CHAPTER XXXII.

Within half an hour he had given a few orders to his major-domo,

and had taken a special train to overtake the express, already for

on its way that night towards Strasburg. No steam could fly as fast

as his own wishes flew. Never had he felt happier than as the train

rushed across the windy level country of the north-east, bearing him

back to the peace and tenderness and honour which waited for him at

Hohenszalrasburg. He was content with himself, and the future smiled on

him. He slept soundly all that night, undisturbed by the panting and

oscillating of the carriage, and visited by tranquil dreams. He did not

break the journey till he reached S. Johann. The weather in the German

lands was wild and rough. The sound of the winds and rushing rains

brought the remembrance of that year of the floods which had been the

sweetest of his life. Amidst the Austrian Alps the cold was still keen,

and the brisk buoyant air and the strength, that seems always to come

on winds that blow over glaciers and snow-fields were welcome to him,

like a familiar and trusty friend. The servants who met him in answer

to his message, the horses who knew him and whinnied with pleasure, the

summits of the Glöckner, on which a noon-day sun was shining, all were

delightful to him: he thought of the Catullian 'laugh in the dimples of

home.'

Their ways of life renewed themselves as if they had never been

broken. She divined what had passed, but she never spoke of it. She

was happy in his return, and never disturbed its happiness by inquiry

or allusion. He entered with eagerness into plans and projects which

had of recent years ceased to interest him, and he resumed his old

occupations and pursuits with almost boyish ardour. His restlessness

was appeased, and if a dull apprehension beat at his heart with

warning now and then, it was scarcely heeded in his deep sense of the

intense and forbearing love his wife bore to him. She never asked him

how he had escaped from Olga Brancka. She was satisfied that if he

had been faithless to herself, he would not have returned with such

single-hearted contentment and such lover-like fervour.

'You are the only woman in the world who can forbear from putting

questions,' said Madame Ottilie to her.

She answered smiling:

'I remember Psyche's lamp.'

'That is very pretty,' said the Princess, 'and I do believe you would

never have cared for the lamp. But, all the same, if the god had been

as honest as he ought to have been, would he have minded the light?'

'I do not think that enters into the story,' said Wanda. 'He did not

resent the light either; he resented the inquisitiveness.'

'You are the only woman who has none,' said the Princess, taking up her

netting, and at times she called her niece Pschye, little imagining the

terrible suitability of the name, and the secret that was hidden in

darkness from that noble confidence of the last of the Szalras.

The remembrance of that night of base temptation left a sense of

uneasiness and of insecurity upon Sabran, but the influence his

temptress had possessed with him was of that kind which fades instantly

in absence. He honestly abhorred the memory of her, and never spoke

her name.

His wife, to whom the utter degradation of her cousin's wife would

never have seemed possible in a woman nobly born and nurtured, never

imagined the truth or anything similar to it.

Another woman would have tormented herself and him with innuendo or

direct reference to what had passed in those weeks when she had not

been beside him, and on which he was absolutely silent. But she put all

baseness of curiosity from her; she was content to know that her own

influence in absence had been strong enough to bring him back to his

allegiance. She would not have wished to hear, had he offered to reveal

them, all the various, conflicts of good and evil which had gone on in

his mind, all the subtle changes by which her own power had been for a

moment obscured, only to regain still stronger and purer ascendency.

She was indulgent because she knew human nature well, and expected no

miracles. That he had returned of his own accord, and was content so to

return, was all she desired to know. If to attain that equanimity had

cost her many a struggle, the fact was shut in her own soul and could

concern no other. She esteemed it a poor love which could not bear to

be sometimes shut out in silence.

'For a man to be manly he must be free,' she thought; 'and how can he

be free if there be someone to whom he must confess every trifle? He

owes allegiance to no one but his own conscience.'

If in their intercourse she had found his honour less scrupulous, his

code less fine than her own; if she had been ever pained by a certain

levity and looseness of principle betrayed by him at times, she always

strove not to attach too much importance to these. The creeds of a man

of pleasure were necessarily different, she told herself, to those of

a woman reared in austere tenets, and guarded by natural pride and

purity of disposition. Whenever the fear crossed her that he might not

be always faithful to her she put it away from her thoughts. 'What I

have to do,' she thought, 'is to be true to him, not to question or to

doubt him: a man's faithfulness has always such a different reading to

a woman's.'

