels
+flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams.
+There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her
+breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.
+
+Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an _étourdissement_
+that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.
+
+'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda,
+_mon beau_ cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are
+really going to Russia?'
+
+'I believe so.'
+
+'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in
+paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'
+
+'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'
+
+'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy
+enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money
+that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'
+
+'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played
+since my marriage.'
+
+'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A
+saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature,
+though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by
+marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean
+nothing.'
+
+'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he
+was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.
+
+'Call me at least _cousinette_,' said Mdme. Olga; 'we are cousins, you
+know, thanks to Wanda. Oh! she will be very unhappy in St. Petersburg;
+she will not amuse herself, she never does. She is incapable of a
+flirtation; she never touches a card. When she dances it is only
+because she must, and then it is only a quadrille or a contre-dance.
+She always reminds me of Marie Thérèse's "In our position nothing is a
+trifle." You remember the Empress's letters to Versailles?'
+
+Sabran was very much angered, but he was afraid to express his anger
+lest it should seem to make him absurd.
+
+'Madame,' he said, with ill-repressed irritation, 'I know you speak
+only in jest, but I must take the liberty to tell you----however
+bourgeois it appear----that I do not allow a jest even from you upon my
+wife. Anything she does is perfect in my sight, and if she be imbued
+with the old traditions of gentle blood, too many ladies desert them in
+these days for me not to be grateful to her for her loyalty.'
+
+She listened, with her bright black eyes fixed on him; then she leaned
+a little more closely on his arm.
+
+'Do you know that you said that very well? Most men are ridiculous
+when they are in love with their wives, but it becomes you, Wanda is
+perfect, we all know that; you are not alone in thinking so. Ask Egon!'
+
+The face of Sabran changed as he heard that name. As she saw the
+change she thought: 'Can it be possible that he is jealous?'
+
+Aloud she said with a little laugh: 'I almost wonder Egon did not
+run you through the heart before you married. Now, of course, he
+is reconciled to the inevitable; or, if not reconciled, he has to
+submit to it as we all have to do. He grows very _farouche_; he lives
+between his troopers and his castle of Taróc, like a barbaric lord
+of the Middle Ages. Were you ever at Taróc? It is worth seeing----a
+huge fortress, old as the days of Ottokar, in the very heart of the
+Karpathians. He leads a wild, fierce life enough there. If he keep the
+memory of Wanda with him it is as some men keep an idolatry for what is
+dead.'
+
+Sabran listened with a sombre irritation. 'Suppose we leave my wife's
+name in peace,' he said coldly. 'The _grosser cotillon_ is about to
+begin; may I aspire to the honour?'
+
+As he led her out, and the light fell on her red gold curls, on her
+dazzling butterflies, her armour of diamonds, her snow-white skin, a
+thousand memories of Cochonette came over him, though the scene around
+him was the ball-room of the Hofburg, and the woman whose great bouquet
+of _rêve d'or_ roses touched his hand was a great lady who had been the
+wife of Gela von Szalras, and the daughter of the Prince Serriatine.
+He distrusted her, he despised her, he disliked her so strongly that
+he was almost ashamed of his own antagonism; and yet her contact, her
+grace of movement, the mere scent of the bouquet of roses had a sort of
+painful and unwilling intoxication for the moment for him.
+
+He was glad when the long and gorgeous figures of the cotillon had
+tired out even her steel-like nerves, and he was free to leave the
+palace and go home to sleep. He looked at a miniature of his wife as
+he undressed; the face of it, with its tenderness and its nobility,
+seemed to him, after the face of this other woman, like the pure high
+air of the Iselthal after the heated and unhealthy atmosphere of a
+gambling-room.
+
+The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence
+was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which
+had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was
+brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural
+gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the
+sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some
+with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the
+empire.
+
+As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way
+slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through
+the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and
+odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After
+all, I may do her some honour before I die.'
+
+When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached
+him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said
+that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought
+it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.
+
+Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the
+staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants
+away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.
+
+There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:
+
+'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to
+him, under secrecy, what I know.'
+
+They were fully signed----'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a
+courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph.
+They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the
+Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+As the carriage of the Countess Olga rolled home through the Graben
+after the military spectacle, she stopped it suddenly, and signed to an
+old man in the crowd who was waiting to cross the road until a regiment
+of cuirassiers had rolled by. He was eyeing them critically, as only an
+old soldier does look at troops.
+
+'Is it you, Georg?' said Madame Olga. 'What brings you here?'
+
+'I came from Taróc with a letter from the Prince, my master,' answered
+the man, an old hussar who had carried Vàsàrhely in his arms off the
+field of Königsgrätz, after dragging him from under a heap of dead men
+and horses.
+
+'A letter! To whom?' asked Olga, who always was curious and persistent
+in investigation of all her brother-in-law's movements and actions.
+
+Vàsàrhely had not laid any injunction as to secrecy, only as to speed,
+upon his faithful servant; so that Georg replied, unwitting of harm,
+'To the Markgraf von Sabran, my Countess.'
+
+'A letter that could not go by post--how strange! And from Egon to
+Wanda's husband!' she thought, with her inquisitive eagerness awakened.
+Aloud she bade the old trooper call at her palace for a packet for
+Taróc, to make excuse for having stopped and questioned him, and drove
+onward lost in thought.
+
+'Perhaps it is a challenge late in the day!' she thought, with a laugh;
+but she was astonished and perplexed that any communication should take
+place between these men; she perplexed her mind in vain in the effort
+to imagine what tie could connect them, what mystery mutually affecting
+them could lie beneath the secret of Vassia Kazán.
+
+When, on the morrow, she heard at Court that the Emperor was deeply
+incensed at the caprice and disrespect of the Count von Idrac, as
+he was called at Court, who, at the eleventh hour, had declined a
+mission already accepted by him, and of which the offer had been in
+itself an unprecedented mark of honour and confidence, her swift
+sagacity instantly associated the action, apparently so excuseless and
+inexcusable, with the letter sent up from Taróc. It was still as great
+a mystery to her as it had been before what the contents of the letter
+could have been, but she had no doubt that in some way or another it
+had brought about the resignation of the appointment. It awakened a
+still more intense curiosity in her, but she was too wise to whisper
+her suspicion to anyone. To her friends at the Court she said, with
+laughter: 'A night or two ago I chanced to tell Sabran that his wife
+would be wretched at St. Petersburg. That is sure to have been enough
+for him. He is such a devoted husband.'
+
+No one of course believed her, but they received the impression that
+she knew the real cause of his resignation, though she could not be
+induced to say it.
+
+What did it matter to her? Nothing, indeed. But the sense of a secret
+withheld from her was to Mdme. Olga like the slot of the fox to a young
+hound. She might have a thousand secrets of her own if it pleased her,
+but she could not endure anyone else to guard one. Besides, in a vague,
+feverish, angry way, she was almost in love with the man who was so
+faithful to his wife that he had looked away from her as from some
+unclean thing when she had wished to dazzle him. She had no perception
+that the secret could concern him himself very nearly, but she thought
+it was probably one which he and Egon Vàsàrhely, for reasons of their
+own, chose to share and keep hidden. And if it were a secret that
+prevented Sabran from going to the Court of Russia? Then, surely, it
+was one worth knowing? And if she gained a knowledge of it, and his
+wife had none?----what a superiority would be hers, what a weapon
+always to hand!
+
+She did not intend any especial cruelty or compass any especial end:
+she was actuated by a vague desire to interrupt a current of happiness
+that flowed on smoothly without her, to interfere where she had no
+earthly title or reason to do so, merely because she was disregarded
+by persons content with each other. It is not always definite motives
+which have the most influence; the subtlest poisons are those which
+enter the system we know not how, and penetrate it ere we are aware.
+The only thing which had ever held her back from any extremes of evil
+had been the mere habit of good-breeding and an absolute egotism which
+had saved her from all strong passions. Now something that was like
+passion had touched her under the sting of Sabran's indifference, and
+with it she became tenacious, malignant, and unsparing: adroit she had
+always been. Instinct is seldom at fault when we are conscious of an
+enemy, and Sabran's had not erred when it had warned him against the
+wife of Stefan Brancka as the serpent who would bring woe and disaster
+to his paradise.
+
+In some three months' time she received a more explicit answer from her
+cousin in St. Petersburg. Giving the precise dates, he told her that
+Vassia Kazán was the name given to the son of Count Paul Ivanovitch
+Zabaroff by a wayside amour with one of his own serfs at a village
+near the border line of Astrachan. He narrated the early history of
+the youth, and said that he had been amongst the passengers on board a
+Havre ship, which had foundered with all hands. So far the brief record
+of Vassia Kazán was clear and complete. But it told her nothing. She
+was unreasonably enraged, and looked at the little piece of burnt paper
+as though she would wrench the secret out of it.
+
+'There must be so much more to know,' she thought. 'What would a mere
+drowned boy be to either of those men----a boy dead too all these years
+before?'
+
+She wrote insolently to her cousin, that the Third Section, with
+its eyes of Argus and its limbs of Vishnoo, had always been but an
+overgrown imbecile, and set her woman's wits to accomplish what the
+Third Section had failed to do for her. So much she thought of it that
+the name seemed forced into her very brain; she seemed to hear every
+one saying----'Vassia Kazán.' It was a word to conjure with, at least:
+she could at the least try the effect of its utterance any day upon
+either of those who had made it the key of their correspondence. Russia
+had written down Vassia Kazán as dead, and the mystery which enveloped
+the name would not open to her. She knew her country too well not to
+know that this bold statement might cover some political secret, some
+story wholly unlike that which was given her. Vassia Kazán might have
+lived and have incurred the suspicions of the police, and be dwelling
+far away in the death in life of Siberian mines, or deep sunk in some
+fortress, like a stone at the bottom of a well. The reply not only
+did not beget her belief in it, but gave her range for the widest and
+wildest conjectures of imagination. 'It is some fault, some folly, some
+crime, who can tell? And Vassia Kazán is the victim or the associate,
+or the confidant of it. But what is it? And how does Egon know of it?'
+
+She passed the summer in pleasures of all kinds, but the subject did
+not lose its power over her, nor did she forget the face of Sabran as
+he had turned it away from her in the ball-room of the Hofburg.
+
+He himself had left the capital, after affirming to the minister that
+private reasons, which he could not enter into, had induced him to
+entreat the Imperial pardon for so sudden a change of resolve, and to
+solicit permission to decline the high honour that had been vouchsafed
+to him.
+
+'What shall I say to Wanda?' he asked himself incessantly, as the
+express train swung through the grand green country towards Salzburg.
+
+She was sitting on the lake terrace with the Princess, when a telegram
+from her cousin Kunst was brought to her. Bela and Gela were playing
+near with squadrons of painted cuirassiers, and the great dogs were
+lying on the marble pavement at her feet. It was a golden close to a
+sunless but fine day; the snow peaks were growing rosy as the sun shone
+for an instant behind the Venediger range, and the lake was calm and
+still and green, one little boat going noiselessly across it from the
+Holy Isle to the further side.
+
+'What a pity to leave it all!' she thought as she took the telegram.
+
+The Minister's message was curt and angered:
+
+'Your husband has resigned; he makes himself and me ridiculous. Unable
+to guess his motive, I am troubled and embarrassed beyond expression.'
+
+The other, from Sabran, said simply: 'I am coming home. I give up
+Russia.'
+
+'Any bad news?' the Princess asked, seeing the seriousness of her face.
+Her niece rose and gave her the papers.
+
+'Is Réné mad!' she exclaimed as she read. His wife, who was startled
+and dismayed at the affront to her cousin and to her sovereign, yet had
+been unable to repress a movement of personal gladness, hastened to say
+in his defence:
+
+'Be sure he has some grave, good reason, dear mother. He knows the
+world too well to commit a folly. Unexplained, it looks strange,
+certainly; but he will be home to-night or in the early morning; then
+we shall know; and be sure we shall find him right.'
+
+'Right!' echoed the Princess, lifting the little girl who was her
+namesake off her knee, a child white as a snowdrop, with golden curls,
+who looked as if she had come out of a band of Correggio's baby angels.
+
+'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who
+had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard
+suspended in the air.
+
+'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme
+displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when
+through him you are probably _brouillée_ with your Sovereign for life.'
+
+She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a
+caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon.
+I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible
+excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such
+vast importance.'
+
+'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would
+condemn Réné unheard?'
+
+'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'
+
+'Perhaps none. I know it is a very grave offence that he has committed,
+and yet I cannot help being happy,' said his wife with a smile, as she
+lifted up the little Ottilie, and murmured over the child's fair curls,
+'Ah, my dear little dove! We are not going to Russia after all. You
+little birds will not leave your nest!'
+
+'Bela is not going to the snow palace?' said he, whose ears were very
+quick, and to whom his attendants had told marvellous narratives of an
+utterly imaginary Russia.
+
+'No; are not you glad, my dear?'
+
+He thought very gravely for a moment.
+
+'Bela is not sure. Marc says Bela would have slaves in Russia, and
+might beat them.'
+
+'Bela would be beaten himself if he did, and by my own hand, said his
+mother very gravely. 'Oh, child! where did you get your cruelty?'
+
+'He is not cruel,' said the Princess. 'He is only masterful.'
+
+'Alas! it is the same thing.'
+
+She sent the children indoors, and remained after the sun-glow had all
+faded, and Mdme. Ottilie had gone away to her own rooms, and paced
+to and fro the length of the terrace, troubled by an anxiety which
+she would have owned to no one. What could have happened to make
+him so offend alike the State and the Court? She tormented herself
+with wondering again and again whether she had used any incautious
+expression in her letters which could have betrayed to him the poignant
+regret the coming exile gave her. No! she was sure she had not done
+so. She had only written twice, preferring telegrams as quicker, and,
+to a man, less troublesome than letters. She knew courts and cabinets
+too well not to know that the step her husband had taken was one which
+would wholly ruin the favour he enjoyed with the former, and wholly
+take away all chance of his being ever called again to serve the
+latter. Personally she was indifferent to that kind of ambition; but
+her attachment to the Imperial house was too strong, and her loyalty
+to it too hereditary, for her not to be alarmed at the idea of losing
+its good-will. Disquieted and afraid of all kinds of formless unknown
+ills, she went with a heavy heart into the Rittersaal to a dinner for
+which she could find no appetite. The Princess also, so talkative and
+vivacious at other times, was silent and pre-occupied. The evening
+passed tediously. He did not come.
+
+It was past midnight, and she had given up all hope of his arrival,
+when she heard the returning trot of the horses, who had been sent over
+to Matrey in the evening on the chance of his being there. She was in
+her own chamber, having dismissed her women, and was trying in vain to
+keep her thoughts to nightly prayer. At the sound of the horses' feet
+without, she threw on a _négligé_ of white satin and lace, and went,
+out on to the staircase to meet him. As he came up the broad stairs,
+with Donau and Neva gladly leaping on him, he looked up and saw her
+against the background of oak and tapestry and old armour, with the
+light of a great Persian lamp in metal that swung above shed full upon
+her. She had never looked more lovely to him than as she stood so, her
+eyes eagerly searching the dim shadow for him, and the loose white
+folds embroidered in silk with pale roses flowing downward from her
+throat to her feet. He drew her within her chamber, and took her in his
+arms with a passionate gesture.
+
+'Let us forget everything,' he murmured, 'except that we have been
+parted nearly a month!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+In the morning, after breakfast in the little Saxe room, she said to
+him with gentle firmness: 'Réné, you must tell me now--why have you
+refused Russia?'
+
+He had known that the question must come, and all the way on his
+homeward journey he had been revolving in his mind the answer he would
+give to it. He was very pale, but otherwise he betrayed no agitation as
+he turned and looked at her.
+
+'That is what I cannot tell you,' he replied.
+
+She could not believe she heard aright.
+
+'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'I have had a message from Kunst;
+he is deeply angered. I understand that, after all was arranged, you
+abruptly resigned the Russian mission. I ask your reasons. It is a very
+grave step to have taken. I suppose your motives must be very strong
+ones?'
+
+'They are so,' said Sabran; and he continued in the forced and measured
+tone of one who recites what he has taught himself to say: 'It is quite
+natural that your cousin Kunst should be offended; the Emperor also.
+You perhaps will be the same when I say to you that I cannot tell you,
+as I cannot tell them, the grounds of my withdrawal. Perhaps you, like
+them, will not forgive it.'
+
+Her nostrils dilated and her breast heaved: she was startled,
+mortified, amazed. 'You do not choose to tell _me_!' she said in
+stupefaction.
+
+'I cannot tell you.'
+
+'She gazed at him with the first bitterness of wrath that he had ever
+seen upon her face. She had been used to perfect submission of others
+all her life. She had the blood in her of stern princes, who had meted
+out rule and justice against which there had been no appeal. She was
+accustomed even in him to deference, homage, consideration, to be
+consulted always, deferred to often. His answer for the moment seemed
+to her an unwarrantable insult.
+
+Her influence, her relatives, her sovereign, had given him one of the
+highest honours conceivable, and he did not choose to even say why he
+was thankless for it! Passionate and withering words rose to her lips,
+but she restrained their utterance. Not even in that moment could she
+bring herself to speak what might seem to rebuke him with the weight
+of all his debt to her. She remained silent, but he understood all the
+intense indignation that held her speechless there. He approached her
+more nearly, and spoke with emotion, but with a certain sternness in
+his voice----
+
+'I know very well that I must offend and even outrage you. But I
+cannot tell you my motives. It is the first time that I have ever
+acted independently of you or failed to consult your wishes. I only
+venture to remind you that marriage does give to the man the right to
+do so, though I have never availed myself of it. Nay, even now, I owe
+you too much to be ingrate enough to take refuge in my authority as
+your husband. I prefer to owe more, as I have owed so much, to your
+tenderness. I prefer to ask of you, by your love for me, not to press
+me for an answer that I am not in a position to make; to be content
+with what I say--that I have relinquished the Russian mission because I
+have no choice but to do so.'
+
+He spoke firmly, because he spoke only the truth, although not all the
+truth.
+
+A great anger rose up in her, the first that she had ever been moved to
+by him. All the pride of her temper and all her dignity were outraged
+by this refusal to have confidence in her. It seemed incredible
+to her. She still thought herself the prey of some dream, of some
+hallucination. Her lips parted to speak, but again she withheld the
+words she was about to utter. Her strong justice compelled her to admit
+that he was but within his rights, and her sense of duty was stronger
+than her sense of self-love.
+
+She did not look at him, nor could she trust her voice. She turned
+from him without a syllable, and left the room. She was afraid of the
+violence of the anger that she felt.
+
+'If it had been only to myself I would pardon it,' she thought; 'but an
+insult to my people, to my country, to my sovereign!--an insult without
+excuse, or explanation, or apology----'
+
+She shut herself alone within her oratory and passed the most bitter
+hour of her life. The imperious and violent temper of the Szalras
+was dormant in her character, though she had chastened and tamed it,
+and the natural sweetness and serenity of her disposition had been a
+counterpoise to it so strong that the latter had become the only thing
+visible in her. But all the wrath of her race was now aroused and in
+arms against what she loved best on earth.
+
+'If it had been anything else,' she thought; 'but a public act like
+this--an ingratitude to the Crown itself! A caprice for all the world
+to chatter of and blame!'
+
+It would have been hard enough to bear, difficult enough to explain
+away to others, if he had told her his reasons, however captious,
+unwise, or selfish they might be; but to have the door of his soul
+thus shut upon her, his thoughts thus closed to her, hurt her with
+intolerable pain, and filled her with a deep and burning indignation.
+
+She passed all the early morning hours alone in her little temple of
+prayer, striving in vain against the bitterness of her heart; above
+her the great ivory Crucifixion, the work of Angermayer, beneath which
+so many generations of the women of the House of Szalras had knelt in
+their hours of tribulation or bereavement.
+
+When she left the oratory she had conquered herself. Though she could
+not extinguish the human passions that smarted and throbbed within her,
+she knew her duty well enough to know that it must lie in submission
+and in silence.
+
+She sought for him at once. She found him in the library: he was
+playing to himself a long dreamy concerto of Schubert's, to soothe the
+irritation of his own nerves and pass away a time of keen suspense. He
+rose as she came into the room, and awaited her approach with a timid
+anxiety in his eyes, which she was too absorbed by her own emotions to
+observe. He had assumed a boldness that he had not, and had used his
+power to dominate her rather in desperation than in any sense of actual
+mastery. In his heart it was he who feared her.
+
+'You were quite right,' she said simply to him. 'Of course, you are
+master of your own actions, and owe no account of them to me. We will
+say no more about it. For myself, you know I am content enough to
+escape exile to any embassy.'
+
+He kissed her hand with an unfeigned reverence and humility.
+
+'You are as merciful as you are great,' he murmured. 'If I be silent it
+is my misfortune.' He paused abruptly.
+
+A sudden thought came over her as he spoke.
+
+'It is some State secret that he knows and cannot speak of, and that
+has made him unwilling to go. Why did I never think of that before?'
+
+An explanation that had its root in honour, a reticence that sprang
+from conscience, were so welcome to her, and to her appeared so
+natural, that they now consoled her at once, and healed the wounds to
+her own pride.
+
+'Of course, if it be so, he is right not to speak even to me,' she
+mused, and her only desire was now to save him from the insistence and
+the indignation of the Princess, and the examination which these were
+sure to entail upon him when he should meet her at the noon breakfast
+now at hand.
+
+To that end she sought out her aunt in her own apartments, taking
+with her the tiny Ottilie, who always disarmed all irritation in her
+godmother by the mere presence of her little flower-like face.
+
+'Dear mother,' she said softly, when the child had made her morning
+obeisance, 'I am come to ask of you a great favour and kindness to me.
+Réné returned last night. He has done what he thought right. I do not
+even ask his reasons. He has acted from _force majeure_ by dictate of
+his own honour. Will you do as I mean to do? Will you spare him any
+interrogation? I shall be so grateful to you, and so will he.'
+
+Mdme. Ottilie, opening her bonbonnière for her namesake, drew up her
+fragile figure with a severity unusual to her.
+
+'Do I hear you aright? You do not even know the reasons of the insult
+M. de Sabran has passed upon the Crown and Cabinet, and you do not even
+mean to ask them?'
+
+'I do mean that; and what I do not ask I feel sure you will admit no
+one else has any right to ask of him.'
+
+'No one certainly except His Majesty.'
+
+'I presume His Majesty has had all information due to him as our
+Imperial master. All I entreat of you, dearest mother, is to do as
+I have done; assume, as we are bound to assume, that Réné has acted
+wisely and rightly, and not weary him with questions to which it will
+be painful to him not to respond.'
+
+'Questions! I never yet indulged in anything so vulgar as curiosity,
+that you should imagine I shall be capable of subjecting your husband
+to a cross-examination. If you be satisfied, I can have no right to
+be more exacting than yourself. The occurrence is to me lamentable,
+inexcusable, unintelligible; but if explanation be not offered me you
+may rest assured I shall not intrude my request for it.'
+
+'Of that I am sure; but I am not contented only with that. I want you
+to feel no dissatisfaction, no doubt, no anger against him. You may be
+sure that he has acted from conviction, because he was most desirous to
+go to Russia, as you saw when you urged him to accept the mission.'
+
+'I have said the utmost that I can say,' replied the Princess, with a
+chill light in her blue eyes. 'This little child is no more likely to
+ask questions than I am, after what you have stated. But you must not
+regard my silence as any condonation of what must always appear to me a
+step disrespectful to the Crown, contrary to all usages of etiquette,
+and injurious to his own future and that of his children. His scruples
+of conscience came too late.'
+
+'I did not say they were exactly that. I believe he learned something
+which made him consider that his honour required him to withdraw.'
+
+'That may be,' said the Princess, frigidly. 'As I observed, it came
+lamentably late. You will excuse me if I breakfast in my own rooms this
+morning.'
+
+Wanda left her, gave the child to a nurse who waited without, and
+returned to the library. She had offended and pained Mdme. Ottilie,
+but she had saved her husband from annoyance. She knew that though
+the Princess was by no means as free from curiosity as she declared
+herself, she was too high-bred and too proud to solicit a confidence
+withheld from her.
+
+Sabran was seated at the piano where she had left him, but his forehead
+rested on the woodwork of it, and his whole attitude was suggestive
+of sad and absorbed thought and abandonment to regrets that were
+unavailing.
+
+'It has cost him so much,' she reflected as she looked at him. 'Perhaps
+it has been a self-sacrifice, a heroism even; and I, from mere wounded
+feeling, have been angered against him and almost cruel!'
+
+With the exaggeration in self-censure of all generous natures, she was
+full of remorse at having added any pain to the disappointment which
+had been his portion; a disappointment none the less poignant, as she
+saw, because it had been voluntarily, as she imagined, accepted.
+
+As he heard her approach he started and rose, and the expression of his
+face startled her for a moment; it was so full of pain, of melancholy,
+almost (could she have believed it) of despair. What could this matter
+be to affect him thus, since being of the State it could be at its
+worst only some painful and compromising secret of political life which
+could have no personal meaning for him? It was surely impossible that
+mere disappointment----a disappointment self-inflicted----could bring
+upon him such suffering? But she threw these thoughts away. In her
+great loyalty she had told herself that she must not even think of this
+thing, lest she should let it come between them once again and tempt
+her from her duty and obedience. Her trust in him was perfect.
+
+The abandonment of a coveted distinction was in itself a bitter
+disappointment, but it seemed to him as nothing beside the sense of
+submission and obedience compelled from him to Vàsàrhely. He felt as
+though an iron hand, invisible, weighed on his life, and forced it into
+subjection. When he had almost grown secure that his enemy's knowledge
+was a buried harmless thing, it had risen and barred his way, speaking
+with an authority which it was not possible to disobey. With all his
+errors he was a man of high courage, who had always held his own with
+all men. How the old forgotten humiliation of his earliest years
+revived, and enforced from him the servile timidity of the Slav blood
+which he had abjured. He had never for an instant conceived it possible
+to disregard the mandate he received; that an apparently voluntary
+resignation was permitted to him was, his conscience acknowledged, more
+mercy than he could have expected. That Vàsàrhely would act thus had
+not occurred to him; but before the act he could not do otherwise than
+admit its justice and obey.
+
+But the consciousness of that superior will compelling him, left in him
+a chill tremor of constant fear, of perpetual self-abasement. What was
+natural to him was the reckless daring which many Russians, such as
+Skobeleff, have shown in a thousand ways of peril. He was here forced
+only to crouch and to submit; it was more galling, more cruel to him
+than utter exposure would have been. The sense of coercion was always
+upon him like a dragging chain. It produced on him a despondency, which
+not even the presence of his wife or the elasticity of his own nature
+could dispel.
+
+He had to play a part to her, and to do this was unfamiliar and hateful
+to him. In all the years before he had concealed a fact from her, but
+he had never been otherwise false. Though to his knowledge there had
+been always between them the shadow of a secret untold, there had
+never been any sense upon him of obligation to measure his words, to
+feign sentiments he had not, to hide behind a carefully constructed
+screen of untruth. Now, though he had indeed not lied with his lips,
+he had to sustain a concealment which was a thousand times more trying
+to him than that concealment of his birth and station to which he had
+been so long accustomed that he hardly realised it as any error. The
+very nobility with which she had accepted his silence, and given it,
+unasked, a worthy construction, smote him with a deeper sense of shame
+than even that which galled him when he remembered the yoke laid on him
+by the will of Egon Vàsàrhely.
+
+He roused himself to meet her with composure.
+
+She rested her hand caressingly on his.
+
+'We will never speak of Russia any more. I should be sorry were the
+Kaiser to think you capricious or disloyal, but you have too much
+ability to have incurred this risk. Let it all be as though there had
+never arisen any question of public life for you. I have explained
+to Aunt Ottilie; she will not weary you with interrogation; she
+understands that you have acted as your honour bade you. That is enough
+for those who love you as do she and I.'
+
+Every word she spoke entered his very soul with the cruellest irony,
+the sharpest reproach. But of these he let her see nothing. Yet he
+was none the less abjectly ashamed, less passionately self-condemned,
+because he had to consume his pain in silence, and had the self-control
+to answer, still with a smile, as he touched a chord or two of music:
+
+'When the Israelites were free they hankered after the flesh-pots of
+Egypt. They deserved eternal exile, eternal bondage. So do I, for
+having ever been ingrate enough to dream of leaving Hohenszalras for
+the world of men!'
+
+Then he turned wholly towards the Erard keyboard, and with splendour
+and might there rolled forth under his touch the military march of
+Rákóczi: he was glad of the majesty and passion of the music which
+supplanted and silenced speech.
+
+'That is very grand,' she said, when the last notes had died away.
+'One seems to hear the _Eljén!_ of the whole nation in it. But play me
+something more tender, more pathetic----some _lieder_ half sorrow and
+half gladness, you know so many of all countries.'
+
+He paused a moment; then his hands wandered lightly across the notes,
+and called up the mournful folk-songs that he had heard so long, so
+long, before; songs of the Russian peasants, of the maidens borne off
+by the Tartar in war, of the blue-eyed children carried away to be
+slaves, of the homeless villagers beholding their straw-roofed huts
+licked up by the hungry hurrying flame lit by the Kossack or the Kurd;
+songs of a people without joy, that he had heard in his childish days,
+when the great rafts had drifted slowly down the Volga water, and
+across the plains the lines of chained prisoners had crept as slowly
+through the dust; or songs that he had sung to himself, not knowing
+why, where the winter was white on all the land, and the bay of the
+famished wolves afar off had blent with the shrill sad cry of the wild
+swans dying of cold and of hunger and of thirst on the frozen rivers,
+and the reeds were grown hard as spears of iron, and the waves were
+changed to stone.
+
+The intense melancholy penetrated her very heart. She listened with
+the tears in her eyes, and her whole being stirred and thrilled by a
+pain not her own. A kind of consciousness came to her, borne on that
+melancholy melody, of some unspoken sorrow which lived in this heart
+which beat so near her own, and whose every throb she had thought she
+knew. A sudden terror seized her lest all this while she who believed
+his whole life hers was in truth a stranger to his deepest grief, his
+dearest memories.
+
+When the last sigh of those plaintive songs without words had died
+away, she signed to him to approach her.
+
+'Tell me,' she said very gently, 'tell me the truth. Réné, did you ever
+care for any woman, dead or lost, more than, or as much as, you care
+for me? I do not ask you if you loved others. I know all men have many
+caprices, but was any one of them so dear to you that you regret her
+still? Tell me the truth; I will be strong to bear it.'
+
+He, relieved beyond expression that she but asked him that on which his
+conscience was clear and his answer could be wholly sincere, sat down
+at her feet and leaned his head against her knee.
+
+'Never, so hear me God!' he said simply. 'I have loved no woman as I
+love you.'
+
+'And there is not one that you regret?'
+
+'There is not one.'
+
+'Then what is it that you do regret? Something more weighs on you than
+the mere loss of diplomatic life, which; after all, to you is no more
+than the loss of a toy to Bela.'
+
+'If I do regret,' he said, with a smile, 'it is foolish and thankless.
+The happiness you give me here is worth all the fret and fever of
+the world's ambitions. You are so great and good to be so little
+angered with me for my reticence. All my life, such as it is, shall be
+dedicated to my gratitude.'
+
+Once more an impulse to tell her all passed over him----a sense that
+he might trust her absolutely for all tenderness and all pity came
+upon him; but with the weakness which so constantly holds back human
+souls from their own deliverance, his courage once again failed him.
+He once more looking at her thought: 'Nay! I dare not. She would never
+understand, she would never pardon, she would never listen. At the
+first word she would abhor me.'
+
+He did not dare; he bent his face down on her knees as any child might
+have done.
+
+'What I ever must regret is not to be worthy of you!' he murmured; and
+the subterfuge was also a truth.
+
+She looked down at him wistfully with doubt and confusion mingled. She
+sighed, for she understood that buried in his heart there was some pain
+he would not share, perchance some half involuntary unfaithfulness he
+did not dare confess. She thrust this latter thought away quickly; it
+hurt her as the touch of a hot iron hurts tender flesh; she would not
+harbour it. It might well be, she knew.
+
+She was silent some little time, then she said calmly:
+
+'I think you worthy. Is not that enough? Never say to me what you do
+not wish to say. But----but----if there be anything you believe that I
+should blame, be sure of this, love: I am no fair weather friend. Try
+me in deep water, in dark storm!'
+
+And still he did not speak.
+
+His evil angel held him back and said to him, 'Nay! she would never
+forgive.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+One day in this winter time she sat alone in her octagon-room whilst he
+was out driving in the teeth of a strong wind blowing from the north
+and frequent bursts of snowstorm. Rapid exercise, eager movements, were
+necessary to him at once as tonic and as anodyne, and the northern
+blood that was in him made the bitter cold, the keen and angry air, the
+conflict with the frantic horses tearing at their curbs welcome and
+wholesome to him. Paul Zabaroff had many a day driven so over the hard
+snows of Russian plains.
+
+She sat at home as the twilight drew on, her feet buried in the furs
+before her chair, the fragrance shed about her from a basket of forced
+narcissus and bowls full of orange flowers and of violets, the light
+of the burning wood shining on the variegated and mellow hues of the
+tiles of the hearth. The last poems of Coppée were on her lap, but
+her thoughts had wandered away from those to Sabran, to her children,
+to a thousand happy trifles connected with one or the other. She was
+dreaming idly in that vague reverie which suits the last hour of the
+reclining day in the grey still winter of a mountain-land. She was
+almost sorry when Hubert entered and brought her the mail-bag, which
+had just come through the gloomy defiles and the frosted woods which
+stretched between them and Matrey.
+
+'It grows late,' she said to him. 'I fear it will be a stormy night.
+Have you heard the Marquis return?
+
+He told her that Sabran had not yet driven in, and ventured to add
+his hope that his master would not be out long; then he asked if she
+desired the lamps lit, and on being told she did not, withdrew, leaving
+the leather bag on a table close to one of the Saxe bowls of violets.
+There was plenty of light from the fire, and even from the windows, to
+read her letters by; she went first to one of the casements and looked
+at the night, which was growing very wild and dark. Though day still
+lingered, she could hear the wind go screaming down the lake, and
+the rush of the swollen water swirling against the terrace buttresses
+below. All beyond, woods, hills, mountains, were invisible under the
+grey mist.
+
+'I hope he will not be late,' she thought, but she was too keen a
+mountaineer to be apprehensive. Sabran now knew every road and path
+through all the Tauern as well as she did. She returned to her seat and
+unlocked the leather bag; there were several newspapers, two letters
+for the Princess, three or four for Sabran, and one only for herself.
+She laid his aside for him, sent those of the Princess to her room,
+and opened her own. The writing of it she did not recognise; it was
+anonymous, and was very brief.
+
+
+'If you wish to know why the Marquis de Sabran did not go to Russia,
+ask Egon Vàsàrhely.'
+
+
+That was all: so asps are little.
+
+She sat quite still, and felt as if a bolt had fallen on her from the
+leaden skies without. Vàsàrhely knew, the writer of the letter knew,
+and she----_she----_ did not know! That was her first distinct thought.
+
+If Sabran had entered the room at that instant she would have held to
+him this letter, and would have said, 'I ask you, not him.' He was
+absent, and she sat motionless, keeping the unsigned note in her hand,
+and staring down on it. Then she turned and looked at the post-mark.
+It was 'Vienna,' A city of a million souls! What clue to the writer
+was there? She read it again and again, as even the wisest will read
+such poisonous things, as though by repeated study that mystery would
+be compelled to stand out clearly revealed. It did not say enough to
+have been the mere invention of the sender; it was not worded as an
+insinuation, but as a fact. For that reason it took a hold upon her
+mind which would at once have rejected a fouler or a darker suggestion.
+Although free from any baseness of suspicion there was yet that in the
+name of her cousin, in juxtaposition with her husband's, which could
+not do otherwise than startle and carry with it a corroboration of the
+statement made. A wave of the deep anger which had moved her on her
+husband's first refusal swept over her again. Her hand clenched, her
+eyes hashed, where she sat alone in the gathering shadows.
+
+There came a sound at the door of the room and a small golden head came
+from behind the tapestry.
+
+'May we come in?' said Bela; it was the children's hour.
+
+She rose, and put him backward.
+
+'Not now, my darling; I am occupied. Go away for a little while.'
+
+The women who were with them took the children back to their
+apartments. She sat down with the note still in her hand. What could
+it mean? No good thing was ever said thus. She pondered long, and was
+unable to imagine any sense or meaning it could have, though all the
+while memories thronged upon, her of words, and looks, and many trifles
+which had told her of the enmity that was existent between her cousin
+and Sabran. That she saw; but there her knowledge ceased, her vision
+failed. She could go no further, conjecture nothing more.
+
+'Ask Egon!' Did they think she would ask him or any living being that
+which Sabran had refused to confide in her? Whoever wrote this knew her
+little, she thought. Perhaps there were women who would have done so.
+She was not one of them.
+
+With a sudden impulse of scorn she cast the sheet of paper into the
+fire before her. Then she went to her writing-table and enclosed the
+envelope in another, which she addressed to her lawyers in Salzburg.
+She wrote with it: 'This is the cover to an anonymous letter which I
+have received. Try your uttermost to discover the sender.'
+
+Then she sat down again and thought long, and wearily, and vainly. She
+could make nothing of it. She could see no more than a wayfarer whom a
+blank wall faces as he goes. The violets and orange blossoms were close
+at her elbow; she never in after time smelt their perfume without a
+sick memory of the stunned, stupefied bewilderment of that hour.
+
+The door unclosed again, a voice again spoke behind as a hand drew back
+the folds of the tapestry.
+
+'What, are you in darkness here? I am very cold. Have you no tea for
+me?' said Sabran, as he entered, his eyes brilliant; his cheeks warm,
+from the long gallop against the wind. He had changed his clothes, and
+wore a loose suit of velvet; the servants, entering behind him, lit the
+candelabra, and brought in the lamps; warmth, and gladness, and light
+seemed to come with him; she looked up and thought, 'Ah! what does any
+thing matter? He is home in safety!'
+
+The impulse to ask of him what she had been bidden to ask of Egon
+Vàsàrhely had passed with the intense surprise of the first moment. She
+could not ask of him what she had promised never to seek to know; she
+could not reopen a long-closed wound. But neither could she forget the
+letter lying burnt there amongst the flames of the wood. He noticed
+that her usual perfect calm was broken as she welcomed him, gave him
+his letters, and bade the servants bring tea; but he thought it mere
+anxiety, and his belated drive; and being tired with a pleasant fatigue
+which made rest sweet, he stretched his limbs out on a low couch beside
+the hearth, and gave himself up to that delicious dreamy sense of
+_bien-être_ which a beautiful woman, a beautiful room, tempered warmth
+and light, and welcome repose, bring to any man after some hours effort
+and exposure in wild weather and intense cold and increasing darkness.
+
+'I almost began to think I should not see you to-night,' he said
+happily, as he took from her hand the little cup of Frankenthal china
+which sparkled like a jewel in the light. 'I had fairly lost my way,
+and Josef knew it no better than I; the snow fell with incredible
+rapidity, and it seemed to grow night in an instant. I let the horses
+take their road, and they brought us home; but if there be any poor
+pedlars or carriers on the hills to-night I fear they will go to their
+last sleep.'
+
+She shuddered and looked at him with dim, fond eyes, 'He is here; he is
+mine,' she thought; 'what else matters?'
+
+Sabran stretched out his fingers and took some of the violets from the
+Saxe bowl and fastened them in his coat as he went on speaking of the
+weather, of the perils of the roads whose tracks were obliterated, and
+of the prowess and intelligence of his horses, who had found the way
+home when he and his groom, a man born and bred in the Tauern, had both
+been utterly at a loss. The octagon-room had never looked lovelier and
+gayer to him, and his wife had never looked more beautiful than both
+did now as he came to them out of the darkness and the snowstorm and
+the anxiety of the last hour.
+
+'Do not run those risks,' she murmured. 'You know all that your life is
+to me.'
+
+The letter which lay burnt in the fire, and the dusky night of ice
+and wind without, had made him dearer to her than ever. And yet the
+startled, shocked sense of some mystery, of some evil, was heavy upon
+her, and did not leave her that evening nor for many a day after.
+
+'You are not well?' he said to her anxiously later, as they left the
+dinner-table. She answered evasively.
+
+'You know I am not always quite well now. It is nothing. It will pass.'
+
+'I was wrong to alarm you by being out so late in such weather,' he
+said with self-reproach. 'I will go out earlier in future.'
+
+'Do not wear those violets,' she said, with a trivial caprice wholly
+unlike her, as she took them from his coat. 'They are Bonapartist
+emblems--_fleurs de malheur_.'
+
+He smiled, but he was surprised, for he had never seen in her any one
+of those fanciful whims and vagaries that are common to women.
+
+'Give me any others instead,' he said; 'I wear but your symbol, O my
+lady!'
+
+She took some myrtle and lilies of the valley from one of the large
+porcelain jars in the Rittersaal.
+
+'These are our flowers,' she said as she gave them to him. 'They mean
+love and peace.'
+
+He turned from her slightly as he fastened them where the others had
+been.
+
+All the evening she was pre-occupied and nervous. She could not forget
+the intimation she had received. It was intolerable to her to have
+anything of which she could not speak to her husband. Though they had
+their own affairs apart one from the other, there had been nothing
+of moment in hers that she had ever concealed from him. But here it
+was impossible for her to speak to him, since she had pledged herself
+never to seek to know the reason of an action which, however plausibly
+she explained it to herself, remained practically inexplicable and
+unintelligible. It was terrible to her, too, to feel that the lines
+of a coward who dared not sign them had sunk so deeply into her mind
+that she did not question their veracity. They had at once carried
+conviction to her that Egon Vàsàrhely did know what they said he did.
+She could not have told why this was, but it was so. It was what hurt
+her most----others knew; she did not.
+
+She felt that if she could have spoken to Sabran of it, the matter
+would have become wholly indifferent to her; but the obligation of
+reticence, the sense of separation which it involved, oppressed her
+greatly. She was also haunted by the memory of the enmity which existed
+between these men, whose names were so strangely coupled in the
+anonymous counsel given her.
+
+She stayed long in her oratory that night, seeking vainly for calmness
+and patience under this temptation; seeking beyond all things for
+strength to put the poison of it wholly from her mind. She dreaded lest
+it should render her irritable and suspicious. She reproached herself
+for having been guilty of even so much insinuation of rebuke to him
+as her words with the flower had carried in them. She had ideas of
+the duties of a woman to her husband widely different to those which
+prevail in the world. She allowed herself neither irritation nor irony
+against him. 'When the thoughts rebel, the acts soon revolt,' she was
+wont to say to herself, and even in her thoughts she would never blame
+him.
+
+Prayer, even if it have no other issue or effect, rarely fails to
+tranquillise and fortify the heart which is lifted up ever so vaguely
+in search of a superhuman aid. She left her oratory strengthened and
+calmed, resolved in no way to allow such partial success to their
+unknown foe as would be given if the treacherous warning brought any
+suspicion or bitterness to her mind. She passed through the open
+archway in the wall which divided his rooms from hers, and looked at
+him where he lay already asleep upon his bed, early fatigued by the
+long cold drive from which he had returned at nightfall. He was never
+more handsome than sleeping calmly thus, with the mellow light of a
+distant lamp reaching the fairness of his face. She looked at him with
+all her heart in her eyes; then stooped and kissed him without awaking
+him.
+
+'Ah! my love,' she thought, 'what should ever come between us? Hardly
+even death, I think, for if I lost you I should not live long without
+you.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+The Salzburg lawyers employed all the resources of the Viennese police
+to discover the sender of the envelope, but vainly; nothing was
+learned by all the efforts made. But the letter constantly haunted her
+thoughts. It produced in her an uneasiness and an apprehensiveness
+wholly foreign to her temper. The impossibility also of saying anything
+about it increased the weight of it on her memory. Yet she never once
+thought of asking Vàsàrhely. She wrote to him now and then, as she had
+always done, to give him tidings of her health or of her movements,
+but she never once alluded in the most distant terms to the anonymous
+information she had received. If he had been there beside her she would
+not have spoken of it. Of the two, she would sooner have reopened the
+subject to her husband. But she never did so. She had promised him
+to be silent, and to her creed a promise was inviolate, never to be
+retracted, be the pressure or the desire to do so what it would.
+
+It was these grand lines on which her character and her habits were
+cast that awed him, and made him afraid to tell her his true history.
+Had he revered her less he would probably have deceived her less. Had
+she been of a less noble temperament she would also probably have been
+much less easy to deceive.
+
+Her health was at this time languid, and more uncertain than usual,
+and the two lines of the letter were often present to her thoughts,
+tormenting her with idle conjecture, painful doubt, none the less
+painful because it could take no definite shape. Sometimes when she
+was not well enough to accompany him out of doors or drive her own
+sleigh through the keen clear winter air, she sat doing nothing, and
+thinking only of this thing, in the same room, with the same smell of
+violets about her, musing on what it might by any possibility mean. Any
+secret was safe with Egon, but then since the anonymous writer was in
+possession of it the secret was not only his. She wondered sometimes in
+terror whether it could be anything that might in after years affect
+her children's future, and then as rapidly discarded the bare thought
+as so much dishonour to their father. 'It is only because I am now
+nervous and impressionable,' she said to herself,'that this folly takes
+such a hold upon me. When I am well again I shall not think of it. Who
+is it says of anonymous letters that they are like "_les immondices des
+rues: il faut boucher le nez, tourner la tête et passer outre?_"'
+
+But '_les immondices_' spoiled the odours of the new year violets to
+her.
+
+In the early spring of the year she gave birth to another son. She
+suffered more than she had ever done before, and recovered less
+quickly. The child was like all the others, fair, vigorous, and full
+of health. She wished to give him her husband's name, but Sabran so
+strenuously opposed the idea that she yielded, and named him after her
+brother Victor, who had fallen at Magenta.
+
+There were the usual rejoicings throughout the estates, rejoicings
+that were the outcome of genuine affection and fealty to the race of
+Szalras, whose hold on the people of the Tauern had resisted all the
+revolutionary movements of the earlier part of the century, and had
+fast root in the hearts of the staunch and conservative mountaineers.
+But for the first time as she heard the hearty '_Hoch!_' of the
+assembled peasantry echoing beneath her windows, and the salvos fired
+from the old culverins on the keep, a certain fear mingled with her
+maternal pride, and she thought: 'Will the people love them as well
+twenty years hence, fifty years hence, when I shall be no more? Will my
+memory be any shield to them? Will the traditions of our race outlast
+the devouring changes of the world?'
+
+Meantime the Princess, happy and smiling, showed the little new-born
+noble to the stalwart chamois hunters, the comely farmers and
+fishermen, the clear-eyed stout-limbed shepherds and labourers gathered
+bareheaded round the Schloss.
+
+Bela stood by contemplating the crowd he knew so well; he did not see
+why they should cheer any other child beside himself. He stood with his
+little velvet cap in his hand, because he was always told to do so, but
+he felt very inclined to put it on; if his father had not been present
+there he would have done so.
+
+'If I have ever so many brothers,' he said at last thoughtfully to
+Greswold, who was by his side, 'it will not make any difference, will
+it? I shall always be _the_ one?'
+
+'What do you mean?' asked the physician.
+
+'They will none of them be like me? They will none of them be as great
+as I am? Not if I have twenty?'
+
+'You will be always the eldest son, of course,' said the old man,
+repressing a smile. 'Yes; you will be their head, their chief, their
+leading spirit; but for that reason you will have much more expected of
+you than will be expected of them; you will have to learn much more,
+and try to be always good. Do you follow me, Count Bela?'
+
+Bela's little rosy mouth shut itself up contemptuously. 'I shall be
+always the eldest, and I shall do whatever I like. I do not see why
+they want any others than me.'
+
+'You will not do always what you like, Count Bela.'
+
+'Who shall prevent me?'
+
+'The law, which you will have to obey like everyone else.'
+
+'I shall make the laws when I am a little older,' said Bela. 'And they
+will be for my brothers and all the people, but not for me. I shall do
+what I like.'
+
+'That will be very ungenerous,' said Greswold, quietly. 'Your mother,
+the Countess, is very different. She is stern to herself, and indulgent
+to all others. That is why she is beloved. If you will think of
+yourself so much when you are grown up, you will be hated.'
+
+Bela flushed a little guiltily and angrily.
+
+'That will not matter,' he said sturdily. 'I shall please myself
+always.'
+
+'And be unkind to your brothers?'
+
+'Not if they do what I tell them; I will be very kind if they are good.
+Gela always does what I tell him,' he added after a little pause; 'I do
+not want any but Gela.'
+
+'It is natural you should be fondest of Gela, as he is nearest your
+age, but you must love all the brothers you may have, or you will
+distress your mother very greatly.'
+
+'Why does she want any but me?' said Bela, clinging to his sense of
+personal wrong. And he was not to be turned from that.
+
+'She wants others beside you,' said the physician, adroitly, 'because
+to be happy she needs children who are tender-hearted, unselfish, and
+obedient. You are none of those things, my Count Bela, so Heavens ends
+her consolation.'
+
+Bela opened his blue eyes very wide, and he coloured with mortification.
+
+'She always loves me best!' he said haughtily. 'She always will!'
+
+'That will depend on yourself, my little lord,' said Greswold, with a
+significance which was not lost on the quick intelligence of the child;
+and he never forgot this day when his brother Victor was shown to the
+people.
+
+'There will be no lack of heirs to Hohenszalras,' said the Princess
+meanwhile to his father.
+
+He thought as he heard:
+
+'And if ever she know she can break her marriage like a rotten thread!
+Those boys can all be made as nameless as I was! Would she do it?
+Perhaps not, for the children's sake. God knows----she might change
+even to them; she might hate them as she loves them now, because they
+are mine.'