Sabran never quite understood the perfect indulgence to him which she

combined with the greatest severity to herself. He thought that the

same measure she gave she would exact. The' serenity and grandeur of

her character made it seem to him impossible that she would ever have

compassion for weakness or for falsehood. He fancied, wrongly, that

a woman less noble herself would be more indulgent than she would be

to error. He did not realise that it is only a great nature which can

wholly understand the full force of the words _aimer c'est pardonner._

And then again, he said to himself, she might have pardoned a fault, a

crime even, of high passion, of bold mutiny against moral, law, but how

could she ever pardon a meanness, a treason, a lie?

So he let the months slide away, and did not say to her whilst he still

might have said it himself, 'I am not what you think me.'

But he was impressed and profoundly affected by that mute magnanimity,

which never vaunted itself or claimed any praise for itself by any hint

or suggestion. He felt disgust at his own folly in ever having cared to

be a single instant in the presence of the woman of whose libertinage

and inconstancy his yellow roses had been the fitting symbol. When

he had cast her from him, rejected and despised, the glamour she had

thrown over him had fallen like scales from the eyes of one blind.

Her memory made the beauty of his wife's nature and thoughts seem to

him more than ever things for reverence and worship. More than ever

his soul shrank within him when he recollected the treachery and the

deception with which, he had rewarded this noblest of friends.

Ah! why when she had stretched out her hand to him in that supreme gift

of herself, in, that golden sunset hour after the autumn floods of

Idrac, had he not had courage to kneel at her feet and tell her all?

Perchance she might have still have loved him, might have still stooped

to him!

He strove his utmost to conceal these anxious self-reproaches from her,

lest she should imagine that his hours of gloom were caused by any

lingering shadows of the fatal folly which had been forced on him, like

a drug by Olga Brancka. The sorceress had failed, and he had flung down

and shivered in atoms the glass out of which she had bidden him drink;

she was to him as utterly forgotten, as though she were in her grave;

but not so easily could he banish the memory of his own treachery to

his wife. The very forbearance of her made him the more conscious of

guilt, when he remembered that one man lived who knew that he was

unworthy even to kiss the hem of her garment. He had been faithful to

her in the present, and so could greet her with clean hands and honest

lips; but in the past he had betrayed her foully; he had done her what

in her sight, if ever she knew it would be the darkest dishonour the

treachery of ä human life could hold.

The sense of crime, which had slept quiet and mute in his conscience so

many years, was now awake and seldom to be stilled.

The time passed serenely; the autumn brought its hardy sports, the

winter its vigorous pastimes. With the new year she gave him another

son; she named him after Egon Vàsàrhely, without opposition from Sabran.

'He is worthier to give them a name than I,' he thought bitterly.

They did not care to move from the green Iselthal. Of Olga Brancka they

heard but rarely. Now and then she sent a little witty flippant note to

Hohenszalras, dated from Paris or Trouville, or Biarritz, or Vienna, or

Monaco, or St. Petersburg, according to the season and her caprices.

Of these little meaningless notes Wanda did not speak to her husband.

She could not bring herself to talk to him of the woman who had so

nearly wrecked their peace, and it seemed to her that the old saw was

wise: 'Let sleeping dogs lie.' It appeared to her, too, that theirs and

Madame Brancka's paths in life would henceforth very seldom, if ever,

meet.

Sabran believed that her overtures towards him had sprung from one

of those insane unhealthy passions which sometimes are created by

their very sense of their own immorality; he fancied it had died of

its own fire. He did not credit her with the tenacity and endurance

she really possessed. He had little doubt that long ere now some dandy

of the boulevards, some soldier of the palace, had supplanted him in

that brazier of heated senses which she called by courtesy her heart.

He mistook, as the cleverest men often do mistake, in underrating the

cruelty of women.

The summer was a soft and sunny one, and they enjoyed it in simple and

healthful pleasures of the open air and of the affections. The children

throve and never ailed a day. Sabran had lost all desire to return

to the excitations and passions of the world; his wife was more than

content in the joys of her home; and if above her a storm brooded, if

in his heart there fretted ceaselessly the chafing sense of a gross

treachery, of an incessant peril, she was as ignorant of what menaced

her as the child to whom she had given birth. With present security

also, the sense of dread often wore away from him.

The months sped on swiftly and serenely for the mistress of

Hohenszalras, the only shadows cast on them coming from accidents

to her poor people through flood or avalanche, and the occasional

waywardness and turbulence of her eldest born. Bela had not been the

better for his sojourn in a great city, where parasites are never

lacking to the heir of wealth, and where his companions had been

small coquettes and dandies _pétris du monde_ at six years old. The

bright vigorous hardihood of the child had escaped the contagion of

affectation, but he had arrived at an inordinate sense of his own

importance and dignity, despite the memory of the Dauphin which often

came to him. He grew quite beyond the management of his governantes,

and though he never disobeyed his mother, gave little heed to anyone

else's authority. Of Sabran he was alone afraid; but at the same time

he preserved for him that silent intense admiration which a young child

sometimes nourishes for a man by whom he is little noticed, but who is

his ideal of all power, force, and achievement, and of whom he hears

heroic tales.

He was now seven years old. It was time to think of a tutor for him,

since he was beyond the control of the women entrusted with his

education. When she spoke of it to his father, he answered at once:

'Take Greswold. He has the best temper in the world to govern a child,

and he is a great scholar.'

'But he is a physician,' she objected.

'He has studied the mind no less than the body. He adores the boy,

and will influence him as a stranger could not. Speak to him; he will

be only too happy. As no one is ever ill here,' he added with a smile,

'his present position is a sinecure; he can very well combine another

office with it.'

'I wanted you to take Bela in your hands,' he said later to the old

doctor, 'because I say to you what I should not care to say to a

stranger. The boy has all my faults in him. As he exactly resembles me

physically so he does morally. There is in him, too, I am afraid, a

tendency to tyranny that I have never had. I am not cruel to anything,

though I am indifferent to most things; he would be cruel if he were

allowed; perhaps it is mere masterfulness which may be conquered by

time. I imagine he has also my fatal facility. I call it fatal because

it renders acquisition and proficiency so easy that it prevents

laboriousness and depth of knowledge. You are much wiser than I am,

and will know how to educate the child much better than I can tell

you how to do. Only remember two things: first, that he is cursed by

certain hereditary passions coming to him from me which must be checked

and calmed, or he will grow up with a character dangerous to himself,

and odious to others in the great position he will one day occupy.

Secondly, that if any child of mine ever bring any kind of sorrow upon

her, I shall be of all men the most wretched. You have always been my

good friend. Be yet more so in preventing my suffering from the pain of

seeing my own moral deformities face me and accuse me in the life of

her eldest son.'

The old physician listened with emotion and with surprise. Of the moral

defects Sabran spoke of, he had seen none. Since his marriage his

tenderness to his wife, his kindliness to his dependants, his courage

in field sports, and his courtesy as a host had been all that anyone

had seen in him; whilst his abstinence from all interference with and

all appropriation of his wife's vast possessions had aroused a yet

deeper esteem in all who surrounded him. As he heard, over the old

man's mind drifted the memories of all he had observed at the time of

Sabran's accident in the forest and subsequent prostration of nerve and

will. But he thrust these vague suspicions away, for he was blameless

in his loyalty to the house he served, and honoured as his master the

husband of the Countess von Szalras.

'I will do my uttermost to deserve so precious a trust,' he said,

with deep feeling. 'I think that you exaggerate childish foibles, and

attach too much importance to them. The little Count Bela is imperious

and high-spirited, nothing more; and in this great household, where

everyone salutes him as the heir, it is difficult to keep him wholly

unspoiled by adulation and consciousness of his own future power. But a

great pride has been always the mark of the race of Szalras, although

my lady has so chastened hers that you may well believe the line she

springs from has been always faultless as--if one may say so of any

mortal--one may say she herself is. It is not from you alone that the

child inherits his arrogance, if arrogant he be. As for his facility,

it is like a fairy's wand, a caduceus of the gods; it may be used

for good unspeakable. At least believe this, my dear lord, what any

human teacher can do I will do, thankful to pay my debt so easily. I

have always,' he added less gravely, 'had my own theories as to the

education of young princes, and like all theorists believe everyone

else who has had any doctrine on that subject to be wrong. I shall be

charmed to have so happy an occasion in which to put my theories to the

test. I think nature and learning together, the woods and the study,

should be the preparation for the world.'