+
+Even as he sat beside her couch with her hand in his these thoughts
+pursued and haunted him. Remorse and fear consumed him. When she looked
+at the blue eyes of her new-born son, and said to him with a happy
+smile: 'He will be just as much like you as the others are,' he could
+only think with a burning sense of shame, 'Like me! like a traitor!
+like a liar! like a thief!'----and the faces of these children seemed
+to him like those of avenging angels.
+
+He thought with irrepressible agony of the fact that her country's
+laws would divorce her from him if she chose, did ever the truth come
+to her ear. He had always known this indeed, as he had known all the
+other risks he ran in doing what he did. Put it had been far away,
+indistinct, unasserted; whenever the memory of it had passed over him
+he had thrust it away. Now when another knew his secret, he could
+not do so. He had a strange sensation of having fallen from some
+great height; of having all his life slide away like melting ice out
+of his hands. He never once doubted for an instant the good faith of
+Egon Vàsàrhely. He knew that his lips would no more unclose to tell
+his secret than the glaciers yonder would find human voice. But the
+consciousness that one man lived, moved, breathed, rose with each day,
+and went amongst other men, bearing with him that fatal knowledge,
+made it now impossible for himself ever to forget it. A dull remorse,
+a sharp apprehension, were for ever his companions, and never left him
+for long even in his sweetest hours. He did justice to the magnificent
+generosity of the one who spared him. Egon Vàsàrhely knew, as he knew,
+that she, hearing the truth, could annul the marriage if she chose.
+His children would have no rights, no name, if their mother chose to
+separate herself from him. The law would make her once more as free
+as though she had never wedded him. He knew that, and the other man
+who loved her knew it too. He could measure the force of Vàsàrhely's
+temptation as that simple and heroic soldier could not stoop to measure
+his.
+
+He was deeply unhappy, but he concealed it from her. Even when his
+heart beat against hers it seemed to him always that there was an
+invisible wall between himself and her. He longed to tell the whole
+truth to her, but he was afraid; if the whole pain and shame had been
+his own that the confession would have caused, he would have dared it;
+but he had not the heart to inflict on her such suffering, not the
+courage to destroy their happiness with his own hand. Egon Vàsàrhely
+alone knew, and he for her sake would never speak. As for the reproach
+of his own conscience, as for the remorse that the words of his
+children might at any moment call up in him, these lie must bear. He
+was a man of cool judgment and of ready resource, and though he had
+never foreseen the sharp repentance which his better nature now felt,
+he knew that he would be able to live it down as he had crushed out so
+many other scruples. He vowed to himself that as far as in him lay he
+would atone for his act. The moral influence of his wife had not been
+without effect on him. Not altogether, but partially, he had grown to
+believe in what she believed in, of the duty of human life to other
+lives; he had not her sympathy for others, but he had admired it, and
+in his own way followed it, though without her faith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+Life went on in its old pathways at Hohenszalras. Nothing more, was
+said by him, or to him, as to his rejection of the Russian mission. She
+was niggard in nothing, and when she offered her faith or pledged her
+silence, gave both entirely and ungrudgingly. Sabran to her showed an
+increase of devotion, an absolute adoration which would in themselves
+have sufficed to console any woman; and if the most observant member
+of their household, Greswold, perceived in him a preoccupation, a
+languor, a gloom, which boded ill for their future peace, the old man
+was too loyal in his attachment not to endeavour to shake off his own
+suspicions and discredit his own penetration.
+
+The Princess had been favoured by a note from Olga Brancka, in which
+that lady wrote: 'Have you discovered the nature of his refusal of
+Russia? Myself, I believe that I was to blame. I hinted to him that
+he would be tempted to his old sins in St. Petersburg, and that Wanda
+would be very miserable there. It seems that this was enough for the
+tender heart of this devoted lover, and too much for his wisdom and
+his judgment; he rejected the mission after accepting it. I believe
+the Court is furious. I am not _de service_ now, so that I have no
+opportunity of endeavouring to restore him to favour; but I imagine the
+Emperor will not quarrel for ever with the Hohenszalrasburg.
+
+The letter restored him at least to the favour of Mdme. Ottilie.
+Exaggerated as such a scruple appeared it did not seem to her
+impossible in a man whose devotion to his wife she daily witnessed,
+shown in a hundred traits. She blamed him still severely in her own
+thoughts for what she held an inexcusable disrespect to the Crown, but
+she kept her word scrupulously and never spoke to him on the subject.
+
+'Where else in the wide world would any man have found such
+forbearance?' he thought with gratitude, and he knew that nowhere
+would such delicate sentiment have existed outside the pale of that
+fine patrician dignity which is as incapable of the vulgarity of
+inquisitiveness and interrogation as was the Spartan of lament.
+
+The months went by. They did not leave home; he seemed to have lost
+all wish for any absence, and even repulsed the idea of inviting the
+usual house parties of the year. She supposed that he was averse to
+meeting people who might recur to his rejection of the post he had
+once accepted. The summer passed and the autumn came; he spent his
+time in occasional sport, the keen and perilous sport of the Austrian
+mountains, and more often and more faithfully beguiled himself with
+those arts of which he was a brilliant master, though he would call
+himself no more than a mere amateur. From the administration of the
+estates he had altogether withdrawn himself.
+
+'You are so much wiser than I,' he always said to her; and when she
+would have referred to him, replied: 'You have your lawyers; they are
+all honest men. Consult them rather than me.'
+
+With the affairs of Idrac only he continued to concern himself a
+little, and was persistent in setting aside all its revenues to
+accumulate for his second son.
+
+'I wish you cared more about all these things,' she said to him one
+day, when she had in her hand the reports from the mines of Galicia.
+He answered angrily, 'I have no right to them. They are not mine. If
+you chose to give them all away to the Crown I should say nothing.'
+
+'Not even for the children's sake?'
+
+'No: you would be entirely justified if you liked to give the children
+nothing.'
+
+'I really do not understand you,' she said in great surprise.
+
+'Everything is yours,' he said abruptly.
+
+'And the children too, surely!' she said, with a smile: but the
+strangeness of the remark disquieted her. 'It is over-sensitiveness,'
+she thought; 'he can never altogether forget that he was poor. It is
+for that reason public life would have been so good for him; dignities
+which he enjoyed of his own, honours that he arrived at through his own
+attainments.'
+
+Chagrined to have lost, the opportunity of winning personal honours
+in a field congenial to him, the sense that everything was hers could
+hardly fail to gall him sometimes constantly, though she strove to
+efface any remembrance or reminder that it was so.
+
+In the midsummer of that year, whilst they were quite alone, they were
+surprised by another letter from Mdme. Brancka, in which she proposed
+to take Hohenszalras on her way from France to Tsarköe Selo, where she
+was about to pay a visit which could not be declined by her.
+
+When in the spring he had written with formality to her to announce the
+birth of his son Victor, she had answered with a witty coquettish reply
+such as might well have been provocative of further correspondence.
+But he had not taken up the invitation. Mortified and irritated, she
+had compared his writing with the piece of burnt paper, and been more
+satisfied than ever that he had penned the name of Vassia Kazán. But
+even were it so, what, she wondered, had it to do with Russia? He
+and Egon Vàsàrhely were not friends so intimate that they had any
+common interests one with the other. The mystery had interested her
+intensely when her rapid intuition had connected the resignation of
+Sabran's appointment with the messenger sent to him from Taróc. Her
+impatience to be again in his presence grew intense. She imagined a
+thousand stories, to cast each aside in derision as impossible. All her
+suppositions were built upon no better basis than a fragment of charred
+paper; but her shrewd intuition bore her into the region of truth,
+though the actual truth of course never suggested itself to her even in
+her most fantastic and dramatic visions. Finally she thus proposed to
+visit Hohenszalras in the midsummer months.
+
+'Last year you had such a crowd about you,' she wrote, 'that I
+positively saw nothing of you, _liebe_ Wanda. You are alone now, and
+I venture to propose myself for a fortnight. You cannot exactly be
+said to be in the way to anywhere, but I shall make you so. When one
+is going to Russia, a matter of another five hundred miles or so is a
+bagatelle.'
+
+'We must let her come,' said Wanda, as she gave the letter to Sabran,
+who, having read it, said with much sincerity----
+
+'For heaven's sake, do not. A fortnight of Madame Olga! as well
+have----a century of "Madame Angot!"'
+
+'Can I prevent her?'
+
+'You can make some excuse. I do not like Mdme. Brancka.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+He hesitated; he could not tell her what he had felt at the ball of
+the Hofburg. 'She reminds me of a woman who drew me into a thousand
+follies, and to cap her good deeds betrayed me to the Prussians. If you
+must let her come I will go away. I will go and see your haras on the
+Pusztas.'
+
+'Are you serious?'
+
+'Quite serious. Were I not ashamed of such a weakness, I should use a
+feminine expression. I should say "_elle me donne des nerfs._"'
+
+'I think she has a great admiration for you, and she does not conceal
+it.'
+
+'Merely because she is sensible that I do not like her. Such women as
+she are discontented if only one person fail to admit their charm. She
+is accustomed to admiration, and she is not scrupulous as to how she
+obtains it.'
+
+'My dear! pray remember that she is our guest, and doubly our relative.'
+
+'I will try and remember it; but, believe me, all honour is wholly
+wasted upon Mdme. Olga. You offer her a coin of which the person and
+the superscription are alike unknown to her.'
+
+'You are very severe,' said his wife.
+
+She looked at him, and perceived that he was not jesting, that he
+was on the contrary disturbed and annoyed, and she remembered the
+persistence with which Olga Brancka had sought his companionship and
+accompanied him on his sport in the summer of her visit there.
+
+'If she had not married first my brother and then my cousin, she would
+never have been an intimate friend of mine,' she continued. 'She is of
+a world wholly opposed to all my tastes. For you to be absent, if she
+came, would be too marked, I think; but we can both leave, if you like.
+I am well enough for any movement now, and I can leave the child with
+his nurse. Shall we make a tour in Hungary? The haras will interest
+you. There are the mines, too, that one ought to visit.'
+
+He received her assent with gratitude and delight. He felt that he
+would have gone to the uttermost ends of the earth rather than run the
+risk of spending long lonely summer days in the excitation of Mdme.
+Brancka's presence. He detested her, he would always detest her; and
+yet when he shut his eyes he saw her so clearly, with the malicious
+light in her dusky glance, and the jewelled butterfly trembling about
+her breasts.
+
+'She shall never come under Wanda's roof if I can prevent it,' he
+thought, remembering her as she had been that night.
+
+A few days later the Countess Brancka, much to her rage, had a note
+from the Hohenszalrasburg, which said that they were on the point of
+leaving for Hungary and Galicia, but that if she would come there in
+their absence, the Princess Ottilie, who remained, would be charmed to
+receive her. Of course she excused herself, and did not go. A visit to
+the solitudes of the Iselthal, where she would, see no one but a lady
+of eighty years old and four little children, had few attractions for
+the adventurous and vivacious wife of Stefan Brancka.
+
+'It is only Wanda's jealousy,' she thought, and was furious; but she
+looked at herself in the mirror, and was almost consoled as she thought
+also, 'He avoids me. Therefore he is afraid of me!'
+
+She went to her god, _le monde_, and worshipped at all its shrines and
+in all its fashions; but in the midst of the turmoil and the triumphs,
+the worries and the intoxications of her life, she did not lose her
+hold on her purpose, nor forget that he had slighted her. His beautiful
+face, serene and scornful, was always before her. He might have been at
+her feet, and he chose to dwell beside his wife under those solitary
+forests, amongst those solitary mountains of the High Tauern!
+
+'With a woman he has lived with all these eight years!' she thought,
+with furious impatience. 'With a woman who has grafted the Lady of La
+Garaye on Libussa, who never gives him a moment's jealousy, who is
+as flawless as an ivory statue or a marble throne, who suckles her
+children and could spin their clothes if she wanted, who never cares
+to go outside the hills of her own home----the Teuton _Hausfrau_ to
+her finger-tips.' And she was all the more bitter and the more angered
+because, always as she tried to think thus, the image of Wanda rose up
+before her, as she had seen her so often at Vienna or Hohenszalras,
+with the great pearls on her hair and on her breast.
+
+/$
+A planet at whose passing, lo!
+All lesser stars recede, and night
+Grows clear as day thus lighted up
+By all her loveliness, which burns
+With pure white flame of chastity;
+And fires of fair thought....
+$/
+
+
+END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Ouida
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Ouida
+
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+
+Title: Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3)
+
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+
+Release Date: May 23, 2016 [EBook #52136]
+
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+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDA, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***
+
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+
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+</pre>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
+</div>
+<h1>WANDA</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>OUIDA</h2>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>'Doch!&mdash;alles was dazu mich trieb;</i><br />
+<i>Gott!&mdash;war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20%;">Goethe</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h4>IN THREE VOLUMES</h4>
+
+<h4>VOL. II.</h4>
+
+
+<h5>London</h5>
+
+<h5>CHATTO &amp; WINDUS, PICCADILLY</h5>
+
+<h5>1883</h5>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<h3><a name="WANDA" id="WANDA">WANDA.</a></h3>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>On her return she spoke of her royal friends, of her cousins, of
+society, of her fears for the peace of Europe, and her doubts as to
+the strength of the empire; but she did not speak of the one person of
+whom, beyond all others, Mdme. Ottilie was desirous to hear. When some
+hours had passed, and still she had never alluded to the existence of,
+the Princess could bear silence no longer, and casting prudence to the
+winds, said boldly and with impatience:</p>
+
+<p>'And your late guest? Have you nothing to tell me? Surely you have seen
+him?'</p>
+
+<p>'He called once,' she answered, 'and I heard him speak at the Chamber.'</p>
+
+<p>'And was that all?' cried the Princess, disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>'He speaks very well in public,' added Wanda, 'and he said many tender
+and grateful things of you, and sent you many messages&mdash;such grateful
+ones that my memory is too clumsy a tray to hold such eggshell china.'</p>
+
+<p>She was angered with herself as she spoke, but the fragrance of the
+white lilac and the remembrance of its donor pursued her&mdash;angered
+with herself, too, because Hohenszalras seemed for the moment sombre,
+solitary, still, almost melancholy, wrapped in that winter whiteness
+and stillness which she had always loved so well.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning she saw all her people, visited her schools and her
+stables, and tried to persuade herself that she was as contented as
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>The aurist came from Paris shortly after her, and consoled the Princess
+by assuring her that the slight deafness she suffered from occasionally
+was due to cold.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course!' she said, with some triumph. 'These mountains, all this
+water, rain whenever there is not snow, snow whenever there is not
+rain; it is a miracle, and the mercy of Heaven, if one saves any of
+one's five senses uninjured in a residence here.'</p>
+
+<p>She had her satin hood trebly wadded, and pronounced the aurist a
+charming person. Herr Greswold in an incautious moment had said to her
+that deafness was one of the penalties of age and did not depend upon
+climate. A Paris doctor would not have earned his fee of two hundred
+napoleons if he had only produced so ungallant a truism. She heard a
+little worse after his visit, perhaps, but if so, she said that was
+caused by the additional wadding in her hood. He had told her to use a
+rose-water syringe, and Herr Greswold was forbidden her presence for a
+week because he averred that you might as well try to melt the glacier
+with a lighted pastille.</p>
+
+<p>The aurist gone, life at Hohenszalras resumed its even tenor; and
+except for, the post, the tea-cups, and the kind of dishes served at
+dinner, hardly differed from what life had been there in the sixteenth
+century, save that there were no saucy pages playing in the court, and
+no destriers stamping in the stalls, and no culverins loaded on the
+bastions.</p>
+
+<p>'It is like living between the illuminated leaves of one of the Hours,'
+thought the Princess, and though her conscience told her that to dwell
+so in a holy book like a pressed flower was the most desirable life
+that could be granted by Heaven to erring mortality, still she felt it
+was dull. A little gossip, a little movement, a little rolling of other
+carriage-wheels than her own, had always seemed desirable to her.</p>
+
+<p>Life here was laid down on broad lines. It was stately, austere,
+tranquil; one day was a mirror of all the rest. The Princess fretted
+for some little <i>frou-frou</i> of the world to break its solemn silence.</p>
+
+<p>When Wanda returned from her ride one forenoon she said a little
+abruptly to her aunt:</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose you will be glad to hear you have convinced me. I have
+telegraphed to Ludwig to open and air the house in Vienna; we will go
+there for three months. It is, perhaps, time I should be seen at Court.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is a very sudden decision!' said Madame Ottilie, doubting that she
+could hear aright.</p>
+
+<p>'It is the fruit of your persuasions, dear mother mine! The only
+advantage in having houses in half a dozen different places is to be
+able to go to them without consideration. You think me obstinate,
+whimsical, barbaric; the Kaiserin thinks so too. I will endeavour to
+conquer my stubbornness. We will go to Vienna next week. You will see
+all your old friends, and I all my old jewels.'</p>
+
+<p>The determination once made, she adhered to it. She had felt a vague
+annoyance at the constancy and the persistency with which regret for
+the lost society of Sabran recurred to her. She had attributed it to
+the solitude in which she lived: that solitude which is the begetter
+and the nurse of thought may also be the hotbed of unwise fancies.
+It was indeed a solitude filled with grave duties, careful labours,
+high desires and endeavours; but perhaps, she thought, the world for a
+while, even in its folly, might be healthier, might preserve her from
+the undue share which the memory of a stranger had in her musings.</p>
+
+<p>Her people, her lands, her animals, would none of them suffer by
+a brief absence; and perhaps there were duties due as well to her
+position as to her order. She was the only representative of the great
+Counts of Szalras. With the whimsical ingratitude to fate common
+to human nature, she thought she would sooner have been obscure,
+unnoticed, free. Her rank began to drag on her with something like the
+sense of a chain. She felt that she was growing irritable, fanciful,
+thankless; so she ordered the huge old palace in the Herrengasse to be
+got ready, and sought the world as others sought the cloister.</p>
+
+<p>In a week's time she was installed in Vienna, with a score of horses,
+two score of servants, and all the stir and pomp that attend a great
+establishment in the most aristocratic city of Europe, and she made her
+first appearance at a ball at the Residenz covered with jewels from
+head to foot; the wonderful old jewels that for many seasons had lain
+unseen in their iron coffers&mdash;opals given by Rurik, sapphires taken
+from Kara Mustafa, pearls worn by her people at the wedding of Mary of
+Burgundy, diamonds that had been old when Maria Theresa had been young.</p>
+
+<p>She had three months of continual homage, of continual flattery, of
+what others called pleasure, and what none could have denied was
+splendour. Great nobles laid their heart and homage before her feet,
+and all the city looked after her for her beauty as she drove her
+horses round the Ringstrasse. It left her all very cold and unamused
+and indifferent.</p>
+
+<p>She was impatient to be back at Hohenszalras, amidst the stillness of
+the woods, the sound of the waters.</p>
+
+<p>'You cannot say now that I do not care for the world, because I have
+forgotten what it was like,' she observed to her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish you cared more,' said the Princess. 'Position has its duties.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never dispute that; only I do not see that being wearied by society
+constitutes one of them. I cannot understand why people are so afraid
+of solitude; the routine of the world is quite as monotonous.'</p>
+
+<p>'If you only appreciated the homage that you receive&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Surely one's mind is something like one's conscience: if one can be
+not too utterly discontented with what it says one does not need the
+verdict of others.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with
+your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your
+overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the
+one I possess.'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be
+pride&mdash;the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely
+better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are not all simpletons.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very
+stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well
+as of the Wurstel-Prater.'</p>
+
+<p>The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the
+Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw
+the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she
+was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something
+wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up,
+nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.</p>
+
+<p>The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain,
+and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging
+primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of
+the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging
+with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass
+was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale
+sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras,
+and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she
+returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.</p>
+
+<p>'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold,
+as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the
+Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias
+and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between
+the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of
+their stalls.</p>
+
+<p>'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert,
+as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with
+tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with
+'<i>Willkommen</i>' written on it.</p>
+
+<p>She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single
+word.</p>
+
+<p>How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that
+day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been
+sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.</p>
+
+<p>'That is the Stanhopea tigrina,' said Herr Greswold, touching one with
+reverent fingers; 'they are all very rare. It is a welcome worthy of
+you, my lady.'</p>
+
+<p>'A very extravagant one,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a certain
+displeasure that mingled with a softened emotion. 'Who brought it?'</p>
+
+<p>'The Marquis de Sabran, by <i>extra-poste</i>, himself this morning,'
+answered Hubert&mdash;an answer she did not expect. 'But he would not wait;
+he would not even take a glass of tokayer, or let his horses stay for a
+feed of corn.'</p>
+
+<p>'What knight-errantry!' said the Princess well pleased.</p>
+
+<p>'What folly!' said Wanda, but she had the basket of orchids taken to
+her own octagon room.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as if he had divined how much of late she had thought of him.
+She was touched, and yet she was angered a little.</p>
+
+<p>'Surely she will write to him,' thought the Princess wistfully very
+often: but she did not write. To a very proud woman the dawning
+consciousness of love is always an irritation, an offence, a failure, a
+weakness: the mistress of Hohenszalras could not quickly pardon herself
+for taking with pleasure the message of the orchids.</p>
+
+<p>A little while later she received a letter from Olga Brancka. In it she
+wrote from Paris:</p>
+
+<p>'Parsifal is doing wonders in the Chamber, that is, he is making Paris
+talk; his party will forbid him doing anything else. You certainly
+worked a miracle. I hear he never plays, never looks at an actress,
+never does anything wrong, and when a grand heiress was offered to
+him by her people refused her hand blandly but firmly. What is one to
+think? That he washed his soul white in the Szalrassee?'</p>
+
+<p>It was the subtlest flattery of all, the only flattery to which she
+would have been accessible, this entire alteration in the current
+of a man's whole life; this change in habit, inclination, temper,
+and circumstance. If he had approached her its charm would have been
+weakened, its motive suspected; but aloof and silent as he remained,
+his abandonment of all old ways, his adoption of a sterner and worthier
+career, moved her with its marked, mute homage of herself.</p>
+
+<p>When she read his discourses in the French papers she felt a glow
+of triumph, as if she had achieved some personal success; she felt
+a warmth at her heart as of something near and dear to her, which
+was doing well and wisely in the sight of men. His cause did not,
+indeed, as Olga Brancka had said, render tangible, practical, victory
+impossible for him, but he had the victories of eloquence, of
+patriotism, of high culture, of pure and noble language, and these
+blameless laurels seemed to her half of her own gathering.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you never reward him?' the Princess ventured to say at last,
+overcome by her own impatience to rashness. 'Never? Not even by a word?'</p>
+
+<p>'Hear mother,' said Wanda, with a smile which perplexed and baffled the
+Princess, 'if your hero wanted reward he would not be the leader of a
+lost cause. Pray do not suggest to me a doubt of his disinterestedness.
+You will do him very ill service.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess was mute, vaguely conscious that she had said something
+ill-timed or ill-advised.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed on and brought beautiful weather in the month of June,
+which here in the High Tauern means what April does in the south.
+Millions of song-birds were shouting in the woods, and thousands of
+nests were suspended on the high branches of the forest trees, or
+hidden in the greenery of the undergrowth; water-birds perched and
+swung in the tall reeds where the brimming streams tumbled; the purple,
+the white, and the grey herons were all there, and the storks lately
+flown home from Asia or Africa were settling in bands by the more
+marshy grounds beside the northern shores of the Szalrassee.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon she had been riding far and fast, and on her return a
+telegram from Vienna had been brought to her, sent on from Lienz.
+Having opened it, she approached her aunt and said with an unsteady
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>'War is declared between France and Prussia!'</p>
+
+<p>'We expected it; we are ready for it,' said the Princess, with all
+her Teutonic pride in her eyes. 'We shall show her that we cannot be
+insulted with impunity.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is a terrible calamity for the world,' said Wanda, and her face was
+very pale.</p>
+
+<p>The thought which was present to her was that Sabran would be foremost
+amidst volunteers. She did not hear a word of all the political
+exultation with which Princess Ottilie continued to make her militant
+prophecies. She shivered as with cold in the warmth of the midsummer
+sunset.</p>
+
+<p>'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her
+house.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess demurred.</p>
+
+<p>'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all
+the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial.
+You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the
+especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge
+Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from
+her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.</p>
+
+<p>In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War
+is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss
+of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I
+shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw
+bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every
+sword she has.'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:</p>
+
+<p>'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her
+soil is bound to arm.'</p>
+
+<p>More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her
+grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,'
+written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were
+filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that
+was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a
+child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian
+campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made
+her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal
+conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she
+became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had
+at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from
+the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the
+shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the
+command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their
+own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was
+congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of
+his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally,
+in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name
+mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That
+was all.</p>
+
+<p>The autumn began to deepen into winter, and complete silence covered
+all his life. She thought with a great remorse&mdash;if he were dead?
+Perhaps he was dead? Why had she been always so cold to him? She
+suffered intensely; all the more intensely because it was not a sorrow
+which she could not confess even to herself. When she ceased altogether
+to hear anything of or from him, she realised the hold which he had
+taken on her life.</p>
+
+<p>These months of suspense did more to attach her to him than years
+of assiduous and ardent homage could have done. She, a daughter of
+soldiers, had always felt any man almost unmanly who had not received
+the baptism of fire.</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Ottilie talked of him constantly, wondered frequently if he were
+wounded, slain, or in prison; she never spoke his name, and dreaded to
+hear it.</p>
+
+<p>Greswold, who perceived an anxiety in her that, he did not dare to
+allude to, ransacked every journal that was published in German to find
+some trace of Sabran's name. At the first he saw often some mention of
+the Cuirassiers d'Orléans, and of their intrepid Colonel Commandant:
+some raid, skirmish, or charge in which they had been conspicuous for
+reckless gallantry. But after the month of November he could find
+nothing. The whole regiment seemed to have been obliterated from
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>Winter settled down on Central Austria with cold silence, with roads
+blocked and mountains impassable. The dumbness, the solitude around
+her, which she had always loved so well, now grew to her intolerable.
+It seemed like death.</p>
+
+<p>Paris capitulated. The news reached her at the hour of a violent
+snowstorm; the postillion of her post-sledge bringing it had his feet
+frozen.</p>
+
+<p>Though her cousins of Lilienhöhe were amongst those who entered the
+city as conquerors, the fate of Paris smote her with a heavy blow. She
+felt as if the cold of the outer world had chilled her very bones, her
+very soul. The Princess, looking at her, was afraid to rejoice.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day she wrote to her cousin Hugo of Lilienhöhe, who
+was in Paris with the Imperial Guard. She asked him to inquire for and
+tell her the fate of a friend, the Marquis de Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>In due time Prince Hugo answered:</p>
+
+<p>'The gentleman you asked for was one of the most dangerous of our
+enemies. He commanded a volunteer cavalry regiment, which was almost
+cut to pieces by the Bavarian horse in an engagement before Orleans.
+Two or three alone escaped; their Colonel was severely wounded in
+the thigh, and had his charger shot dead under him. He was taken
+prisoner by the Bavarians after a desperate resistance. Whilst he
+lay on the ground he shot three of our men with his revolver. He was
+sent to a fortress, I think Ehrenbreitstein, but I will inquire more
+particularly. I am sorry to think that you have any French friends.</p>
+
+<p>By-and-by she heard that he had been confined not at Ehrenbreitstein
+but at a more obscure and distant fortress on the Elbe; that his wounds
+had been cured, and that he would shortly be set free like other
+prisoners of war. In the month of March in effect she received a brief
+letter from his own hand, gloomy and profoundly dejected.</p>
+
+<p>'Our plans were betrayed,' he wrote. 'We were surprised and surrounded
+just as we had hobbled our horses and lain down to rest, after being
+the whole day in the saddle. Bavarian cavalry, outnumbering us four to
+one, attacked us almost ere we could mount our worn-out beasts. My
+poor troopers were cut to pieces. They hunted me down when my charger
+dropped, and I was made a prisoner. When they could they despatched
+me to one of their places on the Elbe. I have been here December and
+January. I am well. I suppose I must be very strong; nothing kills
+me. They are now about to send me back to the frontier. My beautiful
+Paris! What a fate! But I forget, I cannot hope for your sympathy; your
+kinsmen are our conquerors. I know not whether the house I lived in
+there exists, but if you will write me a word at Romaris, you will be
+merciful, and show me that you do not utterly despise a lost cause and
+a vanquished soldier.'</p>
+
+<p>She wrote to him at Romaris, and the paper she wrote on felt her tears.
+In conclusion she said:</p>
+
+<p>'Whenever you will, come and make sure for yourself that both the
+Princess Ottilie and I honour courage and heroism none the less because
+it is companioned by misfortune.'</p>
+
+<p>But he did not come.</p>
+
+<p>She understood why he did not. An infinite pity for him overflowed her
+heart. His public career interrupted, his country ruined, his future
+empty, what remained to him? Sometimes she thought, with a blush on her
+face, though she was all alone: 'I do.' But then, if he never came to
+hear that?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The little hamlet of Romaris, on the coast of Finisterre, was very dull
+and dark and silent. A few grave peasant women knitted as they walked
+down the beach or sat at their doors; a few children did the same. Out
+on the <i>landes</i> some cows were driven through the heather and broom;
+out on the sea some fishing-boats with rough, red sails were rocking to
+and fro. All was melancholy, silent, poor; life was hard at Romaris for
+all. The weatherbeaten church looked grey and naked on a black rock;
+the ruins of the old <i>manoir</i> faced it amidst sands and surfs; the only
+thing of beauty was the bay, and that for the folk of Romaris had no
+beauty; they had seen it kill so many.</p>
+
+<p>There was never any change at Romaris, unless it were a change in the
+weather, a marriage, a birth, or a death. Therefore the women and
+children who were knitting had lifted up their heads as a stranger,
+accompanied by their priest, had come down over the black rocks, on
+which the church stood, towards the narrow lane that parted the houses
+where they clustered together face to face on the edge of the shore.</p>
+
+<p>Their priest, an old man much loved by them, came slowly towards them,
+conversing in low tones with the stranger, who had been young and
+handsome, and a welcome sight, since a traveller to Romaris always
+needed a sailing-boat or a rowing-boat, a guide over the moors, or a
+drive in an ox-waggon through the deep-cut lanes of the country.</p>
+
+<p>But they had ceased to think of such things as these when the curate,
+with his hands extended as when he blessed them, had said in <i>bas</i>
+Breton as he stood beside them:</p>
+
+<p>'My children, this is the last of the Sabrans of Romaris, come back to
+us from the far west that lies in the setting of the sun. Salute him,
+and show him that in Brittany we do not forget&mdash;nay, not in a hundred
+years.'</p>
+
+<p>Many years had gone by since then, and of the last of the old race,
+Romaris had scarcely seen more than when he had been hidden from
+their sight on the other side of the heaving ocean. Sabran rarely came
+thither. There was nothing to attract a man who loved the world and
+who was sought by it, in the stormy sea coast, the strip of sea-lashed
+oak forest, that one tall tower with its gaunt walls of stone which
+was all that was left of what had once been the fortress of his race.
+Now and then they saw him, chiefly when he had heard that there was
+wild weather on the western coast, and at such times he would go out
+in their boats to distressed vessels, or steer through churning waters
+to reach a fishing-smack in trouble, with a wild courage and an almost
+fierce energy which made him for the moment one of themselves. But
+such times had been few, and all that Romaris really knew of the last
+marquis was that he was a gay gentleman away there in distant Paris.</p>
+
+<p>He had been a mere name to them. Now and then he had sent fifty
+napoleons, or a hundred, to the old priest for such as were poor or
+sick amongst them. That was all. Now after the war he came hither.
+Paris had become hateful to him; his political career was ended, at
+all events for the time; the whole country groaned in anguish; the
+vices and follies that had accompanied his past life disgusted him
+in remembrance. He had been wounded and a prisoner; he had suffered
+betrayal at unworthy hands; Cochonette had sold him to the Prussians,
+in revenge of his desertion of her.</p>
+
+<p>He was further removed from the Countess von Szalras than ever. In the
+crash with which the Second Empire had fallen and sunk out of sight for
+evermore, his own hopes had gone down like a ship that sinks suddenly
+in a dark night. All his old associations were broken, half his old
+friends were dead or ruined; gay châteaux that he had ever been welcome
+at were smoking ruins or melancholy hospitals; the past had been
+felled to the ground like the poor avenues of the Bois. It affected
+him profoundly. As far as he was capable of an impersonal sentiment
+he loved France, which had been for so many years his home, and which
+had always seemed to smile at him with indulgent kindness. Her vices,
+her disgrace, her feebleness, her fall, hurt him with an intense pain
+that was not altogether selfish, but had in it a nobler indignation, a
+nobler regret.</p>
+
+<p>When he was released by the Prussians and sent across the frontier, he
+went at once to this sad sea village of Romaris, to collect as best
+he might the shattered fragments of his life, which seemed to him as
+though it had been thrown down by an earthquake. He had resigned his
+place as deputy when he had offered his sword to France; he had now no
+career, no outlet for ambition, no occupation. Many of his old friends
+were dead or ruined; although such moderate means as he possessed were
+safe, they were too slender to give him any position adequate to his
+rank. His old life in Paris, even if Paris arose from her tribulations,
+gay and glorious once more, seemed to him altogether impossible. He had
+lost taste for those pleasures and distractions which had before the
+war&mdash;or before his sojourn on the Holy Isle&mdash;seemed to him the Alpha
+and Omega of a man's existence. '<i>Que faire?</i>' he asked himself wearily
+again and again. He did not even know whether his rooms in Paris had
+been destroyed or spared; a few thousands of francs which he had
+made by a successful speculation years before, and placed in foreign
+funds, were all he had to live on. His keen sense told him that the
+opportunity which might have replaced the Bourbon throne had been lost
+through fatal hesitation. His own future appeared to him like a blank
+dead wall that rose up in front of him barring all progress; he was no
+longer young enough to select a career and commence it. With passionate
+self-reproach he lamented all the lost irrevocable years that he had
+wasted.</p>
+
+<p>Romaris was not a place to cheer a disappointed and dejected soldier
+who had borne the burning pain of bodily wounds and the intolerable
+shame of captivity in a hostile land. Its loneliness, its darkness,
+its storms, its poverty, had nothing in them with which to restore his
+spirit to hope or his sinews to ambition. In these cold, bleak, windy
+days of a dreary and joyless spring-time, the dusky moors and the
+gruesome sea were desolate, without compensating grandeur. The people
+around him were all taciturn, dull, stupid; they had not suffered by
+the war, but they understood that, poor as they were, they would have
+to bear their share in the burden of the nation's ransom. They barred
+their doors and counted their hoarded gains in the dark with throbbing
+hearts, and stole out in the raw, wet, gusty dawns to kneel at the
+bleeding feet of their Christ. He envied them their faith; he could not
+comfort them, they could not comfort him; they were too far asunder.</p>
+
+<p>The only solace he had was the knowledge that he had done his duty by
+France, and to the memory of those whose name he bore; that he had
+rendered what service he could; that he had not fled from pain and
+peril; that he had at least worn his sword well and blamelessly; that
+he had not abandoned his discrowned city of pleasure in the day of
+humiliation and martyrdom. The only solace he had was that he felt
+Wanda von Szalras herself could have commanded him to do no more than
+he had done in this the Année Terrible.</p>
+
+<p>But, though his character had been purified and strengthened by the
+baptism of fire, and though his egotism had been destroyed by the
+endless scenes of suffering and of heroism which he had witnessed, he
+could not in a year change so greatly that he could be content with the
+mere barren sense of duty done and honour redeemed. He was deeply and
+restlessly miserable. He knew not where to turn, either for occupation
+or for consolation. Time hung on his hands like a wearisome wallet of
+stones.</p>
+
+<p>When all the habits of life are suddenly rent asunder, they are like a
+rope cut in two. They may be knotted together clumsily, or they may be
+thrown altogether aside and a new strand woven, but they will never be
+the same thing again.</p>
+
+<p>Romaris, with its few wind-tortured trees and its leaden-hued dangerous
+seas, seemed to him, indeed, a <i>champ des trépassés</i>, as it was called,
+a field of death. The naked, ugly, half-ruined towers, which no ivy
+shrouded and no broken marble ennobled, as one or the other would have
+done had it been in England or in Italy, was a dreary residence for
+a man who was used to all the elegant and luxurious habits of a man
+of the world, who was also a lover of art and a collector of choice
+trifles. His rooms had been the envy of his friends, with all their
+eighteenth century furniture, and their innumerable and unclassified
+treasures; when he had opened his eyes of a morning a pastel of La
+Tour had smiled at him, rose-coloured windows had made even a grey
+sky smile. Without, there had been the sound of wheels going down
+the gay Boulevard Haussmann. All Paris had passed by, tripping and
+talking, careless and mirthful, beneath his gilded balconies bright
+with canariensis and volubilis; and on a little table, heaped in
+their hundreds, had been cards that bade him to all the best and most
+agreeable houses, whilst, betwixt them, slipped coyly in many an
+amorous note, many an unlooked-for declaration, many an eagerly-desired
+appointment.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Quel beau temps!</i>' he thought, as he awoke in the chill, bare,
+unlively chamber of the old tower by the sea; and it seemed to him
+that he must be dreaming: that all the months of the war had been
+a nightmare; that if he fully awakened he would find himself once
+more with the April sunshine shining through the rose glass, and
+the carriages rolling beneath over the asphalt road. But it was no
+nightmare, it was a terrible, ghastly reality to him, as to so many
+thousands. There were the scars on his breast and his loins where
+the Prussian steel had hacked and the Prussian shot had pierced him;
+there was his sword in a corner all dinted, notched, stained; there
+was a crowd of hideous ineffaceable tumultuous memories; it was all
+true enough, only too true, and he was alone at Romaris, with all his
+dreams and ambitions faded into thin air, vanished like the blown burst
+bubbles of a child's sport.</p>
+
+<p>In time to come he might recover power and nerve to recommence his
+struggle for distinction, but at present it seemed to him that all was
+over. His imprisonment had shaken and depressed him as nothing else
+in the trials of war could have done. He had been shut up for months
+alone, with his own desperation. To a man of high courage and impatient
+appetite for action there is no injury so great and in its effect so
+lasting as captivity. Joined to this he had the fever of a strong, and
+now perfectly hopeless, passion.</p>
+
+<p>Pacing to and fro the brick floor of the tower looking down on the
+sands and rocks of the coast, his thoughts were incessantly with Wanda
+von Szalras in her stately ancient house, built so high up amidst the
+mountains and walled in by the great forests and the ice slopes of the
+glaciers. In the heat and stench of carnage he had longed for a breath
+of that mountain breeze, for a glance from those serene eyes; he longed
+for them still.</p>
+
+<p>As he passed to and fro in the wild wintry weather, his heart was sick
+with hope deferred, with unavailing regret and repentance, with useless
+longings.</p>
+
+<p>It was near noonday; there was no sun; a heavy wrack of cloud was
+sweeping up from the west; on the air the odour of rotting fish and
+of fish-oil, and of sewage trickling uncovered to the beach, were too
+strong to be driven away by the pungency of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The sea was high and moaning loud; the dusk was full of rain; the
+wind-tormented trees groaned and seemed to sigh; their boughs were
+still scarce in bud though May had come. He felt cold, weary, hopeless.
+His walk brought no warmth to his veins, and his thoughts none to
+his heart. The moisture of the air seemed to chill him to the bone,
+and he went within and mounted the broken granite stairs to his
+solitary chamber, bare of all save the simplest necessaries, gloomy
+and cheerless with the winds and the bats beating together at the high
+iron-barred casement. He wearily lighted a little oil lamp, and threw
+a log or two of drift-wood on the hearth and set fire to them with a
+faggot of dried ling.</p>
+
+<p>He dreaded his long lonely evening.</p>
+
+<p>He had set the lamp on a table while he had set fire to the wood; its
+light fell palely on a small white square thing. It was a letter. He
+took it up eagerly; he, who in Paris had often tossed aside, with a
+passing glance, the social invitations of the highest personages and
+the flattering words of the loveliest women.</p>
+
+<p>Here, any letter seemed a friend, and as he took up this his pulse
+quickened; he saw that it was sealed with armorial bearings which he
+knew&mdash;a shield bearing three vultures with two knights as supporters,
+and with the motto '<i>Gott und mein Schwert</i>;' the same arms, the same
+motto as were borne upon the great red and gold banner floating from
+the keep on the north winds at the Hohenszalrasburg. He opened it with
+a hand which shook a little and a quick throb of pleasure at his heart.
+He had scarcely hoped that she would write again to him. The sight of
+her writing filled him with a boundless joy, the purest he had ever
+known called forth by the hand of woman.</p>
+
+<p>The letter was brief, grave, kind. As he read he seemed to hear the
+calm harmonious voice of the lady of Hohenszalras speaking to him in
+her mellowed and softened German tongue.</p>
+
+<p>She sent him words of consolation, of sympathy, of congratulation, on
+the course of action he had taken in a time of tribulation, which had
+been the touchstone of character to so many.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me something of Romaris,' she said in conclusion. 'I am sure
+you will grow to care for the place and the people, now that you seek
+both in the hour of the martyrdom of France. Have you any friends near
+you? Have you books? How do your days pass? How do you fill up time,
+which must seem so dull and blank to you after the fierce excitations
+and the rapid changes of war? Tell me all about your present life, and
+remember that we at Hohenszalras know how to honour courage and heroic
+misfortune.'</p>
+
+<p>He laid the letter down after twice reading it. Life seemed no longer
+all over for him. He had earned her praise and her sympathy. It was
+doubtful if years of the most brilliant political successes would have
+done as much as his adversity, his misadventure, and his daring had
+done for him in her esteem. She had the blood of twenty generations of
+warriors in her, and nothing appealed so forcibly to her sympathies and
+her instincts as the heroism of the sword. Those few lines too were
+a permission to write to her. He replied at once, with a gratitude
+somewhat guardedly expressed, and with details almost wholly impersonal.</p>
+
+<p>She was disappointed that he said so little of himself, but she did
+justice to the delicacy of the carefully guarded words from a man
+whose passion appealed to her by its silence, where it would only have
+alienated her by any eloquence. Of Romaris he said nothing, save that,
+had Dante ever been upon their coast, he would have added another canto
+to the 'Purgatorio,' more desolate and more unrelieved in gloom than
+any other.</p>
+
+<p>'Does he regret Cochonette?' she thought, with a jealous
+contemptuousness of which she was ashamed as soon as she felt it.</p>
+
+<p>Having once written to her, however, he thought himself privileged
+to write again, and did so several times. He wrote with ease, grace,
+and elegance: he wrote as he spoke, which gives this charm to
+correspondence, seem close at hand to the reader in intimate communion.
+The high culture of his mind displayed itself without effort, and he
+had that ability of polished expression which is in our day too often
+a neglected one. His letters became welcome to her: she answered them
+briefly, but she let him see that they were agreeable to her. There
+was in them the note of a profound depression, of an unuttered, but
+suggested hopelessness which touched her. If he had expressed it in
+plain words, it would not have appealed to her one half so forcibly.</p>
+
+<p>They remained only the letters of a man of culture to a woman capable
+of comprehending the intellectual movement of the time, but it
+was because of this limitation that she allowed them. Any show of
+tenderness would have both alarmed and alienated her. There was no
+reason after all, she thought, why a frank friendship should not exist
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she was surprised at herself for having conceded so much,
+and angry that she had done so. Happily he had the good taste to take
+no advantage of it. Interesting as his letters were they might have
+been read from the housetops. With that inconsistency of her sex from
+which hitherto she had always flattered herself she had been free, she
+occasionally felt a passing disappointment that they were not more
+personal as regarded himself. Reticence is a fine quality; it is the
+marble of human nature. But sometimes it provokes the impatience that
+the marble awoke in Pygmalion.</p>
+
+<p>Once only he spoke of his own aims. Then he wrote:</p>
+
+<p>'You bade me do good at Romaris. Candidly, I see no way to do it
+except in saving a crew off a wreck, which is not an occasion that
+presents itself every week. I cannot benefit these people materially,
+since I am poor; I cannot benefit them morally, because I have not
+their faith in the things unseen, and I have not their morality in the
+things tangible. They are God-fearing, infinitely patient, faithful
+in their daily lives, and they reproach no one for their hard lot,
+cast on an iron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at risk
+of their lives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What
+should I say to them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience,
+one petulant mutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only
+take them what the world always takes into solitude&mdash;discontent. It
+would be a cruel gift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any
+other. It is a homely saying that no blood comes out of a stone; so,
+out of a life saturated with the ironies, the contempt, the disbelief,
+the frivolous philosophies, the hopeless negations of what we call
+society, there can be drawn no water of hope and charity, for the
+well-head&mdash;belief&mdash;is dried up at its source. Some pretend, indeed,
+to find in humanity what they deny to exist as deity, but I should
+be incapable of the illogical exchange. It is to deny that the seed
+sprang from a root; it is to replace a grand and illimitable theism by
+a finite and vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased
+mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the
+poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a <i>vibrion</i>,
+a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere
+bundle of phosphorus and carbon? how can it contain the elements of
+worship; what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the
+weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty.
+It becomes ridiculous. The <i>carpe diem</i> of the classic sensualists, the
+morality of the "Satyricon" or the "Decamerone," are its only natural
+concomitants and outcome; but as yet it is not honest enough to say
+this. It affects the soothsayer's long robe, the sacerdotal frown, and
+is a hypocrite.'</p>
+
+<p>In answer she wrote back to him:</p>
+
+<p>'I do not urge you to have my faith: what is the use? Goethe was
+right. It is a question between a man and his own heart. No one should
+venture to intrude there. But taking life even as you do, it is surely
+a casket of mysteries. May we not trust that at the bottom of it, as
+at the bottom of Pandora's, there may be hope? I wish again to think
+with Goethe that immortality is not an inheritance, but a greatness
+to be achieved like any other greatness, by courage, self-denial, and
+purity of purpose&mdash;a reward allotted to the just. This is fanciful, may
+be, but it is not illogical. And without being either a Christian or a
+Materialist, without beholding either majesty or divinity in humanity,
+surely the best emotion that our natures know&mdash;pity&mdash;must be large
+enough to draw us to console where we can, and sustain where we can, in
+view of the endless suffering, the continual injustice, the appalling
+contrasts, with which the world is full. Whether man be the <i>vibrion</i>
+or the heir to immortality, the bundle of carbon or the care of angels,
+one fact is indisputable: he suffers agonies, mental and physical,
+that are wholly out of proportion to the brevity of his life, while he
+is too often weighted from infancy with hereditary maladies, both of
+body and of character. This is reason enough, I think, for us all to
+help each other, even though we feel, as you feel, that we are as lost
+children wandering in a great darkness, with no thread or clue to guide
+us to the end.'</p>
+
+<p>When Sabran read this answer, he mused to himself:</p>
+
+<p>'Pity! how far would her pity reach? How great offences would it cover?
+She has compassion for the evil-doers, but it is easy, since the evil
+does not touch her. She sits on the high white throne of her honour and
+purity, and surveys the world with beautiful but serene compassion.
+If the mud of its miry labyrinths reached and soiled her, would her
+theories prevail? They are noble, but they are the theories of one who
+sits in safety behind a gate of ivory and jasper, whilst outside, far
+below, the bitter tide of the human sea surges and moans too far off,
+too low down, for its sound to reach within. <i>Tout comprendre, c'est
+tout pardonner.</i> But since she would never understand, how could she
+ever pardon? There are things that the nature must understand rather
+than the mind; and her nature is as high, as calm, as pure as the snows
+of her high hills.'</p>
+
+<p>And then the impulse came over him for a passing moment to tell her
+what he had never told any living creature; to make confession to
+her and abide her judgment, even though he should never see her face
+again. But the impulse shrank and died away before the remembrance
+of her clear, proud eyes. He could not humiliate himself before her.
+He would have risked her anger; he could not brave her disdain.
+Moreover, straight and open ways were hot natural to him, though he was
+physically brave to folly. There was a subtlety and a reticence in him
+which were the enemies of candour.</p>
+
+<p>To her he was more frank than to any other because her influence
+was great on him, and a strong reverence was awakened in him that
+was touched by a timid fear quite alien to a character naturally
+contemptuously cynical and essentially proud. But even to her he could
+not bring himself to be entirely truthful in revelation of his past.
+Truthfulness is in much a habit, and he had never acquired its habit.
+When he was most sincere there was always some reserve lying behind
+it. This was perhaps one of the causes of the attraction he exercised
+on all women. All women are allured by the shadows and the suggestions
+of what is but imperfectly revealed. Even on the clear, strong nature
+of Wanda von Szalras it had its unconscious and intangible charm. She
+herself was like daylight, but the subtle vague charm of the shadows
+had their seduction for her; Night holds dreams and passions that fade
+and flee before the lucid noon, and who, at noonday wishes not for
+night?</p>
+
+<p>For himself, the letters he received from her seemed the only things
+that bound him to life at all.</p>
+
+<p>The betrayal of him by a base and mercenary woman had hurt him more
+than it was worthy to do; it had stung his pride and saddened him in
+this period of adversity with a sense of degradation. He had been sold
+by a courtezan; it seemed to him to make him ridiculous as Samson was
+ridiculous, and he had no gates of Gaza to pull down upon himself and
+her. He could only be idle, and stare at an unoccupied and valueless
+future. The summer went on, and he remained at Romaris. An old servant
+had sent him word that all his possessions were safe in Paris, and his
+apartments unharmed; but he felt no inclination to go there: he felt no
+sympathy with Communists or Versaillists, with Gambetta or Gallifet. He
+stayed on at the old storm-beaten sea-washed tower, counting his days
+chiefly by the coming to him of any line from the castle by the lake.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to understand that and pity it, for each week brought him
+some tidings.</p>
+
+<p>At midsummer she wrote him word that she was about to be honoured again
+by a two days' visit of her Imperial friends.</p>
+
+<p>'We shall have, perforce, a large house party,' she said. 'Will you
+be inclined this time to join it? It is natural that you should
+sorrow without hope for your country, but the fault of her disasters
+lies not with you. It is, perhaps, time that you should enter the
+world again; will you commence with what for two days only will be
+worldly&mdash;Hohenszalras? Your old friends the monks will welcome you
+willingly and lovingly on the Holy Isle?'</p>
+
+<p>He replied with gratitude, but he refused. He did not make any plea or
+excuse; he thought it best to let the simple denial stand by itself.
+She would understand it.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not think, however,' he wrote, 'that I am the less profoundly
+touched by your admirable goodness to a worsted and disarmed combatant
+in a lost cause.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is the causes that are lost which are generally the noble ones,'
+she said in answer. 'I do not see why you should deem your life at an
+end because a sham empire, which you always despised, has fallen to
+pieces. If it had not perished by a blow from without, it would have
+crumbled to pieces from its own internal putrefaction.'</p>
+
+<p>'The visit has passed off very well,' she continued. 'Every one was
+content, which shows their kindness, for these things are all of
+necessity so much alike that it is difficult to make them entertaining.
+The weather was fortunately fine, and the old house looked bright.
+You did rightly not to be present, if you felt festivity out of tone
+with your thoughts. If, however, you are ever inclined for another
+self-imprisonment upon the island, you know that your friends, both at
+the monastery and at the burg, will be glad to see you, and the monks
+bid me salute you with affection.'</p>
+
+<p>A message from Mdme. Ottilie, a little news of the horses, a few
+phrases on the politics of the hour, and the letter was done. But,
+simple as it was, it seemed to him to be like a ray of sunshine amidst
+the gloom of his empty chamber.</p>
+
+<p>From her the permission to return to the monastery when he would
+seemed to say so much. He wrote her back calm and grateful words of
+congratulation and cordiality; he commenced with the German formality,
+'Most High Lady,' and ended them with the equally formal 'devoted and
+obedient servant;' but it seemed to him as if under that cover of
+ceremony she must see his heart beating, his blood throbbing; she must
+know very well, and if knowing, she suffered him to return to the Holy
+Isle, why then&mdash;he was all alone, but he felt the colour rise to his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>'And I must not go! I must not go!' he thought, and looked at his
+pistols.</p>
+
+<p>He ought sooner to blow his brains out, and leave a written confession
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>The hoarse sound of the sea surging amongst the rocks at the base of
+the tower was all that stirred the stillness; evening was spreading
+over all the monotonous inland country; a west wind was blowing and
+rustling amidst the gorse; a woman led a cow between the dolmen,
+stopping for it to crop grass here and there; the fishing-boats were
+far out to sea, hidden under the vapours and the shadows. It was all
+melancholy, sad-coloured, chill, lonesome. As he leaned against the
+embrasure of the window and looked down, other familiar scenes, long
+lost, rose up to his memory. He saw a wide green rolling river, long
+lines of willows and of larches bending under a steel-hued sky, a vast
+dim plain stretching away to touch blue mountains, a great solitude,
+a silence filled at intervals with the pathetic song of the swans,
+chanting sorrowfully because the nights grew cold, the ice began to
+gather, the food became scanty, and they were many in number.</p>
+
+<p>'I must not go!' he said to himself; 'I must never see Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>And he lit his study lamp, and held her letter to it and burnt it.
+It was his best way to do it honour, to keep it holy. He had the
+letters of so many worthless women locked in his drawers and caskets
+in his rooms in Paris. He held himself unworthy to retain hers. He
+had burned each written by her as it had come to him, in that sort
+of exaggeration of respect with which it seemed to him she was most
+fittingly treated by him. There are less worthy offerings than the
+first scruple of an unscrupulous life. It is like the first pure drops
+that fall from a long turbid and dust-choked fountain.</p>
+
+<p>As he walked the next day upon the windblown, rock-strewn strip of sand
+that parted the old oak wood from the sea, he thought restlessly of her
+in those days of stately ceremony which suited her so well. What did he
+do here, what chance had he to be remembered by her? He chafed at his
+absence, yet it seemed to him impossible that he could ever go to her.
+What had been at first keen calculation with him had now become a finer
+instinct, was now due to a more delicate sentiment, a truer and loftier
+emotion. What could he ever look to her if he sought her but a mere
+base fortune-seeker, a mere liar, with no pride and no manhood in him?
+And what else was he? he thought, with bitterness, as he paced to and
+fro the rough strip of beach, with the dusky heaving waves trembling
+under a cloudy sky, where a red glow told the place of the setting sun.</p>
+
+<p>There were few bolder men living than He, and he was cynical and
+reckless before many things that most men reverence; but at the thought
+of her possible scorn he felt himself tremble like a child. He thought
+he would rather never see her face again than risk her disdain; there
+was in him a vague romantic wishfulness rather to die, so that she
+might think well of his memory, than live in her love through any
+baseness that would be unworthy of her.</p>
+
+<p>Sin had always seemed a mere superstitious name to him, and if he had
+abstained from its coarser forms it had been rather from the revolt
+of the fine taste of a man of culture than from any principle or
+persuasion of duty. Men he believed were but ephemera, sporting their
+small hours, weaving their frail webs, and swept away by the great
+broom of destiny as spiders by the housewife. In the spineless doctrine
+of altruism he had had too robust a temperament, too clear a reason,
+to seek a guide for conduct. He had lived for himself, and had seen
+no cause to do otherwise. That he had not been more criminal had been
+due partly to indolence, partly to pride. In his love for Wanda von
+Szalras, a love with which considerable acrimony had mingled at the
+first, he yet, through all the envy and the impatience which alloyed
+it, reached a moral height which he had never touched before. Between
+her and him a great gulf yawned. He abstained from any effort to pass
+it. It was the sole act of self-denial of a selfish life, the sole
+obedience to conscience in a character which obeyed no moral laws, but
+was ruled by a divided tyranny of natural instinct and conventional
+honour.</p>
+
+<p>The long silent hours of thought in the willow-shaded cloisters of
+the Holy Isle had not been wholly without fruit. He desired, with
+passion and sincerity, that she should think well of him, but he did
+not dare to wish for more; love offered from him to her seemed to him
+as if it would be a kind of blasphemy. He remembered in his far-off
+childhood, which at times still seemed so near to him, nearer than all
+that was around him, the vague, awed, wistful reverence with which
+he had kneeled in solitary hours before the old dim picture of the
+Madonna with the lamp burning above it, a little golden flame in the
+midst of the gloom; he remembered so well how his fierce young soul and
+his ignorant yearning child's heart had gone out in a half-conscious
+supplication, how it had seemed to him that if he only knelt long
+enough, prayed well enough, she would come down to him and lay her
+hands on him. It was all so long ago, yet, when he thought of Wanda
+von Szalras, something of that same emotion rose up in him, something
+of the old instinctive worship awoke in him. In thought he prostrated
+himself once more whenever the memory of her came to him. He had no
+religion; she became one to him.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, he was constantly thinking restlessly to himself, 'Did I do
+ill not to go?'</p>
+
+<p>His bodily life was at Romaris, but his mental life was at
+Hohenszalras. He was always thinking of her as she would look in those
+days of the Imperial visit; he could see the stately ceremonies of
+welcome, the long magnificence of the banquets, the great Rittersaal
+with cressets of light blazing on its pointed emblazoned roofs; he
+could see her as she would move down the first quadrille which she
+would dance with her Kaiser: she would wear her favourite ivory-white
+velvet most probably, and her wonderful old jewels, and all her orders.
+She would look as if she had stepped down off a canvas of Velasquez
+or Vandyck, and she would be a little tired, a little contemptuous, a
+little indifferent, despite her loyalty; she would be glad, he knew,
+when the brilliant gathering was broken up, and the old house, and the
+yew terrace, and the green lake were all once more quiet beneath the
+rays of the watery moon. She was so unlike other women. She would not
+care about a greatness, a compliment, a success more or less. Such
+triumphs were for the people risen yesterday, not for a Countess von
+Szalras.</p>
+
+<p>He knew the simplicity of her life and the pride of her temper,
+and they moved him to the stronger admiration because he knew also
+that those mere externals which she held in contempt had for him an
+exaggerated value. He was scarcely conscious himself of how great a
+share the splendour of her position, united to her great indifference
+to it, had in the hold she had taken on his imagination and his
+passions. He did know that there were so much greater nobilities in
+her that he was vaguely ashamed of the ascendency which her mere rank
+took in his thoughts of her. Yet he could not divest her of it, and
+it seemed to enhance both her bodily and spiritual beauty, as the
+golden calyx of the lily makes its whiteness seem the whiter by its
+neighbourhood.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the Iselthal the summer was more brilliant and warm than usual. The
+rains were less frequent, and the roses on the great sloping lawns
+beneath the buttresses and terraces of Hohenszalras were blooming
+freely.</p>
+
+<p>Their mistress did not for once give them much heed. She rode long and
+fast through the still summer woods, and came back after nightfall. Her
+men of business, during their interviews with her, found her attention
+less perfect, her interest less keen. In stormy days she sat in the
+library, and read Heine and Schiller often, and all the philosophers
+and men of science rarely. A great teacher has said that the Humanities
+must outweigh the Sciences at all times, and he is unquestionably
+true, if it were only for the reason that in the sweet wise lore of
+ages every human heart in pain and perplexity finds a refuge; whilst in
+love or in sorrow the sciences seem the poorest and chilliest of mortal
+vanities that ever strove to measure the universe with a foot-rule.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess watched her with wistful, inquisitive eyes, but dared
+not name the person of whom they both thought most. Wanda was herself
+intolerant of the sense of impatience with which she awaited the coming
+of the sturdy pony that brought the post-bag from Windisch-Matrey.
+He in his loneliness and emptiness of life on the barren sea-shore
+of Romaris did not more anxiously await her letters than did the
+châtelaine of Hohenszalras, amidst all her state, her wealth, and her
+innumerable occupations, await his. She pitied him intensely; there was
+something pathetic to her in the earnestness with which he had striven
+to amend his ways of life, only to have his whole career shattered by
+an insensate and unlooked-for national war. She understood that his
+poverty stood in the path of his ambition, and she divined that his
+unhappiness had broken that spring of manhood in him which would have
+enabled him to construct a new career for himself out of the ruins of
+the old. She understood why he was listless and exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>There were moments when she was inclined to send him some invitation
+more cordial, some bidding more clear; but she hesitated to take a step
+which would bind her in her own honour to so much more. She knew that
+she ought not to suggest a hope to him to which she was not prepared
+to give full fruition. And again, how could he respond? It would be
+impossible for him to accept. She was one of the great alliances of
+Europe, and he was without fortune, without career, without a future.
+Even friendship was only possible whilst they were far asunder.</p>
+
+<p>Two years had gone by since he had come across from the monastery in
+the green and gold of a summer afternoon. The monks had not forgotten
+him; throughout the French war they had prayed for him. When their
+Prior saw her, he said anxiously sometimes: 'And the Markgraf von
+Sabran, will he never come to us again? Were we too dull for him?
+Will your Excellency remember us to him, if ever you can?' And she
+had answered with a strange emotion at her heart: 'His country is
+in trouble, holy father; a good son cannot leave his land in her
+adversity. No: I do not think he was dull with you; he was quite happy,
+I believe. Perhaps he may come again some day, who knows? He shall be
+told what you say.'</p>
+
+<p>Then a vision would rise up to her of herself and him, as they would
+be perhaps when they should be quite old. Perhaps he would retire into
+this holy retreat of the Augustines, and she would be a grave sombre
+woman, not gay and pretty and witty, as the Princess was. The picture
+was gloomy; she chased it away, and galloped her horse long and far
+through the forests.</p>
+
+<p>The summer had been so brilliant that the autumn which followed was
+cold and severe, earlier than usual, and heavy storms swept over the
+Tauern, almost ere the wheat harvest could be reaped. Many days were
+cheerless and filled only with the sound of incessant rains. In the
+Pinzgau and the Salzkammergut floods were frequent. The Ache and the
+Szalzach, with all their tributary streams and wide and lonely lakes,
+were carrying desolation and terror into many parts of the land which
+in summer they made beautiful. Almost every day brought her some
+tidings of some misfortunes in the villages on the farms belonging to
+her in the more distant parts of Austria; a mill washed away, a bridge
+down, a dam burst, a road destroyed, a harvest swept into the water,
+some damage or other done by the swollen river and torrents, she heard
+of by nearly every communication that her stewards and her lawyers made
+to her at this season.</p>
+
+<p>'Our foes the rivers are more insidious than your mighty enemy the
+salt water,' she wrote to Romaris. 'The sea deals open blows, and men
+know what they must expect if they go out on the vasty deep. But here
+a little brook that laughed and chirped at noon-day as innocently as
+a child may become at nightfall or dawn a roaring giant, devouring
+all that surrounds him. We pay heavily for the glory of our mountain
+waters.'</p>
+
+<p>These autumn weeks seemed very dreary to her. She visited her horses
+chafing at inaction in their roomy stalls, and attended to her affairs,
+and sat in the library or the octagon room hearing the rain beat
+against the emblazoned leaded panes, and felt the days, and above all
+the evenings, intolerably dull and melancholy. She had never heeded
+rain before, or minded the change of season.</p>
+
+<p>One Sunday a messenger rode through the drenching storm, and brought
+her a telegram from her lawyer in Salzburg. It said: 'Idrac flooded:
+many lives lost: great distress: fear town wholly destroyed. Please
+send instructions.'</p>
+
+<p>The call for action roused her as a trumpet sounding rouses a cavalry
+charger.</p>
+
+<p>'Instructions!' she echoed as she read. 'They write as if I could bid
+the Danube subside, or the Drave shrink in its bed!'</p>
+
+<p>She penned a hasty answer.</p>
+
+<p>'I will go to Idrac myself.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she sent a message also to S. Johann im Wald for a special train
+to be got in readiness for her, and told one of her women and a trusty
+servant to be ready to go with her to Vienna in an hour. It was still
+early in the forenoon.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you mad?' cried Madame Ottilie, when she was informed of the
+intended journey.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'There is no madness in what I shall do, dear mother, and Bela surely
+would have gone.'</p>
+
+<p>'Can you stay the torrents of heaven? Can you arrest a river in its
+wrath?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; but lives are often lost because poor people lose their senses in
+fright. I shall be calmer than anyone there. Besides, the place belongs
+to us; we are bound to share its danger. If only Egon were not away
+from Hungary!'</p>
+
+<p>'But he is away. You have driven him away.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not dissuade me, dearest mother. It would be cowardice not to go.'</p>
+
+<p>'What can women do in such extremities?'</p>
+
+<p>'But we of Hohenszalras must not be mere women when we are wanted in
+any danger. Remember Luitgarde von Szalras, the <i>kuttengeier.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess sighed, prayed, even wept, but Wanda was gently
+inflexible. The Princess could not see why a precious life should be
+endangered for the sake of a little half barbaric, half Jewish town,
+which was remarkable for nothing except for shipping timber and selling
+<i>salbling.</i> The population was scarcely Christian, so many Hebrews were
+there, and so benighted were the Sclavonian poor, who between them made
+up the two thousand odd souls that peopled Idrac. To send a special
+messenger there, and to give any quantity of money that the distress
+of the moment might demand, would be all right and proper; indeed,
+an obligation on the owner of the little feudal river-side town. But
+to go! A Countess von Szalras to go in person where not one out of a
+hundred of the citizens had been properly baptized or confirmed! The
+Princess could not view this Quixotism in any other light than that of
+an absolute insanity.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela lost his life in just such a foolish manner!' she pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>'So did the saints, dear mother,' said his sister, gently.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess coloured and coughed.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, I am aware that many holy lives have been&mdash;have been&mdash;what
+appears to our finite senses wasted,' she said, with a little asperity.
+'But I am also aware, Wanda, that the duties most neglected are those
+which lie nearest home and have the least display; consideration for
+<i>me</i> might be better, though less magnificent, than so much heroism for
+Idrac.'</p>
+
+<p>'It pains me that you should put it in that light, dearest mother,'
+said Wanda, with inexhaustible patience. 'Were you in any danger I
+would stay by you first, of course; but you are in none. These poor,
+forlorn, ignorant, cowardly creatures are in the very greatest. I
+draw large revenues from the place; I am in honour bound to share
+its troubles. Pray do not seek to dissuade me. It is a matter not of
+caprice but of conscience. I shall be in no possible peril myself. I
+shall go down the river in my own vessel, and I will telegraph to you
+from every town at which I touch.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess ceased not to lament, to oppose, to bemoan her own
+powerlessness to check intolerable follies. Sitting in her easy chair
+in her warm blue-room, sipping her chocolate, the woes of a distant
+little place on the Danube, whose population was chiefly Semitic, were
+very bearable and altogether failed to appeal to her.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda kissed her, asked her blessing humbly, and took her way in the
+worst of a blinding storm along the unsafe and precipitous road which
+went over the hills to Windisch-Matrey.</p>
+
+<p>'What false sentiment it all is!' thought the Princess, left alone.
+'She has not seen this town since she was ten years old. She knows that
+they are nearly all Jews, or quite heathenish Sclavonians. She can do
+nothing at all&mdash;what should a woman do?&mdash;and yet she is so full of her
+conscience that she goes almost to the Iron Gates in quest of a duty in
+the wettest of weather, while she leaves a man like Egon and a man like
+Sabran wretched for want of a word! I must say,' thought the Princess,
+'false sentiment is almost worse than none at all!'</p>
+
+<p>The rains were pouring down from leaden skies, hiding all the sides of
+the mountains and filling the valleys with masses of vapour. The road
+was barely passable; the hill torrents dashed across it; the little
+brooks were swollen to water-courses; the protecting wall on more than
+one giddy height had been swept away; the gallop of the horses shook
+the frail swaying galleries and hurled the loosened stones over the
+precipice with loud resounding noise. The drive to Matrey and thence
+with post-horses to S. Johann im Wald, the nearest railway station, was
+in itself no little peril, but it was accomplished before the day had
+closed in, and the special train she had ordered being in readiness
+left at once for Vienna, running through the low portions of the
+Pinzgau, which were for the most part under water.</p>
+
+<p>All the way was dim and watery, and full of the sound of running
+or of falling water. The Ache and the Szalsach, both always deep
+and turbulent rivers, were swollen and boisterous, and swirled and
+thundered in their rocky beds; in the grand Pass of Lueg the gloom,
+always great, was dense as at midnight, and when they reached Salzburg
+the setting sun was bursting through ink-black clouds, and shed a
+momentary glow as of fire upon the dark sides of the Untersberg, and
+flamed behind the towers of the great castle on its rocky throne. All
+travellers know the grandeur of that scene; familiar as it was to her
+she looked upward at it with awe and pleasure commingled. Salzburg in
+the evening light needs Salvator Rosa and Rembrandt together to portray
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The train only paused to take in water; the station was crowded as
+usual, set as it is between the frontiers of empire and kingdom, but in
+the brief interval she saw one whom she recognised amongst the throng,
+and she felt the colour come into her own face as she did so.</p>
+
+<p>She saw Sabran; he did not see her. Her train moved out of the station
+rapidly, to make room for the express from Munich; the sun dropped down
+into the ink-black clouds; the golden and crimson pomp of Untersberg
+changed to black and grey; the ivory and amber and crystal of the
+castle became stone and brick and iron, that frowned sombrely over a
+city sunk in river-mists and in rain-vapours. She felt angrily that
+there was an affinity between the landscape and herself; that so, at
+sight of him, a light had come into her life which had no reality in
+fact, prismatic colours baseless as a dream.</p>
+
+<p>She had longed to speak to him; to stretch out her hand to him; to
+say at least how her thoughts and her sympathies had been with him
+throughout the war. But her carriage was already in full onward
+movement, and in another moment had passed at high speed out of the
+station into that grand valley of the Szalzach where Hohensalzburg
+seems to tower as though Friederich Barbarossa did indeed sleep there.
+With a sigh she sank backward amongst her furs and cushions, and saw
+the soaring fortress pass, into the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>The night had now closed in; the rain fell heavily. As the little
+train, oscillating greatly from its lightness, swung over the iron
+rails, there was a continual sound of splashing water audible above
+the noise of the wheels and the throb of the engine. She had often
+travelled at night and had always slept soundly; this evening she could
+not sleep. She remained wide awake watching the swaying of the lamp,
+listening to the shrill shriek of the wheels as they rushed through
+water where some hillside brook had broken bounds and spread out in a
+shallow lagoon. The skies were overcast in every direction; the rain
+was everywhere unceasing; the night seemed to her very long.</p>
+
+<p>She pondered perpetually on his presence at Salzburg, and wondered if
+he were going to the Holy Isle. Three months had gone by since she had
+sent him the semi-invitation to her country.</p>
+
+<p>The train sped on; the day dawned; she began to get glimpses of the
+grand blue river, now grey and ochre-coloured and thick with mud, its
+turbid waves heaving sullenly under the stormy October skies. She had
+always loved the great Donau; she knew its cradle well in the north
+land of the Teutons. She had often watched the baby-stream rippling
+over the stones, and felt the charm, as of some magical transformation,
+as she thought of the same stream stretching broadly under the monastic
+walls of Klosterneuberg, rolling in tempest by the Iron Gates, and
+gathering its mighty volume higher and deeper to burst at last into
+the sunlight of the eastern sea. Amidst the levelled monotony of
+modern Europe the Danube keeps something of savage grandeur, something
+of legendary power, something of oriental charm; it is still often
+tameless, a half-barbaric thing, still a Tamerlane amidst rivers: and
+yet yonder at its birthplace it is such a slender thread of rippling
+water! She and Bela had crossed it with bare feet to get forget-me-nots
+in Taunus, talking together of Chriemhilde and her pilgrimage to the
+land of the Huns.</p>
+
+<p>The little train swung on steadily through the water above and below,
+and after a night of no little danger came safely to Vienna as the dawn
+broke. She went straight to her yacht, which was in readiness off the
+Lobau and weighed anchor as the pale and watery morning broadened into
+day above the shores that had seen Aspern and Wagram. The yacht was
+a yawl, strongly built and drawing little water, made on purpose for
+the ascent and descent of the Danube, from Passau up in the north to
+as far south as the Bosphorus if needed. The voyage had been of the
+greatest joys of hers and of Bela's childhood; they had read on deck
+alternately the 'Nibelungen-Lied' and the 'Arabian Nights,' clinging
+together in delighted awe as they passed through the darkness of the
+defile of Kasan.</p>
+
+<p>Idrac was situated between Pesth and Peterwardein, lying low on marshy
+ground that was covered with willows and intersected by small streams
+flowing from the interior to the Danube.</p>
+
+<p>The little town gave its name and its seigneurie to the owner of its
+burg; an ancient place built on a steep rock that rose sheer out of
+the fast-running waves, and dominated the passage of the stream. The
+Counts of Idrac had been exceeding powerful in the old times, when
+they had stopped at their will the right of way of the river; and
+their appanages with their title had come by marriage into the House
+of Szalras some four centuries before, and although the dominion over
+the river was gone, the fortress and the little town and all that
+appertained thereto still formed a considerable possession; it had
+usually been given with its Countship to the second son of the Szalras.</p>
+
+<p>Making the passage to Pesth in fourteen hours, the yacht dropped
+anchor before the Franz Josef Quai as the first stars came out above
+the Blocksburg, for by this time the skies had lightened and the rains
+had ceased. Here she stayed the night perforce, as an accident had
+occurred to the machinery of the vessel. She did not leave the yacht,
+but sent into the inner city for stores of provisions and of the local
+cordial, the <i>slibowitza</i>, to distribute to the half-drowned people
+amongst whom she was about to go. It was noonday before the yawl got
+under weigh and left the twin-towns behind her. A little way further
+down the stream they passed a great castle, standing amidst beech woods
+on a rock that rose up from fields covered with the Carlowitz vine. She
+looked at it with a sigh: it was the fortress of Kohacs, one of the
+many possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>The weather had now cleared, but the skies were overcast, and the
+plains, which began to spread away monotonously from either shore,
+were covered with white fog. Soon the fog spread also over the river,
+and the yacht was compelled to advance cautiously and slowly, so that
+the voyage was several hours longer than usual. When the light of the
+next day broke they had come in sight of the flooded districts on their
+right: the immense flat fields that bore the flax and grain which make
+the commerce of Baja, of Neusatz, and of other riverain towns, were
+all changed to shallow estuaries. The Theiss, the Drave, and many
+minor streams, swollen by the long autumnal rains, had burst their
+boundaries and laid all the country under water for hundreds of square
+leagues. The granaries, freshly filled with the late abundant harvest,
+had at many places been flooded or destroyed: thousands of stacks of
+grain were floating like shapeless, dismasted vessels. Timber and the
+thatched roofs of the one-storied houses were in many places drifting
+too, like the flotsam and the hulls of wrecked ships.</p>
+
+<p>There are few scenes more dreary, more sad, more monotonous than those
+of a flat country swamped by flood: the sky above them was leaden
+and heavy, the Danube beneath them was turgid and discoloured; the
+shrill winds whistled through the brakes of willow, the water-birds,
+frightened, flew from their osier-beds on the islands, the bells of
+churches and watch-towers tolled dismally.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon when she came within sight of her little
+town on the Sclavonian shore, which Ernst von Szalras had fired on
+August 29, 1526, to save it from the shame of violation by the Turks.
+Though he had perished, and most of the soldiers and townsfolk with
+him, the fortress, the <i>têtes du pont</i>, and the old water-gates and
+walls had been too strong for the flames to devour, and the town had
+been built up again by the Turks and subsequently by the Hungarians.</p>
+
+<p>The slender minarets of the Ottomans' two mosques still raised
+themselves amidst the old Gothic architecture of the mediæval
+buildings, and the straw-covered roofs and the white-plastered walls
+of the modern houses. As they steamed near it the minarets and the
+castle towers rose above what looked a world of waters, all else seemed
+swallowed in the flood; the orchards, which had surrounded all save the
+river-side of the town; were immersed almost to the summits of their
+trees. The larger vessels could never approach Idrac in ordinary times,
+the creek being too shallow on which it stood; but now the water was
+so high that though it would be too imprudent to anchor there, the
+yacht easily passed in, and hove-to underneath the water-walls, a pilot
+taking careful soundings as they steered. It was about three in the
+afternoon. The short, grey day was near its end; a shout of welcome
+rose from some people on the walls as they recognised the build and the
+ensign of the yawl. Some crowded boats were pulling away from the town,
+laden with fugitives and their goods.</p>
+
+<p>'How soon people run away! They are like rats,' she thought. 'I would
+sooner be like the stork, and not quit my nest if it were in flames.'</p>
+
+<p>She landed at the water-stairs of the castle. Men, women, and children
+came scrambling along the walls, where they were huddled together out
+of temporary reach of the flood, and threw themselves down at her
+feet and kissed her skirts with abject servility. They were half mad
+with terror, and amongst the population there were many hundreds of
+Jews, the most cowardly people in all the world. The boats were quite
+inadequate in number to the work they had to do; the great steamers
+passing up and down did not pause to help them; the flood was so
+general below Pesth that on the right shore of the river each separate
+village and township was busy with its own case and had no help for
+neighbours: the only aid came from those on the opposite shore, but
+that was scanty and unwisely ministered. The chief citizens of Idrac
+had lost their wits, as she had foreseen they would do. To ring the
+bells madly night and day, and fire off the old culverins from the
+water-gate, was all they seemed to know how to do. They told her that
+many lives had been lost, as the inland waters had risen in the night,
+and most of the houses were of only one storey. In the outlying
+flax-farms it was supposed that whole households had perished. In the
+town itself there were six feet of water everywhere, and many of the
+inhabitants were huddled together in the two mosques, which were now
+granaries, in the towers, and in the fortress itself; but several
+families had been enabled to escape, and had climbed upon the roofs,
+clinging to the chimneys for bare life.</p>
+
+<p>Her mere presence brought reviving hope and energy to the primitive
+population. Their Lady had a romantic legendary reputation amongst
+them, and they were ready to cling round the pennon of the yacht as
+their ancestors had rallied round the standard of Ernst von Szalras.</p>
+
+<p>She ascended to the Rittersaal of the fortress, and assembled a few of
+the men about her, who had the most influence and energy in the little
+place. She soon introduced some kind of system and method into the
+efforts made, promised largesse to those who should be the most active,
+and had the provisions she had brought distributed amongst those who
+most needed them. The boats of the yawl took many away to a temporary
+refuge on the opposite shore. Many others were brought in to the
+state-room of the castle for shelter. Houses were constantly falling,
+undermined by the water, and there were dead and wounded to be attended
+to, as well as the hungry and terrified living creatures. Once before,
+Idrac had been thus devastated by flood, but it had been far away in
+the previous century, and the example was too distant to have been a
+warning to the present generation.</p>
+
+<p>She passed a fatiguing and anxious night. It was impossible to
+think of sleep with so much misery around. The yacht was obliged to
+descend, the river for safe anchorage, but the boats remained. She
+went herself, now in one, now in another, to endeavour to inspire the
+paralysed people with some courage and animation. A little wine, a
+little bread, were all she took; food was very scarce. The victuals of
+the yacht's provisioning did not last long amongst so many famishing
+souls. She ordered her skipper at dawn to go down as far as Neusatz
+and purchase largely. There were five thousand people, counting those
+of the neighbourhood, or more, homeless and bereft of all shelter. The
+telegraph was broken, the poles had been snapped by the force of the
+water in many places.</p>
+
+<p>With dawn a furious storm gathered and broke, and renewed rains added
+their quota to the inundation and their discomfort to the exposed
+sufferers. The cold was great, and the chill that made them shudder
+from head to foot was past all cure by cordials. She regretted not
+to have brought Greswold with her. She was indifferent to danger,
+indefatigable in exertion, and strong as Libussa, brave as Chriemhilde.
+Because the place belonged to her in almost a feudal manner, she held
+herself bound to give her life for it if need be. Bela would have done
+what she was doing.</p>
+
+<p>Twice or thrice during the two following days she heard the people
+speak of a stranger who had arrived fifteen hours before her, and had
+wrought miracles of deliverance. Unless the stories told her were
+greatly exaggerated, this foreigner had shown a courage and devotion
+quite unequalled. He had thrown himself into the work at once on his
+arrival there in a boat from Neusatz, and had toiled night and day,
+enduring extreme fatigue and running almost every hour some dire peril
+of his life. He had saved whole families of the poorest and most
+wretched quarter; he had sprung on to roofs that were splitting and
+sinking, on to walls that were trembling and tottering, and had borne
+away in safety men, women, and children, the old, and the sick, and the
+very animals; he had infused some of his own daring and devotedness
+into the selfish and paralysed Hebrew population; priests and rabbis
+were alike unanimous in his praise, and she, as she heard, felt that
+he who had fought for France had been here for her sake. They told
+her that he was now out amongst the more distant orchards and fields,
+amidst the flooded farms where the danger was even greater than in the
+town itself. Some Czechs said that he was S. John of Nepomuc himself.
+She bade them bring him to her, that she might thank him, whenever he
+should enter the town again, and then thought of him no more.</p>
+
+<p>Her whole mind and feeling were engrossed by the spectacle of a misery
+that even all her wealth could not do very much to alleviate. The
+waters as yet showed no sign of abatement. The crash of falling houses
+sounded heavily ever and again through the gloom. The melancholy sight
+of humble household things, of drowned cattle, of dead dogs, borne down
+the discoloured flood out to the Danube renewed itself every hour.
+The lamentations of the ruined people went up in an almost continuous
+wail like the moaning of a winter wind. There was nothing grand,
+nothing picturesque, nothing exciting to redeem the dreariness and the
+desolation. It was all ugly, miserable, dull. It was more trying than
+war, which even in its hideous senselessness lends a kind of brutal
+intoxication to all whom it surrounds.</p>
+
+<p>She was incessantly occupied and greatly fatigued, so that the time
+passed without her counting it. She sent a message each day to the
+Princess at home, and promised to return as soon as the waters had
+subsided and the peril passed. For the first time in her life she
+experienced real discomfort, real privation; she had surrendered nearly
+all the rooms in the burg to the sick people, and food ran short and
+there was none of good quality, though she knew that supplies would
+soon come from the steward at Kohacs and by the yacht.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth day the waters had sunk an inch. As she heard the good
+tidings she was looking out inland over the waste of grey and yellow
+flood; a Jewish rabbi was beside her speaking of the exertions of the
+stranger, in whom the superstitious of the townsfolk saw a saint from
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p>'And does no one even know who he is?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'No one has asked,' answered the Jew. 'He has been always out where the
+peril was greatest.'</p>
+
+<p>'How came he here?'</p>
+
+<p>'He came by one of the big steamers that go to Turkey. He pulled
+himself here in a little boat that he had bought; the boat in which he
+has done such good service.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is he like in appearance?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is very tall, very fair, and handsome; I should think he is
+northern.'</p>
+
+<p>Her pulse beat quicker for a moment; then she rejected the idea as
+absurd, though indeed, she reflected, she had seen him at Salzburg.</p>
+
+<p>'He must at least be a brave man,' she said quietly. 'If you see him
+bring him to me that I may thank him. Is he in the town now?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; he is yonder, where the Rathwand farms are, or were; where your
+Excellency sees those dark, long islands which are not islands at all,
+but only the summits of cherry orchards. He has carried the people
+away, carried them down to Peterwardein; and he is now about to try and
+rescue some cattle which were driven up on to the roof of a tower, poor
+beasts&mdash;that tower to the east there, very far away: it is five miles
+as the crow flies.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose he will come into the town again?'</p>
+
+<p>'He was here last night; he had heard of your Excellency, and asked for
+her health.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! I will see and thank him if he come again.'</p>
+
+<p>But no one that day saw the stranger in Idrac.</p>
+
+<p>The rains fell again and the waters again rose. The maladies which
+come of damp and of bad exhalations spread amongst the people; they
+could not all be taken to other villages or towns, for there was no
+room for them. She had quinine, wines, good food ordered by the great
+steamers, but they were not yet arrived. What could be got at Neusatz
+or Peterwardein the yacht brought, but it was not enough for so many
+sick and starving people. The air began to grow fœtid from the many
+carcases of animals, though as they floated the vultures from the hills
+fed on them. She had a vessel turned into a floating hospital, and
+the most delicate of the sick folk carried to it, and had it anchored
+off the nearest port. Her patience, her calmness, and her courage did
+more to revive the sinking hearts of the homeless creatures than the
+cordials and the food. She was all day long out in her boat, being
+steered from one spot to another. At night she rested little and passed
+from one sick bed to another. She had never been so near to hopeless
+human misery before. At Hohenszalras no one was destitute.</p>
+
+<p>One twilight hour on the ninth day, as she was rowed back to the castle
+stairs, she passed another boat in which were two lads and a man. The
+man was rowing, a dusky shadow in the gloom of the wet evening and the
+uncouthness of his waterproof pilot's dress; but she had a lantern
+beside her, and she flashed its light full on the boat as it passed
+her. When she reached the burg, she said to her servant Anton: 'Herr
+von Sabran is in Idrac; go and say that I desire to see him.'</p>
+
+<p>Anton, who remembered him well, returned in an hour, and said he could
+neither find him nor hear of him.</p>
+
+<p>All the night long, a cheerless tedious night, with the rain falling
+without and the storm that was raging in the Bosphorus sending its
+shrill echoes up the Danube, she sat by the beds of the sick women
+or paced up and down the dimly-lit Rittersaal in an impatience which
+it humiliated her to feel. It touched her that he should be here,
+so silently, so sedulously avoiding her, and doing so much for the
+people of Idrac, because they were her people. The old misgiving that
+she had been ungenerous in her treatment of him returned to her. He
+seemed always to have the finer part&mdash;the <i>beau rôle.</i> To her, royal
+in giving, imperious in conduct, it brought a sense of failure, of
+inferiority. As she read the psalms in Hungarian to the sick Magyar
+women, her mind perpetually wandered away to him.</p>
+
+<p>She did not see Sabran again, but she heard often of him. The fair
+stranger, as the people called him, was always conspicuous wherever
+the greatest danger was to be encountered. There was always peril in
+almost every movement where the undermined houses, the tottering walls,
+the stagnant water, the fever-reeking marshes presented at every turn a
+perpetual menace to life. 'He is not vainly <i>un fils des preux</i>,' she
+thought, with a thrill of personal pride, as if someone near and dear
+to her were praised, as she listened to the stories of his intrepidity
+and his endurance. Whole nights spent in soaked clothes, in half
+swamped boats; whole days lost in impotent conflict with the ignorance
+or the poltroonery of an obstinate populace, continual risk encountered
+without counting its cost to rescue some poor man's sick beast, or pull
+a cripple from beneath falling beams, or a lad from choking mud; hour
+on hour of steady laborious rowing, of passage to and fro the sullen
+river with a freight of moaning, screaming peasantry&mdash;this was not
+child's play, nor had it any of the animation and excitation which in
+war or in adventure make of danger a strong wine that goes merrily and
+voluptuously to the head. It was all dull, stupid, unlovely, and he
+had come to it for her sake. For her sake certainly, though he never
+approached her; though when Anton at last found and took her message
+to him he excused himself from obedience to it by a plea that he was
+at that moment wet and weary, and had come from a hut where typhoid
+raged. She understood the excuse; she knew that he knew well she was no
+more afraid than he of that contagion. She admired him the more for his
+isolation; in these grey, rainy, tedious, melancholy days his figure
+seemed to grow into a luminous heroic shape like one of the heroes of
+the olden time. If he had once seemed to seek a guerdon for it the
+spell would have been broken. But he never did. She began to believe
+that such a knight deserved any recompense which she could give.</p>
+
+<p>'Egon himself could have done no more,' she said in her own thoughts,
+and it was the highest praise that she could give to any man, for
+her Magyar cousin was the embodiment of all martial daring, of all
+chivalrous ardour, and had led his glittering hussars down on to the
+French bayonets, as on to the Prussian Krupp guns, with a fury that
+bore all before it, impetuous and irresistible as a stream of fired
+naphtha.</p>
+
+<p>On the twelfth morning the river had sunk so much lower that the yacht
+arriving with medicines and stores of food from Neusatz signalled that
+she could not enter the creek on which Idrac stood, and waited orders.
+It had ceased to rain, but the winds were still strong and the skies
+heavy. She descended to her boat at the water-gate, and told the men to
+take her out to the yacht. It was early, the sun behind the clouds had
+barely climbed above the distant Wallachian woods, and the scene had
+lost nothing of its melancholy. A man was standing on the water-stairs
+as she descended them, and turned rapidly away, but she had seen him
+and stretched out her long staff and touched him lightly.</p>
+
+<p>'Why do you avoid me?' she said, as he uncovered his head; 'my men
+sought you in all directions; I wished to thank you.'</p>
+
+<p>He bowed low over the hand she held out to him. 'I ventured to be near
+at hand to be of use,' he answered. 'I was afraid the exposure, and,
+the damp, and all this pestilence would make you ill: you are not ill?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I am quite well. I have heard of all your courage and endurance.
+Idrac owes you a great debt.'</p>
+
+<p>'I only pay my debt to Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>They were both silent; a certain constraint was upon them both.</p>
+
+<p>'How did you know of the inundation? It was unkind of you not to come
+to me,' she said, and her voice was unsteady as she spoke. 'I want so
+much to tell you, better than letters can do, all that we felt for you
+throughout that awful war.'</p>
+
+<p>He turned away slightly with a shudder. 'You are too good. Thousands of
+men much better than I suffered much more.'</p>
+
+<p>The tears rose to her eyes as she glanced at him. He was looking pale
+and worn. He had lost the graceful <i>insouciance</i> of his earlier manner.
+He looked grave, weary, melancholy, like a man who had passed through
+dire disaster, unspeakable pain, and had seen his career snapped in
+two like a broken wand. But there was about him instead something
+soldierlike, proven, war-worn, which became him in her eyes, daughter
+of a race of warriors as she was.</p>
+
+<p>'You have much to tell me, and I have much to hear,' she said, after
+a pause. 'You should have come to the monastery to be cured of your
+wounds. Why were you so mistrustful of our friendship?'</p>
+
+<p>He coloured and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed,' she said gravely, 'we can honour brave men in the Tauern and
+in Idrac too. You are very brave. I do not know how to thank you for my
+people or for myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Pray do not speak so,' he said, in a very low voice. 'To see you again
+would be recompense for much worthier things than any I have done.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you might have seen me long ago,' she said, with a certain
+nervousness new to her, 'had you only chosen to come to the Isle. I
+asked you twice.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with eyes of longing and pathetic appeal.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not tempt me,' he murmured. 'If I yielded, and if you despised
+me&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'How could I despise one who has so nobly saved the lives of my people?'</p>
+
+<p>'You would do so.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke very low: he was silent a little while, then he said very
+softly:</p>
+
+<p>'One evening, when we spoke together on the terrace at Hohenszalras,
+you leant your hand upon the ivy there. I plucked the leaf you touched;
+you did not see. I had the leaf with me all through the war. It was
+a talisman. It was like a holy thing. When your cousin's soldiers
+stripped me in their ambulance, they took it from me.'</p>
+
+<p>His voice faltered. She listened and was moved to a profound emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'I will give you something better,' she said very gravely. He did not
+ask her what she would give.</p>
+
+<p>She looked away from him awhile, and her face flushed a little. She was
+thinking of what she would give him; a gift so great that the world
+would deem her mad to bestow it, and perhaps would deem him dishonoured
+to take it.</p>
+
+<p>'How did you hear of these floods along the Danube?' she asked him,
+recovering her wonted composure.</p>
+
+<p>'I read about them in telegrams in Paris,' he made answer. 'I had
+mustered courage to revisit my poor Paris; all I possess is there.
+Nothing has been injured; a shell burst quite close by but did not
+harm my apartments. I went to make arrangements for the sale of my
+collections, and on the second day that I arrived there I saw the news
+of the inundations of Idrac and the lower Danubian plains. I remembered
+the name of the town; I remembered it was yours. I remembered your
+saying once that where you had feudal rights you had feudal duties, so
+I came on the chance of being of service.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have been most devoted to the people.'</p>
+
+<p>'The people! What should I care though the whole town perished? Do not
+attribute to me a humanity that is not in my nature.'</p>
+
+<p>'Be as cynical as you like in words so long as you are heroic in
+action. I am going out to the yacht; will you come with me?'</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated. 'I merely came to hear from the warder of your health. I
+am going to catch the express steamer at Neusatz; all danger is over.'</p>
+
+<p>'The yacht can take you to Neusatz. Come with me.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not offer more opposition; he accompanied her to the boat and
+entered it.</p>
+
+<p>The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing more, but she could not
+forget that scores of her own people here had owed their lives to his
+intrepidity and patience, and that he had never hesitated to throw his
+life into the balance when needed. And it had been done for her sake
+alone. The love of humanity might have been a nobler and purer motive,
+but it would not have touched her so nearly as the self-abandonment of
+a man by nature selfish and cold.</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments they were taken to the yawl. He ascended the deck with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The tidings the skipper brought, the examination of the stores, the
+discussion of ways and means, the arrangements for the general relief,
+were air dull, practical matters that claimed careful attention and
+thought. She sat in the little cabin that was brave with marqueterie
+work and blue satin and Dresden mirrors, and made memoranda and
+calculations, and consulted him, and asked his advice on this, on
+that. The government official, sent to make official estimates of the
+losses in the township, had come on board to salute and take counsel
+with her. The whole forenoon passed in these details. He wrote, and
+calculated, and drew up reports for her. No more tender or personal
+word was spoken between them; but there was a certain charm for them
+both in this intimate intercourse, even though it took no other shape
+than the study of how many boatloads of wheat were needed for so many
+hundred people, of how many florins a day might be passed to the head
+of each family, of how many of the flooded houses would still be
+serviceable with restoration, of how many had been entirely destroyed,
+of how the town would best be rebuilt, and of how the inland rivers
+could best be restrained in the future.</p>
+
+<p>To rebuild it she estimated that she would have to surrender for five
+years the revenues from her Galician and Hungarian mines, and she
+resolved to do it altogether at her own cost. She had no wish to see
+the town figure in public prints as the object of public subscription.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure all my woman friends,' she said, 'would kindly make it
+occasion for a fancy fair or a lottery (with new costumes) in Vienna,
+but I do not care for that sort of thing, and I can very well do what
+is needed alone.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent. He had always known that her riches were great, but
+he had never realised them as fully as he now did when she spoke of
+rebuilding an entire town as she might have spoken of building a
+carriage.</p>
+
+<p>'You would make a good prime minister,' she said, smiling; 'you have
+the knowledge of a specialist on so many subjects.'</p>
+
+<p>At noon they served her a little plain breakfast of Danubian
+<i>salbling</i>, with Carlowitzer wine and fruit sent by the steward of
+Mohacs. She bade him join her in it.</p>
+
+<p>'Had Egon himself been here he could not have done more for Idrac than
+you have done,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Is this Prince Egon's wine?' he said abruptly, and on hearing that it
+was so, he set the glass down untasted.</p>
+
+<p>She looked surprised, but she did not ask him his reason, for she
+divined it. There was an exaggeration in the unspoken hostility more
+like the days of Arthur and Lancelot than their own, but it did not
+displease her.</p>
+
+<p>They were both little disposed to converse during their meal; after the
+dreary and terrible scenes they had been witness of, the atmosphere
+of life seems grave and dark even to those whom the calamity had not
+touched. The most careless spirit is oppressed by a sense of the
+precariousness and the cruelty of existence.</p>
+
+<p>When they ascended to the deck the skies were lighter than they had
+been for many weeks; the fog had cleared, so that, in the distance, the
+towers of Neusatz and the fortress of Peterwardein were visible; vapour
+still hung over the vast Hungarian plain, but the Danube was clear and
+the affluents of it had sunk to their usual level.</p>
+
+<p>'You really go to-night?' she said, as they looked down the river.</p>
+
+<p>'There is no need for me to stay; the town is safe, and you are well,
+you say. If there be anything I can still do, command me.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled a little and let her eye meet his for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, if I command you to remain then, will you do so as my viceroy?
+I want to return home; Aunt Ottilie grows daily more anxious, more
+alarmed, but I cannot leave these poor souls all alone with their
+priests, and their rabbi, who are all as timid as sheep and as stupid.
+Will you stay in the castle and govern them, and help them till they
+recover from their fright? It is much to ask, I know, but you have
+already done so much for Idrac that I am bold to ask you to do more?'</p>
+
+<p>He coloured with a mingled emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'You could ask me nothing that I would not do,' he said in a low tone.
+'I could wish you asked me something harder.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it will be very hard,' she said, with an indifference she did not
+feel. 'It will be very dull, and you will have no one to speak to that
+knows anything save how to grow flax and cherries. You will have to
+talk the Magyar tongue all day, and you will have nothing to eat save
+<i>kartoffeln</i> and <i>salbling</i>; and I do not know that I am even right,'
+she added, more gravely, 'to ask you to incur the risks that come from
+all that soaked, ground, which will be damp so long.'</p>
+
+<p>'The risks that you have borne yourself! Pray do not wound me by any
+such scruple as that. I shall be glad, I shall be proud, to be for ever
+so short or so long a time as you command, your representative, your
+servant.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very good.'</p>
+
+<p>'No.'</p>
+
+<p>His eyes looked at hers with a quick flash, in which all the passion
+he dared not express was spoken. She averted her glance and continued
+calmly: 'You are very good indeed to Idrac. It will be a great
+assistance and comfort to me to know that you are here. The poor people
+already love you, and you will write to me and tell me all that may
+need to be done. I will leave you the yacht and Anton. I shall return
+by land with my woman; and when I reach home I will send you Herr
+Greswold. He is a good companion, and has a great admiration for you,
+though he wishes that you had not forsaken the science of botany.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is like all other dissection or vivisection; it spoils the artistic
+appreciation of the whole. I am yet unsophisticated enough to feel the
+charm of a bank of violets, of a cliff covered with alpen-roses. I may
+write to you?'</p>
+
+<p>'You must write to me! It is you who will know all the needs of Idrac.
+But are you sure that to remain here will not interfere with your own
+projects, your own wishes, your own duties?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have none. If I had any I would throw them away, with pleasure, to
+be of use to one of your dogs, to one of your birds.'</p>
+
+<p>She moved from his side a little.</p>
+
+<p>'Look how the sun has come out. I can see the sparkle of the brass on
+the cannon down yonder at Neusatz. We had better go now. I must see my
+sick people and then leave as soon as I can. The yacht must take me to
+Mohacs; from there I will send her back to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do as you will. I can have no greater happiness than to obey you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure that I thank you in the way that you like best, when I say
+that I believe you.'</p>
+
+<p>She said the words in a very low tone, but so calmly that the calmness
+of them checked any other words he might have uttered. It was a royal
+acceptance of a loyal service; nothing more. The boat took them back
+to the fortress. Whilst she was occupied in her farewell to the sick
+people, and her instructions to those who attended on them, he, left
+to himself in the apartment she had made her own, instinctively went
+to an old harpsichord that stood there and touched the keys. It had a
+beautiful case, rich with the varnish of the Martins. He played with
+it awhile for its external beauty, and then let his fingers stray over
+its limited keyboard. It had still sweetness in it, like the spinet
+of Hohenszalras. It suited certain pathetic quaint old German airs he
+knew, and which he half unconsciously reproduced upon it, singing them
+as he did so in a low tone. The melody, very soft and subdued, suited
+to the place where death had been so busy and nature so unsparing, and
+where a resigned exhaustion had now succeeded to the madness of terror,
+reached the ears of the sick women in the Rittersaal and of Wanda von
+Szalras seated beside their beds.</p>
+
+<p>'It is like the saints in Heaven sighing in pity for us here,' said one
+of the women who was very feeble and old, and she smiled as she heard.