'I have entire confidence in your judgment,' said Sabran. 'Above all,

try and keep the boy from pride. Train him, as Madame de Genlis

trained the d'Orléans boys, for any reverse of fortune. He is born with

that temper which would make any humiliation, any loss of position,

unbearable to him; and who can say----'

He paused abruptly: what he thought was, who could say that in future

years Egon Vàsàrhely might not tell his son of that secret shame which

hung over Hohenszalras, a cloud unseen, but big with tempest? Greswold

looked at him in a surprise which he could not conceal, and Sabran left

his presence hastily, under excuse of visiting some stallions arrived

that morning from Tunis; he was afraid of the interrogations which

the old man might be led in all innocence to make. Greswold looked

after him with some anxiety; he had become sincerely attached to his

lord, whose life he had saved in Pregratten; but the unevenness of his

spirits, the unhappiness which evidently came over him at times in

the midst of his serene and fortunate life, the strangeness of a few

words which from time to time he let fall, had not escaped the quick

perception of the wise physician, and gave him at intervals a vague,

uncertain feeling of apprehension.

'Pride!' he thought now. 'If the little Count were not proud he would

be no Szalras; and if his father have not also that superb sin he must

be a greater philosopher than I have ever thought him, and no fit mate

for our lady. What should overtake the child? If war or revolution

ruin him when he grows up that will be no humiliation; he will be none

the less Bela von Szalras, and if he be like my lady he will be quite

content with being that. Nevertheless, one must try and teach him

humility--that is, one must try and make the stork creep and the oak

bend!'

Sabran, as he examined his Eastern horses and conversed about them with

Ulrich, was haunted by the thoughts which his own words had called

up in him. It was possible, it was always possible, that if she ever

knew, she might divorce him, and the children would become bastards.

The Law would certainly give her her divorce, and the Church also. The

most severe of judges, the most austere of pontiffs, would not hold her

bound to a man who had so grossly deceived her.

By his own act he had rendered it possible for her, if she knew, to

sever herself entirely from him, and make his sons nameless. Of course

he had always known this. But in the first ardours of his passion,

the first ecstasies of his triumph, he had scarcely thought of it.

He had been certain that Vassia Kazán was dead to the whole world.

Then, as the years had rolled on, the security of his position, the

calmness of his happiness, had lulled all this remembrance in him. But

now tranquillity had departed from him, and there were hours when an

intense dread possessed him.

True, he did justice to the veracity and honour of his foe. He believed

that Vàsàrhely would never speak whilst he himself was living; but then

again he himself might die at any moment, a gun accident, a false step

on a glacier, a thrust from a boar or a bear, ten thousand hazards

might kill him in full health, and were he dead his antagonist might

be tempted to break his word. Vàsàrhely had always loved her; would it

not be a temptation beyond the power of humanity to resist, when by a

word he could show to her that she had been betrayed and outraged by a

traitor?

And then the children?

Though were he himself dead, she would in all likelihood never do aught

that would let the world know his sin, yet she would surely change to

his offspring, most probably would hate them when she saw in their

lives only the evidence of her own dishonour, and knew that in their

veins was the blood of a man born a serf.

'Born a serf! I!' he thought, incredulous of his own memories, of his

own knowledge, as he left the haras and mounted a young half-broken

English horse, and rode out into the silent, fragrant forest ways.

Almost to himself it seemed a dream that he had ever been a little

peasant on the Volga plains. Almost to himself it seemed an impossible

fable that he had been the natural son of Paul Zabaroff and a poor

maiden who had deemed herself honoured when she had been bidden to bear

drink to the _barine_ in his bedchamber. He had once said that he was

that best of all actors, one who believes in the part he plays; and at

all times, and above all since his marriage, he had been identified

in his own persuasions, and his own instincts and habits, with that

character of a great noble, which, when he paused to remember, he knew

was but assumed. Patrician in all his temper and tone, it seemed to

him, when he did so remember, incredible that he could be actually only

a son of hazard, without name, right, or station in the world. Was he

even the husband of Wanda von Szalras? Law and Church would both deny

it were his fraud once known.

It was not very often that these gloomy terrors seized him--his temper

was elastic and his mind sanguine; but when they did so they overcame

him utterly; he felt like Orestes pursued by the Furies. What smote him

most deeply and hardly of all was his consciousness of the wrong done

to his wife.

He rode fast and recklessly in the soft, grey atmosphere of the still

day, making his young horse leap brawling stream and fallen tree-trunk,

and dash headlong through the dusky greenery of the forests.