+The notes, tremulous from age but penetrating in their sweetness, came
+in slow calm movements of harmony through the stillness of the chamber;
+his voice, very low also, but clear, ascended with them. Wanda sat
+quite still, and listened with a strange pleasure. 'He alone,' she
+thought, 'can make the dumb strings speak.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost dusk when she descended to the room which she had made
+her own. In the passages of the castle oil wicks were lighted in the
+iron lamps and wall sconces, but here it was without any light, and
+in the gloom she saw the dim outline of his form as he sat by the
+harpsichord. He had ceased playing; his head was bent down and rested
+on the instrument; he was lost in thought, and his whole attitude was
+dejected. He did not hear her approach, and she looked at him some
+moments, herself unseen. A great tenderness came over her: he was
+unhappy, and he had been very brave, very generous, very loyal: she
+felt almost ashamed. She went nearer, and he raised himself abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'I am going,' she said to him. 'Will you come with me to the yacht?'</p>
+
+<p>He rose, and though it was dusk, and in this chamber so dark that his
+face was indistinct to her, she was sure that tears had been in his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Your old harpsichord has the vernis Martin,' he said, with effort.
+'You should not leave it buried here. It has a melody in it too, faint
+and simple and full of the past, like the smell of dead rose-leaves.
+Yes, I will have the honour to come with you. I wish there were a full
+moon. It will be a dark night on the Danube.'</p>
+
+<p>'My men know the soundings of the river well. As for the harpsichord,
+you alone have found its voice. It shall go to your rooms in Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are too good, but I would not take it. Let it go to Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why would you not take it?</p>
+
+<p>'I would take nothing from you.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke abruptly, and with some sternness.</p>
+
+<p>'I think there is such a thing as being too proud? she said, with
+hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>'Your ancestors would not say so,' he answered, with an effort; she
+understood the meaning that underlay the words. He turned away and
+closed the lid of the harpsichord, where little painted cupids wantoned
+in a border of metal scroll-work.</p>
+
+<p>All the men and women well enough to stand crowded on the water-stairs
+to see her departure; little children were held up in their mother's
+arms and bidden remember her for evermore; all feeble creatures lifted
+up their voices to praise her; Jew and Christian blessed her; the
+water-gate was cumbered with sobbing people, trying to see her face,
+to kiss her skirt for the last time. She could not be wholly unmoved
+before that unaffected, irrepressible emotion. Their poor lives were
+not worth much, but such as they were she, under Heaven, had saved them.</p>
+
+<p>'I will return and see you again,' she said to them, as she made a slow
+way through the eager crowd. 'Thank Heaven, my people, not me. And I
+leave my friend with you, who did much more for you than I. Respect him
+and obey him.'</p>
+
+<p>They raised with their thin trembling voices a loud <i>Eljén</i>! of homage
+and promise, and she passed away from their sight into the evening
+shadows on the wide river.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran accompanied her to the vessel, which was to take her to the town
+of Mohacs, thence to make her journey home by railway.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not leave until you bid me, even though you should forget to
+call me all in my life!' he said, as the boat slipped through the dark
+water.</p>
+
+<p>'Such oblivion would be a poor reward.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have had reward enough. You have called me your friend.'</p>
+
+<p>She was silent. The boat ran through the dusk and the rippling rays of
+light streaming from the sides of the yacht, and they went on board. He
+stood a moment with uncovered head before her on the deck, and she gave
+him her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'You will come to the Holy Isle?' she said, as she did so.</p>
+
+<p>'If you bid me,' he said, as he bowed and kissed her hand. His lips
+trembled as he did so, and by the lamplight she saw that he was very
+pale.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall bid you,' she said, very softly, by-and-by. Farewell!'</p>
+
+<p>He bowed very low once more, then he dropped over the yacht's side into
+the boat waiting below; the splash of the oars told her he was gone
+back to Idrac. The yawl weighed anchor and began to go up the river,
+a troublesome and tedious passage at all seasons. She sat on deck
+watching the strong current of the Danube as it rolled on under the bow
+of the schooner. For more than a league she could see the beacon that
+burned by the water-gate of the fortress. When the curve of the stream
+hid it from her eyes she felt a pang of painful separation, of wistful
+attachment to the old dreary walls where she had seen so much suffering
+and so much courage, and where she had learned to read her own heart
+without any possibility of ignoring its secrets. A smile came on her
+mouth and a moisture in her eyes as she sat alone in the dark autumn
+night, while the schooner made her slow ascent through the swell that
+accompanies the influx of the Drave.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In two days' time Hohenszalras received its mistress home.</p>
+
+<p>She was not in any way harmed by the perils she had encountered, and
+the chills and fever to which she had been exposed. On the contrary,
+her eyes had a light and her face had a bloom which for many months had
+not been there.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess heard a brief sketch of what had passed in almost
+total silence. She had disapproved strongly, and she said that her
+disapproval could not change, though a merciful heavenly host had
+spared her the realisation of her worst fears.</p>
+
+<p>The name of Sabran was not spoken. Wanda was of a most truthful temper,
+but she could not bring herself to speak of his presence at Idrac; the
+facts would reveal themselves inevitably soon enough.</p>
+
+<p>She sent Greswold to the Danube laden with stores and medicines.
+She received a letter every morning from her delegate; but he wrote
+briefly, and with scrupulous care, the statements of facts connected
+with the town and reports of what had been done. Her engineer had
+arrived from the mines by Kremnitz, and the builders estimated that
+the waters would have subsided and settled enough, if no fresh rising
+took place, for them to begin the reconstruction of the town with the
+beginning of the new month. Ague and fever were still very common, and
+fresh cases were brought in every hour to the hospital in the fortress.
+He wrote on the arrival of Herr Greswold, that, with her permission, he
+himself would still stay on, for the people had grown used to him, and
+having some knowledge of hydraulics he would be interested to see the
+plans proposed by her engineers for preserving the town from similar
+calamities.</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks passed; all that time she spoke but little either of him or
+of any other subject. She took endless rides, and she sat many hours
+doing nothing in the white room, absorbed in thought. The Princess,
+who had learned what had passed, with admirable exercise of tact and
+self-restraint made neither suggestion nor innuendo, and accepted the
+presence of a French Marquis at a little obscure town in Sclavonia as
+if it were the most natural circumstance in the world.</p>
+
+<p>'All the Szalras have been imperious, arrogant, and of complicated
+character,' she thought; 'she has the same temper, though it is
+mitigated in her by great natural nobility of disposition and strong
+purity of motives. She will do as she chooses, let all the world do
+what it may to change her. If I say a word either way it may take
+effect in some wholly unforeseen manner that I should regret. It is
+better to abstain. In doubt do nothing, is the soundest of axioms.'</p>
+
+<p>And Princess Ottilie, who on occasion had the wisdom of the serpent
+with the sweetness of the dove, preserved a discreet silence, and
+devoured her really absorbing curiosity in her own heart.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the fourth week she heard that all was well at Idrac,
+so far as it could be so in a place almost wholly destroyed. There
+was no sign of renewed rising of the inland streams. The illness was
+diminished, almost conquered; the people had begun to take heart and
+hope, and, being aided, wished to aid themselves. The works for new
+embankments, water-gates, and streets were already planned, though
+they could not be begun until the spring. Meanwhile, strong wooden
+houses were being erected on dry places, which which could shelter
+<i>ad interim</i> many hundreds of families; the farmers were gradually
+venturing to return to their flooded lands. The town had suffered
+grievously and in much irreparably, but it began to resume its trade
+and its normal life.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated a whole day when she heard this. Though Sabran did not
+hint at any desire of his own to leave the place, she knew it, was
+impossible to bid him remain longer, and that a moment of irrevocable
+decision was come. She hesitated all the day, slept little all the
+night, then sent him a brief telegram: 'Come to the Island.'</p>
+
+<p>Obey the summons as rapidly as he might, he could not travel by Vienna
+and Salzburg more quickly than in some thirty hours or more. The time
+passed to her in a curious confusion and anxiety. Outwardly she was
+calm enough; she visited the schools, wrote some letters, and took her
+usual long ride in the now leafless woods, but at heart she was unquiet
+and ill at ease, troubled more than by anything else at the force of
+the desire she felt to meet him once more. It was but a month since
+they had parted on the deck, and it seemed ten years. She had known
+what he had meant when he had said that he would come if she bade him;
+she had known that she would only do the sheerest cruelty and treachery
+if she called him thither only to dismiss him. It had not been a visit
+of the moment, but all his life that she had consented to take when she
+had written 'Come to the Island.'</p>
+
+<p>She would never have written it unless she had been prepared to fulfil
+all to which it tacitly pledged her. She was incapable of wantonly
+playing with any passion that moved another, least of all with his. The
+very difference of their position would have made indecision or coyness
+in her seem cruelty, humiliation. The decision hurt her curiously with
+a sense of abdication, mortification, and almost shame. To a very proud
+woman in whom the senses have never asserted their empire, there is
+inevitably an emotion of almost shame, of self-surrender, of loss of
+self-respect, in the first impulses of love. It made her abashed and
+humiliated to feel the excitation that the mere touch of his hand, the
+mere gaze of his eyes, had power to cause her. 'If this be love,' she
+thought, 'no wonder the world is lost for it.'</p>
+
+<p>Do what she would, the time seemed very long; the two evenings that
+passed were very tedious and oppressive. The Princess seemed to
+observe nothing of what she was perfectly conscious of, and her
+flute-like voice murmured on in an unending stream of commonplaces to
+which her niece replied much at random.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon of the third day she stood on the terrace looking down
+the lake and towards the Holy Isle, with an impatience of which she was
+in turn impatient. She was dressed in white woollen stuff with silver
+threads in it; she had about her throat an old necklace of the Golden
+Fleece, of golden shells enamelled, which had been a gift from Charles
+the Fifth to one of her house; over her shoulders, for the approach
+of evening was cold, she had thrown a cloak of black Russian sables.
+She made a figure beautiful, stately, patrician, in keeping with the
+background of the great donjon tower, and the pinnacled roofs, and the
+bronze warriors in their Gothic niches.</p>
+
+<p>When she had stood there a few minutes looking down the lake towards
+the willows of the monastery island, a boat came out from the willow
+thickets, and came over the mile-and-half of green shadowy water. There
+was only one person in it. She recognised him whilst he was still far
+off, and a smile came on her mouth that it was a pity he could not see.</p>
+
+<p>He was a bold man, but his heart stood still with awe of her, and his
+soul trembled within him at this supreme moment of his fate. For he
+believed that she would not have bidden him there unless her hand were
+ready to hold out destiny to him&mdash;the destiny of his maddest, of his
+sweetest, dreams.</p>
+
+<p>She came forward a few paces to meet him; her face was grave and pale,
+but her eyes had a soft suppressed light.</p>
+
+<p>'I have much for which to thank you,' she said, as she held out her
+hand to him. Her voice was tremulous though calm.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand, then stood silent. It seemed to him that there was
+nothing to say. She knew what he would have said if he had been king,
+or hero, or meet mate for her. His pulses were beating feverishly, his
+self-possession was gone, his eyes did not dare to meet hers. He felt
+as if the green woods, the shining waters, the rain-burdened skies were
+wheeling round him. That dumbness, that weakness, in a man so facile
+of eloquence, so hardy and even cynical in courage, touched her to a
+wondering pitifulness.</p>
+
+<p>'After all,' she thought once more, 'if we love one another what is it
+to anyone else? We are both free.'</p>
+
+<p>If the gift she would give would be so great that the world would blame
+him for accepting it, what would that matter so long as she knew him
+blameless?</p>
+
+<p>They were both mute: he did not even look at her, and she might have
+heard the beating of his heart. She looked at him and the colour came
+back into her face, the smile back upon her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>'My friend,' she said very gently,'did never you think that I also&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She paused: it was very hard to her to say what she must say, and he
+could not help her, dared not help her, to utter it.</p>
+
+<p>They stood thus another moment mute, with the sunset glow upon the
+shining water, and upon the feudal majesty of the great castle.</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked at him with a straight, clear, noble glance, and with
+the rich blood mounting in her face, stretched out her hand to him with
+a royal gesture.</p>
+
+<p>'They robbed you of your ivy leaf, my cruel Prussian cousins. Will
+you&mdash;take&mdash;this&mdash;instead?'</p>
+
+<p>Then Heaven itself opened to his eyes. He did not take her hand. He
+fell at her feet and kissed them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Is it wisest after all to be very unwise, dear mother mine?' she said a
+little later, with a smile that was tender and happy.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess looked up quickly, and so looking understood.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my beloved, is it indeed so? Yes, you are wise to listen to your
+heart; God speaks in it!'</p>
+
+<p>With tears in her eyes she stretched out her pretty hands in solemn
+benediction.</p>
+
+<p>'Be His Spirit for ever with you,' she said with great emotion. 'I
+shall be so content to know that I leave you not alone when our Father
+calls me, for I think your very greatness and dominion, my dear, but
+make you the more lonely, as sovereigns are, and it is not well to be
+alone, Wanda; it is well to have human love close about us.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is to lean on a reed, perhaps,'murmured Wanda, in that persistent
+misgiving which possessed her. 'And when the reed breaks, then though
+it has been so weak before, it becomes of iron, barbed and poisoned.'</p>
+
+<p>'What gloomy thoughts! And you have made me so happy, and surely you
+are happy yourself?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes. My reed is in full flower, but&mdash;but&mdash;yes, I am happy; I hope that
+Bela knows.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess kissed her once again.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! he loves you so well.'</p>
+
+<p>'That I am sure of; yet I might never have known it but for you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I did for the best.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will send him to you. I want to be alone a little. Dear mother, he
+cares for you as tenderly as though he were your son.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have been his friend always,' said the Princess, with a smile,
+whilst the tears still stood in her eyes. 'You cannot say so much,
+Wanda; you were very harsh.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know it. I will atone to him.'</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the Princess followed her tenderly.'</p>
+
+<p>'And she will make her atonement generously, grandly,' she thought.
+'She is a woman of few protestations, but of fine impulses and of
+unerring magnanimity. She will be incapable of reminding him that
+their kingdom is hers. I have done this thing; may Heaven be with it!
+If she had loved no one, life would have grown so pale, so chill, so
+monotonous to her; she would have tired of herself, having nothing
+but herself for contemplation. Solitude has been only grand to her
+hitherto because she has been young, but as the years rolled on she
+would have died without ever having lived; now she will live. She may
+have to bear pains, griefs, infidelities, calamities that she would
+have escaped; but even so, how much better the summer day, even with
+the summer storm, than the dull, grey, quiet, windless weather! Of
+course, if she could have found sanctuary in the Church&mdash;&mdash;But her
+faith is not absolute and unwavering enough for that; she has read too
+many philosophies; she requires, too, open-air and vigorous life; the
+cloister would have been to her a prison. She is one of those whose
+religion lies in activity; she will worship God through her children.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran entered as she mused, and knelt down before her.</p>
+
+<p>'You have been my good angel, always,' he murmured. 'How can I thank
+you? I think she would never have let her eyes rest on me but for you.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'My friend, you are one of those on whom the eyes of women willingly
+rest, perhaps too willingly. But you&mdash;you will have no eyes for any
+other now? You must deserve my faith in you. Is it not so?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, madame,' he answered with deep emotion, 'all words seem so trite
+and empty; any fool can make phrases, but when I say that my life
+shall be consecrated to her, I mean it, in the uttermost royalty, the
+uttermost gratitude.'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe you,' said the Princess, as she laid her hand lightly
+on his bent head. 'Perhaps no man can understand entirely all that
+she surrenders in admitting that she loves you; for a proud woman
+to confess so much of weakness is very hard: but I think you will
+comprehend her better than any other would. I think you will not force
+her to pass the door of disillusion; and remember that though she will
+leave you free as air&mdash;for she is not made of that poor stuff which
+would enslave what it loves&mdash;she would not soon forgive too great abuse
+of freedom. I mean if you were ever&mdash;ever unfaithful&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'For what do you take me?' he cried, with indignant passion. 'Is there
+another woman in the world who could sit beside her, and not be
+dwarfed, paled, killed, as a candle by the sun?'</p>
+
+<p>'You are only her betrothed,' said the Princess, with a little sigh.
+'Men see their wives with different eyes; so I have been told, at
+least. Familiarity is no courtier, and time is always cruel.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, time shall be our dearest friend,' said Sabran, with a tenderness
+in his voice that spoke more constancy than a thousand oaths. 'She will
+be beautiful when she is old, as you are; age will neither alarm nor
+steal from her; her bodily beauty is like her spiritual, it is cast
+in lines too pure and clear not to defy the years. Oh, mother mine!
+(let me call you that) fear nothing; I will love her so well that, all
+unworthy now, I will grow worthy her, and cause her no moment's pain
+that human love can spare her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Her people shall be your people, and her God your God,' murmured the
+Princess, with her hand still lying lightly on his head, obediently
+bent.</p>
+
+<p>When late that night he went across the lake the monks were at their
+midnight orisons; their voices murmured as one man's the Latin words of
+praise and prayer, and made a sound like that of a great sea rolling
+slowly on a lonely shore.</p>
+
+<p>He believed naught that they believed. Deity was but a phrase to him;
+faith and a future life were empty syllables to him. Yet, in the
+fulness of his joy and the humiliation of his spirit, he felt his heart
+swell, his pride sink subdued. He knelt down in the hush and twilight
+of that humble place of prayer, and for the first moment in many years
+he also praised God.</p>
+
+<p>No one heeded him; he knelt behind them in the gloom unnoticed; he rose
+refreshed as men in barren lands in drought are soothed by hearing the
+glad fall of welcome rain. He had no place there, and in another hour
+would have smiled at his own weakness; but now he remembered nothing
+except that he, utterly beyond his deserts, was blessed. As the monks
+rose to their feet and their loud chanting began to vibrate in the air,
+he went out unheard, as he had entered, and stood on the narrow strip
+of land that parted the chapel from the lake. The green waters were
+rolling freshly in under a strong wind, the shadows of coming night
+were stealing on; in the south-west a pale yellow moonlight stretched
+broadly in a light serene as dawn, and against it there rose squarely
+and darkly with its many turrets the great keep of Hohenszalras.</p>
+
+<p>He looked, but it was not of that great pile and all which it
+represented and symbolised that he thought now.</p>
+
+<p>It was of the woman he loved as a woman, not as a great possessor of
+wealth and lands.</p>
+
+<p>'Almost I wish that she were poor as the saints she resembles!' he
+thought, with a tender passion that for the hour was true. It seemed
+to him that had he seen her standing in her shift in the snow, like
+our Lady of Hungary, discrowned and homeless, he would have been glad.
+He was honest with the honesty of passion. It was not the mistress of
+Hohenszalras that he loved, but his own wife.</p>
+
+<p>Such a marriage could not do otherwise than arouse by its announcement
+the most angry amazement, the most indignant protests from all the
+mighty houses with which for so many centuries the house of Szalras
+had allied itself. In a few tranquil sentences she made known her
+intentions to those of her relations whom she felt bound thus to
+honour; but she gave them clearly to understand that it was a formula
+of respect not an act of consultation. When they received her letters
+they knew that her marriage was already quite as irrevocable as though
+it had already taken place in the Hof-Kapelle of Vienna.</p>
+
+<p>All her relatives and all her order were opposed to her betrothal;
+a cold sufferance was the uttermost which any of them extended to
+Sabran. A foreigner and poor, and, with a troubled and uncertain
+past behind him, he was bitterly unwelcome to the haughty Prussian,
+Austrian, and Hungarian nobilities to which she belonged; neither his
+ancient name nor his recent political brilliancy and military service
+could place him on an equality with them in their eyes. Her trustees,
+the Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe and the Cardinal Vàsàrhely, with her
+cousin Kaulnitz, hurried in person as swiftly as special trains could
+bring them to the Iselthal, but they were too late to avert the blow.</p>
+
+<p>'It is not a marriage for her,' said Kaulnitz, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>'Why not? It is a very old family,' said the Princess, with no less
+irritation.</p>
+
+<p>'But quite decayed, long ruined,' he returned. 'This man was himself
+born in exile.'</p>
+
+<p>'As they exile everybody twice in every ten years in France!</p>
+
+<p>'And there have been stories&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Of whom are there not stories? Calumny is the parasite of character;
+the stronger the character the closer to it clings the strangler.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never heard him accused of any strength, except of the wrist in
+<i>l'escrime!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know anything dishonourable of him? If you do you are bound to
+say it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dishonourable is a grave word. No, I cannot say that I do; the society
+he frequents is a guarantee against that; but his life has been
+indifferent, complicated, uncertain, not a life to be allied with that
+of such a woman as Wanda. My dear Princess, it has been a life <i>dans le
+milieu parisien</i>; what more would you have me say?'</p>
+
+<p>'Prince Archambaud's has been that. Yet three years since you earnestly
+pressed his suit on Wanda.'</p>
+
+<p>'Archambaud! He is one of the first alliances in Europe; he is of blood
+royal, and he has not been more vicious than other men.'</p>
+
+<p>'It would be better he should have been less so, since he lives so near
+'the fierce light that beats upon the throne;' an electric light which
+blackens while it illumines! My good Kaulnitz, you wander very far
+afield. If you know anything serious against M. de Sabran it is your
+duty to say it.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is a gambler.'</p>
+
+<p>'He has renounced gambling.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is a duellist.'</p>
+
+<p>'Society was of much better constitution when the duel was its habitual
+phlebotomy.'</p>
+
+<p>'He has been the lover of many women.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid that is nothing singular.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is hardly more than an adventurer.'</p>
+
+<p>'He counts his ancestry in unbroken succession from the clays of
+Dagobert.</p>
+
+<p>'He has nothing but a <i>pignon sur rue</i> in Paris, and a league or two of
+rocks and sand in Brittany; yet, though so poor, he made money enough
+by cards and speculation to be for three years the <i>amant en titre</i> of
+Cochonette.'</p>
+
+<p>Madame Ottilie rose with a little frown.</p>
+
+<p>'I think we will say no more, my dear Baron; the matter is, after all,
+not yours or mine to decide. Wanda will assuredly do as she likes.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you have so much influence with her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have none; no one has any: and I think you do not understand her in
+the least. It may cost her very much to avow to him that she loves him,
+but once having done that, it will cost her nothing at all to avow it
+to the world. She is much too proud a woman to care for the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is <i>gentilhomme de race</i>, I grant,' admitted with reluctance the
+Grand Duke of Lilienhöhe.</p>
+
+<p>'When has a noble of Brittany been otherwise?' asked the Princess
+Ottilie.</p>
+
+<p>'I know,' said the Prince; 'but you will admit that he occupies a
+difficult position&mdash;an invidious one.'</p>
+
+<p>'And he carries himself well through it. It is a difficult position
+which is the test of breeding,' said the Princess, triumphantly, 'and
+I deny entirely that it is what you call an invidious one. It is you
+who have the idea of the crowd when you lay so much stress on the mere
+absence of money.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is the idea of the crowd that dominates in this age.'</p>
+
+<p>'The more reason for us to resist it, if it be so.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you are in love with him yourself, my sister!'</p>
+
+<p>'I should be were I forty years younger.'</p>
+
+<p>The Countess Brancka alone wrote with any sort of sympathy and pleasure
+to congratulate them both.</p>
+
+<p>'I was sure that Parsifal would win soon or late,' she said. 'Only
+remember that he is a Parsifal <i>doublé</i> by a de Morny.'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than
+the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of
+the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied.
+De Morny!&mdash;a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The
+comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!</p>
+
+<p>She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or
+remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had
+so much of the '<i>éternel féminin</i>' in her that she was only the more
+resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and
+exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was
+natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All
+the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those
+who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances
+produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as
+Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again
+Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had
+no power of persuasion.</p>
+
+<p>The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more
+graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as
+might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were
+present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that
+he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The
+sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man,
+whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of
+many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had
+they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of
+this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of
+birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere
+difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or
+the inches of one's stature.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he
+is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always
+be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at
+large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'</p>
+
+<p>'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what
+matters the opinion of others?'</p>
+
+<p>'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt
+those motives?'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has
+been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him
+as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to
+him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the
+power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'</p>
+
+<p>As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was
+listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ
+within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of
+grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous
+years to come.</p>
+
+<p>When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:</p>
+
+<p>'I want you to promise me one thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'I promise you all things. What is this one?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those
+great fortunes which form the <i>acte d'accusation</i> of socialists against
+society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of
+Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It
+is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed
+by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious
+barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one
+of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!&mdash;Promise me that
+you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may
+enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'</p>
+
+<p>He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to
+speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still
+remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is
+too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against
+me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a
+few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too
+much!'</p>
+
+<p>He stooped and kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with
+passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that
+I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be
+right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away
+from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'</p>
+
+<p>A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her
+hands as he held them clasped in his.</p>
+
+<p>'We will drink that wafer together, and as long as we are together it
+will never be bitter, I think,' she said very softly.</p>
+
+<p>Her voice seemed to sink into his very soul, so much it said of faith,
+so much it aroused of remorse.</p>
+
+<p>Then the great joy which had entered his life, like a great dazzling
+flood of light suddenly let loose into a darkened chamber, so blinded
+consumed, and intoxicated him, that he forgot all else; all else save
+this one fact&mdash;she would be his, body and soul, night and day, in life
+and in death for ever; his children borne by her, his life spent with
+her, her whole existence surrendered to him.</p>
+
+<p>For some days after that she mused upon the possibility of rendering
+him entirely independent of herself, without insulting him by a direct
+offer of a share in her possessions. At last a solution occurred
+to her. The whole of the fiefs of Idrac constituted a considerable
+appanage apart; its title went with it. When it had come into the
+Szalras family by marriage, as far back as the fifteenth century, it
+had been a principality; it was still a seigneurie, and many curious
+feudal privileges and distinctions went with it.</p>
+
+<p>It was Idrac now that she determined to abandon to her lover.</p>
+
+<p>'He will be seigneur of Idrac,' she thought, 'and I shall be so glad
+for him to bear an Austrian name.'</p>
+
+<p>'She herself would always retain her own name, and would take no other.</p>
+
+<p>'We will go and revisit it together,' she thought, and though she
+was all alone' at that moment, a soft warmth came into her face, and
+a throb of emotion to her heart, as she remembered all that would lie
+in that one word 'together,' all the tender and intimate union of the
+years to come.</p>
+
+<p>Her trustees were furious, and sought the aid of the men of law to
+enable them to step in and arrest her in what they deemed a course
+of self-destruction, but the law could not give them so much power;
+she was her own mistress, and as sole inheritrix had received her
+possessions singularly untrammelled by restrictions. In vain Prince
+Lilienhöhe spent his severe and chilly anger, Kaulnitz his fine
+sarcasm and delicate insinuations, and the Cardinal his stately and
+authoritative wrath. She was not to be altered in her decision.</p>
+
+<p>Austrian law allowed her to give away an estate to her husband if she
+chose, and there was nothing in the private settlements of her property
+to prevent her availing herself of the law.</p>
+
+<p>Strenuous opposition was encountered by her to this project, by every
+one of her relatives, hardly excluding the Princess Ottilie; 'for,'
+said that sagacious recluse, 'your horses may show you, my dear, the
+dangers of a rein too loose.'</p>
+
+<p>'I want no rein at all,' said Wanda. 'You forget that, to my thinking,
+marriage should never be bondage; two people with independent wills,
+tastes, and habits should mutually concede a perfect independence of
+action to each other. When one must yield, it must be the woman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Those are very fine theories,' the Princess remarked with caution.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope we shall put them in practice,' said Wanda, with unruffled good
+humour. 'Dear mother, I am sure you can understand that I want him
+to feel he is wholly independent of me. To what I love best on earth
+shall I dole out a niggard largesse from my wealth? If I were capable
+of doing so he would grow in time to hate me, and his hatred would be
+justified.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never should have supposed you would become so romantic,' said the
+Princess.</p>
+
+<p>'It will make him independent of you,' objected Prince Lilienhöhe.</p>
+
+<p>'That is what, beyond all, I desire him to be,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>'It is an infatuation,' sighed Cardinal Vàsàrhely, out of her hearing,
+'when Egon would have brought to her a fortune as large as her own.'</p>
+
+<p>'You think water should always run to the sea,' said Princess Ottilie;
+'surely that is great waste sometimes?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you are as infatuated as she is,' murmured the Cardinal. 'You
+forget that had she not been inspired with this unhappy sentiment she
+would have most probably left Hohenszalras to the Church.'</p>
+
+<p>'She would have done nothing of the kind. Your Eminence mistakes,'
+answered Madame Ottilie, sharply. 'Hohenszalras and everything else,
+had she died unmarried, would have certainly gone to the Habsburgs.'</p>
+
+<p>That would have been better than to an adventurer.'</p>
+
+<p>'How can you call a Breton noble ah adventurer? It is one of the purest
+aristocracies of the world, if poor.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Ce que femme veut</i>,' sighed his Eminence, who knew how often even the
+Church had been worsted by women.</p>
+
+<p>The Countess von Szalras had her way, and although when the
+marriage-deeds were drawn up they all set aside completely any
+possibility of authority or of interference on the part of her husband,
+and maintained in the clearest and firmest manner her entire liberty of
+action and enjoyment of inalienable properties and powers, she had the
+deed of gift of Idrac locked up in her cabinet, and thought to herself,
+as the long dreary preamble and provisions of the law were read aloud
+to her, 'So will he be always his own master. What pleasure that your
+hawk stays by you if you chain him to your wrist? If he love you he
+will sail back uncalled from the longest flight. I think mine always
+will. If not&mdash;if not&mdash;well, he must go!'</p>
+
+<p>One morning she came to him with a great roll of yellow parchment
+emblazoned and with huge seals bearing heraldic arms and crowns. She
+spread it out before him as they stood alone in the Rittersaal. He
+looked scarcely at it, always at her. She wore a gown of old gold plush
+that gleamed and glowed as she moved, and she had a knot of yellow
+tea-roses at her breast, fastened in with a little dagger of sapphires.
+She had never looked more truly a great lady, more like a châtelaine of
+the Renaissance, as she spread out the great roll of parchment before
+him on one of the tables of the knights' hall.</p>
+
+<p>'Look!' she said to him. 'I had the lawyers bring this over for you
+to see. It is the deed by which Stephen, first Christian King of
+Hungary, confirmed to the Counts of Idrac in the year 1001 all their
+feudal rights to that town and district, as a fief. They had been
+lords there long before. Look at it; here, farther down you see is the
+reconfirmation of the charter under the Habsburg seal, when Hungary
+passed to them; but you do not attend, where are your eyes?'</p>
+
+<p>'On you! Carolus Duran must paint you again in that dead gold with
+those roses.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are only hothouse roses; who cares for them? I love no forced
+flowers either in nature or humanity. Come, study this old parchment.
+It must have some interest for you. It is what makes you lord of Idrac.'</p>
+
+<p>'What have I to do with Idrac? It is one of the many jewels of your
+coronet, to which I can add none!'</p>
+
+<p>But to please her he bent over the crabbed black letter and the antique
+blazonings of the great roll to which the great dead men had set their
+sign and seal. She watched him as he read it, then after a little time
+she put her hand with a caressing movement on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'My love, I can do just as I will with Idrac. The lawyers are agreed on
+that, and the Kaiser will confirm whatever I do. Now I want to give you
+Idrac, make you wholly lord of it; indeed, the thing is already done. I
+have signed all the documents needful, and, as I say, the Emperor will
+confirm any part of them that needs his assent. My Réné, you are a very
+proud man, but you will not be too proud to take Idrac and its title
+from your wife. But for that town who can say that our lives might not
+have been passed for ever apart? Why do you look so grave? The Kaiser
+and I both want you to be Austrian. When I transfer to you the fief of
+Idrac you are its Count for evermore.'</p>
+
+<p>He drew a quick deep breath as if he had been struck a blow, and stood
+gazing at her. He did not speak, his eyes darkened as with pain. For
+the moment she was afraid that she had wounded him. With exquisite
+softness of tone and touch she took his hand and said to him tenderly:</p>
+
+<p>'Why will you be so proud? After all, what are these things? Since
+we love one another, what is mine is yours; a formula more or less
+is no offence. It is my fancy that you should have the title and the
+fief. The people know you there, and your heroic courage will be for
+ever amongst their best traditions. Dear! once I read that it needs a
+greater soul to take generously than to give. Be great so, now, for my
+sake!'</p>
+
+<p>'Great!' he echoed the word hoarsely, and a smile of bitter irony
+passed for a moment over his features. But he controlled the passionate
+self-contempt that rose in him. He knew that whatever else he was,
+he was her lover, and her hero in her sight. If the magnitude and
+magnanimity of her gifts overwhelmed and oppressed him, he was recalled
+to self-control by the sense of her absolute faith in him. He pressed
+her hands against his heavily-beating heart.</p>
+
+<p>'All the greatness is with you, my beloved,' he said with effort.
+'Since you delight to honour me, I can but strive my utmost to deserve
+your honour. It is like your beautiful and lavish nature to be prodigal
+of gifts. But when you give yourself, what need is there for aught
+else?'</p>
+
+<p>'But Idrac is my caprice. You must gratify it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will take the title gladly at your hands then. The revenues&mdash;No.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must take it all, the town and the title, and all they bring,' she
+insisted. 'In truth, but for you there would possibly be no town at
+all. Nay, my dear, you must do me this little pleasure; it will become
+you so well that Countship of Idrac: it is as old a place as Vindobona
+itself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you not understand?' she added, with a flush on her face. 'I want
+you to feel that it is wholly yours; that if I die, or if you leave me,
+it remains yours still. Oh, I do not doubt you; not for one moment. But
+liberty is always good. And Idrac will make you an Austrian noble in
+your own right. If you persist in refusing it I will assign it to the
+Crown; you will pain me and mortify me.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is enough! Never wittingly in my life will I hurt you. But if you
+wish me to be lord of Idrac, invest me with the title, my Empress. I
+will take it and be proud of it; and as for the revenues&mdash;well, we will
+not quarrel for them. They shall go to make new dykes and new bastions
+for the town, or pile themselves one on another in waiting for your
+children.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled and her face grew warm as she turned aside and took up one
+of the great swords with jewelled hilts and damascened scabbards, which
+were ranged along the wall of the Rittersaal with other stands of arms.</p>
+
+<p>She drew the sword, and as he fell on his knee before her smote him
+lightly on the shoulder with its blade.</p>
+
+<p>'Rise, Graf von Idrac!' she said, stooping and touching his forehead
+with the bouquet that she wore at her breast. He loosened one of the
+roses and held it to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>'I swear my fealty now and for ever,' he said with emotion, and his
+face was paler and his tone was graver than the playfulness of the
+moment seemed to call for in him.</p>
+
+<p>'Would to Heaven I had had no other name than this one you give me,'
+he murmured as he rose. 'Oh, my love, my lady, my guardian angel!
+Forget that ever I lived before, forget all my life when I was unworthy
+you; let me live only from the day that will make me your vassal and
+your&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'That will make you my lord!' she said softly; then she stooped, and
+for the first time kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>What caused her the only pain that disturbed the tranquillity of these
+cloudless days was the refusal of her cousin Egon to be present at
+her marriage. He sent her, with some great jewels that had come from
+Persia, a few words of sad and wistful affection.</p>
+
+<p>'My presence,' he added in conclusion, 'is no more needed for your
+happiness than are these poor diamonds and pearls needed in your
+crowded jewel-cases. You will spare me a trial, which it could be of no
+benefit to you for me to suffer. I pray that the Marquis de Sabran may
+all his life be worthy of the immense trust and honour which you have
+seen fit to give to him. For myself, I have been very little always in
+your life. Henceforth I shall be nothing. But if ever you call on me
+for any service&mdash;which it is most unlikely you ever will do&mdash;I entreat
+you to remember that there is no one living who will more gladly or
+more humbly do your bidding at all cost than I, your cousin Egon.'</p>
+
+<p>The short letter brought tears to her eyes. She said nothing of it to
+Sabran. He had understood from Mdme. Ottilie that Prince Vàsàrhely had
+loved his cousin hopelessly for many years, and could not be expected
+to be present at her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>In a week from that time their nuptials were celebrated in the Court
+Chapel of the Hofburg at Vienna, with all the pomp and splendour that
+a brilliant and ceremonious Court could lend to the espousal of one of
+the greatest ladies of the old Duchy of Austria.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after the ceremony they left the capital for Hohenszalras.</p>
+
+<p>At the signing of the contract on the previous night, when he had taken
+up the pen he had grown very pale; he had hesitated a moment, and
+glanced around him on the magnificent crowd, headed by the Emperor and
+Empress, with a gleam of fear and of anxiety in his eyes, which Baron
+Kaulnitz, who was intently watching him, had alone perceived.</p>
+
+<p>'There is something. What is it?' had mused the astute German.</p>
+
+<p>It was too late to seek to know. Sabran had bent down over the
+parchment, and with a firm hand had signed his name and title.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>It was midsummer once more in the Iselthal, five years and a half after
+the celebration at the Imperial palace of those nuptials which had been
+so splendid that their magnificence had been noticeable even at that
+magnificent Court. The time had seemed to her like one long, happy,
+cloudless day, and if to him there had come any fatigue, any satiety,
+any unrest, such as almost always come to the man in the fruition of
+his passion, he suffered her to see none of them.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those rare marriages in which no gall of a chain is felt,
+but a quick and perfect sympathy insures that harmony which passion
+alone is insufficient to sustain. He devoted himself with ardour to the
+care of the immense properties that belonged to his wife; he brought
+to their administration a judgment and a precision that none had looked
+for in a man of pleasure; he entered cordially into all her schemes for
+the well-being of her people dependent on her, and carried them out
+with skill and firmness. The revenues of Idrac he never touched; he
+left them to accumulate for his younger son, or expended them on the
+township itself, where he was adored.</p>
+
+<p>If he were still the same man who had been the lover of Cochonette,
+the terror of Monte Carlo, the hero of night-long baccara and frontier
+duels, he had at least so banished the old Adam that it appeared wholly
+dead. Nor was the death of it feigned. He had flung away the slough
+of his old life with a firm hand, and the peace, the dignity of his
+present existence were very precious to him. He was glad to steep
+himself in them, as a tired and fevered wayfarer was glad to bathe his
+dusty and heated limbs in the cool, clear waters of the Szalrassee. And
+he loved his wife with a great love, in which reverence, and gratitude,
+and passion were all blent. Possession had not dulled, nor familiarity
+blunted it. She was still to him a sovereign, a saint, a half divine
+creature, who had stooped to become mortal for his sake, and his
+children's.</p>
+
+<p>The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls
+and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the
+Szalrassee.</p>
+
+<p>'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath
+the great yews beside the keep.</p>
+
+<p>'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but
+watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as
+ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty
+amphitheatre.</p>
+
+<p>She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of
+whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy
+with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The
+other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months
+of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were
+all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.</p>
+
+<p>'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the
+world called so proud.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near
+her wicker chair.</p>
+
+<p>'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it,
+at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you
+it will be he who will be dearest to me.'</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that
+we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all
+the world who have passed five years and more together without once
+disagreeing?'</p>
+
+<p>'In all the world there is not another Countess Wanda!'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! that is your only defect; you will always avoid argument by
+escaping through the side-door of compliment. It is true, to be sure,
+that your flattery is a very high and subtle art.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is like all high art then, based on what is eternally true.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will always have the last word, and it is always so graceful a
+one that it is impossible to quarrel with it. But, Réné, I want you
+to speak without compliment to me for once. Tell me, are you indeed
+never&mdash;never&mdash;a little weary of being here?'</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment and a slight flush came on his face.</p>
+
+<p>She observed both signs, slight as they were, and sighed; it was the
+first sigh she had ever breathed since her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course you are, of course you must be,' she said quickly. 'It has
+been selfish and blameable of me never to think of it before. It is
+paradise to me, but no doubt to you, used as you have been to the stir
+of the world, there, must be some tedium, some dulness in this mountain
+isolation. I ought to have remembered that before.'</p>
+
+<p>'You need do nothing of the kind, now,' he said. 'Who has been talking
+to you? Who has brought this little snake into our Eden?'</p>
+
+<p>'No one; and it is not a snake at all, but a natural reflection.
+Hohenszalras and you are the world to me, but I cannot expect that
+Hohenszalras and I can be quite as much to yourself. It is always the
+difference between the woman and the man. You have great talents; you
+are ambitious.'</p>
+
+<p>'Were I as ambitious as Alexander, surely I have gained wherewithal to
+be content!'</p>
+
+<p>'That is only compliment again, or if truth it is only a side of the
+truth. Nay, love, I do not think for a moment you are tired of me;
+I am too self-satisfied for that! But I think it is possible that
+this solitude may have grown, or may grow, wearisome to you; that you
+desire, perhaps without knowing it, to be more amidst the strife,
+the movement, and the pleasures of men. Aunt Ottilie calls this
+"confinement to a fortress;" now that is a mere pleasantry, but if ever
+you should feel tempted to feel what she feels, have confidence enough
+in my good sense and in my affection to say so to me, and then&mdash;&mdash;.'</p>
+
+<p>'And then? We will suppose I have this ingratitude and bad taste, what
+then?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why then, my own wishes should not stand for one instant in the way
+of yours, or rather I would make yours mine. And do not use the word
+ingratitude, my dearest; there can be no question of that betwixt you
+and me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' said Sabran, as he stooped towards her and touched her hair
+with his lips. 'When you gave me yourself, you made me your debtor
+for all time; would have made me so had you been as poor as you are
+rich. When I speak of gratitude it is of <i>that</i> gift, I think, not of
+Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>A warmth of pleasure flushed her cheek for a moment, and she smiled
+happily.</p>
+
+<p>'You shall not beg the question so,' she said, with gentle insistence
+after a moment's pause. 'I have not forgotten your eloquence in the
+French Chamber.' You are that rare thing a born orator. You are
+not perhaps fitted to be a statesman, for I doubt if you would have
+the application or bear the tedium necessary, but you have every
+qualification for a diplomatist, a foreign minister.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not the first qualification, I have no country!'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, in surprise&mdash;he spoke with bitterness and
+self-contempt; but in a moment he had added quickly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'France is nothing to me now, and though I am Austrian by all ties and
+affections, I am not an Austrian before the law.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is hardly true,' she answered, satisfied with the explanation.
+'Since France is little to you you could be naturalised here whenever
+you chose, even if Idrac have not made you a Croat noble, as I believe
+the lawyers would say it had; and the Emperor, who knows and admires
+you, would, I think, at once give you gladly any mission you preferred;
+you would make so graceful, so perfect, so envied an ambassador!
+Diplomacy has indeed little force now, yet tact still tells wherever
+it be found, and it is as rare as blue roses in the unweeded garden of
+the world. I do not speak for myself, dear; that you know. Hohenszalras
+is my beloved home, and it was enough for me before I knew you, and
+nowhere else could life ever seem to me so true, so high, so simple,
+and so near to God as here. But I do remember that men weary even of
+happiness when it is unwitnessed, and require the press and stir of
+emulation and excitation; and, if you feel that want, say so. Have
+confidence enough in me to believe that your welfare will be ever my
+highest law. Promise me this.'</p>
+
+<p>He changed colour slightly at her generous and trustful words, but he
+answered without a moment's pause:</p>
+
+<p>'Whenever I am so thankless to fate I will confess it. No; the world
+and I never valued one another much. I am far better here in the heart
+of your mountains. Here only have I known peace and rest.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with a certain effort and emotion, and he stooped over his
+little son and raised him on her knees.</p>
+
+<p>'These children shall grow up at Hohenszalras,' he continued, 'and you
+shall teach them your love of the open air, the mountain solitudes, the
+simple people, the forest creatures, the influences and the ways of
+nature. You care for all those things, and they make up true wisdom,
+true contentment. As for myself, if you always love me I shall ask no
+more of fate.'</p>
+
+<p>'If! Can you be afraid?'</p>
+
+<p>'Sometimes. One always fears to lose what one has never merited.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, my love, do not be so humble! If you saw yourself as I see you,
+you would be very proud.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled as she spoke, and stretched her hand out to him over the
+golden head of her child.</p>
+
+<p>He took it and held it against his heart, clasped in both his own.
+Bela, impatient, slipped off his mother's lap to pursue his capture of
+the daisies; the butterflies were forbidden joys, and he was obedient,
+though in his own little way he was proud and imperious. But there
+was a blue butterfly just in front of him, a Lycœna Adonis, like a
+little bit of the sky come down and dancing about; he could not resist,
+he darted at it. As he was about to seize it she caught his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>'I have told you, Bela, you are never to touch anything that flies or
+moves. You are cruel.'</p>
+
+<p>He tried to get away, and his face grew very warm and passionate.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will be cruel, if he like,' he said, knitting his pretty brows.</p>
+
+<p>Though he was not more than four years old he knew very well that he
+was the Count Bela, to whom all the people gave homage, crowding to
+kiss his tiny hand after Mass on holy-days. He was a very beautiful
+child, and all the prettier for his air of pride and resolution; he had
+been early put on a little mountain pony, and could ride fearlessly
+down the forest glades with Otto. All the imperiousness of the great
+race which had dealt out life and death so many centuries at their
+caprice through the Hohe Tauern seemed to have been inherited by him,
+coupled with a waywardness and a vanity that were not traits of the
+house of Szalras. It was impossible, even though those immediately
+about him were wise and prudent, to wholly prevent the effects of the
+adulation with which the whole household was eager to wait on every
+whim of the little heir.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his
+desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that
+to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it
+his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition,
+and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very
+affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.</p>
+
+<p>With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he
+said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'</p>
+
+<p>Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very
+frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been
+four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his
+father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his
+nurse, who came for him.</p>
+
+<p>'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him
+more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give
+you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'</p>
+
+<p>It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil
+qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son,
+and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was
+unworthy to beget <i>her</i> children,' he thought, with the self-reproach
+that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his
+satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what
+trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years
+to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his
+blood?</p>
+
+<p>'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to
+see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It
+hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own
+little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill;
+do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is
+your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud
+of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows
+older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to
+enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy
+that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry
+passions, of my degraded humanity?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think
+me.'</p>
+
+<p>'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'</p>
+
+<p>'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a <i>beau défaut</i>,
+and I would not have you lose it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and
+passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him surprised, and vaguely troubled at the self-reproach
+and the self-scorn of his passionate utterance. Seeing that surprise
+and trouble in her glance, he controlled the emotion that for the
+moment mastered him.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, love!' he said quickly and truly, 'if you could but guess how
+gross and base a man's life seems to him contrasted with the life of
+a pure and noble woman! Being born of you, those children, I think,
+should be as faultless and as soilless as those pearls that lie on your
+breast. But then they are mine also; so already on that boy's face one
+sees the sins of revolt, of self-will, of cruelty&mdash;being mine also,
+your living pearls are dulled and stained!'</p>
+
+<p>A greater remorse than she dreamed of made his heart ache as he said
+these words; but she heard in them only the utterance of that extreme
+and unwavering devotion to her which he had shown in all his acts and
+thoughts from the first hours of their union.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Princess Ottilie was scarcely less happy than they in the
+realisation of her dreams and prophecies. Those who had been most
+bitterly opposed to her alliance with him could find no fault in his
+actions and his affections.</p>
+
+<p>'I always said that Wanda ought to marry, since she had plainly no
+vocation for the cloister,' she said a hundred times a year. 'And I was
+certain that M. de Sabran was the person above all others to attract
+and to content her. She has much more imagination than she would be
+willing to allow and he is capable at once of fascinating her fancy
+and of satisfying her intellect. No one can be dull where he is; he is
+one of those who make <i>la pluie et le beau temps</i> by his absence or
+presence; and, besides that, no commonplace affection would have ever
+been enough for her. And he loves her like a poet, which he is at once
+whenever he leaves the world for Beethoven and Bach. I cannot imagine
+why you should have opposed the marriage, merely because he had not two
+millions in the Bank of France.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not for that,' answered the Grand Duke; 'rather because he broke the
+bank of Monte Carlo, and other similar reasons. A great player of
+baccara is scarcely the person to endow with the wealth of the Szalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'The wealth is tied up tightly enough at the least, and you will admit
+that he was yet more eager than you that it should be so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes! he behaved very well. I never denied it. But she has placed
+it in his power to make away with the whole of Idrac, if he should ever
+choose. That was very unwise, but we had no power to oppose.'</p>
+
+<p>'You may be quite sure that Idrac will go intact to the second son, as
+it has always done; and I believe but for his own exertions Idrac would
+now be beneath the Danube waters. Perhaps you never heard all that
+story of the flood?'</p>
+
+<p>'I only hope that if I have detractors you will defend me from them,'
+said Prince Lilienhöhe, giving up argument.</p>
+
+<p>Fair weather is always especially fair in the eyes of those who have
+foretold at sunset that the morrow would be fine; and so the married
+life of Wanda von Szalras was especially delightful as an object of
+contemplation, as a theme of exultation, to the Princess, who alone had
+been clear-sighted enough to foresee the future. She really also loved
+Sabran like a son, and took pride and pleasure in the filial tenderness
+he showed her, and in his children, with the beautiful blue eyes that
+had gleams of light in them like sapphires. The children themselves
+adored her; and even the bold and wilful Bela was as quiet as a
+startled fawn beside this lovely little lady, with her snow-white hair
+and her delicate smile, whose cascades of lace always concealed such
+wonderful bon-bon boxes, and gilded cosaques, and illuminated stories
+of the saints.</p>
+
+<p>Almost all their time was spent at Hohenszalras. A few winter months
+in Vienna was all they had ever passed away from it, except one visit
+to Idrac and the Hungarian estates. The children never left it for
+a day. He shared her affection for the place, and for the hardy and
+frank mountain people around them. He seemed to her to entirely forget
+Romaris, and beyond the transmission of moneys to its priest, he
+took no heed of it. She hesitated to recall it to him, since to do
+so might have seemed to remind him that it was she, not he, who was
+suzerain in the Hohe Tauern. Romaris was but a bleak rock, a strip of
+sea-swept sand; it was natural that it should have no great hold on his
+affections, only recalling as it did all that its lords had lost.</p>
+
+<p>'I hate its name,' he said impetuously once; and seeing the surprise
+upon her face, he added: 'I was very lonely and wretched there; I
+tried to take interest in it because you bade me, but I failed; all
+I saw, all I thought of, was yourself, and I believed you as far and
+for ever removed from me as though you had dwelt in some other planet.
+No! perhaps I am superstitious: I do not wish you to go to Romaris. I
+believe it would bring us misfortune. The sea is full of treachery, the
+sands are full of graves.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'Superstition is a sort of parody of faith; I am sure you are not
+superstitious. I do not care to go to Romaris; I like to cheat myself
+into the belief that you were born and bred in the Iselthal. Otto said
+to me the other day, "My lord must be a son of the soil, or how could
+he know our mountains so well as he does, and how could he anywhere
+have learned to shoot like that?"'</p>
+
+<p>'I am very glad that Otto does me so much honour. When he first met
+me, he would have shot me like a fox, if you had given the word. Ah, my
+love! how often I think of you that day, in your white serge, with your
+girdle of gold, and your long gold-headed staff, and your little ivory
+horn. You were truly a châtelaine of the old mystical German days.
+You had some <i>Schlüsselblumen</i> in your hand. They were indeed the key
+flower to my soul, though, alas! treasures, I fear, you found none on
+your entrance there.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not answer you, since to answer would be to flatter you, and
+Aunt Ottilie already, does that more than is good for you,' she said
+smiling, as she passed her fingers over the waves of his hair. 'By the
+way, whom shall we invite to meet the Lilienhöhe? Will you make out a
+list?'</p>
+
+<p>'The Grand Duke does not share Frau Ottilie's goodness for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'What would you? He has been made of buckram and parchment; besides
+which; nothing that is not German has, to his mind, any right to exist.
+By the way, Egon wrote to me this morning; he will be here at last.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked up quickly in unspoken alarm: 'Your cousin Egon? Here?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why are you so surprised? I was sure that sooner or later he would
+conquer that feeling of being unable to meet you. I begged him to come
+now; it is eight whole years since I have seen him. When once you have
+met you will be friends&mdash;for my sake.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent; a look of trouble and alarm was still upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>'Why should you suppose it any easier to him now than then?' he said at
+length. 'Men who love <i>you</i> do not change. There are women who compel
+constancy, <i>sans le vouloir</i>. The meeting can but be painful to Prince
+Vàsàrhely.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Réné,' she answered in some surprise, 'my nearest male relative
+and I cannot go on for ever without seeing each other. Even these years
+have done Egon a great deal of harm. He has been absent from the Court
+for fear of meeting us. He has lived with his hussars, or voluntarily
+confined to his estates, until he grows morose and solitary. I am
+deeply attached to him. I do not wish to have the remorse upon me of
+having caused the ruin of his gallant and brilliant life. When he
+has been once here he will like you: men who are brave have always
+a certain sympathy. When he has seen you here he will realise that
+destiny is unchangeable, and grow reconciled to the knowledge that I am
+your wife.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran gave an impatient gesture of denial, and began to write the list
+of invitations for the autumn circle of guests who were to meet the
+Prince and Princess of Lilienhöhe.</p>
+
+<p>Once every summer and every autumn Hohenszalras was filled with a
+brilliant house-party, for she sacrificed her own personal preferences
+to what she believed to be for the good of her husband. She knew that
+men cannot always live alone; that contact with the world is needful to
+their minds and bracing for it. She had a great dread lest the ghost
+<i>ennui</i> should show his pale face over her husband's shoulder, for
+she realised that from the life of the asphalte of the Champs-Élysées
+to the life amidst the pine forests of the Iselthal was an abrupt
+transition that might easily bring tedium in its train. And tedium is
+the most terrible and the most powerful foe love ever encounters.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran completed the list, and when he had corrected it into due
+accordance with all Lilienhöhe's personal and political sympathies and
+antipathies, despatched the invitations, 'for eight days,' written on
+cards that bore the joint arms of the Counts of Idrac and the Counts of
+Szalras. He had adopted the armorial bearings of the countship of Idrac
+as his own, and seemed disposed to abandon altogether those of the
+Sabrans of Romaris.</p>
+
+<p>When they were written he went out by himself and rode long and fast
+through the mists of a chilly afternoon, through dripping forest ways
+and over roads where little water-courses spread in shining shallows.
+The coming of Egon Vàsàrhely troubled him and alarmed him. He had
+always dreaded his first meeting with the Magyar noble; and as the
+years had dropped by one after another, and her cousin had failed
+to find courage to see her again, he had begun to believe that they
+and Vàsàrhely would remain always strangers. His wish had begotten
+his thought. He knew that she wrote at intervals to her cousin, and
+he to her; he knew that at the birth of each of their children some
+magnificent gift, with a formal letter of felicitation, had come from
+the Colonel of the White Hussars; but as time had gone on and Prince
+Egon had avoided all possibility of meeting them, he had grown to
+suppose that the wound given her rejected lover was too profound ever
+to close; nor did he wonder that it was so: it seemed to him that any
+man who loved her must do so for all eternity, if eternity there should
+be. To learn suddenly that within another month Vàsàrhely would be his
+guest, distressed and alarmed him in a manner she never dreamed. They
+had been so happy. On their cloud less heaven there seemed to him to
+rise a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but bearing with it disaster
+and a moonless night.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps he will have forgotten,' he thought, as he strove to shake off
+his forebodings. 'We were so young then. He was not even as old as I!'</p>
+
+<p>And he rode fast and furiously homewards as the day drew in, and the
+lighted windows of the great castle seemed to smile at him as lie saw
+it high up above the darkness of the woods and of the evening mists,
+his home, beloved, sacred, infinitely dear to him; dear as the soil of
+the mother country which the wrecked mariner reaches after facing death
+on the deep sea.</p>
+
+<p>'God save her from suffering by me!' he said, in an unconscious prayer,
+as he drew rein before the terrace of Hohenszalras. Almost he believed
+in God through her.</p>
+
+<p>When, after dressing, he went into, the Saxe room, the peace and
+beauty of the scene had never struck him so strongly as it did now,
+coming out of the shadows of the wet woods and the gloom of his own
+anxieties; anxieties the heavier and the more wearing because they
+could be shared by no one. The soft, full light of the wax candles fell
+on the Louis Seize embroideries and the white woodwork of the panelling
+and the china borders of the mirrors. The Princess Ottilie sat making
+silk-netting for the children's balls; his wife was reading, and Bela
+and Gela, who were there for their privileged half-hour before dinner,
+were fitting together on a white bearskin, playing with the coloured
+balls of the game of solitaire. The soft light from the chandeliers
+and sconces of the Saxe Royale china fell on the golden heads and the
+velvet frocks of the children, on the old laces and the tawny-coloured
+plush of their mothers skirts, on the great masses of flowers in the
+Saxe bowls, and on the sleeping forms of the big dogs Donau and Neva.
+It was an interior that would have charmed Chardin, that would have
+been worthy of Vandyck.</p>
+
+<p>As he looked at it he thought with a sort of ecstasy, 'All that is
+mine;' and then his heartstrings tightened as he thought again, 'If she
+knew&mdash;&mdash;?'</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at his entrance with a welcome on her face that needed no
+words.</p>
+
+<p>'Where have you been in the rain all this long afternoon?' You see we
+have a fire, even though it is midsummer. Bela, rise, and make your
+obeisance, and push that chair nearer the hearth.'</p>
+
+<p>The two little boys stood up and kissed his hand, one after another,
+with the pretty formality; of greeting on which she always insisted;
+then they went back to their coloured glass balls, and he sank into a
+low chair beside his wife with a sigh half of fatigue, half of content.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have been riding all the time,' he said to her. 'I am not sure
+that Siegfried approved it. But it does one good sometimes, and after
+the blackness and the wetness of that forest how charming it is to come
+home!'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with wistfulness.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish you were not vexed that Egon is coming! I am sure you have been
+thinking of it as you rode.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have; but I am ashamed of doing so. He is your cousin, that
+shall be enough for me. I will do my best to make him welcome. Only
+there is this difficulty; a welcome from me to him will seem in itself
+an insult.'</p>
+
+<p>'An insult! when you are my husband? One would think you were my
+<i>jägermeister.</i> Dear mother mine, help me to scold him.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am a stranger,' he said, under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled a little, but she said with a certain hauteur:</p>
+
+<p>'You are master of Hohenszalras, as your son will be when our places
+shall know us no more. Do not let the phantom of Egon come between us,
+I beseech you. His real presence never will do so, that is certain.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing shall come between us,' said Sabran, as his hand took and
+closed upon hers. 'Forgive me if I have brought some gloomy <i>nix</i> out
+of the dark woods with me; he will flee away in, the light of this
+beloved white-room. No evil spirits could dare stay by your hearth.'</p>
+
+<p>'There are <i>nixes</i> in the forests,' said Bela in a whisper to his
+brother.</p>
+
+<p>'Ja!' said Gela, not comprehending.</p>
+
+<p>'We will kill them all when we are big,' said Bela.</p>
+
+<p>'Ja! ja!' said Gela.</p>
+
+<p>Bela knew very well what a <i>nix</i> was. Otto had told him all about
+kobolds and sprites, as his pony trotted down the drives.</p>
+
+<p>'Or we will take them prisoners,' he added, remembering that his mother
+never allowed anything to be killed, not even butterflies.</p>
+
+<p>'Ja!' said Gela again, rolling the pretty blue and pink and amber balls
+about in the white fur of the bearskin.</p>
+
+<p>Gela's views of life were simplified by the disciple's law of
+imitation; they were restricted to doing whatever Bela did, when that
+was possible, when it was not possible he remained still adoring Bela,
+with his little serious face as calm as a god's.</p>
+
+<p>She used to think that when they should grow up Bela would be a great
+soldier like Wallenstein or Condé, and Gela would stay at home and
+take care of his people here in the green, lone, happy Iselthal.</p>
+
+<p>Time ran on and the later summer made the blooming hay grow brown on
+all the alpine meadows, and made the garden of Hohenszalras blossom
+with a million autumnal glories; it brought also the season of the
+first house-party. Egon Vàsàrhely was to arrive one day before the
+Lilienhöhe and the other guests.</p>
+
+<p>'I want Egon so much to see Bela!' she said, with the thoughtless
+cruelty of a happy mother forgetful of the pain of a rejected lover.</p>
+
+<p>'I fear Bela will find little favor in your cousin's eyes, since he is
+mine too,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Egon is content to be only our cousin by this&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'You think so? You do not know yourself if you imagine that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Egon is very loyal. He would not come here if he could not greet you
+honestly.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran's face flushed a little, and he turned away. He vaguely dreaded
+the advent of Egon Vàsàrhely, and there were so many innocent words
+uttered in the carelessness of intimate intercourse which stabbed him
+to the quick; she had so wounded him all unconscious of her act.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we have a game of billiards?' he asked her as they stood in the
+Rittersaal, whilst the rain fell fast without. She played billiards
+well, and could hold her own against him, though his game was one that
+had often been watched by a crowded <i>galerie</i> in Paris with eager
+speculation and heavy wager. An hour afterwards they were still playing
+when the clang of a great bell announced the approach of the carriage
+which had been sent to Windisch-Matrey.</p>
+
+<p>'Come!' she said joyously, as she put back her cue in its rest; but
+Sabran drew back.</p>
+
+<p>'Receive your cousin first alone,' he said. 'He must resent my presence
+here. I will not force it on him on the threshold of your house.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of our house! Why will you use wrong pronouns? Believe me, dear, Egon
+is too generous to bear you the animosity you think.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then he never loved you,' said Sabran, somewhat impatiently, as he
+sent one ball against another with a sharp collision. 'I will come if
+you wish it,' he added; 'but I think it is not in the best taste to so
+assert myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Egon is only my cousin and your guest. You are the master of
+Hohenszalras. Come! you were not so difficult when you received the
+Emperor.'</p>
+
+<p>'I had done the Emperor no wrong,' said Sabran, controlling the
+impatience and the reluctance he still felt.</p>
+
+<p>'You have done Egon none. I should not have been his wife had I never
+been yours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who knows?' murmured Sabran, as he followed her into the entrance
+hall. The stately figure of Egon Vàsàrhely enveloped in furs was just
+passing through the arched doorway.</p>
+
+<p>She went towards him with a glad welcome and both hands outstretched.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Egon bowed to the ground: then took both her hands in his and
+kissed her on the cheek.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran, who grew very pale, advanced and greeted him with ceremonious
+grace.</p>
+
+<p>'My wife has bade me welcome you, Prince, but it would be presumptuous
+in me, a stranger, to do that. All her kindred must be dear and sacred
+here.'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely, with an effort to which he had for years been vainly
+schooling himself, stretched out his hand to take her husband's; but
+as he did so, and his glance for the first time dwelt on Sabran, a
+look surprised and indefinitely perplexed came on his own features.
+Unconsciously he hesitated a moment; then, controlling himself, he
+replied with a few fitting words of courtesy and friendship. That
+there should be some embarrassment, some constraint, was almost
+inevitable, and did not surprise her: she saw both, but she also saw
+that both were hidden under the serenity of high breeding and worldly
+habit. The most difficult moment had passed: they went together into
+the Rittersaal, talked together a little on a few indifferent topics,
+and in a little space Prince Egon withdrew to his own apartments to
+change his travelling clothes. Sabran left him on the threshold of his
+chamber.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely locked the doors, locking out even his servant, threw off
+his furs and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. The meeting had
+cost him even more than he had feared that it would do. For five years
+he had dreaded this moment, and its pain was as sharp and as fresh to
+him as though it had been unforeseen. To sleep under the same roof
+with the husband of Wanda von Szalras! He had overrated his power of
+self-control, underrated his power of suffering, when to please her he
+had consented after five years to visit Hohenszalras. What were five
+years?&mdash;half a century would not have changed him.</p>
+
+<p>Under the plea of fatigue, he, who had sat in his saddle eighteen hours
+at a stretch, and was braced to every form of endurance in the forest
+chase and in the tented field, sent excuses to his host for remaining
+in his own rooms until the Ave Maria rung. When he at length went
+down to the blue-room where she was, he had recovered, outwardly at
+least, his tranquillity and his self-possession, though here, in this
+familiar, once beloved chamber, where every object had been dear to him
+from his boyhood, a keener trial than any he had passed through awaited
+him, as she led forward to meet him a little boy clad in white velvet,
+with a cloud of light golden hair above deep blue luminous eyes, and
+said to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Egon, this is my Bela. You will love him a little, for my sake?'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely felt a chill run through him like the cold of death as he
+stooped towards the child; but he smiled and touched the boy's forehead
+with his lips.</p>
+
+<p>'May the spirit of our lost Bela be with him and dwell in his heart,'
+he murmured; 'better I cannot wish him.'</p>
+
+<p>With an effort he turned to Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'Your little son is a noble child; you may with reason be proud of him.
+He is very like you in feature. I see no trace of the Szalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'The other boy is more like Wanda,' replied Sabran, sensible of a
+certain tenacity of observation with which Vàsàrhely was gazing at
+him. 'As for my daughter, she is too young for anyone to say whom she
+will resemble. All I desire is that she should be like her mother,
+physically and spiritually.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course,' said the Prince, absently, still looking from Sabran to
+the child, as if in the endeavour to follow some remembrance that
+eluded-him. The little face of Bela was a miniature of his father's,
+they were as alike as it is possible for a child and a man to be so,
+and Egon Vàsàrhely perplexedly mused and wondered at vague memories
+which rose up to him as he gazed on each.</p>
+
+<p>'And what do you like best to do, my little one?' he asked of Bela, who
+was regarding him with curious and hostile eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'To ride,' answered Bela at once, in his pretty uncertain German.</p>
+
+<p>'There you are a true Szalras at least. And your brother Gela, can he
+ride yet? Where is Gela, by the way?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is asleep,' said Bela, with some contempt. 'He is a little thing.
+Yes; he rides, but it is in a chair-saddle. It is not real riding.'</p>
+
+<p>'I see. Well, when you come and see me you shall have some real riding,
+on wild horses if you like;' and he told the child stories of the great
+Magyar steppes, and the herds of young horses, and the infinite delight
+of the unending gallop over the wide hushed plain; and all the while
+his heart ached bitterly, and the sight of the child&mdash;who was her
+child, yet had that stranger's face&mdash;was to him like a jagged steel
+being turned and twisted inside a bleeding wound. Bela, however, was
+captivated by the new visions that rose before him.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will come to Hungary,' he said with condescension, and then with
+an added thought, continued: 'I think Bela has great lands there. Otto
+said so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela has nothing at all,' said Sabran, sternly. 'Bela talks great
+nonsense sometimes, and it would be better he should go to sleep with
+his brother.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela looked up shyly under his golden cloud of hair. 'Folko is Bela's,'
+he said under his breath. Folko was his pony.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' said Sabran; 'Folko belongs to your mother. She only allows you
+to have him so long as you are good to him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is always good to him,' he said decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is faultless in his own estimation,' said his mother, with a
+smile. 'He is too little to be wise enough to see himself as he is.'</p>
+
+<p>This view made Bela's blue eyes open very wide and fill very
+sorrowfully. It was humiliating. He longed to get back to Gela, who
+always listened to him dutifully, and never said anything in answer
+except an entirely acquiescent 'Ja! ja!' which was indeed about the
+limitation of Gela's lingual powers. In a few moments, indeed, his
+governess came for him and took him away, a little dainty figure in his
+ivory velvet and his blue silk stockings, with his long golden curls
+hanging to his waist.</p>
+
+<p>'It is so difficult to keep him from being spoilt,' she said, as the
+door closed on him. 'The people make a little prince, a little god, of
+him. He believes himself to be something wonderful. Gela, who is so
+gentle and quiet, is left quite in the shade.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose Gela takes your title?' said Vàsàrhely to his host. 'It
+is usual with the Austrian families for the second son to have some
+distant appellation?'</p>
+
+<p>'They are babies,' said Sabran, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'It will be time enough to settle those matters when they are old
+enough to be court-pages or cadets. They are Bela and Gela at present.
+The only real republic is childhood.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid Bela is the <i>tyrannus</i> to which all republics succumb,'
+said Wanda, with a smile. He is extremely autocratic in his notions,
+and in his family. In all his "make believe" games he is crowned.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is a beautiful child,' said her cousin, and she answered, still
+smiling:</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes: he is so like Réné!'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely turned his face from her. The dinner was somewhat dull,
+and the evening seemed tedious, despite the efforts of Sabran to
+promote conversation, and the <i>écarté</i> which he and his guest played
+together. They, were all sensible that some chord was out of tune, and
+glad that on the morrow a large house-party would be there to spare
+them a continuation of this difficult intercourse.</p>
+
+<p>'Your cousin will never forgive me,' said Sabran to her when they were
+alone. 'I think, beside his feeling that I stand for ever between you
+and him there is an impatience of me as a stranger and one unworthy
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'You do yourself and him injustice,' she answered. 'I shall be unhappy
+if you and he be not friends.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then unhappy you will be, my beloved. We both adore you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not say that. He would not be here if it were so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! look at him when he looks at Bela!'</p>
+
+<p>She sighed; she had felt a strong emotion on the sight of her cousin,
+for Egon Vàsàrhely was much changed by these years of pain. His grand
+carriage and his martial beauty were unaltered, but all the fire and
+the light of earlier years were gone out of his face, and a certain
+gloom and austerity had come there. To all other women he would have
+been the more attractive for the melancholy which was in such apt
+contrast with the heroic adventures of his life, but to her the change
+in him was a mute reproach which filled her with remorse though she had
+done no wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Prince Egon, throwing open his window, leaned out into the
+cold rainy night, as though a hand were at his throat and suffocating
+him. And amidst all the tumult of his pain and revolt, one dim thought
+was incessantly intruding itself; he was always thinking, as he
+recalled the face of Sabran and of Sabran's little son, 'Where have I
+seen those blue eyes, those level brows, those delicate curved lips?'</p>
+
+<p>They were so familiar, yet so strange to him. When he would have given
+a name to them they receded into the shadows of some far away past of
+his own, so far away he could not follow them. He sat up half the night
+letting the wind beat and the rain fall on him. He could not sleep.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the morrow thirty or forty people arrived, amongst them Baron
+Kaulnitz <i>en congé</i> from his embassy.</p>
+
+<p>'What think you of Sabran?' he asked of Egon Vàsàrhely, who answered:</p>
+
+<p>'He is a perfect gentleman. He is a charming companion. He plays
+admirably at <i>écarté.</i></p>
+
+<p>'<i>Écarté</i>! I spoke of his moral worth: what is your impression of that?'</p>
+
+<p>'If he had not satisfied her as to that, Wanda would not be his wife,'
+answered the Prince gravely. 'He has given her beautiful children, and
+it seems to me that he renders her perfectly happy. We should all be
+grateful to him.'</p>
+
+<p>'The children are certainly very beautiful,' said Baron Kaulnitz, and
+said no more.</p>
+
+<p>'The people all around are unfeignedly attached to him,' Vàsàrhely
+continued with generous effort. 'I hear nothing but his praise. Nor do
+I think it the conventional compliment which loyalty leads them to pay
+the husband of their Countess; it is very genuine attachment. The men
+of the old Archduchy are not easily won; it is only qualities of daring
+and manliness which appeal to their sympathies. That he has gained
+their affections is as great testimony to his character in one way as
+that he has gained Wanda's is in another. At Idrac also the people
+adore him, and Croats are usually slow to see merit in strangers.'</p>
+
+<p>'In short, he is a paragon,' said the ambassador, with a little dubious
+smile. 'So much the better, since he is irrevocably connected with us.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran was at no time seen to greater advantage than when he was
+required to receive and entertain a large house-party. Always graceful,
+easily witty, endowed with that winning tact which is to society as
+cream is to the palate, the charm he possessed for women and the
+ascendency he could, at times, exercise over men&mdash;even men who were
+opposed to him&mdash;were never more admirably displayed than when he was
+the master of Hohenszalras, with crowned heads, and princes, and
+diplomatists, and beauties gathered beneath his roof. His mastery,
+moreover, of all field sports, and his skill at all games that demanded
+either intelligence or audacity, made him popular with a hardy and
+brilliant nobility; his daring in a boar hunt at noon was equalled by
+his science at whist in the evening. Strongly prejudiced against him at
+the onset, the great nobles who were his guests had long ceased to feel
+anything for him except respect and regard; whilst the women admired
+him none the less for that unwavering devotion to his wife which made
+even the conventionalities of ordinary flirtation wholly impossible to
+him. With all his easy gallantry and his elegant homage to them, they
+all knew that, at heart, he was as cold as the rocks to all women save
+one.</p>
+
+<p>'It is really the knight's love for his lady,' said the Countess
+Brancka once; and Sabran, overhearing, said: 'Yes, and, I think that if
+there were more like my lady on earth, knighthood might revive on other
+scenes than Wagner's.'</p>
+
+<p>Between him and the Countess Brancka there was a vague intangible
+enmity, veiled under the perfection of courtesy. They could ill have
+told why they disliked each other; but they did so. Beneath their
+polite or trivial or careless speech they often aimed at each other's
+feelings or foibles with accuracy and malice. She had stayed at
+Hohenszalras more or less time each year in the course of her flight
+between France and Vienna, and was there now. He admired his wife's
+equanimity and patience under the trial of Mdme. Olga's frivolities,
+but he did not himself forbear from as much sarcasm as was possible
+in a man of the world to one who was his guest, and by marriage his
+relative, and he was sensible of her enmity to himself, though she
+paid him many compliments, and sometimes too assiduously sought his
+companionship. '<i>Elle fait le ronron, mais gare à ses pattes!</i>' he said
+once to his wife concerning her.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran appraised her indeed with unflattering accuracy. He knew
+by heart all the wiles and wisdom of such a woman as she was. Her
+affectations did not blind him to her real danger, and her exterior
+frivolity did not conceal from him the keen and subtle self-interest
+and the strong passions which laboured beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>She felt that she had an enemy in him, and partly in self-protection,
+partly in malice, she set herself to convert a foe into a friend,
+perhaps, without altogether confessing it to herself, into a lover as
+well.</p>
+
+<p>The happiness that prevailed at Hohenszalrasburg annoyed her for
+no other reason than that it wearied her to witness it. She did
+not envy it, because she did not want happiness at all; she wanted
+perpetual change, distraction, temptation, passion, triumph&mdash;in a word,
+excitement, which becomes the drug most unobtainable to those who have
+early exhausted all the experiences and varieties of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Brancka had always an unacknowledged resentment against her
+sister-in-law, for being the owner of all the vast possessions of the
+Szalras. 'If Gela had lived!' she thought constantly. 'If I had only
+had a son by him before he died, this woman would have had her dower
+and nothing more.' That his sister should possess all, whilst she had
+by her later marriage lost her right even to a share in that vast
+wealth, was a perpetual bitterness to her.</p>
+
+<p>Stefan Brancka was indeed rich, but he was an insensate gambler. She
+was extravagant to the last degree, with all the costly caprices of
+a <i>cocodette</i> who reigned in the two most brilliant capitals of the
+world. They were often troubled by their own folly, and again and again
+the generosity of his elder brother had rescued them from humiliating
+embarrassments. At such moments she had almost hated Wanda von Szalras
+for these large possessions, of which, according to her own views,
+her sister-in-law made no use whatever. Meantime, she wished Egon
+Vàsàrhely to die childless, and to that end had not been unwilling
+for the woman he loved to marry anyone else. She had reasoned that the
+Szalras estates would go to the Crown or the Church if Wanda did not
+marry; whilst all the power and possessions of Egon Vàsàrhely must, if
+he had no sons, pass in due course to his brother. She had the subtle
+acuteness of her race, and she had the double power of being able at
+once to wait very patiently and to spring with swift rage on what she
+needed. To her sister-in-law she always appeared a mere flutterer on
+the breath of fashion. The grave and candid nature of the one could not
+follow or perceive the intricacies of the other.</p>
+
+<p>'She is a cruel woman and a perilous one,' Sabran said one day to his
+wife's surprise.</p>
+
+<p>She answered him that Olga Brancka had always seemed to her a mere
+frivolous <i>mondaine</i>, like so many others of their world.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' he persisted. 'You are wrong; she is not a butterfly. She has too
+much energy. She is a profoundly immoral woman also. Look at her eyes.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is Stefan's affair,' she answered, 'not ours. He is indifferent.'</p>
+
+<p>'Or unsuspicious? Did your brother care for her?'</p>
+
+<p>'He was madly in love with her. She was only sixteen when he married
+her. He fell at Solferino half a year later. When she married my
+cousin it shocked and disgusted me. Perhaps I was foolish to take it
+thus, but it seemed such a sin against Gela. To die <i>so</i>, and not to be
+even remembered!'</p>
+
+<p>'Did your cousin Egon approve this second marriage?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' he opposed it; he had our feeling about it. But Stefan, though
+very young, was beyond any control. He had the fortune as he had the
+title of his mother, the Countess Brancka, and Olga bewitched him as
+she had done my brother.'</p>
+
+<p>'She <i>is</i> a witch, a wicked witch,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>The great autumn party was brilliant and agreeable. All things went
+well, and the days were never monotonous. The people were well
+assorted, and the social talent of their host made their outdoor sports
+and their indoor pastimes constantly varied, whilst Hungarian musicians
+and Viennese comedians played waltzes that would have made a statue
+dance, and represented the little comedies for which he himself had
+been famous at the Mirlitons.</p>
+
+<p>He was not conscious of it, but he was passionately eager for Egon
+Vàsàrhely to be witness, not only of his entire happiness, but of his
+social powers. To Vàsàrhely he seemed to put forward the perfection
+of his life with almost insolence; with almost exaggeration to exhibit
+the joys and the gifts with which nature and chance had so liberally
+dowered him. The stately Magyar soldier, sitting silent and melancholy
+apart, watched him with a curious pang, that in a lesser nature would
+have been a consuming envy. Now and then, though Sabran and his wife
+spoke rarely to each other in the presence of others, a glance, a
+smile, a word passed between them that told of absolute unuttered
+tenderness, profound and inexhaustible as the deep seas; in the very
+sound of their laughter, in the mere accent of their voices, in a
+careless caress to one of their children, in a light touch of the hand
+to one another as they rode, or as they met in a room, there was the
+expression of a perfect joy, of a perfect faith between them, which
+pierced the heart of the watcher of it. Yet would he not have had it
+otherwise at her cost.</p>
+
+<p>'Since she has chosen him as the companion of her life, it is well
+that he should be what she can take pride in, and what all men can
+praise,' he thought, and yet the happiness of this man seemed to him an
+audacity, an insolence. What human lover could merit her?</p>
+
+<p>Between himself and Sabran there was the most perfect courtesy, but no
+intimacy. They both knew that if for fifty years they met continually
+they would never be friends. All her endeavours to produce sympathy
+between them failed. Sabran was conscious of a constant observation of
+him by her cousin, which seemed to him to have a hostile motive, and
+which irritated him extremely, though he did not allow his irritation
+any visible vent. Olga Brancka perceived, and with the objectless
+malice of women of her temperament, amused herself with fanning, the
+slumbering enmity, as children play at fire.</p>
+
+<p>'You cannot expect Egon to love you,' she said once to her host. 'You
+know he was the betrothed of Wanda from her childhood&mdash;at least in his
+own hopes, and in the future sketched for them by their families.'</p>
+
+<p>'I was quite aware of that before I married,' he answered her
+indifferently. 'But those family arrangements are tranquil disposals of
+destiny which, if they be disturbed, leave no great trace of trouble.
+The Prince is young still, and a famous soldier as well as a great
+noble. He has no lack of consolation if he need it, and I cannot
+believe that he does.'</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Olga laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'You know as well as I do that Egon adores the very stirrup your wife's
+foot touches!'</p>
+
+<p>'I know he is her much beloved cousin,' said Sabran, in a tone which
+admitted of no reply.</p>
+
+<p>To Vàsàrhely his sister-in-law said confidentially:</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Egon, why did you not stay on the <i>pusztas</i> or remain with your
+hussars? You make <i>le beau</i> Sabran jealous.'</p>
+
+<p>'Jealous!' asked Vàsàrhely, with a bitter smile. 'He has much cause,
+when she has neither eye nor ear, neither memory nor thought of any
+kind for any living thing except himself and those children who are
+all his very portraits! Why do you say these follies, Olga? You know
+that my cousin Wanda chose her lord out of all the world, and loves
+him as no one would have supposed she had it in her to love any mortal
+creature.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke imperiously, harshly, and she was silenced.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you think of him?' she said with hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>'Everyone asks me that question. I am not his keeper!'</p>
+
+<p>'But you must form some opinion. He is virtual lord of Hohenszalras,
+and I believe she has made over to him all the appanages of Idrac, and
+his children will have everything.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are they not her natural heirs? Who should inherit from her if not her
+sons?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, of course they will inherit, only they inherit nothing
+from him. It was certainly a great stroke of fortune for a landless
+gentleman to make. Why does the <i>gentilhomme pauvre</i> always so
+captivate women?'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean to insinuate, Olga?' he asked her, with a stern
+glance of his great black eyes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, nothing; only his history was peculiar. I remember his arrival
+in France, his first appearance in society; it is many years ago now.
+All the Faubourg received him, but some said at the time that it was
+too romantic to be true&mdash;those Mexican forests, that long exile of the
+Sabran, the sudden appearance of this beautiful young marquis; you
+will grant it was romantic. I suppose it was the romance that made
+even Wanda's clear head turn a little. It is a <i>vin capiteux</i> for many
+women. And then such a life in Paris after it&mdash;duels, baccara, bonnes
+fortunes, clever comedies, a touch like Liszt's, a sudden success in
+the Chamber&mdash;it was all so romantic; it was bound to bring him at
+last to his haven, the Prince Charmant of an enchanted castle! Only
+enchanted castles sometimes grow dull, and Princes Charmants are not
+always amusable by the same châtelaine!'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely, with his eyes sombre under their long black lashes,
+listened to the easy bantering phrases with the vague suspicion of an
+honest and slow-witted man that a woman is trying to drop poison into
+his ear which she wishes to pass as <i>eau sucrée.</i> He did not altogether
+follow her insinuation, but he understood something of her drift. They
+were alone in a corner of the ball-room, whilst the cotillon was at its
+height, conducted by Sabran, who had been famous for its leadership in
+Paris and Vienna. He stooped his head and looked her full in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Look here, Olga. I am not sure what you mean, but I believe you are
+tired of seeing my cousin's happiness, merely because it is something
+with which you cannot interfere. For myself I would protect her
+happiness as I would her honour if I thought either endangered. Whether
+you or I like the Marquis de Sabran is wholly beyond the question. She
+loves him, and she has made him one of us. His honour is now ours.
+For myself I would defend him in his absence as though he were my own
+brother. Not for his sake at all&mdash;for hers. I do not express myself
+very well, but you know what I mean. Here is Max returning to claim
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>Silenced and a little alarmed the Countess Brancka rose and went off to
+her place in the cotillon.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely, sitting where she had left him, watched the mazes of the
+cotillon, the rhythm of the tzigane musicians coming to his ear
+freighted with a thousand familiar memories of the czardas danced madly
+in the long Hungarian nights. Time had been when the throb of the
+tzigane strings had stirred all his pulses like magic, but now all his
+bold bright life seemed numb and frozen in him.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes rested on his cousin, where she stood conversing with a crown
+prince, who was her chief guest, and passed from her to follow the
+movements of Sabran, who with supreme ease and elegance was leading a
+new intricate measure down the ball-room.</p>
+
+<p>She was happy, that he could not doubt. Every action, every word, every
+glance said so with a meaning not to be doubted. He thought she had
+never looked so handsome as she did to-night since that far away day
+in her childhood when he had seen her with the red and white roses in
+her lap and the crown upon her curls. She had the look of her childhood
+in her eyes, that serene and glad light which had been dimmed by her
+brothers' death, but now shone there again tranquil, radiant, and pure
+as sunlight is. She wore white velvet and white brocade; her breast
+was hidden in white roses; she wore her famous pearls and the ribbons
+of the Starred Cross of Austria and of the Prussian Order of Merit;
+she held in her hand a large painted fan which had belonged to Maria
+Theresa. Every now and then, as she talked with her royal guest, her
+glance strayed down the room to where her husband was, and lingered
+there a moment with a little smile.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely watched her for awhile, then rose abruptly, and made his way
+out of the ball-room and the state apartments down the corridors of the
+old house he knew so well towards his own chamber. He thought he would
+write to her and leave upon the morrow. What need was there for him to
+stay on in this perpetual pain? He had done enough for the world, which
+had seen him under the roof of Hohenszalras.</p>
+
+<p>As he took his way through the long passages, tapestry-hung or
+oak-panelled, which led across the great building to his own set of
+rooms in the clock tower, he passed an open door out of which a light
+was streaming. As he glanced within he saw it was the children's
+sleeping apartment, of which the door was open because the night was
+warm, unusually warm for the heart of the Gross Glöckner mountains. An
+impulse he could not have explained made him pause and enter. The three
+little white beds of carved Indian work, with curtains of lace, looked
+very snowy and peaceful in the pale light from a hanging lamp. The
+children were all asleep; the one nearest the door was Bela.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely stood and looked at him. His head was thrown back on his
+pillow and his arms were above his head. His golden hair, which was
+cut straight and low over his forehead, had been pushed back in his
+slumber; he looked more like his father than in his waking hours,
+for as he dreamed there was a look of coldness and of scorn upon his
+childish face, which made him so resemble Sabran that the man who
+looked on him drew his breath hard with pain.</p>
+
+<p>The night-nurse rose from her seat, recognising Prince Egon, whom she
+had known from his childhood.</p>
+
+<p>'The little Count is so like the Marquis,' she said, approaching; 'so
+is Herr Gela. Ah, my Prince, you remember the noble gentlemen whose
+names they bear? God send they may be like them in their lives and not
+their deaths!'</p>
+
+<p>'An early death is good,' said Vàsàrhely, as he stood beside the
+child's bed. He thought how good it would have been if he had fallen
+at Sadowa or Königsgrätz, or earlier by the side of Gela and Victor,
+charging with his White Hussars.</p>
+
+<p>The old nurse rambled on, full of praise and stories of the children's
+beauty, and strength, and activity, and intelligence. Vàsàrhely did not
+hear her; he stood lost in thought looking down on the sleeping figure
+of Bela, who, as if conscious of strange eyes upon him, moved uneasily
+in his slumber, and ruffled his golden hair with his hands, and thrust
+off his coverings from his beautiful round white limbs.</p>
+
+<p>'Count Bela is not like our saint who died,' said the old nurse. 'He
+is always masterful, and loves his own way. My lady is strict with
+him, and wisely so, for he is a proud rebellious child. But he is very
+generous, and has noble ways. Count Gela is a little angel; he will be
+like the Heilige Graf.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely did not hear anything she said. His gaze was bent on the
+sleeping child, studying the lines of the delicate brows, of the
+curving lips, of the long black lashes. It was so familiar, so
+familiar! Suddenly as he gazed a light seemed to leap out of the
+darkness of long forgotten years, and the memory which had haunted him
+stood out clear before him.</p>
+
+<p>'He is like Vassia Kazán!' he cried, half aloud. The face of the child
+had recalled what in the face of the man had for ever eluded his
+remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>He thrust a gold coin in the nurse's hand, and hurried from the
+chamber. A sudden inconceivable, impossible suspicion had leaped up
+before him as he had gazed on the sleeping loveliness of Sabran's
+little son.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman saw his sudden pallor, his uncertain gesture, and
+thought, 'Poor gallant gentleman! He wishes these pretty boys were his
+own. Well, it might have been better if he had been master here, though
+there is nothing to say against the one who is so. Still, a stranger is
+always a stranger, and foreign blood is bad.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she drew the coverings over Bela's naked little limbs, and passed
+on to make sure that the little Ottilie, who had been born when the
+primroses where first out in the Iselthal woods, was sleeping soundly,
+and wanted nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely made his way to his own chamber, and there sat down heavily,
+mechanically, like a man waking out from a bad dream.</p>
+
+<p>His memory went back to twenty years before, when he, a little lad, had
+accompanied his father on a summer visit to the house of a Russian,
+Prince Paul Zabaroff. It was a house, gay, magnificent, full of idle
+men and women of facile charm; it was not a house for youth; but
+both the Prince Vàsàrhely and the Prince Zabaroff were men of easy
+morals&mdash;<i>viveurs</i>, gamesters, and philosophers, who at fifteen years
+old themselves had been lovers and men of the world. At that house
+had been present a youth, some years older than he was, who was known
+as Vassia Kazán: a youth whose beauty and wit made him the delight of
+the women there, and whose skill at games and daring in sports won him
+the admiration of the men. It was understood without even being said
+openly that Vassia Kazán was a natural son of the Prince Zabaroff. The
+little Hungarian prince, child as he was, had wit enough and enough
+knowledge of life to understand that this brilliant companion, of his
+was base-born. His kind heart moved him to pity, but his intense pride
+curbed his pity with contempt. Vassia Kazán had resented the latter too
+bitterly to even be conscious of the first. The gentlemen assembled had
+diverted themselves by the unspoken feud that had soon risen between
+the boys, and the natural intelligence of the little Magyar noble had
+been no match for the subtle and cultured brain of the Parisian Lycéen.</p>
+
+<p>One day one of the lovely ladies there, who plundered Zabaroff and
+caressed his son, amused herself with a war of words between the lads,
+and so heated, stung, spurred and tormented the Hungarian boy that,
+exasperated by the sallies and satires of his foe, and by the presence
+of this lovely goddess of discord, he so far forgot his chivalry that
+he turned on Vassia with a taunt. 'You would be a serf if you were in
+Russia!' he said, with his great black eyes flashing the scorn of the
+noble on the bastard. Without a word, Vassia, who had come in from
+riding and had his whip in his hand, sprang on him, held him in a grip
+of steel, and thrashed him. The fiery Magyar, writhing under the blows
+of one who to him was as a slave, as a hound, freed his right arm,
+snatched from a table near an oriental dagger lying there with other
+things of value, and plunged it into the shoulder of his foe. The
+cries of the lady, alarmed at her own work, brought the men in from
+the adjoining room; the boys were forced apart and carried to their
+chambers.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Vàsàrhely left the house that evening with his son, still
+furious and unappeased. Vassia Kazán remained, made a hero of and
+nursed by the lovely woman who had thrown the apple of strife. His
+wound was healed in three weeks' time; soon after his father's
+house-party was scattered, and he himself returned to his college. Not
+a syllable passed between him and Zabaroff as to his quarrel with the
+little Hungarian magnate. To the woman who had wrought the mischief
+Zabaroff said: 'Almost I wish he were my lawful son. He is a true wolf
+of the steppes. Paris has only combed his hide and given him a silken
+coat; he is still a wolf, like all true Russians.'</p>
+
+<p>Looking on the sleeping child of Sabran, all that half-forgotten scene
+had risen up before the eyes of Egon Vàsàrhely. He seemed to see the
+beautiful fair face of Vassia Kazán, with the anger on the knitted
+brows, and the ferocity on the delicate stern lips as he had raised his
+arm to strike. Twenty years had gone by; he himself, whenever he had
+remembered the scene, had long grown ashamed of the taunt he had cast,
+not of the blow he had given, for the sole reproof his father had ever
+made him was to say: 'A noble, only insults his equals. To insult an
+inferior is ungenerous, it is derogatory; whom you offend you raise for
+the hour to a level with yourself. Remember to choose your foes not
+less carefully than you choose your friends.'</p>
+
+<p>Why with the regard, the voice, the air of Sabran had some vague
+intangible remembrance always come before him?'</p>
+
+<p>Why, as he had gazed on the sleeping child had the vague uncertainty
+suddenly resolved itself into distinct revelation?</p>
+
+<p>'He is Vassia Kazán! He is Vassia Kazán!' he said to himself a score
+of times stupidly, persistently, as one speaks in a dream. Yet he knew
+he must be a prey to delusion, to phantasy, to accidental resemblance.
+He told himself so. He resisted his own folly, and all the while a
+subtler inner consciousness seemed to be speaking in him, and saying to
+him:</p>
+
+<p>'That man is Vassia Kazán. Surely he is Vassia Kazán.'</p>
+
+<p>And then the loyal soul of him strengthened itself and made him think:</p>
+
+<p>'Even if he be Vassia Kazán he is her husband. He is what she loves; he
+is the father of those children that are hers.'</p>
+
+<p>He never went to his bed that night. When the music ceased at an hour
+before dawn, and the great house grew silent, he still sat there by
+the open casement, glad of the cold air that blew in from over the
+Szalrassee, as with daybreak a fine film of rain began to come down the
+mountain sides.</p>
+
+<p>Once he heard the voice of Sabran, who passed the door on his way to
+his own apartment. Sabran was saying in German with a little laugh:</p>
+
+<p>'My lady!' I am jealous of your crown prince. When I left him now in
+his chamber I was disposed to immortalise myself by regicide. He adores
+you!'</p>
+
+<p>Then he heard Wanda laugh in answer, with some words that did not
+reach his ear as they passed on further down the corridor. Vàsàrhely
+shivered, and instinctively rose to his feet. He felt as if he must
+seek him out and cry out to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Am I mad or is it true? Let me see your shoulder&mdash;have you the mark of
+the wound that I gave? Your little child has the face of Vassia Kazán.
+Are you Vassia Kazán? Are you the bastard of Zabaroff? Are you the wolf
+of the steppes?'</p>
+
+<p>He had desired to go from Hohenszalras, where every hour was pain to
+him, but now he felt an irresistible fascination in the vicinity of
+Sabran. His mind was in that dual state which at once rejects a fact as
+incredible, and believes in it absolutely. His reason told him that his
+suspicion was a folly; his instinct told him that it was a truth.</p>
+
+<p>When in the forenoon the castle again became animated, and the guests
+met to the mid-day breakfast in the hall of the knights, he descended,
+moved by an eagerness that made him for the first time in his life
+nervous. When Sabran addressed him he felt himself grow pale; he
+followed the movements, he watched the features, he studied the tones
+of his successful rival, with an intense absorption in them. Through
+the hunting breakfast, at which only men were present, he was conscious
+of nothing that was addressed to him; he only seemed to hear a voice in
+his ear saying perpetually&mdash;&mdash;'Yonder is Vassia Kazán.'</p>
+
+<p>The day was spent in sport, sport rough and real, that gave fair play
+to the beasts and perilous exposure to the hunters. For the first time
+in his life, Egon Vàsàrhely let a brown bear go by him untouched,
+and missed more than one roebuck. His eyes were continually seeking
+his host; a mile off down a forest glade the figure of Sabran seemed
+to fill his vision, a figure full of grace and dignity, clad in a
+hunting-dress of russet velvet, with a hunting-horn slung at his side
+on a broad chain of gold, the gift of his wife in memory of the fateful
+day when he had aimed at the <i>kuttengeier</i> in her woods.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran of necessity devoted himself to the crown prince throughout
+the day's sport; only in the twilight as they returned he spoke to
+Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda is so full of regret that you wish to leave us,' he said, with
+graceful cordiality; 'if only I can persuade you to remain, I shall
+take her the most welcome of all tidings from the forest. Stay at the
+least another week, the weather has cleared.'</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he thought that Vàsàrhely looked at him strangely; but
+he knew that he could not be much loved by his wife's cousin, and
+continued with good humour to persist in his request. Abruptly, the
+other answered him at last.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda wishes me to stay? Well, I will stay then. It seems strange to
+hear a stranger invite <i>me</i> to Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran coloured; he said with hauteur:</p>
+
+<p>'That I am a stranger to Prince Vàsàrhely is not my fault. That I have
+the right to invite him to Hohenszalras is my happiness, due to his
+cousin's goodness, which has been far beyond my merit.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely's eyes dwelt on him gloomily; he was sensible of the dignity,
+the self-command, and the delicacy of reproof which were blent in the
+answer he had received; he felt humbled and convicted of ill-breeding.
+He said after a pause:</p>
+
+<p>'I should ask your pardon. My cousin would be the first to condemn my
+words; they sounded ill, but I meant them literally. Hohenszalras has
+been one of my homes from boyhood; it will be your son's when we are
+both dead. How like he is to you; he has nothing of his mother.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran, somewhat surprised, smiled as he answered:</p>
+
+<p>'He is very like me. I regret it; but you know the poets and the
+physiologists are for once agreed as to the cause of that. It is a
+truth proved a million times: <i>l'enfant de l'amour ressemble toujours
+au père.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely grew white under the olive hue of his sun-bronzed
+cheek. The <i>riposte</i> had been made with a thrust that went home. Otto
+at that moment approached his master for orders for the morrow. They
+were no more alone. They entered the house; the long and ceremonious
+dinner succeeded. Vàsàrhely was silent and stern. Sabran was the most
+brilliant of hosts, the happiest of men; all the women present were in
+love with him, his wife the most of all.</p>
+
+<p>'Réné tells me you will stay, Egon. I am so very glad,' his cousin said
+to him during the evening, and she added with a little hesitation, 'If
+you would take time to know him well, you would find him so worthy of
+your regard; he has all the qualities that most men esteem in each
+other. It would make me so happy if you were friends at heart, not only
+in mere courtesy.'</p>
+
+<p>'You know that can never be,' said Vàsàrhely, almost rudely. 'Even you
+cannot work miracles. He is your husband. It is a reason that I should
+respect him, but it is also a reason why I shall for ever hate him.'</p>
+
+<p>He said the last words in a tone scarcely audible, but low as it was,
+there was a force in it that affected her painfully.</p>
+
+<p>'What you say there is quite unworthy of you,' she said with gentleness
+but coldness. 'He has done you no wrong. Long ere I met him I told you
+that what you wished was not what I wished, never would be so. You are
+too great a gentleman, Egon, to nourish an injustice in your heart.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked down; every fibre in him thrilled and burned under the sound
+of her voice, the sense of her presence.</p>
+
+<p>'I saw your children asleep last night,' he said abruptly. 'They have
+nothing of you in them; they are his image.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is it so unusual for children to resemble their father?' she said with
+a smile, whilst vaguely disquieted by his tone.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I suppose not; but the Szalras have always been of one type. How
+came your husband by that face? I have seen it amongst the Circassians,
+the Persians, the Georgians; but you say he is a Breton.'</p>
+
+<p>'The Sabrans of Romaris are Bretons; you have only to consult history.
+Very beautiful faces like his have seldom much impress of nationality;
+they always seem as though they followed the old Greek laws, and were
+cast in the divine heroic mould of another time than ours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who was his mother?'</p>
+
+<p>'A Spanish Mexican.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely was silent.</p>
+
+<p>His cousin left him and went amongst her guests. A vague sense of
+uneasiness went with her at her consciousness of his hostility to
+Sabran. She wished she had not asked him to remain.</p>
+
+<p>'You have never offended Egon?' she asked Sabran anxiously that night.