When he returned Wanda was seated on the lawn under the great yews

and cedars by the keep. She kissed her hand to him as he rode in the

distance up the avenue.

A little while later he joined her in her garden retreat, calm and

even gay. With her greeting his terror seemed to have faded away; his

home was here, he possessed her entire devotion--what was there to

fear? Never had the serenity of his life here appeared more precise

to him; never had the respect and honour which surrounded him seemed

more needful as the bulwarks of a contented career. What could the

furnace of ambition, the fatigue of exhausted pleasure give, that could

equal this profound sense of peace, this cultured leisure, and this

untainted atmosphere. The moral loveliness of his wife seemed to him

almost more than mortal in its absolute and unconscious rejection of

all things mean or base. 'The world would find the spring by following

her,' seemed to him to have been written for her--the spring of hope,

of faith, of strength, of purity. Perhaps a better man might have less

intensely perceived and worshipped that spiritual beauty.

'Shall we have any house-parties this year or not?' she asked him as he

joined her. 'I fear you must feel lonely here after your crowded days

in Paris last year?'

'No,' he said quickly. 'Let us be without people. We had enough of the

world in Paris, too much of it. How can I be lonely whilst I have you?

And the weather for once is superb, and promises to remain so.'

'I do not know how it seems to you,' she replied, 'but when I came

from the glare and the asphalte of Paris, these deep shadows, these

cool fresh greens, these cloud-bathed mountains seemed to me to have

the very calm of eternity in them. They seemed to say to me in such

reproach, "Why will you wander? What can you find nobler and gladder

than we are?" I want the children to grow up with that love of country

in them; it is such a refuge, such an abiding, innocent joy. What does

the old English poet say: 'It is to go from the world as it is man's to

the world as it is God's.'

'Well, then, I now do plainly see

This busy world and I shall ne'er agree,'

he said, with a smile. 'Cowley was a very wise man; wiser than

Socrates, when all is counted. But, then, Cowley forgot, and you,

perhaps, forget that one must be born with that wiser, holier love in

one; like any other poetic faculty or insight, it is scarcely to be

taught, certainly not to be acquired. I hope your children may inherit

it from you. There is no surer safeguard, no simpler happiness!'

'But since you are content, may it not be acquired?'

'Ah, my beloved!' he said with a sigh. 'Do not compare the retreat of

the soldier tired of his wounds, of the gambler wearied by his losses,

with the poet or the saint who is at peace with himself and sees all

his life long what he at least believes to be the smile of God. Loyola

and Francis d'Assisi are not the same thing, are not on the same plane.'

'What matter what brought them,' she said softly, 'if they reach the

same goal?'

'You think any sin may be forgiven?' he said irrelevantly, with his

face averted.

'That is a very wide question. I do not think S. Augustine himself

could answer it in a word or in a moment. Forgiveness, I think, would

surely depend on repentance.'

'Repentance in secret--would that avail?'

'Scarcely--would it?--if it did not attain some sacrifice. It would

have to prove its sincerity to be accepted.'

'You believe in public penance?' said Sabran, with some impatience and

contempt.

'Not necessarily public,' she said, with a sense of perplexity at the

turn his words had taken. 'But of what use is it for one to say he

repents unless in some measure he makes atonement?'

'But where atonement is impossible?'

'That could never be.'

'Yes. There are crimes whose consequences can never be undone. What

then? Is he who did them shut out from all hope?'

'I am no casuist,' she said, vaguely troubled. 'But if no atonement

were possible I still think----nay, I am sure---a sincere and intense

regret which is, after all, what we mean by repentance, must be

accepted, must be enough.'

'Enough to efface it in the eyes of one who had never sinned?'

'Where is there such an one? I thought you spoke of heaven.'

'I spoke of earth. It is all we can be sure to have to do with; it is

our one poor heritage.'

'I hope it is but an antechamber which we pass through, and fill with

beautiful things, or befoul with dust and blood, at our own will.'

'Hardly at our own will. In your ante-chamber a capricious tyrant

waits us all at birth. Some come in chained; some free.'