+'You have always been forbearing and patient with him?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have obeyed you in that as all things, my angel,', he answered her
+lightly. 'What would you? He is in love with you still, and I have
+married you! It is even a crime in his eyes that my children resemble
+me! One can never argue with a passion that is unhappy. It is a kind of
+frenzy.'</p>
+
+<p>She heard with some impatience.</p>
+
+<p>'He has no right to cherish such a resentment. He keeps it alive by
+brooding on it. I had hoped that when he saw you here, saw how happy
+you render me, saw your children too, he would grow calmer, wiser, more
+reconciled to the inevitable.'</p>
+
+<p>'You did not know men, my love,' said Sabran, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>To him the unhappiness and the ill-will of Egon Vàsàrhely were matters
+of supreme indifference; in a manner they gratified him, they even
+supplied that stimulant of rivalry which a man's passion needs to keep
+at its height in the calm of safe possession. That Egon Vàsàrhely saw
+his perfect happiness lent it pungency and a keener sense of victory.
+When he kissed his wife's hand in the sight of her cousin, the sense
+of the pain it dealt to the spectator gave the trivial action to him
+all the sweetness and the ardour of the first caresses of his accepted
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>Of that she knew nothing. It would have seemed to her ignoble, as so
+much that makes up men's desire always does seem to a woman of her
+temperament, even whilst it dominates and solicits her, and forces her
+to share something of its own intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>'Egon is very unreasonable,' said Mdme. Ottilie. 'He believes that
+if you had not met Réné you would have in time loved himself. It is
+foolish. Love is a destiny. Had you married him you would not have
+loved him. He would soon have perceived that and been miserable, much
+more miserable than he is now, for he would have been unable to release
+you. I think he should not have come here at all if he could not have
+met M. de Sabran with at least equanimity.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think so, too,' said Wanda, and an impatience against her cousin
+began to grow into anger; without being conscious of it, she had placed
+Sabran so high in her own esteem that she could forgive none who did
+not adore her own idol. It was a weakness in her that was lovely and
+touching in a character that had had before hardly enough of the usual
+foibles of humanity. Every error of love is lovable.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely could not dismiss from his mind the impression which haunted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'I conclude you knew the Marquis de Sabran well in France?' he said one
+day to Baron Kaulnitz, who was still there.</p>
+
+<p>Kaulnitz demurred.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I cannot say that I did. I knew him by repute; that was not very
+pure. However, the Faubourg always received and sustained him; the
+Comte de Chambord did the same; they were the most interested. One
+cannot presume to think they could be deceived.'</p>
+
+<p>'Deceived!' echoed Prince Egon. 'What a singular word to use. Do you
+mean to imply the possibility of&mdash;of any falsity on his part&mdash;any
+intrigue to appear what he is not?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' said Kaulnitz, with hesitation. 'Honestly, I cannot say so much.
+An impression was given me at the moment of his signing his marriage
+contract that he concealed something; but it was a mere suspicion. As I
+told you, the whole Legitimist world, the most difficult to enter, the
+most incredulous of assumption, received him with open arms. All his
+papers were of unimpeachable regularity. There was never a doubt hinted
+by anyone, and yet I will confess to you, my dear Egon, since we are
+speaking in confidence, that I have had always my own doubts as to his
+marquisate of Sabran.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Grosser Gott!</i>' exclaimed Vàsàrhely, as he started from his seat.
+'Why did you not stop the marriage?'</p>
+
+<p>'One does not stop a marriage by a mere baseless suspicion,' replied
+Kaulnitz. 'I have not one shadow of reason for my probably quite
+unwarranted conjecture. It merely came into my mind also at the
+signing of the contracts. I had already done all I could to oppose
+the marriage, but Wanda was inflexible&mdash;you are witness of the charm
+he still possesses for her&mdash;and even the Princess was scarcely
+less infatuated. Besides, it must be granted that few men are more
+attractive in every way; and as he <i>is</i> one of us, whatever else he be,
+his honour is now our honour, as you said yourself the other day.'</p>
+
+<p>'One could always kill him,' muttered Vàsàrhely, 'and set her free so,
+if one were sure.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure of what?' said Kaulnitz, rather alarmed at the effect of his own
+words. 'You Magyar gentlemen always think that every knot can be cut
+with a sword. If he were a mere adventurer (which is hardly possible)
+it would not mend matters for you to run him through the heart; there
+are his children.'</p>
+
+<p>'Would the marriage be legal if his name were assumed?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no! She could have it annulled, of course, both by Church and Law.
+All those pretty children would have no rights and no name. But we are
+talking very wildly and in a theatrical fashion. He is as certainly
+Marquis de Sabran as I am Karl von Kaulnitz.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely said nothing; his mind was in tumult, his heart oppressed by
+a sense of secrecy and of a hope that was guilty and mean.</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak to his companion of Vassia Kazán, but his conjecture
+seemed to hover before his sight like a black cloud which grew bigger
+every hour.</p>
+
+<p>He remained at Hohenszalras throughout the autumnal festivities. He
+felt as if he could not go away with that doubt still unsolved, that
+suspicion either confirmed or uprooted. His cousin grew as uneasy at
+his presence there as she had before been uneasy at his absence. Her
+instinct told her that he was the foe of the one dearest to her on
+earth. She felt that the gallant and generous temper of him had changed
+and grown morose; he was taciturn, moody, solitary.</p>
+
+<p>He spent almost all his time out of doors, and devoted himself to the
+hardy sport of the mountains and forests with a sort of rage. Guests
+came and went at the castle; some were imperial, some royal people;
+there was always a brilliant circle of notable persons there, and
+Sabran played his part as their host, with admirable tact, talent, and
+good humour. His wit, his amiability, his many accomplishments, and
+his social charm were in striking contrast to the sombre indifference
+of Vàsàrhely, whom men had no power to amuse and women no power to
+interest. Prince Egon was like a magnificent picture by Rembrandt,
+as he sat in his superb uniform in a corner of a ball-room with the
+collars of his orders blazing with jewels, and his hands crossed on
+the diamond-studded hilt of his sword; but he was so mute, so gloomy,
+so austere, that the vainest, coquette there ceased to hope to please
+him, and his most cordial friends found his curt contemptuous replies
+destroy their desire for his companionship.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda, who was frankly and fondly attached to him, began to long for
+his departure. The gaze of his black eyes, fixed in their fire and
+gloom on the little gay figures of her children, filled her with a
+vague apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>'If he would only find some one and be happy,' she thought, with anger
+at this undesired and criminal love which clung to her so persistently.</p>
+
+<p>'Am I made of wax?' he said to her with scorn, when she ventured to
+hint at her wishes.</p>
+
+<p>'How I wish I had not asked him to remain here!' she said to herself
+many times. It was not possible for her to dismiss her cousin, who had
+been from his infancy accustomed to look on the Hohenszalrasburg as his
+second home. But as circle after circle of guests came, went, and were
+replaced by others, and Egon Vàsàrhely still retained the rooms in the
+west tower that had been his from boyhood, his continual presence grew
+irksome and irritating to her.</p>
+
+<p>'He forgets that it is now my husband's house!' she thought.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one living creature in all the place to whom Vàsàrhely
+unbent from his sullen and haughty reserve, and that one was the child
+Bela.</p>
+
+<p>Bela was as beautiful as the morning, with his shower of golden hair,
+and his eyes like sapphires, and his skin like a lily. With curious
+self-torture Vàsàrhely would attract the child to him by tales of
+daring and of sport, and would watch with intent eyes every line of
+the small face, trying therein to read the secret of the man by whom
+this child had been begotten. Bela, all unconscious, was proud of this
+interest displayed in him by this mighty soldier, of whose deeds in war
+Ulrich and Hubert and Otto told such Homeric tales.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will fight with you when he is big,' he would say, trying to
+inclose the jewelled hilt of Vàsàrhely's sword in his tiny fingers, or
+trotting after him through the silence of the tapestried corridors.
+When she saw them thus together she felt that she could understand the
+superstitious fear of oriental women when their children are looked at
+fixedly.</p>
+
+<p>'You are very good to my boy,' she said once to Vàsàrhely, when he had
+let the child chatter by his side for hours.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely turned away abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'There are times when I could kill your son, because he is his,' he
+muttered, 'and there are times when I could worship him, because he is
+yours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not talk so, Egon,'she said, gravely. 'If you will feel so, it is
+best&mdash;I must say it&mdash;it is best that you should see neither my child
+nor me.'</p>
+
+<p>He took no notice of her words.</p>
+
+<p>'The children would always be yours,' he muttered. 'You would never
+leave him, never disgrace him for their sake; even if one knew&mdash;it
+would be of no use.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Egon,' she said in real distress, 'what strange things are you
+saying? Are you mad? Whose disgrace do you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'Let us suppose an extreme case,' he said, with a hard laugh. 'Suppose
+their father were base, or vile, or faithless, would you hate the
+children? Surely you would.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not imagination enough to suppose any such thing,'she said very
+coldly. 'And you do not know what a mother's love is, my cousin.'</p>
+
+<p>He walked away, leaving her abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'How strange he grows!' she thought. 'Surely his mind must be touched;
+jealousy is a sort of madness.'</p>
+
+<p>She bade the children's attendants keep Count Bela more in the
+nurseries; she told them that the child teased her guests, and must
+not be allowed to run so often at his will and whim over the house.'
+She never seriously feared that Egon would harm the child: his noble
+and chivalrous nature could not have changed so cruelly as that; but
+it hurt her to see his eyes fixed on the son of Sabran with such
+persistent interrogation and so strange an intensity of observation. It
+made her think of old Italian tales of the evil eye.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know that Vàsàrhely had come thither with a sincere and
+devout intention to conquer his jealous hatred of her husband, and
+to habituate himself to the sight of her in the new relations of her
+life. She did not know that he would probably have honestly tried to
+do his duty, and honestly striven to feel at least esteem for one so
+near to her, if the suspicion which had become almost certainty in his
+own mind had not made him believe that he saw in Sabran a traitor,
+a bastard, and a criminal whose offences were the deepest of all
+possible offences, and whose degradation was the lowest of all possible
+degradation, in the sight of the haughty magnate of Hungary, steeped
+to the lips in all the traditions and the convictions of an unsullied
+nobility. If what he believed were, indeed, the truth, he would hold
+Sabran lower than any beggar crouching at the gate of his palace in
+Buda, than any gipsy wandering in the woods of his mountain fortress
+of Taróc. If what he believed were the truth, no leper would seem to
+him so loathsome as this brilliant and courtly gentleman to whom his
+cousin had given her hand, her honour, and her life.</p>
+
+<p>'Doubt, like a raging tooth,' gnawed at his heart, and a hope, which
+he knew was dishonourable to his chivalry, sprang up in him, vague,
+timid, and ashamed. If, indeed, it were as he believed, would not such
+crime, proven on the sinner, part him for ever from the pure, proud
+life of Wanda von Szalras? And then, as he thought thus, he groaned in
+spirit, remembering the children&mdash;the children with their father's face
+and their father's taint in them, for ever living witnesses of their
+mother's surrender to a lying hound.</p>
+
+<p>'Your cousin cannot be said to contribute to the gaiety of your
+house parties, my love,' Sabran observed with a smile one day, when
+they received the announcement of an intended visit from one of the
+archdukes. Egon Vàsàrhely was still there, and even his cousin, much
+as she longed for his departure, could not openly urge it upon him;
+relationship and hospitality alike forbade.</p>
+
+<p>'He is sadly changed,' she answered. 'He was always silent, but he is
+now morose. Perhaps he lives too much at Taróc, where all is very wild
+and solitary.'</p>
+
+<p>'He lives too much in your memory,' said Sabran, with no compassion.
+'Could he determine to forgive my marriage with you, there would be a
+chance for him to recover his peace of mind. Only, my Wanda, it is not
+possible for any man to be consoled for the loss of you.'</p>
+
+<p>'But that is nothing new,' she answered, with impatience. 'If he felt
+so strongly against you, why did he come here? It was not like his
+high, chivalrous honour.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps he came with the frank will to be reconciled to his fate,'
+said Sabran, not knowing how closely he struck the truth, 'and at the
+sight of you, of all that he lost and that I gained, he cannot keep his
+resolution.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then he should go away,' she said, with that indifference to all
+others save the one beloved which all love begets.</p>
+
+<p>'I think he should. But who can tell him so?'</p>
+
+<p>'I did myself the other day. I shall tell him so more plainly, if
+needful. Who cannot honour you shall be no friend of mine, no guest of
+ours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my love!' said Sabran, whose conscience was touched. 'Do not have
+feud with your relatives for my sake. They are worthier than I.'</p>
+
+<p>The Archduke, with his wife, arrived there on the following day, and
+Hohenszalras was gorgeous in the September sun, with all the pomp with
+which the lords of it had always welcomed their Imperial friends.
+Vàsàrhely looked on as a spectator at a play when he watched its
+present master receive the Imperial Prince with that supreme ease,
+grace, and dignity which were so admirably blent in him.</p>
+
+<p>'Can he be but a marvellous comedian?' wondered the man, to whom a
+bastard was less even than a peasant.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing of vanity, of effort, of assumption visible in the
+perfect manner of his host. He seemed to the backbone, in all the
+difficult subtleties of society, as in the simple, frank intercourse
+of man and man, that which even Kaulnitz had conceded that he was,
+<i>gentilhomme de race.</i> Could he have been born a serf&mdash;bred from the
+hour's caprice of a voluptuary for a serving-woman?</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely sat mute, sunk so deeply in his own thoughts that all the
+festivities round him went by like a pageantry on a stage, in which he
+had no part.</p>
+
+<p>'He looks like the statue of the Commendatore,' said Olga Brancka, who
+had returned for the archducal visit, as she glanced at the sombre,
+stately figure of her brother-in-law, Sabran, to whom she spoke,
+laughed with a little uneasiness. Would the hand of Egon Vàsàrhely ever
+seize him and drag him downward like the hand of the statue in <i>Don
+Giovanni?</i></p>
+
+<p>'What a pity that Wanda did not marry him, and that I did not marry
+you!' said Mdme. Brancka, saucily, but with a certain significance of
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p>'You do me infinite honour!' he answered. 'But, at the risk of seeming
+most ungallant, I must confess the truth. I am grateful that the gods
+arranged matters as they are. You are enchanting, Madame Olga, as a
+guest, but as a wife&mdash;alas! who can drink <i>kümmel</i> every day?'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled enchantingly, showing her pretty teeth, but she was bitterly
+angered. She had wished for a compliment at the least. 'What can these
+men see in Wanda?' she thought savagely. 'She is handsome, it is true;
+but she has no coquetry, no animation, no passion. She is dressed by
+Worth, and has a marvellous quantity of old jewels; but for that no one
+would say anything of her except that she was much too tall and had a
+German face!' And she persuaded herself that it was so; if the Venus
+de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her
+waist was large.</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Olga was still very lovely, and took care to be never seen except
+at her loveliest. She always treated Sabran with a great familiarity,
+which his wife was annoyed by, though she did not display her
+annoyance. Mdme Brancka always called him <i>mon cousin</i> or <i>beau cousin</i>
+in the language she usually used, and affected much more previous
+knowledge of him than their acquaintance warranted, since it had been
+merely such slight intimacy as results from moving in the same society.
+She was small and slight, but of great spirit; she shot, fished, rode,
+and played billiards with equal skill; she affected an adoration of
+the most dangerous sports, and even made a point of sharing the bear
+and the boar hunt. Wanda, who, though a person of much greater real
+courage, abhorred all the cruelties and ferocities that perforce
+accompany sport, saw her with some irritation go out with Sabran on
+these expeditions.</p>
+
+<p>'Women are utterly out of place in such sport as that, Olga,' she urged
+to her; 'and indeed are very apt to bring the men into peril, for of
+course no man can take care of himself whilst he has the safety of a
+woman to attend to; she must of necessity distract and trouble him.'</p>
+
+<p>But the Countess Stefan only laughed, and slipped with affectation her
+jewelled hunting-knife into its place in her girdle.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the Archduke's visit, and after the Prince's departure,
+Vàsàrhely continued to stay on, whilst a succession of other guests
+came and went, and the summer deepened into autumn. He felt that he
+could not leave his cousin's house with that doubt unsolved; yet he
+knew that he might stay on for ever with no more certainty to reward
+him and confirm his suspicions than he possessed now. His presence
+annoyed his host, but Sabran was too polished a gentleman to betray
+his irritation; sometimes Vàsàrhely shunned his presence and his
+conversation for days together, at other times he sought them and rode
+with him, shot with him, and played cards with him, in the vain hope of
+gathering from some chance admission or allusion some clue to Sabran's
+early days. But a perfectly happy man is not given at any time to
+retrospection, and Sabran less than most men loved his past. He would
+gladly have forgotten everything that he had ever done or said before
+his marriage at the Hofburg.</p>
+
+<p>The intellectual powers and accomplishments of Sabran dazzled Vàsàrhely
+with a saddened sense of inferiority. Like most great soldiers he
+had a genuine humility in his measurement of himself. He knew that he
+had no talents except as a leader of cavalry. 'It is natural that she
+never looked at me,' he thought, 'when she had once seen this man, with
+his wit, his grace, his facility.' He could not even regard the skill
+of Sabran in the arts, in the salon, in the theatre with the contempt
+which the 'Wild Boar of Taróc' might have felt for a mere maker of
+music, a squire of dames, a writer of sparkling little comedies, a
+painter of screens, because he knew that both at Idrac and in France
+Sabran had showed himself the possessor of those martial and virile
+qualities, by the presence or the absence of which the Hungarian noble
+measured all men. He himself could only love well and live well: he
+reflected sadly that honesty and honour are not alone enough to draw
+love in return.</p>
+
+<p>As the weeks passed on, his host grew so accustomed to his presence
+there that it ceased to give him offence or cause him anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>'He is not amusing, and he is not always polite,' he said to his
+wife, 'but if he likes to consume his soul in gazing at you, I am not
+jealous, my Wanda; and so taciturn a rival would hardly ever be a
+dangerous one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not jest about it,' she answered him, with some real pain. 'I
+should be very vexed at his remaining here, were it not that I feel
+sure he will in time learn to live down his regrets, and to esteem and
+appreciate you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who knows but his estimation of me may not be the right one?' said
+Sabran, with a pang of sad self-knowledge. And although he did not
+attach any significance to the prolonged sojourn of the lord of Taróc
+and Mohacs, he began to desire once more that his guest would return
+to the solitudes of the Carlowitz vineyards, or of the Karpathian
+mountains and gorges of snow.</p>
+
+<p>When over seven weeks had passed by, Vàsàrhely himself began to think
+that to stay in the Iselthal was useless and impossible, and he had
+heard from Taróc tidings which annoyed him&mdash;that his brother Stefan
+and his wife, availing themselves of his general permission to visit
+any one of his places when they chose had so strained the meaning of
+the permission that they had gone to his castle, with a score of their
+Parisian friends, and were there keeping high holiday and festival,
+to the scandal of his grave old stewards, and their own exceeding
+diversion. Hospitable to excess as he was, the liberty displeased him,
+especially as his, men wrote him word that his favourite horses; were
+being ruined by over-driving, and in the list of the guests which they
+sent him were the names of more than one too notorious lady, against
+whose acquaintance he had repeatedly counselled Olga Brancka. He would
+not have cared much what they had done at any other of his houses, but
+at Taróc, his mother, whom he had adored, had lived and died, and the
+place was sacred to him.</p>
+
+<p>He determined to tear himself away from Hohenszalras, and go and
+scatter these gay unbidden revellers in the dusky Karpathian ravines.
+'I cannot stay here for ever,' he thought, 'and I might be here for
+years without acquiring any more certainty than my own conviction.
+Either I am wrong, or he has nothing to conceal, or if I be right he is
+too wary to betray himself. If only I could see his shoulder where I
+struck the dagger&mdash;but I cannot go into his bath-room and say to him,
+"You are Vassia Kazán!"'</p>
+
+<p>He resolved to leave on the day after the morrow. For the next day
+there was organised on a large scale a hunting party, to which the
+nobility of the Tauern had been bidden. There were only some half-dozen
+men then staying in the Burg, most of them Austrian soldiers. The delay
+gave him the chance he longed for, which but for an accident he might
+never have had, though he had tarried there half a century.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning there was a great breakfast in the Rittersaal,
+at which Wanda did not appear. Sabran received the nobles and gentry
+of the province, and did the honours of his table with his habitual
+courtliness and grace. He was not hospitable in Vàsàrhely's sense of
+the word: he was too easily wearied by others, and too contemptuous of
+ordinary humanity; but he was alive to the pleasure of being lord of
+Hohenszalras, and sensible of the favour with which he was looked upon
+by a nobility commonly so exclusive and intolerant of foreign invasion.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast over, the whole party went out and up into the high woods.
+The sport at Hohenszalras always gave fair play to beast and bird. In
+deference to the wishes of his wife, Sabran would have none of those
+battues which make of the covert or the forest a slaughterhouse. He
+himself disdained that sort of sport, and liked danger and adventure
+to mingle with his out-of-door pastimes. Game fairly found by the
+spaniel or the pointer; the boar, the wolf, the bear, honestly started
+and given its fair chance of escape or revenge; the steinbock stalked
+in a long hard day with peril and effort&mdash;these were all delightful
+to him on occasion; but for the crowded drive, the horde of beaters,
+the terrified bewildered troop of forest denizens driven with sticks
+on to the very barrels of the gunners, for this he had the boundless
+contempt of a man who had chased the buffalo over the prairie, and
+lassoed the wild horse and the wild bull leaning down from the saddle
+of his mustang. The day passed off well, and his guests were all
+content: he alone was not, because a large brown bear which he had
+sighted and tired at twice had escaped him, and roused that blood-lust
+in him which is in the hearts of all men.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you come out alone with me to-morrow and try for that grand
+brute?' he said to Vàsàrhely, as the last of his guests took their
+departure.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since
+you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'</p>
+
+<p>He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught
+at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of
+Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had
+suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had
+intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving
+directions to the <i>jägermeister</i> for the next day.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is
+impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance
+resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a
+child.</p>
+
+<p>In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where
+the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a
+rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and
+mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in
+the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with
+no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their
+rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went
+through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a
+mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and
+capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big
+game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting
+and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and
+drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper
+woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian
+pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above
+some underground.</p>
+
+<p>'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper
+to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should
+be his host's.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my
+guest.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him
+to contrive to sting and wound him.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not
+observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed
+upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both
+in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron,
+good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about
+a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low
+hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and
+would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached.
+The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Well done,' cried Sabran, but scarcely were the words off his lips
+when another bear burst through the boughs ahead of him by fifty yards.
+He levelled his rifle and received its approach with two bullets in
+rapid succession. But neither had entered a vital part, and the animal,
+only rendered furious by pain, reared and came towards him with
+deadliest intent, its great fangs grinning. He fired again, and this
+shot struck home. The poor brute fell with a crash, the blood pouring
+from its mouth. It was not dead and its agony was great.</p>
+
+<p>'I will give it the <i>coup de grâce</i>,' said Sabran, who, for his wife's
+sake', was as humane as any hunter ever can be to the beasts he slew.</p>
+
+<p>'Take care,' said Vàsàrhely. 'It is dangerous to touch a wounded bear.
+I have known one that looked stone dead rise up and kill a man.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran did not heed. He went up to the poor, panting, groaning mass of
+fur and flesh, and drew his hunting-knife to give it the only mercy
+that it was now possible for it to receive. But as he stooped to
+plunge the knife into its heart the bear verified the warning he had
+been given. Gathering all its oozing strength in one dying effort to
+avenge its murder, it leaped on him, dashed him to the earth, and clung
+to him with claw and tooth fast in his flesh. He freed his right arm
+from its ponderous weight, its horrible grip, and stabbed it with his
+knife as it clung to and lacerated him where he lay upon the grass.
+In an instant, Vàsàrhely and the jäger who was with them were by his
+side, freed him from the animal, and raised him from the ground. He
+was deluged with its blood and his own. Vàsàrhely, for one moment of
+terrible joy, for which he loathed himself afterwards, thought, 'Is he
+dead?' Men had died of lesser things than this.</p>
+
+<p>He stood erect and smiled, and said that it was nothing, but even as he
+spoke a faintness came over him, and his lips turned grey.</p>
+
+<p>The jäger supported him tenderly, and would have had him sit down upon
+a boulder of rock, but he resisted.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me get to that water, he said feebly, looking to a spot a few
+yards off, where one of the many torrents of the Hohe Tauern tumbled
+from the wooded cliff above through birch and beechwood, and rushing
+underground left a clear round brown pool amongst the ferns. He took a
+draught from the flask of brandy; tendered him by the lad, and leaning
+on the youth, and struggling against the sinking swoon that was coming
+on him, walked to the edge of the pool, and dropped down there on one
+of the mossy stones which served as a rough chair.</p>
+
+<p>'Strip me, and wash the blood away, he said to the huntsman, whilst the
+green wood and the daylight, and the face of the man grew dim to him,
+and seemed to recede further and further in a misty darkness. The youth
+obeyed, and cut away the velvet coat, the cambric shirt, till he was
+naked to his waist; then, making sponges of handkerchiefs, the jäger
+began to wash the blood from him and staunch it as best he could.</p>
+
+<p>Egon Vàsàrhely stood by, without offering any aid; his eyes were
+fastened on the magnificent bust of Sabran, as the sunlight fell on the
+fair blue-veined flesh, the firm muscles, the symmetrical throat, the
+slender, yet sinewy arms, round one of which was clasped a bracelet of
+fair hair. He had the chance he needed.</p>
+
+<p>He approached and told the lad roughly to leave the Marquis to him,
+he was doing him more harm than good; he himself had seen many
+battle-fields, and many men bleeding to death upon their mother earth.
+By this time Sabran's eyes were closed; he was hardly conscious of
+anything, a great numbness and infinite exhaustion had fallen upon him;
+his lips moved feebly. 'Wanda!' he said once or twice,'Wanda!'</p>
+
+<p>The face of the man who leaned above him grew dark as night; he gnashed
+his teeth as he begun his errand of mercy.</p>
+
+<p>Leave me with your lord,' he said to the young jäger. 'Go you to the
+castle. Find Herr Greswold, bring him; do not alarm the Countess, and
+say nothing to the household.'</p>
+
+<p>The huntsman went, fleet as a roe. Vàsàrhely remained alone with
+Sabran, who only heard the sound of the rushing water magnified a
+million times on his dulled ear.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely tore the shirt in shreds, and laved and bathed the wounds,
+and then began to bind them with the skill of a soldier who had often
+aided his own wounded troopers. But first of all, when he had washed
+the blood away, he searched with keen and eager eyes for a scar on the
+white skin&mdash;and found it.</p>
+
+<p>On the right shoulder was a small triangular mark; the mark of what,
+to a soldier's eyes, told of an old wound. When he saw it he smiled a
+cruel smile, and went on with his work of healing.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran leaned against the rock behind him; his eyes were still closed,
+the pulsations of his heart were irregular. He had lost a great
+quantity of blood, and the pool at his feet was red. They were but
+flesh wounds, and there was no danger in them themselves, but great
+veins had been severed, and the stream of life had hurried forth in
+torrents. Vàsàrhely thrust the flask between his lips, but he could not
+swallow.</p>
+
+<p>All had been done that could be for the immediate moment. The stillness
+of the deep woods was around them; the body of the brown bear lay on
+the soaked grass; a vulture scenting death, was circling above against
+the blue sky. Over the mind of his foe swept at the sight of them one
+of those hideous temptations which assail the noblest natures in an
+hour of hatred. If he tore the bandages he had placed there off the
+rent veins of the unconscious man whom he watched, the blood would
+leap out again in floods, and so weaken the labouring heart that in
+ten minutes more its powers would fall so low that all aid would be
+useless. Never more would the lips of Sabran meet his wife! Never
+more would his dreams be dreamed upon her breast! For the moment the
+temptation seemed to curl about him like a flame; he shuddered, and
+crossed himself. Was he a soldier to slay in cold blood by treachery a
+powerless rival?</p>
+
+<p>He leaned over Sabran again, and again tried to force the mouthpiece
+of his wine-flask through his teeth. A few drops passed them, and
+he revived a little, and swallowed a few drops more. The blood was
+arrested in its escape, and the pulsations of the heart were returning
+to their normal measure; after a while he unclosed his eyes, and looked
+up at the green leaves, at the blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not alarm Wanda,' he said feebly. 'It is a scratch; it will be
+nothing. Take me home.'</p>
+
+<p>With his left hand he felt for the hair bracelet on his right arm,
+between the shoulder and the wrist. It was stiff with his own blood.</p>
+
+<p>Then Vàsàrhely leaned over him and met his upward gaze, and said in his
+ear, that seemed still filled with the rushing of many waters, 'You are
+Vassia Kazán!'</p>
+
+<p>When a little later the huntsman returned, bringing the physician, whom
+he had met a mile nearer the house in the woods, and some peasants
+bearing a litter made out of pine branches and wood moss, they found
+Sabran stretched insensible beside the water-pool; and Egon Vàsàrhely,
+who stood erect beside him, said in a strange tone:</p>
+
+<p>'I have stanched the blood, and he has swooned, you see. I commit him
+to your hands. I am not needed.'</p>
+
+<p>And, to their surprise, he turned and walked away with swift steps into
+the green gloom of the dense forest.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Sabran was still insensible when he was carried to the house.</p>
+
+<p>When he regained consciousness he was on his own bed, and his wife was
+bending over him. A convulsion of grief crossed his face as he lifted
+his eyelids and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda,' he murmured feebly, 'Wanda, you will forgive&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She kissed him passionately, while her tears fell like rain upon his
+forehead. She did not hear his words distinctly; she was only alive to
+the intense joy of his recovered consciousness, of the sound of his
+voice, of the sense of his safety. She kneeled by his bed, covering his
+hands with caresses, prodigal of a thousand names of love, given up to
+an abandonment of terror and of hope which broke down all the serenity
+and self-command of her habitual temper. She was not even aware of the
+presence of others. The over-mastering emotions of anguish and of joy
+filled her soul, and made her seem deaf, indifferent to all living
+things save one.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran lay motionless. He felt her lips, he heard her voice; he did not
+look up again, nor did he speak again. He shut his eyes, and slowly
+remembered all that had passed. Greswold approached him and held his
+fingers on his wrist, and held a little glass to his mouth. Sabran put
+it away. 'It is an opiate,' he said feebly; 'I will not have it.'</p>
+
+<p>He was resolute; he closed his teeth, he thrust the calming draught
+away.</p>
+
+<p>He was thinking to himself: 'Sometimes in unconsciousness one speaks.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are not in great pain?' asked the physician. He made a negative
+movement of his head. What were the fire and the smart of his lacerated
+flesh, of his torn muscles, to the torments of his fears, to the agony
+of his long stifled conscience?</p>
+
+<p>'Do not torment him, let him be still,' she said to the physician; she
+held his hand in both her own and pressed it to her heart. His languid
+eyes thanked her, then closed again.</p>
+
+<p>Herr Greswold withdrew to a little distance and waited. It seemed to
+him strange that a man of the high courage and strong constitution of
+Sabran should be thus utterly broken down by any wound that was not
+mortal; should be thus sunk into dejection and apathy, making no effort
+to raise himself, even to console and reassure his wife. It was not
+like his careless and gallant temper, his virile and healthful strength.</p>
+
+<p>It was true, the doctor reflected, that he had lost a great amount of
+blood. Such a loss he knew sometimes affects the heart and shatters the
+nervous system in many unlooked-for ways. Yet, he thought, there was
+something beyond this; the attitude and the regard of Egon Vàsàrhely
+had been unnatural at such an hour of peril. 'When he said just now
+"forgive," what did he mean?' reflected the old man, whose ear had
+caught the word which had escaped that of Wanda, who had been only
+alive to the voice she adored.</p>
+
+<p>The next four days were anxious and terrible. Sabran did not recover as
+the physician expected that he would, seeing the nature of his wounds
+and the naturally elastic and sanguine temperament he possessed. He
+slept little, had considerable fever, woke from the little rest he
+had, startled, alarmed, bathed in cold sweats; at other times he lay
+still in an apathy almost comatose, from which all the caresses and
+entreaties of his wife failed to rouse him. They began to fear that the
+discharge from the arteries had in some subtle and dangerous manner
+affected the action of the heart, the composition of the blood, and
+produced aneurism or pyæmia. 'The hero of Idrac to be prostrated by a
+mere flesh wound!' thought Herr Greswold in sore perplexity. He sent
+for a great man of science from Vienna, who, when he came, declared the
+treatment admirable, the wounds healthy, the heart in a normal state,
+but added it was evident the nervous system had received a severe
+shock, the effects of which still remained.</p>
+
+<p>'But it is that which I cannot understand,' said the old man in
+despair. 'If you only knew the Marquis de Sabran as I know him; the
+most courageous, the most gay, the most resolute of men! A man to laugh
+at death in its face! A man absolutely without fear!'</p>
+
+<p>The other assented.</p>
+
+<p>'Every one knows what he did in the floods at Idrac,' he answered; 'but
+he has a sensitive temperament for all that. If you did not tell me it
+is impossible, I should say that he had had some mental shock, some
+great grief. The prostration seems to me more of the mind than the
+body. But you have assured me it is impossible?'</p>
+
+<p>'Impossible! There does not live on earth a man so happy, so fortunate,
+so blessed in all the world as he.'</p>
+
+<p>'Men have a past that troubles them sometimes,' said the Vienna
+physician. 'Nay, I mean nothing, but I believe that M. de Sabran was a
+man of pleasure. The cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must
+drink long afterwards. I do not mean anything; I merely suggest. The
+prostration has to my view its most probable origin in mental trouble;
+but it would do him more harm than good to excite him by any effort to
+certify this. To the Countess von Szalras I have merely said, that his
+state is the result of the large loss of blood, and, indeed, after all
+it may be so.'</p>
+
+<p>On the fifth day, Sabran, still lying in that almost comatose silence
+which had been scarcely broken since his accident, said in a scarce
+audible voice to his wife:</p>
+
+<p>'Is your cousin here?'</p>
+
+<p>She stooped towards him and answered:</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; he is here, love. All the others went immediately, but Egon
+remained. I suppose he thought it looked kinder to do so. I have
+scarcely seen him, of course.'</p>
+
+<p>The pallor of his face grew greyer; he turned his head away restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>'Why does he not go?' he muttered in his throat. 'Does he wait for my
+death?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Réné! hush, hush!' she said, with horror and amaze. 'My love, how
+can you say such things? You are in no danger; the doctor assures me
+so. In a week or two you will be well, you will be yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Send your cousin away.'</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated; troubled by his unreasoning, restless jealousy, which
+seemed to be the only consciousness of life remaining with him. 'I will
+obey you, love; you are lord here,' she said softly; 'but will it not
+look strange? No guest can well be told to go.'</p>
+
+<p>'A guest!&mdash;he is an enemy!'</p>
+
+<p>She sighed, knowing how hopelessly reason can struggle against the
+delusions of a sick bed. 'I will tell him to go to-morrow,' she said,
+to soothe him. 'To-night it is too late.'</p>
+
+<p>'Write to him&mdash;do not leave me.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a childlike appeal in his voice, that from a man so strong
+had a piteous pathos. Her eyes swam with tears as she heard.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my dearest, I will not leave you!' she said passionately, 'not for
+one moment whilst I live; and oh, my beloved! what could death ever
+change in <i>me</i>? Have you so little faith?'</p>
+
+<p>'You do not know,' he said, so low that his breath scarcely stirred the
+air.</p>
+
+<p>She thought that he was tormented by a doubt that she would not be
+faithful to him if he died. She stooped and kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>'My own, I would sooner be faithless to you in your life than after
+death. Surely you know me well enough to know that at the least?'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent. A great sigh struggled from his breast and escaped his
+pale lips like a parting breath.</p>
+
+<p>'Kiss me again,' he murmured; 'kiss me again, whilst&mdash;&mdash;That gives me
+life,' he said, as he drew her head down upon his bosom, where his
+heart throbbed labouredly. A little while later he fell asleep. He
+slept some hours. When he awoke he was consumed by a nameless fear.</p>
+
+<p>'Is your cousin gone?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She told him that it was one o'clock in the same night; she had not
+written yet.</p>
+
+<p>'Let him stay,' he said feverishly. 'He shall not think I fear him. Do
+you hear me? Let him stay.'</p>
+
+<p>The words seemed to her the causeless caprice of a jealousy magnified
+and distorted by the weakness of fever. She strove to answer him
+calmly. 'He shall go or stay as you please,' she assured him. 'What
+does it matter, dear, what Egon does? You always speak of Egon. You
+have never spoken of the children once.'</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to distract his thoughts. She was pained to think how deep,
+though unspoken, his antagonism to her cousin must have been, that now
+in his feebleness it&mdash;was the one paramount absorbing thought.</p>
+
+<p>A great sadness came upon his face as she spoke; his lips trembled a
+little.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! the children,' he repeated. 'Yes, bring them to me to-morrow. Bela
+is too like me. Poor Bela, it will be his curse.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is my joy of joys,' she murmured, afraid to see how his mind seemed
+astray.</p>
+
+<p>A shudder that was almost a spasm passed over him. He did not reply. He
+turned his face away from her, and seemed to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The day following he was somewhat calmer, somewhat stronger, though his
+fever was high.</p>
+
+<p>The species of paralysis that had seemed to; fall on all his faculties
+had in a great measure left him. 'You wish, me to recover,' he said to
+her. 'I will do so, though perhaps it were, better not?'</p>
+
+<p>'He says strange things,' she said to Greswold. 'I cannot think why he
+has such thoughts.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is not he, himself, that has them, it is his fever,' answered the
+doctor. 'Why, in fever, do people often hate what they most adore when
+they are in health?'</p>
+
+<p>She was reassured, but not contented.</p>
+
+<p>The children were brought to see him. Bela had with him an ivory
+air-gun, with which he was accustomed to blow down his metal soldiers;
+he looked at his father with awed, dilated eyes, and said that he would
+go out with the gun and kill the brothers of the bear that had done the
+harm.</p>
+
+<p>'The bear was quite right,' said Sabran. 'It was I who was wrong to
+take a life not my own.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is beyond Bela,' said his wife. 'But I will translate it to him
+into language he shall understand, though I fear very much, say what I
+will, he will be a hunter and a soldier one day.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela looked from one to the other, knitting, his fair brows as he sat
+on the edge of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela will be like Egon,' he said, 'with all gold and fur to dress up
+in, and a big jewelled sword, and ten hundred men and horses, and Bela
+will be a great killer of things!'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran smiled languidly, but she saw that he flinched at her cousin's
+name.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not love you, Bela, if you are a killer of things that are
+God's dear creatures,' she said, as she sent the child away.</p>
+
+<p>His blue eyes grew dark with anger.</p>
+
+<p>'God only cares about Bela,' he said in innocent profanity, with
+a profound sense of his own vastness in the sight of heaven, 'and
+Gela,' he added, with the condescending tenderness wherewith he always
+associated his brother and himself.</p>
+
+<p>'Where could he get all that overwhelming pride?' she said, as he was
+led away. 'I have tried to rear him so simply. Do what I may he will
+grow arrogant and selfish.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear,' said Sabran, very bitterly, 'what avails that he was borne
+in your bosom? He is my son!'</p>
+
+<p>'Gela is your son, and he is so different,' she answered, not seeking
+to combat the self-censure to which she was accustomed in him, and
+which she attributed to faults or follies of a past life, magnified by
+a conscience too sensitive.</p>
+
+<p>'He is all yours then,' he said, with a wan smile. 'You have prevailed
+over evil.'</p>
+
+<p>In a few days later his recovery had progressed so far that he had
+regained his usual tone and look; his wounds were healing, and his
+strength was returning. He seemed to the keen eyes of Greswold to have
+made a supreme effort to conquer the moral depression into which he had
+sunk, and to have thrust away his malady almost by force of will. As he
+grew better he never spoke of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>On the fifteenth day from his accident he was restored enough to health
+for apprehension to cease. He passed some hours seated at an open
+window in his own room. He never asked if Vàsàrhely were still there or
+not.</p>
+
+<p>Wanda, who never left him, wondered at that silence, but she forbore to
+bring forward a name which had had such power to agitate him. She was
+troubled at the nervousness which still remained to him. The opening of
+a door, the sound of a step, the entrance of a servant made him start
+and turn pale. When she spoke of it with anxiety to Herr Joachim, he
+said vague sentences as to the nervousness which was consequent on
+great loss of blood, and brought forward instances of soldiers who had
+lost their nerve from the same cause. It did not satisfy her. She was
+the descendant of a long line of warriors; she could not easily believe
+that her husband's intrepid and careless courage could have been
+shattered by a flesh wound.</p>
+
+<p>'Did you really mean,' he said abruptly to her that afternoon, as he
+sat for the first time beside the open panes of the oriel; 'did you
+really mean that were I to die you would never forget me for any other?'</p>
+
+<p>She rose quickly as if she had been stung, and her face flushed.</p>
+
+<p>'Do I merit that doubt from you? she said. 'I think not.'</p>
+
+<p>She spoke rather in sadness than in anger. He had hurt her, he could
+not anger her. He felt the rebuke.</p>
+
+<p>'Even if I were dead, should I have all your life?' he murmured, in
+wonder at that priceless gift.</p>
+
+<p>'You and your children,' she said gravely. 'Ah! what can death do
+against great love? Make its bands stronger perhaps, its power purer.
+Nothing else.'</p>
+
+<p>'I thank you,' he said very low, with great humility, with intense
+emotion. For a moment he thought&mdash;&mdash;should he tell her, should he trust
+this deep tenderness which could brave death; and might brave even
+shame unblenching? He looked at her from under his drooped eyelids, and
+then&mdash;he dared not. He knew the pride which was in her better than she
+did&mdash;&mdash;her pride, which was inherited by her firstborn, and had been
+the sign manual of all her imperious race.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her where she stood with the light falling on her through
+the amber hues of painted glass; worn, wan, and tired by so many days
+and nights of anxious vigil, she yet looked a woman whom a nation
+might salute with the <i>pro rege nostro!</i> that Maria Theresa heard. All
+that a great race possesses and rejoices in of valour, of tradition,
+of dignity, of high honour, and of blameless truth were expressed in
+her; every movement, attitude, and gesture spoke of the aristocracy of
+blood. All that potent and subtle sense of patrician descent which had
+most allured and intoxicated him in other days now awed and daunted
+him. He dared not tell her of his treason. He dared not. He was as a
+false conspirator before a great queen he has betrayed.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you faint, my love?' she asked him, alarmed to see the change upon
+his face and the exhaustion with which he sunk, backward against the
+cushions of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>'Mere weakness; it will pass,' he said, smiling as best he might, to
+reassure her. He felt like a man who slides down a crevasse, and has
+time and consciousness enough to see the treacherous ice go by him,
+the black abyss yawning below him, the cold, dark death awaiting him
+beyond, whilst on the heights the sun is shining.</p>
+
+<p>That night he entreated her to leave him and rest. He assured her he
+felt well; he feigned a need of sleep. For fifteen nights she had not
+herself lain down. To please him she obeyed, and the deep slumber of
+tired nature soon fell upon her. When he thought she slept, he rose
+noiselessly and threw on a long velvet coat, sable-lined, that was by
+his bedside, and looked at his watch. It was midnight.</p>
+
+<p>He crossed the threshold of the open door into his wife's chamber and
+stood beside her bed for a moment, gazing at her as she slept. She
+seemed like the marble statue of some sleeping saint; she lay in the
+attitude of S. Cecilia on her bier at Home. The faint lamplight made
+her fair skin white as snow. Bound her arm was a bracelet of his hair
+like the one which he wore of hers. He stood and gazed on her, then
+slowly turned away. Great tears fell down his cheeks as he left her
+chamber. He opened the door of his own room, the outer one which led
+into the corridor, and walked down the long tapestry-hung gallery
+leading to the guest-chambers. It was the first time that he had walked
+without assistance; his limbs felt strange and broken, but he held on,
+leaning now and then to rest against the arras. The whole house was
+still.</p>
+
+<p>He took his way straight to the apartments set aside for guests. All
+was dark. The little lamp he carried shed a circle of light about his
+steps but none beyond him. When he reached the chamber which he knew
+was Egon Vàsàrhely's he did not pause. He struck on its panels with a
+firm hand.</p>
+
+<p>The voice of Vàsàrhely asked from within, 'Who is there? Is there
+anything wrong?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is I! Open,' answered Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment more the door unclosed. Vàsàrhely stood within it; he was
+not undressed. There were a dozen wax candles burning in silver sconces
+on the table within. The tapestried figures on the walls grew pale and
+colossal in their light. He did not speak, but waited.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran entered and closed the door behind him. His face was bloodless,
+but he carried himself erect despite the sense of faintness which
+assailed him.</p>
+
+<p>'You know who I am?' he said simply, without preface or supplication.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely gave a gesture of assent.</p>
+
+<p>'How did you know it?'</p>
+
+<p>'I remembered,' answered the other.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence. If Vàsàrhely could have withered to the
+earth by a gaze of scorn the man before him, Sabran would have fallen
+dead. As it was his eyes dropped beneath the look, but the courage and
+the dignity of his attitude did not alter. He had played his part of
+a great noble for so long that it had ceased to be assumption and had
+become his nature.</p>
+
+<p>'You will tell her?' he said, and his voice did not tremble, though his
+very soul seemed to swoon within him.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not tell her!'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely spoke with effort; his words were hoarse and stern.</p>
+
+<p>'You will not?'</p>
+
+<p>An immense joy, unlooked for, undreamed of, sprang up in him, checked
+as it rose by incredulity.</p>
+
+<p>'But you loved her!' he said, on an impulse which he regretted even
+as the exclamation escaped him. Vàsàrhely threw his head back with a
+gesture of fine anger.</p>
+
+<p>'If I loved' her what is that to you?' he said, with a restrained
+violence vibrating in his words. 'It is, perhaps, because I once loved
+her that your foul secret is safe with me now. I shall not tell her. I
+waited to say this to you. I could not write it lest it should meet her
+eyes. You came to ask me this? Be satisfied and go.'</p>
+
+<p>'I came to ask you this because, had you said otherwise, I would have
+shot myself ere she could have heard.'</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely said nothing; a great scorn was still set like the grimness
+of death upon his face. He looked far away at the dim figures on the
+tapestries; he shrunk from the sight of his boyhood's enemy as from
+some loathly unclean thing he must not kill.</p>
+
+<p>'Suicide!' he thought, 'the Slav's courage, the serf's refuge!</p>
+
+<p>Before the sight of Sabran the room went round, the lights grew dull,
+the figures on the walls became, fantastic and unreal. His heart beat
+with painful effort, yet his ears, his throat, his brain seemed full
+of blood. The nerves of his whole body seemed to shrink and thrill and
+quiver, but the force of habit kept him composed and erect before this
+man who was his foe, yet did for him what few friends would have done.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not thank you,' he said at last. 'I understand; you spare me for
+her sake, not mine.'</p>
+
+<p>'But for her, I would treat you so.'</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he broke in two a slender agate ruler which lay on the
+writing-table at his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>'Go,' he added, 'you have had my word; though we live fifty years you
+are safe from me, because&mdash;&mdash;because&mdash;&mdash;God forgive you! you are hers.'</p>
+
+<p>He made a gesture towards the door. Sabran shivered under the insult
+which his conscience could not resent, his hand dared not avenge.</p>
+
+<p>Hearing this there fell away from him the arrogance that had been his
+mask, the courage that had been his shield. He saw himself for the
+first time as this man saw him, as all the world would see him if once
+it knew his secret. For the first time his past offences rose up like
+ghosts naked from their graves. The calmness, the indifference, the
+cynicism, the pride which had been so long in his manner and in his
+nature deserted him. He felt base-born before a noble, a liar before a
+gentleman, a coward before a man of honour.</p>
+
+<p>Where he stood, leaning on a high caned chair to support himself
+against the sickly weakness which still came on him from his scarce
+healed wounds, he felt for the first time to cower and shrink before
+this man who was his judge, and might become his accuser did he choose.
+Something in the last words of Egon Vàsàrhely suddenly brought home
+to him the enormity of his own sin, the immensity of the other's
+forbearance. He suddenly realised all the offence to honour, all the
+outrage to pride, all the ineffaceable indignity which he had brought
+upon a great race: all that he had done, never to be undone by any
+expiation of his own, in making Wanda von Szalras the mother of his
+sons. Submissive, he turned without a word of gesture or of pleading,
+and felt his way out of the chamber through the dusky mists of the
+faintness stealing on him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against
+the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his
+clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.</p>
+
+<p>She was still asleep.</p>
+
+<p>When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever.
+He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a
+moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his
+desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.</p>
+
+<p>But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned
+to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had
+left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person,
+as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no
+importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said
+nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental
+impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian
+mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use
+to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife
+attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial
+always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength
+returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a
+gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened
+upon her with a strange appeal.</p>
+
+<p>One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was
+certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following
+words to his foe and his judge:</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,&mdash;&mdash;You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I
+send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical
+weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time
+or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof
+absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that
+the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue
+it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but
+shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of
+action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present
+permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have
+governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or
+chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern
+both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse
+at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia
+Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to
+nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the
+great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was
+taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never
+saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years
+old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I
+remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you,
+and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then
+returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him.
+One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the
+Prince Zabaroff was dead&mdash;my protector, as they termed him&mdash;and that
+I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make
+you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always
+been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family,
+could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts,
+the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then,
+thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father.
+I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my
+fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother
+Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year
+after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You
+see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things
+or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had
+a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices,
+like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the
+love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit
+which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of
+me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive
+tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in
+my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those
+three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me
+with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be
+rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did
+me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a
+word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis
+with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold
+some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque
+going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down
+with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone
+reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe,
+and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread,
+fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I
+neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me
+popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name
+of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went
+there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the
+moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I
+liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely
+more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his
+fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior.
+Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left
+for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his
+hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the
+Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the
+solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts
+the hiss of an Indian's arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he
+lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of
+him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows
+of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher
+in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been
+subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having
+wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died
+of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to
+think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life
+with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed
+me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the
+dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history
+of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was
+glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike
+as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on
+the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the
+steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men
+I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I
+loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican <i>ranch</i> near,
+within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us
+and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost
+inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps
+covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it
+all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be
+gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies
+which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight
+whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector
+and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose
+heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he
+died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything
+he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would
+collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France.
+For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss.
+I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and
+his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of
+cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave.
+I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the
+temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all
+those which had been brought with him from France by his Jesuit tutors,
+and the certificates of his own and his father's births and marriages,
+with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper
+containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and
+patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden
+in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had
+desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great
+sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine:
+he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human
+being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed
+to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots
+not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had
+the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was
+born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible
+reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years
+I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and
+purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris,
+yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in
+many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong
+which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that
+I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it
+seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had
+deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and
+had given me all he held most dear&mdash;&mdash;the fruits of his researches.
+To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation.
+I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as
+the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew
+that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke
+no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was
+recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned
+to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance
+with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to
+me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not
+having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I
+went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had
+been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The
+priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the
+name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing&mdash;&mdash;Bretons
+never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead
+men who had gone down when the <i>Estelle</i> had foundered off the Pinos.
+I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so
+much during my seven years' absence from Paris that I did not suppose
+anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran.
+And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known
+me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred
+of me as your cousin's husband; and had you even had suspicions you
+could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in
+the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down
+the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me
+take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune
+involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have
+done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and
+some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What
+was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over
+with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is
+my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious
+and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense
+perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it
+as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying
+ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to
+justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware
+that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true
+that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed
+me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to
+me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I
+had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely
+closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became
+almost by necessity a <i>fainéant</i>, and fate smiled upon me more than I
+merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all
+his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me.
+I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I
+can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so
+natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made
+me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to
+act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and
+irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call
+<i>flair.</i> I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on
+the Bourse. I was also, famous for <i>la main heureuse</i> in all forms of
+gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept
+always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed
+to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded
+the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should
+not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was
+a man of honour until&mdash;&mdash;I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to
+defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware
+of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied
+your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her.
+You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It
+is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions
+of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to
+me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia,
+but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am
+base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting
+elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and
+mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten
+by a great lord's momentary <i>ennui</i> and caprice! But if you will stoop
+so far&mdash;&mdash;if you will consider me ennobled by <i>her</i> enough to meet
+you as an equal would do&mdash;&mdash;we can find with facility some pretext
+of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me.
+You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are
+the only male champion&mdash;what her brothers would surely have taken had
+they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have
+passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your
+commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to
+their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet
+you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother's
+than their father's, and she will rear them in all noble ways.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return
+of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace
+with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his
+own cowardice and shame.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of
+Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief:&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for
+she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 60%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.'</p>
+
+<p>To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:</p>
+
+<p>'Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did
+not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has
+seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return.
+It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a
+prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go
+to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If
+ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope
+this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen
+you.' Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to
+be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name.
+Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your
+husband, and give me a remembrance in your prayers.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 70%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'EGON.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn
+shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and
+to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of
+her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to
+play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and
+eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this
+unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it
+plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian
+world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it
+was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman,
+which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon
+her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and
+what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at
+Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of
+it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation.
+If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again
+paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and
+her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda has ruined him!' she always thought angrily. 'He always expects
+every other woman to have a soul above <i>chiffons</i> and to bury herself
+in the country with children and horses.'</p>
+
+<p>Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which
+his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to
+her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the
+pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him.
+Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed
+measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to
+entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and
+was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law.
+She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only
+came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild
+forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely,
+and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope,
+which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for
+her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the
+post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and
+soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was
+called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish
+literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race
+of Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>What was in that letter?</p>
+
+<p>She attended to none of her own, so absorbed was she in the impression
+which gained upon her that the packet which had brought so much
+surprise and even emotion upon his face came from the hand of Wanda.
+'If even she should be no saint at all?' she thought, with a malicious
+amusement. She did not see Egon Vàsàrhely for many hours, but she
+did not lose her curiosity nor cease to cast about for a method of
+gratifying it. At the close of the day when she came back from hunting
+she went into the library, which was then empty. She did not seriously
+expect to see anything that would reward her enterprise, but she knew
+he read his letters there and wrote the few he was obliged to write:
+like most soldiers he disliked using pen and ink. It was dusk, and
+there were a few lights burning in the old silver sconces fixed upon
+the horns of forest animals against the walls. With a quick, calm
+touch, she moved all the litter of papers lying on the huge table
+where he was wont to do such business as he was compelled to transact.
+She found nothing that gratified her inquisitiveness. She was about
+to leave the room in baffled impatience&mdash;&mdash;impatience of she knew not
+what&mdash;&mdash;when her eyes fell upon a pile of charred paper lying on the
+stove.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those monumental polychrome stoves of fifteenth-century
+work in which the country-houses of Central Europe are so rich; a
+grand pile of fretted pottery, towering half way to the ceiling, with
+the crown and arms of the Vàsàrhely princes on its summit. There was
+no fire in it, for the weather was not cold, and Vàsàrhely, who alone
+used the room, was an ascetic in such matters; but upon its jutting
+step, which was guarded by lions of gilded bronze, there had been some
+paper burned: the ashes lay there in a little heap. Almost all of
+it was ash, but a few torn pieces were only blackened and coloured.
+With the eager curiosity of a woman who is longing to find another
+woman at fault, she kneeled down by the stove and patiently examined
+these pieces. Only one was so little burned that it had a word or two
+legible upon it; two of those words were Vassia Kazán. Nothing else was
+traceable; she recognised the handwriting of Sabran. She attached no
+importance to it, yet she slipped the little scrap, burnt and black as
+it was, within one of her gauntlets; then, as quickly as she had come
+there, she retreated and in another half hour, smiling and radiant,
+covered with jewels, and with no trace of fatigue or of weather, she
+descended the great banqueting-hall, clad as though the heart of the
+Greater Karpathians was the centre of the Boulevard S. Germain.</p>
+
+<p>Who was Vassia Kazán?</p>
+
+<p>The question floated above all her thoughts all that evening. Who was
+he, she, or it, and what could Sabran have to say of him, or her, or
+it to Egon Vàsàrhely? A less wise woman might have asked straightway
+what the unknown name might mean, but straight ways are not those
+which commend themselves to temperaments like hers. The pleasure and
+the purpose of her life was intrigue. In great things she deemed
+it necessity; in trifles it was an amusement; without it life was
+flavourless.</p>
+
+<p>The next day her brother-in-law abandoned Taróc, to join his hussars
+and prepare for the autumn manœuvres in the plains, and left her and
+Stefan in possession of the great place, half palace, half fortress,
+which had withstood more than one siege of Ottoman armies, where it
+stood across a deep gorge with the water foaming black below. But she
+kept the charred, torn, triangular scrap of paper; and she treasured
+in her memory the two words Vassia Kazán; and she said again and again
+and again to herself: 'Why should he write to Egon? Why should Egon
+burn what he writes?' Deep down in her mind there was always at work
+a bitter jealousy of Wanda von Szalras; jealousy of her regular and
+perfect beauty, of her vast possessions, of her influence at the Court,
+of her serene and unspotted repute, and now of her ascendency over the
+lives of Sabran and of Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>'Why should they both love that woman so much?' she thought very often.
+'She is always alike. She has no temptations. She goes over life as if
+it were frozen snow. She did one senseless thing, but then she was rich
+enough to do it with impunity. She is so habitually fortunate that she
+is utterly uninteresting; and yet they are both her slaves!'</p>
+
+<p>She went home and wrote to a cousin of her own who had been a member
+of the famous Third Section at Petersburg. She said in her letter: 'Is
+there anyone known in Russia as Vassia Kazán? I want you to learn for
+me to what or to whom this name belongs. It is certainly Russian, and
+appears to me to have been taken by some one who has been named <i>more
+hebrœo</i> from the city of Kazán. You, who know everything past,
+present, and to come, will be able to know this.'</p>
+
+<p>In a few days she received an answer from Petersburg. Her cousin wrote:
+'I cannot give you the information you desire. It must be a thing of
+the past. But I will keep it in mind, and sooner or later you shall
+have the knowledge you wish. You will do us the justice to admit that
+we are not easily baffled.'</p>
+
+<p>She was not satisfied, but knew how to be patient.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Strangely enough the consciousness that one person lived who knew
+his secret unnerved him. He had said truly that so much were all his
+instincts and temper those of an aristocrat that he had long ceased to
+remember that he was not the true Marquis de Sabran. The admiration men
+frankly gave him, and the ascendency he exercised over women, had alike
+concurred in fostering his self-delusion. Since his recognition by the
+foe of his boyhood a vivid sense of his own shamefulness, however, had
+come upon him; a morbid consciousness that he was not what he seemed,
+and what all the world believed him, had returned to him. Egon would
+never speak, but he himself could never forget. He said to himself in
+his solitude, 'I am Vassia Kazán! and what he had done appeared to him
+intolerable, infamous, beyond all expiation.</p>
+
+<p>It was like an impalpable but impassable wall built up between himself
+and her. Nothing was changed except that one man knew his secret, but
+this one fact seemed to change the face of the world. For the first
+time all the deference, all the homage with which the people of the
+Tauern treated him seemed to him a derision. Naturally of proud temper,
+and of an intellect which gave him ascendency over others, he had from
+the first moment he had assumed the marquisate of Sabran received
+all the acknowledgments of his rank with an honest unconsciousness
+of imposture. After all he had in his veins blood as patrician as
+that of the Sabrans; but now that Egon Vàsàrhely knew the truth he
+was perpetually conscious of not being what he seemed. The mere sense
+that about the world there was another living being who knew what he
+knew, shook down all the self-possession and philosophy which had so
+long made him assure himself that the assumption of a name was an
+immaterial circumstance, which, harming no one, could concern no one.
+Egon Vàsàrhely seemed to have seized his sophisms in a rude grasp, and
+shaken them down as blossoms fall in wind. He thought with bitter
+self-contempt how true the cynic was who said that no sin exists so
+long as it is not found out; that discovery is the sole form which
+remorse takes.</p>
+
+<p>At times his remorse made him almost afraid of Wanda, almost shrink
+from her, almost tremble at her regard; at other times it intensified
+his passion and infused into his embraces a kind of ferocity of
+triumph. He would show an almost brutal ardour in his caresses, and
+would think with an almost cruel exultation, 'I was born a serf, and I
+am her lover, her lord! Strangely enough, she began to lose something
+of her high influence upon him, of her spiritual superiority in his
+sight. She was so entirely, so perpetually his, that she became in a
+manner tainted with his own degradation. She could no longer check him
+with a word, calm him with a gesture of restraint. She was conscious of
+a change in him which she could not explain to herself. His sweetness
+of temper was broken by occasional irritability that she had never seen
+before. He was at times melancholy and absorbed; he at times displayed
+a jealousy which appeared unworthy of herself and him; at other moments
+he adored her, submitted to her with too great a humility. They were
+still happy, but their happiness was more uncertain, more disturbed by
+passing shadows. She told herself that it was always so in marriage,
+that in the old trite phrase nothing mortal was ever perfect long. But
+this philosophy failed to reconcile her. She found herself continually
+pondering on the alteration that she perceived in him, without being
+able to explain it to herself in any satisfactory manner.</p>
+
+<p>One day he announced to her without preface that he had decided to
+renounce the name of Sabran; that he preferred to any other the title
+which she had given him in the Countship of Idrac. She was astonished,
+but on reflection only saw, in his choice, devotion and deference to
+herself. Perhaps, too, she reflected with a pang, he desired some
+foreign mission such as she had once proposed to him; perhaps the life
+at Hohenszalras was monotonous and too quiet for a man so long used
+to the movement and excitation of Paris. She suggested the invitation
+of a circle of guests more often, but he rejected the idea with some
+impatience. He, who had previously amused himself so well with the
+part of host to a brilliant society, now professed that he saw nothing
+but trouble and <i>ennui</i> in a house full of people, who changed every
+week, and of royal personages who exacted ceremonious observances
+that were tedious and burdensome. So they remained alone, for even
+the Princess Ottilie had gone away to Lilienslust. For her own part
+she asked nothing better. Her people, her lands, her occupations, her
+responsibilities, were always interest enough. She loved the stately,
+serene tread of Time in these mountain solitudes. Life always seemed
+to her a purer, graver, more august thing when no echo of the world
+without jarred on the solemnity of the woods and hills. She wanted her
+children to grow up to love Hohenszalras, as she had always done, far
+above all pomps and pleasures of courts and cities.</p>
+
+<p>The winter went by, and he spent most of the days out of doors in
+violent exercise, sledging, skating, wolf hunting. In the evenings he
+made music for her in the white room: beautiful, dreamy music, that
+carried her soul from earth. He played for hours and hours far into the
+night; he seemed more willing to do anything than to converse. When he
+talked to her she was sensible of an effort of constraint; it was no
+longer the careless, happy, spontaneous conversation of a man certain
+of receiving sympathy in all his opinions, indulgence in all his
+errors, comprehension in even his vaguest or most eccentric ideas: a
+certain charm was gone out of their intercourse. She thought sometimes
+humbly enough, was it because a man always wearies of a woman? Yet
+she could scarcely think that, for his reverential deference to her
+alternated with a passion that had lost nothing of its voluptuous
+intensity.</p>
+
+<p>So the winter passed away. Madame Ottilie was in the South for her
+health, with her relatives of Lilienhöhe; they invited no one, and so
+no one could approach them. The children grew and throve. Bela and his
+brother had a little sledge of their own, drawn by two Spanish donkeys,
+white as the snows that wrapped the Iselthal in their serenity and
+silence. In their little sable coats and their sable-lined hoods the
+two little boys looked like rosebuds wrapped in brown moss. They were a
+pretty spectacle upon the ice, with their stately Heiduck, wrapped in
+his scarlet and black cloak, walking by the gilded shell-shaped sledge.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela loves the ice best. Bela wishes the summer never was!' said the
+little heir of the Counts of Szalras one day, as he leaped out from
+under the bearskin of his snow-carriage. His father heard him, and
+smiled a little bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>'You have the snow in your blood,' he thought. 'I, too, know how I
+loved the winter with all its privations, how I skimmed like a swallow
+down the frozen Volga, how I breasted the wind of the North Sea, sad
+with the dying cries of the swans! But I had an empty stomach and
+naked limbs under my rough goatskin, and you ride there in your sables
+and velvets, a proud little prince, and yet you are my son!'</p>
+
+<p>Was he almost angered against his own child for the great heirship to
+which he was born, as kings are often of their dauphins? Bela looked up
+at him a little timidly, always being in a certain awe of his father.</p>
+
+<p>'May Bela go with you some day with the big black horses, one day when
+you go very far?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ask your mother,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'She will like it,' said the child. 'Yesterday she said you never do
+think of Bela. She did not say it <i>to</i> Bela, but he heard.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will think of him,' said Sabran, with some emotion: he had a certain
+antagonism to the child, of which he was vaguely ashamed; he was sorry
+that she should have noticed it. He disliked him because Bela so
+visibly resembled himself that he was a perpetual reproach; a living
+sign of how the blood of a Russian lord and of a Persian peasant had
+been infused into the blood of the Austrian nobles.</p>
+
+<p>The next day he took the child with him on a drive of many leagues,
+through the frozen highways winding through the frosted forests under
+the huge snow-covered range of the Glöckner mountains. Bela was in
+raptures; the grand black Russian horses, whose speed was as the wind,
+were much more to his taste than the sedate and solemn Spanish asses.
+When they returned, and Sabran lifted him out of the sledge in the
+twilight, the child kissed his hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela loves you,' he said timidly.</p>
+
+<p>'Why do you?' said his father, surprised and touched. 'Because you are
+your mother's child?'</p>
+
+<p>Bela did not understand. He said, after a moment of reflection:</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is afraid, when you are angry; very afraid. But Bela does love
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran laid his hand on the child's shoulder. 'I shall never be angry
+if Bela obey his mother, and never pain her. Remember that.'</p>
+
+<p>'He will remember,' said Bela. 'And may he go with the big black horses
+very soon again?'</p>
+
+<p>'Your mother's horses are just as big, and just as black. Is it not the
+same thing to go with her?'</p>
+
+<p>'No. Because she takes Bela often; you never.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are ungrateful,' said Sabran, in the tone which always alarmed and
+awed the bold, bright spirit of his child. 'Your mother's love beside
+mine is like the great mountain beside the speck of dust. Can you
+understand? You will when you are a man. Obey her and adore her. So you
+will best please me.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela looked at him with troubled suffused eyes; he went within doors a
+little sadly, led away by Hubert, and when he reached his nursery and
+had his furs taken from off him he was still serious, and for once he
+did not tell his thoughts to Gela, for they were too many for him to
+be able to master them in words. His father was a beautiful, august,
+terrible, magnificent figure in his eyes; with the confused fancies
+of a child's scarce-opened mind he blended together in his admiration
+Sabran and the great marble form of S. Johann of Prague which stretched
+its arm towards the lake from the doors of the great entrance, and, as
+Bela always understood, controlled the waters and the storms at will.
+Bela feared no one else in all the world, but he feared his father,
+and for that reason loved him as he loved nothing else in his somewhat
+selfish and imperious little life.</p>
+
+<p>'It is so good of you to have given Bela that pleasure,' his wife said
+to him when he entered the white room. 'I know you cannot care to hear
+a child chatter as I do. It can only be tiresome to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will drive him every day if it please <i>you</i>,' said Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no; that would be too much to exact from you. Besides, he would
+soon despise his donkeys, and desert poor Gela. I take him but seldom
+myself for that reason. He has an idea that he is immeasurably older
+than Gela. It is true a year at their ages is more difference than are
+ten years at ours.'</p>
+
+<p>'The child said something to me, as if he had heard you say I do not
+care for him?'</p>
+
+<p>'You do not, very much. Surely you are inclined to be harsh to him?'</p>
+
+<p>'If I be so, it is only because I see so much of myself in him.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her, assailed once more by the longing which at times came
+over him to tell her the truth of himself, to risk everything rather
+than deceive her longer, to throw himself upon her mercy, and cut short
+this life which had so much of duplicity, so much of concealment, that
+every year added to it was a stone added to the mountain of his sins.
+But when he looked at her he dared not. The very grace and serenity
+of her daunted him; all the signs of nobility in her, from the repose
+of her manner to the very beauty of her hands, with their great rings
+gleaming on the long and slender fingers, seemed to awe him into
+silence. She was so proud a woman, so great a lady, so patrician in
+all her prejudices, her habits, her hereditary qualities, he dared not
+tell her that he had betrayed her thus. An infidelity, a folly, even
+any other crime he thought he could have summoned courage to confess
+to her; but to say to her, the daughter of a line of princes: 'I, who
+have made you the mother of my children, I was born a bastard and a
+serf!' How could he dare say that? Anything else she might forgive,
+he thought, since love is great, but never that. Nay, a cold sickness
+stole over him as he thought again that she came of great lords who had
+meted justice out over whole provinces for a thousand years; and he
+had wronged her so deeply that the human tongue scarcely held any word
+of infamy enough to name his crime. The law would set her free, if she
+chose, from a man who had so betrayed her, and his children would be
+bastards like himself.</p>
+
+<p>He had stretched himself on a great couch, covered with white
+bear-skins. He was in shadow; she was in the light that came from the
+fire on the wide hearth, and from the oriel window near, a red warm
+dusky light, that fell on the jewels on her hands, the furs on her
+skirts, the very pearls about her throat.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at him anxiously, seeing how motionless he lay there, with
+his head turned backward on the cushions.</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid you are weak still from that wound,' she said, as she rose
+and approached him. 'Greswold assures me it has left no trace, but I am
+always afraid. And you look often so pale. Perhaps you exert yourself
+too much? Let the wolves be. Perhaps it is too cold for you? Would you
+like to go to the south? Do not think of me; my only happiness is to do
+whatever you wish.'</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand with deep unfeigned emotion. 'I believe in angels
+since I knew you,' he murmured. 'No; I will not take you away from the
+winter and the people that you love. I am well enough. Greswold is
+right. I could not master those horses if I were not strong; be sure of
+that.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I always fear that it is dull here for you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dull! with you? "Custom cannot stale her infinite variety." That was
+written in prophecy of your charm for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will always flatter me! And I am not "various" at all; I am too
+grave to be entertaining. I am just the German house-mother who cares
+for the children and for you.'</p>
+
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'Is that your portrait of yourself? I think Carolus Duran's is truer,
+my grand châtelaine. When you are at Court the whole circle seems to
+fade to nothing before your presence. Though there are so many women
+high-born and beautiful there, you eclipse them all.'</p>
+
+<p>'Only in your eyes! And you know I care nothing for courts. What I like
+is the life here, where one quiet day is the pattern of all the other
+days. If I were sure that you were content in it&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Why should you think of that?'</p>
+
+<p>'My love, tell me honestly, do you never miss the world?'</p>
+
+<p>He rose and walked to the hearth. He, whose life was a long lie, never
+lied to her if he could avoid it; and he knew very well that he did
+miss the world with all its folly, stimulant, and sin. Sometimes the
+moral air here seemed to him too pure, too clear.</p>
+
+<p>'Did I do so I should be thankless indeed&mdash;thankless as madmen are who
+do not know the good done to them. I am like a ship that has anchored
+in a fair haven after press of weather. I infinitely prefer to see
+none but yourself: when others are here we are of necessity so much
+apart. If the weather,' he added more lightly, 'did not so very often
+wear Milton's grey sandals, there would be nothing one could ever
+wish changed in the life here. For such great riders as we are, that
+is a matter of regret. Wet saddles are too often our fate, but in
+compensation our forests are so green.'</p>
+
+<p>She did not press the question.</p>
+
+<p>But the next day she wrote a letter to a relative who was a great
+minister and had preponderating influence in the council chamber of the
+Austrian Empire. She did not speak to Sabran of the letter that she
+sent.</p>
+
+<p>She had not known any of that disillusion which befalls most women in
+their love. Her husband had remained her lover, passionately, ardently,
+jealously; and the sincerity of his devotion to her had spared her
+all that terrible consciousness of the man's satiety which usually
+confronts a woman in the earliest years of union. She shrank now with
+horror from the fear which came to her that this passion might, like so
+many others, alter and fade under the dulness of habit. She had high
+courage and clear vision; she met half-way the evil that she dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring a Foreign Office despatch from Vienna came to him and
+surprised and moved him strongly. With it in his hand he sought her at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>'You did this!' he said quickly. 'They offer me the Russian mission.'</p>
+
+<p>She grew a little pale, but had courage to smile. She had seen by a
+glance at his face the pleasure the offer gave him.</p>
+
+<p>'I only told my cousin Kunst that I thought you might be persuaded to
+try public life, if he proposed it to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'When did you say that?'</p>
+
+<p>'One day in the winter, when I asked you if you did not miss the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never thought I betrayed that I did so.'</p>
+
+<p>'You were only over eager to deny it. And I know your generosity, my
+love. You miss the world; we will go back to it for a little. It will
+only make our life here dearer&mdash;I hope.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent; emotion mastered him. 'You have the most unselfish
+nature that was!' he said brokenly. 'It will be a cruel sacrifice to
+you, and yet you urge it for my sake.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear, will you not understand? What is for your sake is what is most
+for mine. I see you long, despite yourself, to be amidst men once more,
+and use your rare talents as you cannot use them here. It is only right
+that you should have the power to do so. If our life here has taken
+the hold on your heart then, I think you will come back to it all the
+more gladly. And then I too have my vanity; I shall be proud for the
+world to see how you can fill a great station, conduct a difficult
+negotiation, distinguish yourself in every way. When they praise you,
+I shall be repaid a thousand times for any sacrifice of my own tastes
+that there may be.'</p>
+
+<p>He heard her with many conflicting emotions, of which a passionate
+gratitude was the first and highest.</p>
+
+<p>'You make me ashamed,' he said in a low voice. 'No man can be worthy of
+such goodness as yours; and I&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Once more the avowal of the truth rose to his lips, but stayed
+unuttered. His want of courage took refuge in procrastination.</p>
+
+<p>'We need not decide for a day or two,' he added; 'they give me time; we
+will think well. When do you think I must reply?'</p>
+
+<p>'Surely soon; your delay would seem disrespect. You know we Austrians
+are very ceremonious.'</p>
+
+<p>'And if I accept, it will not make you unhappy?'</p>
+
+<p>'My love, no, a thousand times, no; your choice is always mine.'</p>
+
+<p>He stooped and kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'You are ever the same,' he murmured. 'The noblest, the most
+generous&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled bravely. 'I am quite sure you have decided already. Go to my
+table yonder, and write a graceful acceptance to my cousin Kunst. You
+will be happier when it is posted.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I will think a little. It is not a thing to be done in haste. It
+will be irrevocable.'</p>
+
+<p>'Irrevocable? A diplomatic mission? You can throw it up when you
+please. You are not bound to serve longer than you choose.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent: what he had thought himself had been of the irrevocable
+insult he would be held to have offered to the emperor, the nation, and
+the world, if ever they knew.</p>
+
+<p>'It will not be liked if I accept for a mere caprice. One must never
+treat a State as Bela treats his playthings,' he said as he rang, and
+when the servant answered the summons ordered them to saddle his horse.</p>
+
+<p>'No; there is no haste. Glearemberg is not definitely recalled, I
+think.'</p>
+
+<p>But as she spoke she knew very well that, unknown to himself, he had
+already decided; that the joy and triumph the offer had brought to him
+were both too great for him eventually to resist them. He sat down and
+re-read the letter.</p>
+
+<p>She had said the truth to him, but she had not said all the truth. She
+had a certain desire that he should justify her marriage in the eyes of
+the world by some political career brilliantly followed; but this was
+not her chief motive in wishing him to return to the life of cities.
+She had seen that he was in a manner disquieted, discontented, and
+attributed it to discontent at the even routine of their lives. The
+change in his moods and tempers, the arbitrary violence of his love
+for her, vaguely alarmed and troubled her; she seemed to see the germ
+of much that might render their lives far less happy. She realised
+that she had given herself to one who had the capacity of becoming a
+tyrannical possessor, and retained, even after six years of marriage,
+the irritable ardour of a lover. She knew that it was better for them
+both that the distraction and the restraint of the life of the world
+should occupy some of his thoughts, and check the over-indulgence of
+a passion which in solitude grew feverish and morbid. She had not the
+secret of the change in him, of which the result alone was apparent to
+her, and she could only act according to her light. If he grew morose,
+tyrannical, violent, all the joy of their life would be gone. She knew
+that men alter curiously under the sense of possession. She felt that
+her influence, though strong, was not paramount as it had been, and she
+perceived that he no longer took much interest in the administration
+of the estates, in which he had shown great ability in the first years
+of their marriage. She had been forced to resume her old governance
+of all those matters, and she knew that it was not good for him to
+live without occupation. She feared that the sameness of the days, to
+her so delightful, to him grew tiresome. To ride constantly, to hunt
+sometimes, to make music in the evenings&mdash;&mdash;this was scarcely enough to
+fill up the life of a man who had been a <i>viveur</i> on the bitumen of the
+boulevards for so long.</p>
+
+<p>A woman of a lesser nature would have been too vain to doubt the
+all-sufficiency of her own presence to enthral and to content him; but
+she was without vanity, and had more wisdom than most women. It did
+not even once occur to her, as it would have done incessantly to most,
+that the magnificence of all her gifts to him were title-deeds to his
+content for life.</p>
+
+<p>Public life would be her enemy, would take her from the solitudes she
+loved, would change her plans for her children's education, would bring
+the world continually betwixt herself and her husband; but since he
+wished it that was all she thought of, all her law.</p>
+
+<p>'Surely he will accept?' said Mdme. Ottilie, who had returned from the
+south of France.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, he will accept,' said his wife. 'He does not know it, but he
+will.'</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot imagine why he should affect to hesitate. It is the career
+he is made for, with his talents, his social graces.'</p>
+
+<p>'He does not affect; he hesitates for my sake. He knows I am never
+happy away from Hohenszalras.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why did you write then to Kunst?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because it will be better for him; he is neither a poet nor a
+philosopher, to be able to live away from the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Which are you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the
+people she&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Reigns over,' added the Princess. 'Admit, my beloved, that a part of
+your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be
+quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda von Szalras smiled. 'Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed
+with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.'</p>
+
+<p>'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural
+life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.'</p>
+
+<p>At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great
+avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before
+coming into his wife's presence. He would no more have gone to her with
+the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in
+such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.</p>
+
+<p>When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with
+vivacity:</p>
+
+<p>'Well! you accept, of course?</p>
+
+<p>'I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the
+carpet.</p>
+
+<p>'Wanda is a hermit,' she said; 'she should have dwelt in a cave, and
+lived on berries with S. Scholastica. What is the use of leaving it to
+her? She will say No. She loves her mountains.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then she shall stay amidst her mountains.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you will throw all your future away?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear mother, I have no future&mdash;&mdash;should have had none but for her.'</p>
+
+<p>'All that is very pretty, but after nearly six years of marriage it is
+not necessary to <i>faire des madrigaux.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess sat a little more erect, angrily, and continued to tap her
+foot upon the floor. His wife was silent for a little while; then she
+went over to her writing-table, and wrote with a firm hand a few lines
+in German. She rose and gave the sheet to Sabran.</p>
+
+<p>'Copy that,' she said, 'or give it as many graces of style as you like.'</p>
+
+<p>His heart beat, his sight seemed dim as he read what she had written.</p>
+
+<p>It was an acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>'See, my dear Réné!' said the Princess, when she understood;
+'never combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon&mdash;
+unselfishness! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort.'</p>
+
+<p>The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of
+<i>faisant des madrigaux!</i>'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna,
+and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called
+her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who
+showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and
+welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the
+most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the
+prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified
+and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware
+that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands
+for <i>finesse</i> and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make
+upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his
+wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and
+splendour it required.</p>
+
+<p>He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when
+the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his
+nerve, his self-command, his <i>insouciance</i>; he was once more capable of
+honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman
+he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of
+his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates
+a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must
+always exist, <i>sub rosa</i>, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance
+with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for
+every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul
+Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen
+politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The
+prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of
+a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff
+as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle
+projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social
+honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the
+minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in
+all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the
+purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of
+Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked <i>moujik</i> in the
+<i>isba</i> of a Persian peasant.</p>
+
+<p>Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like
+all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify
+his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort
+that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and
+perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men
+was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public
+career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to
+be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor
+had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.</p>
+
+<p>'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition
+that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which
+had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from
+circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of
+his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the
+social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better
+moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess
+von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;'
+and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless
+and ill at ease.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold
+by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more
+prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if
+ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate,
+dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him
+with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed
+to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he
+been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his
+own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have
+always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion
+of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his
+own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any
+such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly,
+that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a
+suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always
+reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.</p>
+
+<p>This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life;
+not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a
+jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his
+ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it
+touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the
+felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the
+contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and
+witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and
+too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on
+his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed
+of constancy.</p>
+
+<p>'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of
+dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly
+degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is
+always hers and my love.'</p>
+
+<p>Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of
+her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty
+life led there under the show summits of her hills.</p>
+
+<p>He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's
+caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not
+infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most
+use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the
+daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.</p>
+
+<p>As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the
+Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and
+a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour
+and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he
+had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world
+beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had
+beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He
+went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now
+and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some
+portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some
+quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.</p>
+
+<p>On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:</p>
+
+<p>'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 70%; font-size: 0.8em;">(Signed) 'WANDA.'</p>
+
+<p>No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches
+could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.</p>
+
+<p>The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the
+season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the
+sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and
+the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and
+magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present
+at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation,
+as the ambassador-designate to Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Court dress became him, and his great height and elegance of manner
+made him noticeable even in that brilliant crowd of notables. All the
+greatest ladies distinguished him with their smiles, but he gave them
+no more than courtesy. He saw only before the 'eye of memory' his wife
+as he had seen her at the last court ball, with the famous pearls about
+her throat, and her train of silver tissue sown with pearls and looped
+up with white lilac.</p>
+
+<p>'It is the flower I like best,' she had said to him. 'It brought me
+your first love-message in Paris, do you remember? It said little; it
+was very discreet, but it said enough!'</p>
+
+<p>'You are always thinking of Wanda!' said the Countess Brancka to him
+now, with a tinge of impatience in her tone.</p>
+
+<p>He coloured a little, and said with that hauteur with which he always
+repressed any passing jest at his love for his wife:</p>
+
+<p>'When both one's duty and joy point the same way it is easy to follow
+them in thought.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you follow them in action too,' said Mdme. Brancka.</p>
+
+<p>'If I do not, I am at least only responsible to Wanda.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who would be a lenient judge you mean? said the Countess, with a
+certain smile that displeased him. 'Do not be too sure; she is a von
+Szalras. They are not agreeable persons when they are angered.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not been so unhappy as to see her so,' said Sabran coldly,
+with a vague sense of uneasiness. As much as it is possible for a man
+to dislike a woman who is very lovely, and young enough to be still
+charming in the eyes of the world, he disliked Olga Brancka. He had
+known her for many years in Paris, not intimately, but by force of
+being in the same society, and, like many men who do not lead very
+decent lives themselves, he frankly detested <i>cocodettes.</i></p>
+
+<p>'If we want these manners we have our <i>lionnes</i>,' he was wont to say,
+at a time when Cochonette was seen every day behind his horses by the
+Cascade, and it had been the height of the Countess Olga's ambition at
+that time to be called like Cochonette. A certain resemblance there
+was between the great lady and the wicked one; they had the same small
+delicate sarcastic features, the same red gold curls, the same perfect
+colourless complexion; but where Cochonette had eyes of the slightest
+blue, the wife of Count Stefan had the luminous piercing black eyes of
+the Muscovite physiognomy. Still the likeness was there, and it made
+the sight of Mdme. Brancka distasteful to him, since his memories of
+the other were far from welcome. It was for Cochonette that he had
+broken the bank at Monte Carlo, and into her lap that he had thrown
+all the gold rouleaux at a time when in his soul he had already adored
+Wanda von Szalras, and had despised himself for returning to the slough
+of his old pleasures. It was Cochonette who had sold his secrets to
+the Prussians, and brought them down upon him in the farmhouse amongst
+the orchards of the Orléannais, whilst she passed safely through, the
+German lines and across the frontier, laden with her jewels and her
+<i>valeurs</i> of all kinds, saying in her teeth as she went: 'He will
+never see that Austrian woman again!' That had been the end of all he
+had known of Cochonette, and a presentiment of perfidy, of danger, of
+animosity always came over him whenever he saw the <i>joli petit minois</i>
+which in profile was so like Cochonette's, looking up from under the
+loose auburn curls that Mdme. Olga had copied from her.</p>
+
+<p>Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more
+admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds;
+and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette
+would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels
+flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams.
+There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her
+breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an <i>étourdissement</i>
+that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.</p>
+
+<p>'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda,
+<i>mon beau</i> cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are
+really going to Russia?'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe so.'</p>
+
+<p>'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in
+paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'</p>
+
+<p>'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy
+enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money
+that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played
+since my marriage.'</p>
+
+<p>'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A
+saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature,
+though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by
+marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean
+nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he
+was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.</p>
+
+<p>'Call me at least <i>cousinette</i>,' said Mdme. Olga; 'we are cousins, you
+know, thanks to Wanda. Oh! she will be very unhappy in St. Petersburg;
+she will not amuse herself, she never does. She is incapable of a
+flirtation; she never touches a card. When she dances it is only
+because she must, and then it is only a quadrille or a contre-dance.
+She always reminds me of Marie Thérèse's "In our position nothing is a
+trifle." You remember the Empress's letters to Versailles?'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran was very much angered, but he was afraid to express his anger
+lest it should seem to make him absurd.</p>
+
+<p>'Madame,' he said, with ill-repressed irritation, 'I know you speak
+only in jest, but I must take the liberty to tell you&mdash;&mdash;however
+bourgeois it appear&mdash;&mdash;that I do not allow a jest even from you upon my
+wife. Anything she does is perfect in my sight, and if she be imbued
+with the old traditions of gentle blood, too many ladies desert them in
+these days for me not to be grateful to her for her loyalty.'</p>
+
+<p>She listened, with her bright black eyes fixed on him; then she leaned
+a little more closely on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know that you said that very well? Most men are ridiculous
+when they are in love with their wives, but it becomes you, Wanda is
+perfect, we all know that; you are not alone in thinking so. Ask Egon!'</p>
+
+<p>The face of Sabran changed as he heard that name. As she saw the
+change she thought: 'Can it be possible that he is jealous?'</p>
+
+<p>Aloud she said with a little laugh: 'I almost wonder Egon did not
+run you through the heart before you married. Now, of course, he
+is reconciled to the inevitable; or, if not reconciled, he has to
+submit to it as we all have to do. He grows very <i>farouche</i>; he lives
+between his troopers and his castle of Taróc, like a barbaric lord
+of the Middle Ages. Were you ever at Taróc? It is worth seeing&mdash;&mdash;a
+huge fortress, old as the days of Ottokar, in the very heart of the
+Karpathians. He leads a wild, fierce life enough there. If he keep the
+memory of Wanda with him it is as some men keep an idolatry for what is
+dead.'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran listened with a sombre irritation. 'Suppose we leave my wife's
+name in peace,' he said coldly. 'The <i>grosser cotillon</i> is about to
+begin; may I aspire to the honour?'</p>
+
+<p>As he led her out, and the light fell on her red gold curls, on her
+dazzling butterflies, her armour of diamonds, her snow-white skin, a
+thousand memories of Cochonette came over him, though the scene around
+him was the ball-room of the Hofburg, and the woman whose great bouquet
+of <i>rêve d'or</i> roses touched his hand was a great lady who had been the
+wife of Gela von Szalras, and the daughter of the Prince Serriatine.
+He distrusted her, he despised her, he disliked her so strongly that
+he was almost ashamed of his own antagonism; and yet her contact, her
+grace of movement, the mere scent of the bouquet of roses had a sort of
+painful and unwilling intoxication for the moment for him.</p>
+
+<p>He was glad when the long and gorgeous figures of the cotillon had
+tired out even her steel-like nerves, and he was free to leave the
+palace and go home to sleep. He looked at a miniature of his wife as
+he undressed; the face of it, with its tenderness and its nobility,
+seemed to him, after the face of this other woman, like the pure high
+air of the Iselthal after the heated and unhealthy atmosphere of a
+gambling-room.</p>
+
+<p>The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence
+was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which
+had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was
+brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural
+gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the
+sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some
+with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the
+empire.</p>
+
+<p>As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way
+slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through
+the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and
+odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After
+all, I may do her some honour before I die.'</p>
+
+<p>When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached
+him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said
+that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought
+it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the
+staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants
+away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.</p>
+
+<p>There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:</p>
+
+<p>'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to
+him, under secrecy, what I know.'</p>
+
+<p>They were fully signed&mdash;&mdash;'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a
+courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph.
+They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the
+Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>As the carriage of the Countess Olga rolled home through the Graben
+after the military spectacle, she stopped it suddenly, and signed to an
+old man in the crowd who was waiting to cross the road until a regiment
+of cuirassiers had rolled by. He was eyeing them critically, as only an
+old soldier does look at troops.</p>
+
+<p>'Is it you, Georg?' said Madame Olga. 'What brings you here?'</p>
+
+<p>'I came from Taróc with a letter from the Prince, my master,' answered
+the man, an old hussar who had carried Vàsàrhely in his arms off the
+field of Königsgrätz, after dragging him from under a heap of dead men
+and horses.</p>
+
+<p>'A letter! To whom?' asked Olga, who always was curious and persistent
+in investigation of all her brother-in-law's movements and actions.</p>
+
+<p>Vàsàrhely had not laid any injunction as to secrecy, only as to speed,
+upon his faithful servant; so that Georg replied, unwitting of harm,
+'To the Markgraf von Sabran, my Countess.'</p>
+
+<p>'A letter that could not go by post&mdash;how strange! And from Egon to
+Wanda's husband!' she thought, with her inquisitive eagerness awakened.
+Aloud she bade the old trooper call at her palace for a packet for
+Taróc, to make excuse for having stopped and questioned him, and drove
+onward lost in thought.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps it is a challenge late in the day!' she thought, with a laugh;
+but she was astonished and perplexed that any communication should take
+place between these men; she perplexed her mind in vain in the effort
+to imagine what tie could connect them, what mystery mutually affecting
+them could lie beneath the secret of Vassia Kazán.</p>
+
+<p>When, on the morrow, she heard at Court that the Emperor was deeply
+incensed at the caprice and disrespect of the Count von Idrac, as
+he was called at Court, who, at the eleventh hour, had declined a
+mission already accepted by him, and of which the offer had been in
+itself an unprecedented mark of honour and confidence, her swift
+sagacity instantly associated the action, apparently so excuseless and
+inexcusable, with the letter sent up from Taróc. It was still as great
+a mystery to her as it had been before what the contents of the letter
+could have been, but she had no doubt that in some way or another it
+had brought about the resignation of the appointment. It awakened a
+still more intense curiosity in her, but she was too wise to whisper
+her suspicion to anyone. To her friends at the Court she said, with
+laughter: 'A night or two ago I chanced to tell Sabran that his wife
+would be wretched at St. Petersburg. That is sure to have been enough
+for him. He is such a devoted husband.'</p>
+
+<p>No one of course believed her, but they received the impression that
+she knew the real cause of his resignation, though she could not be
+induced to say it.</p>
+
+<p>What did it matter to her? Nothing, indeed. But the sense of a secret
+withheld from her was to Mdme. Olga like the slot of the fox to a young
+hound. She might have a thousand secrets of her own if it pleased her,
+but she could not endure anyone else to guard one. Besides, in a vague,
+feverish, angry way, she was almost in love with the man who was so
+faithful to his wife that he had looked away from her as from some
+unclean thing when she had wished to dazzle him. She had no perception
+that the secret could concern him himself very nearly, but she thought
+it was probably one which he and Egon Vàsàrhely, for reasons of their
+own, chose to share and keep hidden. And if it were a secret that
+prevented Sabran from going to the Court of Russia? Then, surely, it
+was one worth knowing? And if she gained a knowledge of it, and his
+wife had none?&mdash;&mdash;what a superiority would be hers, what a weapon
+always to hand!</p>
+
+<p>She did not intend any especial cruelty or compass any especial end:
+she was actuated by a vague desire to interrupt a current of happiness
+that flowed on smoothly without her, to interfere where she had no
+earthly title or reason to do so, merely because she was disregarded
+by persons content with each other. It is not always definite motives
+which have the most influence; the subtlest poisons are those which
+enter the system we know not how, and penetrate it ere we are aware.
+The only thing which had ever held her back from any extremes of evil
+had been the mere habit of good-breeding and an absolute egotism which
+had saved her from all strong passions. Now something that was like
+passion had touched her under the sting of Sabran's indifference, and
+with it she became tenacious, malignant, and unsparing: adroit she had
+always been. Instinct is seldom at fault when we are conscious of an
+enemy, and Sabran's had not erred when it had warned him against the
+wife of Stefan Brancka as the serpent who would bring woe and disaster
+to his paradise.</p>
+
+<p>In some three months' time she received a more explicit answer from her
+cousin in St. Petersburg. Giving the precise dates, he told her that
+Vassia Kazán was the name given to the son of Count Paul Ivanovitch
+Zabaroff by a wayside amour with one of his own serfs at a village
+near the border line of Astrachan. He narrated the early history of
+the youth, and said that he had been amongst the passengers on board a
+Havre ship, which had foundered with all hands. So far the brief record
+of Vassia Kazán was clear and complete. But it told her nothing. She
+was unreasonably enraged, and looked at the little piece of burnt paper
+as though she would wrench the secret out of it.</p>
+
+<p>'There must be so much more to know,' she thought. 'What would a mere
+drowned boy be to either of those men&mdash;&mdash;a boy dead too all these years
+before?'</p>
+
+<p>She wrote insolently to her cousin, that the Third Section, with
+its eyes of Argus and its limbs of Vishnoo, had always been but an
+overgrown imbecile, and set her woman's wits to accomplish what the
+Third Section had failed to do for her. So much she thought of it that
+the name seemed forced into her very brain; she seemed to hear every
+one saying&mdash;&mdash;'Vassia Kazán.' It was a word to conjure with, at least:
+she could at the least try the effect of its utterance any day upon
+either of those who had made it the key of their correspondence. Russia
+had written down Vassia Kazán as dead, and the mystery which enveloped
+the name would not open to her. She knew her country too well not to
+know that this bold statement might cover some political secret, some
+story wholly unlike that which was given her. Vassia Kazán might have
+lived and have incurred the suspicions of the police, and be dwelling
+far away in the death in life of Siberian mines, or deep sunk in some
+fortress, like a stone at the bottom of a well. The reply not only
+did not beget her belief in it, but gave her range for the widest and
+wildest conjectures of imagination. 'It is some fault, some folly, some
+crime, who can tell? And Vassia Kazán is the victim or the associate,
+or the confidant of it. But what is it? And how does Egon know of it?'</p>
+
+<p>She passed the summer in pleasures of all kinds, but the subject did
+not lose its power over her, nor did she forget the face of Sabran as
+he had turned it away from her in the ball-room of the Hofburg.</p>
+
+<p>He himself had left the capital, after affirming to the minister that
+private reasons, which he could not enter into, had induced him to
+entreat the Imperial pardon for so sudden a change of resolve, and to
+solicit permission to decline the high honour that had been vouchsafed
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>'What shall I say to Wanda?' he asked himself incessantly, as the
+express train swung through the grand green country towards Salzburg.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting on the lake terrace with the Princess, when a telegram
+from her cousin Kunst was brought to her. Bela and Gela were playing
+near with squadrons of painted cuirassiers, and the great dogs were
+lying on the marble pavement at her feet. It was a golden close to a
+sunless but fine day; the snow peaks were growing rosy as the sun shone
+for an instant behind the Venediger range, and the lake was calm and
+still and green, one little boat going noiselessly across it from the
+Holy Isle to the further side.</p>
+
+<p>'What a pity to leave it all!' she thought as she took the telegram.</p>
+
+<p>The Minister's message was curt and angered:</p>
+
+<p>'Your husband has resigned; he makes himself and me ridiculous. Unable
+to guess his motive, I am troubled and embarrassed beyond expression.'</p>
+
+<p>The other, from Sabran, said simply: 'I am coming home. I give up
+Russia.'</p>
+
+<p>'Any bad news?' the Princess asked, seeing the seriousness of her face.
+Her niece rose and gave her the papers.</p>
+
+<p>'Is Réné mad!' she exclaimed as she read. His wife, who was startled
+and dismayed at the affront to her cousin and to her sovereign, yet had
+been unable to repress a movement of personal gladness, hastened to say
+in his defence:</p>
+
+<p>'Be sure he has some grave, good reason, dear mother. He knows the
+world too well to commit a folly. Unexplained, it looks strange,
+certainly; but he will be home to-night or in the early morning; then
+we shall know; and be sure we shall find him right.'</p>
+
+<p>'Right!' echoed the Princess, lifting the little girl who was her
+namesake off her knee, a child white as a snowdrop, with golden curls,
+who looked as if she had come out of a band of Correggio's baby angels.</p>
+
+<p>'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who
+had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard
+suspended in the air.</p>
+
+<p>'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme
+displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when
+through him you are probably <i>brouillée</i> with your Sovereign for life.'</p>
+
+<p>She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a
+caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon.