They were seated at her favourite garden-seat, where the great yews

spread before the keep, and far down below the Szalrassee rippled

away in shining silver and emerald hues, bearing the Holy Isle upon

its waters, and parting the mountains as with a field of light. The

impression which had pursued her once or twice before came to her

now. Was there any error in his own life, any cruel, crooked twist

of circumstance concealed from her? An exceeding tenderness and pity

yearned in her towards him as the thought arose. Was he, with all

his talent, power, pride, grace, and strength, conscious of fault or

failure, weighted with any burden? It seemed impossible. Yet to her

fine instinct, her accurate ear, there was in these generalities the

more painful, the more passionate, tone of personal remorse. She might

have spoken, might once more have said to him what she had once said,

and invited him to place a fearless confidence in her affection; but

she remembered Olga Brancka; she shrank from seeking an avowal which

might be so painful to him and her alike.

At that moment the pretty figure of the Princess Ottilie appeared in

the distance, a lace hood over her head, a broad red sunshade held

above that, and Sabran rose to go forward and offer her his arm.

'You are always lovers still, and one is afraid of interrupting you,'

she said, as she took one of the gilded wicker chairs. 'I have had a

letter from Olga Brancka; the post is come in. She says she will honour

you in the autumn on her way to waiting at Gödöllö.'

'It is impossible!' cried Sabran, who grew first red, then pale.

'Nothing is impossible with Olga,' said the Princess, drily. 'I see

even yet you are not acquainted with her many qualities, which include

among them a will of steel.'

'She cannot come here,' he said in haste under his breath.

Wanda looked at him a moment.

'My aunt shall tell her that it will not suit us. She can go to Gödöllö

by way of Gratz,' she said quietly.

The Princess shifted her sunshade.

'What effect do you think that will have? She will cross your

mountains, and she will call up a snowstorm by incantation, so that you

will be compelled to take her in. You who know so much of the world,

Réné, can you inform me how it is that women possess tenacity of will

in precise proportion to the frivolity of their lives? All these

butterflies have a volition of iron.'

'It is egotism,' he replied with effort, unable to recover his

astonishment and disgust. 'Intensely selfish people are always very

decided as to what they wish. That is in itself a great force; they do

not waste their energies in considering the good of others.'

'Olga's energies are certainly not wasted in that direction,' said

Madame Ottilie.

Sabran rose and went in for his letters. It was intolerable to him

to hear the name of this woman, whom he had only escaped by brutal

violence, spoken in the presence of his wife; and even to him, hardened

to the vices of the world though experience had made him, it had never

occurred as possible that she would have the audacity to come thither;

he had too hastily taken it for granted that conscience would have

kept her clear of their path for ever, unless the hazards of society

should have brought them perforce together. The most secretive of men

is always more sincere than an insincere and crafty woman, and he

was overwhelmed for the moment at the infamy and the hardihood of a

character which he had flattered himself he had understood at a glance.

He forgot the truth that 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.'

'There is not a _déclassée_ in Paris who would not have more decency!'

he thought bitterly. He stood in the Rittersaal and affected to be

occupied with his letters; but his eyes only followed their lines, his

mind was absent. He saw no way to prevent her continued intimacy with

them, if she were vile enough to persist in enforcing it. He could not

tell Egon Vàsàrhely or Stefan Brancka; a man cannot betray a woman,

however base she may be. He could not tell his wife of that hateful

hour, which seemed burnt into his brain as aquafortis bites into metal.

He shuddered as he thought of her here, in this house which had known

so many centuries of honour. He cursed the weak and culpable folly

which had first led him into her snares. If he had not dallied with

this Delilah, she would have been vile of purpose and of nature in

vain. He had escaped her indeed at the last; he had indeed remained

faithful in act to his wife; but had it been such fidelity of the soul

and the mind as she deserved? Would not even the semi-betrayal bring

its punishment soon or late? Could he ever endure to see her beside the

woman who so nearly had tempted him? He felt that he would sooner kill

the other, as he had threatened, rather than let her set foot across

the sacred threshold of Hohenszalras.

'I knew what she was,' he thought with endless self-accusation. 'Why

did I ever loiter an hour by her side, why did I ever look once at her

hateful eyes?'

If she had been a stranger he would have braved his wife's scorn of

himself and told her all, but when it was her cousin's wife--one who

even had once been in a still nearer relationship to her--he could

not do it. It seemed to him as if such nearness of shame would be so

horrible to her that he would be included in her righteous hatred of it.

Moreover, long habit had made him reticent, and silence always seemed

to him safety.