+I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible
+excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such
+vast importance.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would
+condemn Réné unheard?'</p>
+
+<p>'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps none. I know it is a very grave offence that he has committed,
+and yet I cannot help being happy,' said his wife with a smile, as she
+lifted up the little Ottilie, and murmured over the child's fair curls,
+'Ah, my dear little dove! We are not going to Russia after all. You
+little birds will not leave your nest!'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is not going to the snow palace?' said he, whose ears were very
+quick, and to whom his attendants had told marvellous narratives of an
+utterly imaginary Russia.</p>
+
+<p>'No; are not you glad, my dear?'</p>
+
+<p>He thought very gravely for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Bela is not sure. Marc says Bela would have slaves in Russia, and
+might beat them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bela would be beaten himself if he did, and by my own hand, said his
+mother very gravely. 'Oh, child! where did you get your cruelty?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is not cruel,' said the Princess. 'He is only masterful.'</p>
+
+<p>'Alas! it is the same thing.'</p>
+
+<p>She sent the children indoors, and remained after the sun-glow had all
+faded, and Mdme. Ottilie had gone away to her own rooms, and paced
+to and fro the length of the terrace, troubled by an anxiety which
+she would have owned to no one. What could have happened to make
+him so offend alike the State and the Court? She tormented herself
+with wondering again and again whether she had used any incautious
+expression in her letters which could have betrayed to him the poignant
+regret the coming exile gave her. No! she was sure she had not done
+so. She had only written twice, preferring telegrams as quicker, and,
+to a man, less troublesome than letters. She knew courts and cabinets
+too well not to know that the step her husband had taken was one which
+would wholly ruin the favour he enjoyed with the former, and wholly
+take away all chance of his being ever called again to serve the
+latter. Personally she was indifferent to that kind of ambition; but
+her attachment to the Imperial house was too strong, and her loyalty
+to it too hereditary, for her not to be alarmed at the idea of losing
+its good-will. Disquieted and afraid of all kinds of formless unknown
+ills, she went with a heavy heart into the Rittersaal to a dinner for
+which she could find no appetite. The Princess also, so talkative and
+vivacious at other times, was silent and pre-occupied. The evening
+passed tediously. He did not come.</p>
+
+<p>It was past midnight, and she had given up all hope of his arrival,
+when she heard the returning trot of the horses, who had been sent over
+to Matrey in the evening on the chance of his being there. She was in
+her own chamber, having dismissed her women, and was trying in vain to
+keep her thoughts to nightly prayer. At the sound of the horses' feet
+without, she threw on a <i>négligé</i> of white satin and lace, and went,
+out on to the staircase to meet him. As he came up the broad stairs,
+with Donau and Neva gladly leaping on him, he looked up and saw her
+against the background of oak and tapestry and old armour, with the
+light of a great Persian lamp in metal that swung above shed full upon
+her. She had never looked more lovely to him than as she stood so, her
+eyes eagerly searching the dim shadow for him, and the loose white
+folds embroidered in silk with pale roses flowing downward from her
+throat to her feet. He drew her within her chamber, and took her in his
+arms with a passionate gesture.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us forget everything,' he murmured, 'except that we have been
+parted nearly a month!'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the morning, after breakfast in the little Saxe room, she said to
+him with gentle firmness: 'Réné, you must tell me now&mdash;why have you
+refused Russia?'</p>
+
+<p>He had known that the question must come, and all the way on his
+homeward journey he had been revolving in his mind the answer he would
+give to it. He was very pale, but otherwise he betrayed no agitation as
+he turned and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>'That is what I cannot tell you,' he replied.</p>
+
+<p>She could not believe she heard aright.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'I have had a message from Kunst;
+he is deeply angered. I understand that, after all was arranged, you
+abruptly resigned the Russian mission. I ask your reasons. It is a very
+grave step to have taken. I suppose your motives must be very strong
+ones?'</p>
+
+<p>'They are so,' said Sabran; and he continued in the forced and measured
+tone of one who recites what he has taught himself to say: 'It is quite
+natural that your cousin Kunst should be offended; the Emperor also.
+You perhaps will be the same when I say to you that I cannot tell you,
+as I cannot tell them, the grounds of my withdrawal. Perhaps you, like
+them, will not forgive it.'</p>
+
+<p>Her nostrils dilated and her breast heaved: she was startled,
+mortified, amazed. 'You do not choose to tell <i>me</i>!' she said in
+stupefaction.</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot tell you.'</p>
+
+<p>'She gazed at him with the first bitterness of wrath that he had ever
+seen upon her face. She had been used to perfect submission of others
+all her life. She had the blood in her of stern princes, who had meted
+out rule and justice against which there had been no appeal. She was
+accustomed even in him to deference, homage, consideration, to be
+consulted always, deferred to often. His answer for the moment seemed
+to her an unwarrantable insult.</p>
+
+<p>Her influence, her relatives, her sovereign, had given him one of the
+highest honours conceivable, and he did not choose to even say why he
+was thankless for it! Passionate and withering words rose to her lips,
+but she restrained their utterance. Not even in that moment could she
+bring herself to speak what might seem to rebuke him with the weight
+of all his debt to her. She remained silent, but he understood all the
+intense indignation that held her speechless there. He approached her
+more nearly, and spoke with emotion, but with a certain sternness in
+his voice&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'I know very well that I must offend and even outrage you. But I
+cannot tell you my motives. It is the first time that I have ever
+acted independently of you or failed to consult your wishes. I only
+venture to remind you that marriage does give to the man the right to
+do so, though I have never availed myself of it. Nay, even now, I owe
+you too much to be ingrate enough to take refuge in my authority as
+your husband. I prefer to owe more, as I have owed so much, to your
+tenderness. I prefer to ask of you, by your love for me, not to press
+me for an answer that I am not in a position to make; to be content
+with what I say&mdash;that I have relinquished the Russian mission because I
+have no choice but to do so.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke firmly, because he spoke only the truth, although not all the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>A great anger rose up in her, the first that she had ever been moved to
+by him. All the pride of her temper and all her dignity were outraged
+by this refusal to have confidence in her. It seemed incredible
+to her. She still thought herself the prey of some dream, of some
+hallucination. Her lips parted to speak, but again she withheld the
+words she was about to utter. Her strong justice compelled her to admit
+that he was but within his rights, and her sense of duty was stronger
+than her sense of self-love.</p>
+
+<p>She did not look at him, nor could she trust her voice. She turned
+from him without a syllable, and left the room. She was afraid of the
+violence of the anger that she felt.</p>
+
+<p>'If it had been only to myself I would pardon it,' she thought; 'but an
+insult to my people, to my country, to my sovereign!&mdash;an insult without
+excuse, or explanation, or apology&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She shut herself alone within her oratory and passed the most bitter
+hour of her life. The imperious and violent temper of the Szalras
+was dormant in her character, though she had chastened and tamed it,
+and the natural sweetness and serenity of her disposition had been a
+counterpoise to it so strong that the latter had become the only thing
+visible in her. But all the wrath of her race was now aroused and in
+arms against what she loved best on earth.</p>
+
+<p>'If it had been anything else,' she thought; 'but a public act like
+this&mdash;an ingratitude to the Crown itself! A caprice for all the world
+to chatter of and blame!'</p>
+
+<p>It would have been hard enough to bear, difficult enough to explain
+away to others, if he had told her his reasons, however captious,
+unwise, or selfish they might be; but to have the door of his soul
+thus shut upon her, his thoughts thus closed to her, hurt her with
+intolerable pain, and filled her with a deep and burning indignation.</p>
+
+<p>She passed all the early morning hours alone in her little temple of
+prayer, striving in vain against the bitterness of her heart; above
+her the great ivory Crucifixion, the work of Angermayer, beneath which
+so many generations of the women of the House of Szalras had knelt in
+their hours of tribulation or bereavement.</p>
+
+<p>When she left the oratory she had conquered herself. Though she could
+not extinguish the human passions that smarted and throbbed within her,
+she knew her duty well enough to know that it must lie in submission
+and in silence.</p>
+
+<p>She sought for him at once. She found him in the library: he was
+playing to himself a long dreamy concerto of Schubert's, to soothe the
+irritation of his own nerves and pass away a time of keen suspense. He
+rose as she came into the room, and awaited her approach with a timid
+anxiety in his eyes, which she was too absorbed by her own emotions to
+observe. He had assumed a boldness that he had not, and had used his
+power to dominate her rather in desperation than in any sense of actual
+mastery. In his heart it was he who feared her.</p>
+
+<p>'You were quite right,' she said simply to him. 'Of course, you are
+master of your own actions, and owe no account of them to me. We will
+say no more about it. For myself, you know I am content enough to
+escape exile to any embassy.'</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand with an unfeigned reverence and humility.</p>
+
+<p>'You are as merciful as you are great,' he murmured. 'If I be silent it
+is my misfortune.' He paused abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden thought came over her as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'It is some State secret that he knows and cannot speak of, and that
+has made him unwilling to go. Why did I never think of that before?'</p>
+
+<p>An explanation that had its root in honour, a reticence that sprang
+from conscience, were so welcome to her, and to her appeared so
+natural, that they now consoled her at once, and healed the wounds to
+her own pride.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, if it be so, he is right not to speak even to me,' she
+mused, and her only desire was now to save him from the insistence and
+the indignation of the Princess, and the examination which these were
+sure to entail upon him when he should meet her at the noon breakfast
+now at hand.</p>
+
+<p>To that end she sought out her aunt in her own apartments, taking
+with her the tiny Ottilie, who always disarmed all irritation in her
+godmother by the mere presence of her little flower-like face.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear mother,' she said softly, when the child had made her morning
+obeisance, 'I am come to ask of you a great favour and kindness to me.
+Réné returned last night. He has done what he thought right. I do not
+even ask his reasons. He has acted from <i>force majeure</i> by dictate of
+his own honour. Will you do as I mean to do? Will you spare him any
+interrogation? I shall be so grateful to you, and so will he.'</p>
+
+<p>Mdme. Ottilie, opening her bonbonnière for her namesake, drew up her
+fragile figure with a severity unusual to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Do I hear you aright? You do not even know the reasons of the insult
+M. de Sabran has passed upon the Crown and Cabinet, and you do not even
+mean to ask them?'</p>
+
+<p>'I do mean that; and what I do not ask I feel sure you will admit no
+one else has any right to ask of him.'</p>
+
+<p>'No one certainly except His Majesty.'</p>
+
+<p>'I presume His Majesty has had all information due to him as our
+Imperial master. All I entreat of you, dearest mother, is to do as
+I have done; assume, as we are bound to assume, that Réné has acted
+wisely and rightly, and not weary him with questions to which it will
+be painful to him not to respond.'</p>
+
+<p>'Questions! I never yet indulged in anything so vulgar as curiosity,
+that you should imagine I shall be capable of subjecting your husband
+to a cross-examination. If you be satisfied, I can have no right to
+be more exacting than yourself. The occurrence is to me lamentable,
+inexcusable, unintelligible; but if explanation be not offered me you
+may rest assured I shall not intrude my request for it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of that I am sure; but I am not contented only with that. I want you
+to feel no dissatisfaction, no doubt, no anger against him. You may be
+sure that he has acted from conviction, because he was most desirous to
+go to Russia, as you saw when you urged him to accept the mission.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have said the utmost that I can say,' replied the Princess, with a
+chill light in her blue eyes. 'This little child is no more likely to
+ask questions than I am, after what you have stated. But you must not
+regard my silence as any condonation of what must always appear to me a
+step disrespectful to the Crown, contrary to all usages of etiquette,
+and injurious to his own future and that of his children. His scruples
+of conscience came too late.'</p>
+
+<p>'I did not say they were exactly that. I believe he learned something
+which made him consider that his honour required him to withdraw.'</p>
+
+<p>'That may be,' said the Princess, frigidly. 'As I observed, it came
+lamentably late. You will excuse me if I breakfast in my own rooms this
+morning.'</p>
+
+<p>Wanda left her, gave the child to a nurse who waited without, and
+returned to the library. She had offended and pained Mdme. Ottilie,
+but she had saved her husband from annoyance. She knew that though
+the Princess was by no means as free from curiosity as she declared
+herself, she was too high-bred and too proud to solicit a confidence
+withheld from her.</p>
+
+<p>Sabran was seated at the piano where she had left him, but his forehead
+rested on the woodwork of it, and his whole attitude was suggestive
+of sad and absorbed thought and abandonment to regrets that were
+unavailing.</p>
+
+<p>'It has cost him so much,' she reflected as she looked at him. 'Perhaps
+it has been a self-sacrifice, a heroism even; and I, from mere wounded
+feeling, have been angered against him and almost cruel!'</p>
+
+<p>With the exaggeration in self-censure of all generous natures, she was
+full of remorse at having added any pain to the disappointment which
+had been his portion; a disappointment none the less poignant, as she
+saw, because it had been voluntarily, as she imagined, accepted.</p>
+
+<p>As he heard her approach he started and rose, and the expression of his
+face startled her for a moment; it was so full of pain, of melancholy,
+almost (could she have believed it) of despair. What could this matter
+be to affect him thus, since being of the State it could be at its
+worst only some painful and compromising secret of political life which
+could have no personal meaning for him? It was surely impossible that
+mere disappointment&mdash;&mdash;a disappointment self-inflicted&mdash;&mdash;could bring
+upon him such suffering? But she threw these thoughts away. In her
+great loyalty she had told herself that she must not even think of this
+thing, lest she should let it come between them once again and tempt
+her from her duty and obedience. Her trust in him was perfect.</p>
+
+<p>The abandonment of a coveted distinction was in itself a bitter
+disappointment, but it seemed to him as nothing beside the sense of
+submission and obedience compelled from him to Vàsàrhely. He felt as
+though an iron hand, invisible, weighed on his life, and forced it into
+subjection. When he had almost grown secure that his enemy's knowledge
+was a buried harmless thing, it had risen and barred his way, speaking
+with an authority which it was not possible to disobey. With all his
+errors he was a man of high courage, who had always held his own with
+all men. How the old forgotten humiliation of his earliest years
+revived, and enforced from him the servile timidity of the Slav blood
+which he had abjured. He had never for an instant conceived it possible
+to disregard the mandate he received; that an apparently voluntary
+resignation was permitted to him was, his conscience acknowledged, more
+mercy than he could have expected. That Vàsàrhely would act thus had
+not occurred to him; but before the act he could not do otherwise than
+admit its justice and obey.</p>
+
+<p>But the consciousness of that superior will compelling him, left in him
+a chill tremor of constant fear, of perpetual self-abasement. What was
+natural to him was the reckless daring which many Russians, such as
+Skobeleff, have shown in a thousand ways of peril. He was here forced
+only to crouch and to submit; it was more galling, more cruel to him
+than utter exposure would have been. The sense of coercion was always
+upon him like a dragging chain. It produced on him a despondency, which
+not even the presence of his wife or the elasticity of his own nature
+could dispel.</p>
+
+<p>He had to play a part to her, and to do this was unfamiliar and hateful
+to him. In all the years before he had concealed a fact from her, but
+he had never been otherwise false. Though to his knowledge there had
+been always between them the shadow of a secret untold, there had
+never been any sense upon him of obligation to measure his words, to
+feign sentiments he had not, to hide behind a carefully constructed
+screen of untruth. Now, though he had indeed not lied with his lips,
+he had to sustain a concealment which was a thousand times more trying
+to him than that concealment of his birth and station to which he had
+been so long accustomed that he hardly realised it as any error. The
+very nobility with which she had accepted his silence, and given it,
+unasked, a worthy construction, smote him with a deeper sense of shame
+than even that which galled him when he remembered the yoke laid on him
+by the will of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p>
+
+<p>He roused himself to meet her with composure.</p>
+
+<p>She rested her hand caressingly on his.</p>
+
+<p>'We will never speak of Russia any more. I should be sorry were the
+Kaiser to think you capricious or disloyal, but you have too much
+ability to have incurred this risk. Let it all be as though there had
+never arisen any question of public life for you. I have explained
+to Aunt Ottilie; she will not weary you with interrogation; she
+understands that you have acted as your honour bade you. That is enough
+for those who love you as do she and I.'</p>
+
+<p>Every word she spoke entered his very soul with the cruellest irony,
+the sharpest reproach. But of these he let her see nothing. Yet he
+was none the less abjectly ashamed, less passionately self-condemned,
+because he had to consume his pain in silence, and had the self-control
+to answer, still with a smile, as he touched a chord or two of music:</p>
+
+<p>'When the Israelites were free they hankered after the flesh-pots of
+Egypt. They deserved eternal exile, eternal bondage. So do I, for
+having ever been ingrate enough to dream of leaving Hohenszalras for
+the world of men!'</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned wholly towards the Erard keyboard, and with splendour
+and might there rolled forth under his touch the military march of
+Rákóczi: he was glad of the majesty and passion of the music which
+supplanted and silenced speech.</p>
+
+<p>'That is very grand,' she said, when the last notes had died away.
+'One seems to hear the <i>Eljén!</i> of the whole nation in it. But play me
+something more tender, more pathetic&mdash;&mdash;some <i>lieder</i> half sorrow and
+half gladness, you know so many of all countries.'</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment; then his hands wandered lightly across the notes,
+and called up the mournful folk-songs that he had heard so long, so
+long, before; songs of the Russian peasants, of the maidens borne off
+by the Tartar in war, of the blue-eyed children carried away to be
+slaves, of the homeless villagers beholding their straw-roofed huts
+licked up by the hungry hurrying flame lit by the Kossack or the Kurd;
+songs of a people without joy, that he had heard in his childish days,
+when the great rafts had drifted slowly down the Volga water, and
+across the plains the lines of chained prisoners had crept as slowly
+through the dust; or songs that he had sung to himself, not knowing
+why, where the winter was white on all the land, and the bay of the
+famished wolves afar off had blent with the shrill sad cry of the wild
+swans dying of cold and of hunger and of thirst on the frozen rivers,
+and the reeds were grown hard as spears of iron, and the waves were
+changed to stone.</p>
+
+<p>The intense melancholy penetrated her very heart. She listened with
+the tears in her eyes, and her whole being stirred and thrilled by a
+pain not her own. A kind of consciousness came to her, borne on that
+melancholy melody, of some unspoken sorrow which lived in this heart
+which beat so near her own, and whose every throb she had thought she
+knew. A sudden terror seized her lest all this while she who believed
+his whole life hers was in truth a stranger to his deepest grief, his
+dearest memories.</p>
+
+<p>When the last sigh of those plaintive songs without words had died
+away, she signed to him to approach her.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me,' she said very gently, 'tell me the truth. Réné, did you ever
+care for any woman, dead or lost, more than, or as much as, you care
+for me? I do not ask you if you loved others. I know all men have many
+caprices, but was any one of them so dear to you that you regret her
+still? Tell me the truth; I will be strong to bear it.'</p>
+
+<p>He, relieved beyond expression that she but asked him that on which his
+conscience was clear and his answer could be wholly sincere, sat down
+at her feet and leaned his head against her knee.</p>
+
+<p>'Never, so hear me God!' he said simply. 'I have loved no woman as I
+love you.'</p>
+
+<p>'And there is not one that you regret?'</p>
+
+<p>'There is not one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then what is it that you do regret? Something more weighs on you than
+the mere loss of diplomatic life, which; after all, to you is no more
+than the loss of a toy to Bela.'</p>
+
+<p>'If I do regret,' he said, with a smile, 'it is foolish and thankless.
+The happiness you give me here is worth all the fret and fever of
+the world's ambitions. You are so great and good to be so little
+angered with me for my reticence. All my life, such as it is, shall be
+dedicated to my gratitude.'</p>
+
+<p>Once more an impulse to tell her all passed over him&mdash;&mdash;a sense that
+he might trust her absolutely for all tenderness and all pity came
+upon him; but with the weakness which so constantly holds back human
+souls from their own deliverance, his courage once again failed him.
+He once more looking at her thought: 'Nay! I dare not. She would never
+understand, she would never pardon, she would never listen. At the
+first word she would abhor me.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not dare; he bent his face down on her knees as any child might
+have done.</p>
+
+<p>'What I ever must regret is not to be worthy of you!' he murmured; and
+the subterfuge was also a truth.</p>
+
+<p>She looked down at him wistfully with doubt and confusion mingled. She
+sighed, for she understood that buried in his heart there was some pain
+he would not share, perchance some half involuntary unfaithfulness he
+did not dare confess. She thrust this latter thought away quickly; it
+hurt her as the touch of a hot iron hurts tender flesh; she would not
+harbour it. It might well be, she knew.</p>
+
+<p>She was silent some little time, then she said calmly:</p>
+
+<p>'I think you worthy. Is not that enough? Never say to me what you do
+not wish to say. But&mdash;&mdash;but&mdash;&mdash;if there be anything you believe that I
+should blame, be sure of this, love: I am no fair weather friend. Try
+me in deep water, in dark storm!'</p>
+
+<p>And still he did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>His evil angel held him back and said to him, 'Nay! she would never
+forgive.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>One day in this winter time she sat alone in her octagon-room whilst he
+was out driving in the teeth of a strong wind blowing from the north
+and frequent bursts of snowstorm. Rapid exercise, eager movements, were
+necessary to him at once as tonic and as anodyne, and the northern
+blood that was in him made the bitter cold, the keen and angry air, the
+conflict with the frantic horses tearing at their curbs welcome and
+wholesome to him. Paul Zabaroff had many a day driven so over the hard
+snows of Russian plains.</p>
+
+<p>She sat at home as the twilight drew on, her feet buried in the furs
+before her chair, the fragrance shed about her from a basket of forced
+narcissus and bowls full of orange flowers and of violets, the light
+of the burning wood shining on the variegated and mellow hues of the
+tiles of the hearth. The last poems of Coppée were on her lap, but
+her thoughts had wandered away from those to Sabran, to her children,
+to a thousand happy trifles connected with one or the other. She was
+dreaming idly in that vague reverie which suits the last hour of the
+reclining day in the grey still winter of a mountain-land. She was
+almost sorry when Hubert entered and brought her the mail-bag, which
+had just come through the gloomy defiles and the frosted woods which
+stretched between them and Matrey.</p>
+
+<p>'It grows late,' she said to him. 'I fear it will be a stormy night.
+Have you heard the Marquis return?</p>
+
+<p>He told her that Sabran had not yet driven in, and ventured to add
+his hope that his master would not be out long; then he asked if she
+desired the lamps lit, and on being told she did not, withdrew, leaving
+the leather bag on a table close to one of the Saxe bowls of violets.
+There was plenty of light from the fire, and even from the windows, to
+read her letters by; she went first to one of the casements and looked
+at the night, which was growing very wild and dark. Though day still
+lingered, she could hear the wind go screaming down the lake, and
+the rush of the swollen water swirling against the terrace buttresses
+below. All beyond, woods, hills, mountains, were invisible under the
+grey mist.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope he will not be late,' she thought, but she was too keen a
+mountaineer to be apprehensive. Sabran now knew every road and path
+through all the Tauern as well as she did. She returned to her seat and
+unlocked the leather bag; there were several newspapers, two letters
+for the Princess, three or four for Sabran, and one only for herself.
+She laid his aside for him, sent those of the Princess to her room,
+and opened her own. The writing of it she did not recognise; it was
+anonymous, and was very brief.</p>
+
+
+<p>'If you wish to know why the Marquis de Sabran did not go to Russia,
+ask Egon Vàsàrhely.'</p>
+
+
+<p>That was all: so asps are little.</p>
+
+<p>She sat quite still, and felt as if a bolt had fallen on her from the
+leaden skies without. Vàsàrhely knew, the writer of the letter knew,
+and she&mdash;&mdash;<i>she&mdash;&mdash;</i> did not know! That was her first distinct thought.</p>
+
+<p>If Sabran had entered the room at that instant she would have held to
+him this letter, and would have said, 'I ask you, not him.' He was
+absent, and she sat motionless, keeping the unsigned note in her hand,
+and staring down on it. Then she turned and looked at the post-mark.
+It was 'Vienna,' A city of a million souls! What clue to the writer
+was there? She read it again and again, as even the wisest will read
+such poisonous things, as though by repeated study that mystery would
+be compelled to stand out clearly revealed. It did not say enough to
+have been the mere invention of the sender; it was not worded as an
+insinuation, but as a fact. For that reason it took a hold upon her
+mind which would at once have rejected a fouler or a darker suggestion.
+Although free from any baseness of suspicion there was yet that in the
+name of her cousin, in juxtaposition with her husband's, which could
+not do otherwise than startle and carry with it a corroboration of the
+statement made. A wave of the deep anger which had moved her on her
+husband's first refusal swept over her again. Her hand clenched, her
+eyes hashed, where she sat alone in the gathering shadows.</p>
+
+<p>There came a sound at the door of the room and a small golden head came
+from behind the tapestry.</p>
+
+<p>'May we come in?' said Bela; it was the children's hour.</p>
+
+<p>She rose, and put him backward.</p>
+
+<p>'Not now, my darling; I am occupied. Go away for a little while.'</p>
+
+<p>The women who were with them took the children back to their
+apartments. She sat down with the note still in her hand. What could
+it mean? No good thing was ever said thus. She pondered long, and was
+unable to imagine any sense or meaning it could have, though all the
+while memories thronged upon, her of words, and looks, and many trifles
+which had told her of the enmity that was existent between her cousin
+and Sabran. That she saw; but there her knowledge ceased, her vision
+failed. She could go no further, conjecture nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>'Ask Egon!' Did they think she would ask him or any living being that
+which Sabran had refused to confide in her? Whoever wrote this knew her
+little, she thought. Perhaps there were women who would have done so.
+She was not one of them.</p>
+
+<p>With a sudden impulse of scorn she cast the sheet of paper into the
+fire before her. Then she went to her writing-table and enclosed the
+envelope in another, which she addressed to her lawyers in Salzburg.
+She wrote with it: 'This is the cover to an anonymous letter which I
+have received. Try your uttermost to discover the sender.'</p>
+
+<p>Then she sat down again and thought long, and wearily, and vainly. She
+could make nothing of it. She could see no more than a wayfarer whom a
+blank wall faces as he goes. The violets and orange blossoms were close
+at her elbow; she never in after time smelt their perfume without a
+sick memory of the stunned, stupefied bewilderment of that hour.</p>
+
+<p>The door unclosed again, a voice again spoke behind as a hand drew back
+the folds of the tapestry.</p>
+
+<p>'What, are you in darkness here? I am very cold. Have you no tea for
+me?' said Sabran, as he entered, his eyes brilliant; his cheeks warm,
+from the long gallop against the wind. He had changed his clothes, and
+wore a loose suit of velvet; the servants, entering behind him, lit the
+candelabra, and brought in the lamps; warmth, and gladness, and light
+seemed to come with him; she looked up and thought, 'Ah! what does any
+thing matter? He is home in safety!'</p>
+
+<p>The impulse to ask of him what she had been bidden to ask of Egon
+Vàsàrhely had passed with the intense surprise of the first moment. She
+could not ask of him what she had promised never to seek to know; she
+could not reopen a long-closed wound. But neither could she forget the
+letter lying burnt there amongst the flames of the wood. He noticed
+that her usual perfect calm was broken as she welcomed him, gave him
+his letters, and bade the servants bring tea; but he thought it mere
+anxiety, and his belated drive; and being tired with a pleasant fatigue
+which made rest sweet, he stretched his limbs out on a low couch beside
+the hearth, and gave himself up to that delicious dreamy sense of
+<i>bien-être</i> which a beautiful woman, a beautiful room, tempered warmth
+and light, and welcome repose, bring to any man after some hours effort
+and exposure in wild weather and intense cold and increasing darkness.</p>
+
+<p>'I almost began to think I should not see you to-night,' he said
+happily, as he took from her hand the little cup of Frankenthal china
+which sparkled like a jewel in the light. 'I had fairly lost my way,
+and Josef knew it no better than I; the snow fell with incredible
+rapidity, and it seemed to grow night in an instant. I let the horses
+take their road, and they brought us home; but if there be any poor
+pedlars or carriers on the hills to-night I fear they will go to their
+last sleep.'</p>
+
+<p>She shuddered and looked at him with dim, fond eyes, 'He is here; he is
+mine,' she thought; 'what else matters?'</p>
+
+<p>Sabran stretched out his fingers and took some of the violets from the
+Saxe bowl and fastened them in his coat as he went on speaking of the
+weather, of the perils of the roads whose tracks were obliterated, and
+of the prowess and intelligence of his horses, who had found the way
+home when he and his groom, a man born and bred in the Tauern, had both
+been utterly at a loss. The octagon-room had never looked lovelier and
+gayer to him, and his wife had never looked more beautiful than both
+did now as he came to them out of the darkness and the snowstorm and
+the anxiety of the last hour.</p>
+
+<p>'Do not run those risks,' she murmured. 'You know all that your life is
+to me.'</p>
+
+<p>The letter which lay burnt in the fire, and the dusky night of ice
+and wind without, had made him dearer to her than ever. And yet the
+startled, shocked sense of some mystery, of some evil, was heavy upon
+her, and did not leave her that evening nor for many a day after.</p>
+
+<p>'You are not well?' he said to her anxiously later, as they left the
+dinner-table. She answered evasively.</p>
+
+<p>'You know I am not always quite well now. It is nothing. It will pass.'</p>
+
+<p>'I was wrong to alarm you by being out so late in such weather,' he
+said with self-reproach. 'I will go out earlier in future.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not wear those violets,' she said, with a trivial caprice wholly
+unlike her, as she took them from his coat. 'They are Bonapartist
+emblems&mdash;<i>fleurs de malheur</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, but he was surprised, for he had never seen in her any one
+of those fanciful whims and vagaries that are common to women.</p>
+
+<p>'Give me any others instead,' he said; 'I wear but your symbol, O my
+lady!'</p>
+
+<p>She took some myrtle and lilies of the valley from one of the large
+porcelain jars in the Rittersaal.</p>
+
+<p>'These are our flowers,' she said as she gave them to him. 'They mean
+love and peace.'</p>
+
+<p>He turned from her slightly as he fastened them where the others had
+been.</p>
+
+<p>All the evening she was pre-occupied and nervous. She could not forget
+the intimation she had received. It was intolerable to her to have
+anything of which she could not speak to her husband. Though they had
+their own affairs apart one from the other, there had been nothing
+of moment in hers that she had ever concealed from him. But here it
+was impossible for her to speak to him, since she had pledged herself
+never to seek to know the reason of an action which, however plausibly
+she explained it to herself, remained practically inexplicable and
+unintelligible. It was terrible to her, too, to feel that the lines
+of a coward who dared not sign them had sunk so deeply into her mind
+that she did not question their veracity. They had at once carried
+conviction to her that Egon Vàsàrhely did know what they said he did.
+She could not have told why this was, but it was so. It was what hurt
+her most&mdash;&mdash;others knew; she did not.</p>
+
+<p>She felt that if she could have spoken to Sabran of it, the matter
+would have become wholly indifferent to her; but the obligation of
+reticence, the sense of separation which it involved, oppressed her
+greatly. She was also haunted by the memory of the enmity which existed
+between these men, whose names were so strangely coupled in the
+anonymous counsel given her.</p>
+
+<p>She stayed long in her oratory that night, seeking vainly for calmness
+and patience under this temptation; seeking beyond all things for
+strength to put the poison of it wholly from her mind. She dreaded lest
+it should render her irritable and suspicious. She reproached herself
+for having been guilty of even so much insinuation of rebuke to him
+as her words with the flower had carried in them. She had ideas of
+the duties of a woman to her husband widely different to those which
+prevail in the world. She allowed herself neither irritation nor irony
+against him. 'When the thoughts rebel, the acts soon revolt,' she was
+wont to say to herself, and even in her thoughts she would never blame
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Prayer, even if it have no other issue or effect, rarely fails to
+tranquillise and fortify the heart which is lifted up ever so vaguely
+in search of a superhuman aid. She left her oratory strengthened and
+calmed, resolved in no way to allow such partial success to their
+unknown foe as would be given if the treacherous warning brought any
+suspicion or bitterness to her mind. She passed through the open
+archway in the wall which divided his rooms from hers, and looked at
+him where he lay already asleep upon his bed, early fatigued by the
+long cold drive from which he had returned at nightfall. He was never
+more handsome than sleeping calmly thus, with the mellow light of a
+distant lamp reaching the fairness of his face. She looked at him with
+all her heart in her eyes; then stooped and kissed him without awaking
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! my love,' she thought, 'what should ever come between us? Hardly
+even death, I think, for if I lost you I should not live long without
+you.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Salzburg lawyers employed all the resources of the Viennese police
+to discover the sender of the envelope, but vainly; nothing was
+learned by all the efforts made. But the letter constantly haunted her
+thoughts. It produced in her an uneasiness and an apprehensiveness
+wholly foreign to her temper. The impossibility also of saying anything
+about it increased the weight of it on her memory. Yet she never once
+thought of asking Vàsàrhely. She wrote to him now and then, as she had
+always done, to give him tidings of her health or of her movements,
+but she never once alluded in the most distant terms to the anonymous
+information she had received. If he had been there beside her she would
+not have spoken of it. Of the two, she would sooner have reopened the
+subject to her husband. But she never did so. She had promised him
+to be silent, and to her creed a promise was inviolate, never to be
+retracted, be the pressure or the desire to do so what it would.</p>
+
+<p>It was these grand lines on which her character and her habits were
+cast that awed him, and made him afraid to tell her his true history.
+Had he revered her less he would probably have deceived her less. Had
+she been of a less noble temperament she would also probably have been
+much less easy to deceive.</p>
+
+<p>Her health was at this time languid, and more uncertain than usual,
+and the two lines of the letter were often present to her thoughts,
+tormenting her with idle conjecture, painful doubt, none the less
+painful because it could take no definite shape. Sometimes when she
+was not well enough to accompany him out of doors or drive her own
+sleigh through the keen clear winter air, she sat doing nothing, and
+thinking only of this thing, in the same room, with the same smell of
+violets about her, musing on what it might by any possibility mean. Any
+secret was safe with Egon, but then since the anonymous writer was in
+possession of it the secret was not only his. She wondered sometimes in
+terror whether it could be anything that might in after years affect
+her children's future, and then as rapidly discarded the bare thought
+as so much dishonour to their father. 'It is only because I am now
+nervous and impressionable,' she said to herself,'that this folly takes
+such a hold upon me. When I am well again I shall not think of it. Who
+is it says of anonymous letters that they are like "<i>les immondices des
+rues: il faut boucher le nez, tourner la tête et passer outre?</i>"'</p>
+
+<p>But '<i>les immondices</i>' spoiled the odours of the new year violets to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>In the early spring of the year she gave birth to another son. She
+suffered more than she had ever done before, and recovered less
+quickly. The child was like all the others, fair, vigorous, and full
+of health. She wished to give him her husband's name, but Sabran so
+strenuously opposed the idea that she yielded, and named him after her
+brother Victor, who had fallen at Magenta.</p>
+
+<p>There were the usual rejoicings throughout the estates, rejoicings
+that were the outcome of genuine affection and fealty to the race of
+Szalras, whose hold on the people of the Tauern had resisted all the
+revolutionary movements of the earlier part of the century, and had
+fast root in the hearts of the staunch and conservative mountaineers.
+But for the first time as she heard the hearty '<i>Hoch!</i>' of the
+assembled peasantry echoing beneath her windows, and the salvos fired
+from the old culverins on the keep, a certain fear mingled with her
+maternal pride, and she thought: 'Will the people love them as well
+twenty years hence, fifty years hence, when I shall be no more? Will my
+memory be any shield to them? Will the traditions of our race outlast
+the devouring changes of the world?'</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the Princess, happy and smiling, showed the little new-born
+noble to the stalwart chamois hunters, the comely farmers and
+fishermen, the clear-eyed stout-limbed shepherds and labourers gathered
+bareheaded round the Schloss.</p>
+
+<p>Bela stood by contemplating the crowd he knew so well; he did not see
+why they should cheer any other child beside himself. He stood with his
+little velvet cap in his hand, because he was always told to do so, but
+he felt very inclined to put it on; if his father had not been present
+there he would have done so.</p>
+
+<p>'If I have ever so many brothers,' he said at last thoughtfully to
+Greswold, who was by his side, 'it will not make any difference, will
+it? I shall always be <i>the</i> one?'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean?' asked the physician.</p>
+
+<p>'They will none of them be like me? They will none of them be as great
+as I am? Not if I have twenty?'</p>
+
+<p>'You will be always the eldest son, of course,' said the old man,
+repressing a smile. 'Yes; you will be their head, their chief, their
+leading spirit; but for that reason you will have much more expected of
+you than will be expected of them; you will have to learn much more,
+and try to be always good. Do you follow me, Count Bela?'</p>
+
+<p>Bela's little rosy mouth shut itself up contemptuously. 'I shall be
+always the eldest, and I shall do whatever I like. I do not see why
+they want any others than me.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will not do always what you like, Count Bela.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who shall prevent me?'</p>
+
+<p>'The law, which you will have to obey like everyone else.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall make the laws when I am a little older,' said Bela. 'And they
+will be for my brothers and all the people, but not for me. I shall do
+what I like.'</p>
+
+<p>'That will be very ungenerous,' said Greswold, quietly. 'Your mother,
+the Countess, is very different. She is stern to herself, and indulgent
+to all others. That is why she is beloved. If you will think of
+yourself so much when you are grown up, you will be hated.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela flushed a little guiltily and angrily.</p>
+
+<p>'That will not matter,' he said sturdily. 'I shall please myself
+always.'</p>
+
+<p>'And be unkind to your brothers?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not if they do what I tell them; I will be very kind if they are good.
+Gela always does what I tell him,' he added after a little pause; 'I do
+not want any but Gela.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is natural you should be fondest of Gela, as he is nearest your
+age, but you must love all the brothers you may have, or you will
+distress your mother very greatly.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why does she want any but me?' said Bela, clinging to his sense of
+personal wrong. And he was not to be turned from that.</p>
+
+<p>'She wants others beside you,' said the physician, adroitly, 'because
+to be happy she needs children who are tender-hearted, unselfish, and
+obedient. You are none of those things, my Count Bela, so Heavens ends
+her consolation.'</p>
+
+<p>Bela opened his blue eyes very wide, and he coloured with mortification.</p>
+
+<p>'She always loves me best!' he said haughtily. 'She always will!'</p>
+
+<p>'That will depend on yourself, my little lord,' said Greswold, with a
+significance which was not lost on the quick intelligence of the child;
+and he never forgot this day when his brother Victor was shown to the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>'There will be no lack of heirs to Hohenszalras,' said the Princess
+meanwhile to his father.</p>
+
+<p>He thought as he heard:</p>
+
+<p>'And if ever she know she can break her marriage like a rotten thread!
+Those boys can all be made as nameless as I was! Would she do it?
+Perhaps not, for the children's sake. God knows&mdash;&mdash;she might change
+even to them; she might hate them as she loves them now, because they
+are mine.'</p>
+
+<p>Even as he sat beside her couch with her hand in his these thoughts
+pursued and haunted him. Remorse and fear consumed him. When she looked
+at the blue eyes of her new-born son, and said to him with a happy
+smile: 'He will be just as much like you as the others are,' he could
+only think with a burning sense of shame, 'Like me! like a traitor!
+like a liar! like a thief!'&mdash;&mdash;and the faces of these children seemed
+to him like those of avenging angels.</p>
+
+<p>He thought with irrepressible agony of the fact that her country's
+laws would divorce her from him if she chose, did ever the truth come
+to her ear. He had always known this indeed, as he had known all the
+other risks he ran in doing what he did. Put it had been far away,
+indistinct, unasserted; whenever the memory of it had passed over him
+he had thrust it away. Now when another knew his secret, he could
+not do so. He had a strange sensation of having fallen from some
+great height; of having all his life slide away like melting ice out
+of his hands. He never once doubted for an instant the good faith of
+Egon Vàsàrhely. He knew that his lips would no more unclose to tell
+his secret than the glaciers yonder would find human voice. But the
+consciousness that one man lived, moved, breathed, rose with each day,
+and went amongst other men, bearing with him that fatal knowledge,
+made it now impossible for himself ever to forget it. A dull remorse,
+a sharp apprehension, were for ever his companions, and never left him
+for long even in his sweetest hours. He did justice to the magnificent
+generosity of the one who spared him. Egon Vàsàrhely knew, as he knew,
+that she, hearing the truth, could annul the marriage if she chose.
+His children would have no rights, no name, if their mother chose to
+separate herself from him. The law would make her once more as free
+as though she had never wedded him. He knew that, and the other man
+who loved her knew it too. He could measure the force of Vàsàrhely's
+temptation as that simple and heroic soldier could not stoop to measure
+his.</p>
+
+<p>He was deeply unhappy, but he concealed it from her. Even when his
+heart beat against hers it seemed to him always that there was an
+invisible wall between himself and her. He longed to tell the whole
+truth to her, but he was afraid; if the whole pain and shame had been
+his own that the confession would have caused, he would have dared it;
+but he had not the heart to inflict on her such suffering, not the
+courage to destroy their happiness with his own hand. Egon Vàsàrhely
+alone knew, and he for her sake would never speak. As for the reproach
+of his own conscience, as for the remorse that the words of his
+children might at any moment call up in him, these lie must bear. He
+was a man of cool judgment and of ready resource, and though he had
+never foreseen the sharp repentance which his better nature now felt,
+he knew that he would be able to live it down as he had crushed out so
+many other scruples. He vowed to himself that as far as in him lay he
+would atone for his act. The moral influence of his wife had not been
+without effect on him. Not altogether, but partially, he had grown to
+believe in what she believed in, of the duty of human life to other
+lives; he had not her sympathy for others, but he had admired it, and
+in his own way followed it, though without her faith.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></h4>
+
+
+<p>Life went on in its old pathways at Hohenszalras. Nothing more, was
+said by him, or to him, as to his rejection of the Russian mission. She
+was niggard in nothing, and when she offered her faith or pledged her
+silence, gave both entirely and ungrudgingly. Sabran to her showed an
+increase of devotion, an absolute adoration which would in themselves
+have sufficed to console any woman; and if the most observant member
+of their household, Greswold, perceived in him a preoccupation, a
+languor, a gloom, which boded ill for their future peace, the old man
+was too loyal in his attachment not to endeavour to shake off his own
+suspicions and discredit his own penetration.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess had been favoured by a note from Olga Brancka, in which
+that lady wrote: 'Have you discovered the nature of his refusal of
+Russia? Myself, I believe that I was to blame. I hinted to him that
+he would be tempted to his old sins in St. Petersburg, and that Wanda
+would be very miserable there. It seems that this was enough for the
+tender heart of this devoted lover, and too much for his wisdom and
+his judgment; he rejected the mission after accepting it. I believe
+the Court is furious. I am not <i>de service</i> now, so that I have no
+opportunity of endeavouring to restore him to favour; but I imagine the
+Emperor will not quarrel for ever with the Hohenszalrasburg.</p>
+
+<p>The letter restored him at least to the favour of Mdme. Ottilie.
+Exaggerated as such a scruple appeared it did not seem to her
+impossible in a man whose devotion to his wife she daily witnessed,
+shown in a hundred traits. She blamed him still severely in her own
+thoughts for what she held an inexcusable disrespect to the Crown, but
+she kept her word scrupulously and never spoke to him on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>'Where else in the wide world would any man have found such
+forbearance?' he thought with gratitude, and he knew that nowhere
+would such delicate sentiment have existed outside the pale of that
+fine patrician dignity which is as incapable of the vulgarity of
+inquisitiveness and interrogation as was the Spartan of lament.</p>
+
+<p>The months went by. They did not leave home; he seemed to have lost
+all wish for any absence, and even repulsed the idea of inviting the
+usual house parties of the year. She supposed that he was averse to
+meeting people who might recur to his rejection of the post he had
+once accepted. The summer passed and the autumn came; he spent his
+time in occasional sport, the keen and perilous sport of the Austrian
+mountains, and more often and more faithfully beguiled himself with
+those arts of which he was a brilliant master, though he would call
+himself no more than a mere amateur. From the administration of the
+estates he had altogether withdrawn himself.</p>
+
+<p>'You are so much wiser than I,' he always said to her; and when she
+would have referred to him, replied: 'You have your lawyers; they are
+all honest men. Consult them rather than me.'</p>
+
+<p>With the affairs of Idrac only he continued to concern himself a
+little, and was persistent in setting aside all its revenues to
+accumulate for his second son.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish you cared more about all these things,' she said to him one
+day, when she had in her hand the reports from the mines of Galicia.
+He answered angrily, 'I have no right to them. They are not mine. If
+you chose to give them all away to the Crown I should say nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not even for the children's sake?'</p>
+
+<p>'No: you would be entirely justified if you liked to give the children
+nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'I really do not understand you,' she said in great surprise.</p>
+
+<p>'Everything is yours,' he said abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'And the children too, surely!' she said, with a smile: but the
+strangeness of the remark disquieted her. 'It is over-sensitiveness,'
+she thought; 'he can never altogether forget that he was poor. It is
+for that reason public life would have been so good for him; dignities
+which he enjoyed of his own, honours that he arrived at through his own
+attainments.'</p>
+
+<p>Chagrined to have lost, the opportunity of winning personal honours
+in a field congenial to him, the sense that everything was hers could
+hardly fail to gall him sometimes constantly, though she strove to
+efface any remembrance or reminder that it was so.</p>
+
+<p>In the midsummer of that year, whilst they were quite alone, they were
+surprised by another letter from Mdme. Brancka, in which she proposed
+to take Hohenszalras on her way from France to Tsarköe Selo, where she
+was about to pay a visit which could not be declined by her.</p>
+
+<p>When in the spring he had written with formality to her to announce the
+birth of his son Victor, she had answered with a witty coquettish reply
+such as might well have been provocative of further correspondence.
+But he had not taken up the invitation. Mortified and irritated, she
+had compared his writing with the piece of burnt paper, and been more
+satisfied than ever that he had penned the name of Vassia Kazán. But
+even were it so, what, she wondered, had it to do with Russia? He
+and Egon Vàsàrhely were not friends so intimate that they had any
+common interests one with the other. The mystery had interested her
+intensely when her rapid intuition had connected the resignation of
+Sabran's appointment with the messenger sent to him from Taróc. Her
+impatience to be again in his presence grew intense. She imagined a
+thousand stories, to cast each aside in derision as impossible. All her
+suppositions were built upon no better basis than a fragment of charred
+paper; but her shrewd intuition bore her into the region of truth,
+though the actual truth of course never suggested itself to her even in
+her most fantastic and dramatic visions. Finally she thus proposed to
+visit Hohenszalras in the midsummer months.</p>
+
+<p>'Last year you had such a crowd about you,' she wrote, 'that I
+positively saw nothing of you, <i>liebe</i> Wanda. You are alone now, and
+I venture to propose myself for a fortnight. You cannot exactly be
+said to be in the way to anywhere, but I shall make you so. When one
+is going to Russia, a matter of another five hundred miles or so is a
+bagatelle.'</p>
+
+<p>'We must let her come,' said Wanda, as she gave the letter to Sabran,
+who, having read it, said with much sincerity&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'For heaven's sake, do not. A fortnight of Madame Olga! as well
+have&mdash;&mdash;a century of "Madame Angot!"'</p>
+
+<p>'Can I prevent her?'</p>
+
+<p>'You can make some excuse. I do not like Mdme. Brancka.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why?'</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated; he could not tell her what he had felt at the ball of
+the Hofburg. 'She reminds me of a woman who drew me into a thousand
+follies, and to cap her good deeds betrayed me to the Prussians. If you
+must let her come I will go away. I will go and see your haras on the
+Pusztas.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are you serious?'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite serious. Were I not ashamed of such a weakness, I should use a
+feminine expression. I should say "<i>elle me donne des nerfs.</i>"'</p>
+
+<p>'I think she has a great admiration for you, and she does not conceal
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Merely because she is sensible that I do not like her. Such women as
+she are discontented if only one person fail to admit their charm. She
+is accustomed to admiration, and she is not scrupulous as to how she
+obtains it.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear! pray remember that she is our guest, and doubly our relative.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will try and remember it; but, believe me, all honour is wholly
+wasted upon Mdme. Olga. You offer her a coin of which the person and
+the superscription are alike unknown to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very severe,' said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, and perceived that he was not jesting, that he
+was on the contrary disturbed and annoyed, and she remembered the
+persistence with which Olga Brancka had sought his companionship and
+accompanied him on his sport in the summer of her visit there.</p>
+
+<p>'If she had not married first my brother and then my cousin, she would
+never have been an intimate friend of mine,' she continued. 'She is of
+a world wholly opposed to all my tastes. For you to be absent, if she
+came, would be too marked, I think; but we can both leave, if you like.
+I am well enough for any movement now, and I can leave the child with
+his nurse. Shall we make a tour in Hungary? The haras will interest
+you. There are the mines, too, that one ought to visit.'</p>
+
+<p>He received her assent with gratitude and delight. He felt that he
+would have gone to the uttermost ends of the earth rather than run the
+risk of spending long lonely summer days in the excitation of Mdme.
+Brancka's presence. He detested her, he would always detest her; and
+yet when he shut his eyes he saw her so clearly, with the malicious
+light in her dusky glance, and the jewelled butterfly trembling about
+her breasts.</p>
+
+<p>'She shall never come under Wanda's roof if I can prevent it,' he
+thought, remembering her as she had been that night.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later the Countess Brancka, much to her rage, had a note
+from the Hohenszalrasburg, which said that they were on the point of
+leaving for Hungary and Galicia, but that if she would come there in
+their absence, the Princess Ottilie, who remained, would be charmed to
+receive her. Of course she excused herself, and did not go. A visit to
+the solitudes of the Iselthal, where she would, see no one but a lady
+of eighty years old and four little children, had few attractions for
+the adventurous and vivacious wife of Stefan Brancka.</p>
+
+<p>'It is only Wanda's jealousy,' she thought, and was furious; but she
+looked at herself in the mirror, and was almost consoled as she thought
+also, 'He avoids me. Therefore he is afraid of me!'</p>
+
+<p>She went to her god, <i>le monde</i>, and worshipped at all its shrines and
+in all its fashions; but in the midst of the turmoil and the triumphs,
+the worries and the intoxications of her life, she did not lose her
+hold on her purpose, nor forget that he had slighted her. His beautiful
+face, serene and scornful, was always before her. He might have been at
+her feet, and he chose to dwell beside his wife under those solitary
+forests, amongst those solitary mountains of the High Tauern!</p>
+
+<p>'With a woman he has lived with all these eight years!' she thought,
+with furious impatience. 'With a woman who has grafted the Lady of La
+Garaye on Libussa, who never gives him a moment's jealousy, who is
+as flawless as an ivory statue or a marble throne, who suckles her
+children and could spin their clothes if she wanted, who never cares
+to go outside the hills of her own home&mdash;&mdash;the Teuton <i>Hausfrau</i> to
+her finger-tips.' And she was all the more bitter and the more angered
+because, always as she tried to think thus, the image of Wanda rose up
+before her, as she had seen her so often at Vienna or Hohenszalras,
+with the great pearls on her hair and on her breast.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 20%;">
+A planet at whose passing, lo!<br />
+All lesser stars recede, and night<br />
+Grows clear as day thus lighted up<br />
+By all her loveliness, which burns<br />
+With pure white flame of chastity;<br />
+And fires of fair thought....<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h4>END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.</h4>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p style="margin-left: 20%; font-size: 0.8em;">
+CONTENTS<br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Ouida
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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