After some meditation he took his way to the library and there wrote a

brief letter. He said in it, with no preamble, ceremony, or courtesy,

that he begged to decline for himself and his wife the honour of the

Countess Brancka's presence at Hohenszalras. He sealed it with his

arms, and sent a special messenger with it to Matrey. He said nothing

of what he had done to his wife or her aunt.

He knew that if his antagonist were so disposed she could make feud

between him and her husband for the insult which that curt rejection

of her offered visit bore with it. But that did not weigh on him; he

would have been glad to have a man to deal with in the matter. All

he cared to do was to preserve his home from the pollution of her

presence. Moreover, he knew that it would not be like the _finesse_ and

secrecy of Olga Brancka to do aught so simple or so frank as to seek

the support of her lord.

Meantime, the Princess was saying to his wife:

'Will you receive Olga? She will not give up her wishes; she will force

her way to you.'

'How can I refuse to receive Stefan's wife?'

'It would be difficult, but you would be justified. She endeavoured to

draw your husband into an intrigue.'

'Are we sure? Let us be charitable.'

'My dear Wanda, you are a truer Christian than I am.'

'Justice existed before Christianity, if you do not think me profane to

say so. I try to be just.'

'Justice is blind,' said the Princess, drily. 'I never understood very

well how, being so, she can see her own scales.'

Wanda made no reply. She had not been blind, but she would have never

said to any living being all that she had suffered in those weeks

when he had stayed behind her in Paris. That he had returned to her

blameless she was certain; she had put far behind her for ever the

remembrance of those the only hours of anxiety and pain which he had

given her since their marriage.

The Princess, communing with herself, wrote a letter to the Countess

Brancka, chill and austere, in which she conveyed in delicate, but

sufficiently clear, language, her sense that the same roof should

not shelter her and Sabran, especially when the roof was that of

Hohenszalras. She sent it because she believed it to be her duty to do

so, but she had little faith in its efficacy. She would have written

also to Stefan Brancka, but she knew him to be a weak, indulgent,

careless man, still young, who had been lenient to his wife's follies

and frailties, and who was only kept from ruin by the strong hand

of his brother. If she told him what was after all mere conjecture,

he might only laugh; if he did not laugh he might kill Sabran in a

duel, were his Magyar blood fired by suspicion. No one could be ever

sure what Count Stefan would or would not do; the only thing sure was

that he would be never wise. To his wife herself he was absolutely

indifferent, but this did not prevent him from having occasional moods

of furious resentment against her. He was too unstable and too perilous

a person to resort to in any difficulty.

In a few days she received her answer, though Sabran received none. It

was brief and playful and pathetic.

'Beloved and reverend Mother,--You never like me, you always

lecture me, but I am glad that you honour me by remembrance,

even if it be to upbraid. I know not of what mysterious

crime you suspect me, nor do I understand your allusions

to M. de Sabran. I have always found him charming, and I

think if he had not married so rich a woman he would have

been eminent in some way; but content slays ambition. Salute

Wanda lovingly and the pretty children. How is your little

Ottilie? My Mila and Marie are grown out of knowledge. We

shall soon have to be thinking of their _dots_--alas! where

will these come from? Stefan and I have been the prey of

unjust stewards and extortionate tradesfolk till scarce

anything is left except the mine at Schermnitz. Pity me a

little, and pray for me much.

'Your ever devoted

'OLGA.'

Princess Ottilie was a holy woman, and knew that rage was a sin against

herself and heaven, but when she had read this note she tore it in a

hundred pieces, and stamped her small foot upon it, trembling with

passion the while.

Two months went on; the Countess Olga wrote no more; they deemed

themselves delivered from her threatened presence. She had not replied

to his refusal to permit her to come thither, and Sabran felt relieved

from an intolerable position. Had she persisted, he had decided to

make full confession to his wife rather than permit her to receive

ignorantly the insult of such a visit.

It was now the end of September, and the weather remained fine and

open. He spent a great deal of his time out of doors, and took his old

interest in the forests, the stud, and the hunting. The letter of Olga

Brancka had brought close to him again the peril from which he had so

hardly escaped in Paris, and the peace and sweetness of his home-life

seemed the more precious to him by contrast. The high intelligence,

the serene temper of his wife, and her profound affection seemed to

him treasures for which he could be never grateful enough to fate and

fortune; their days passed in tranquil and sunny happiness; but ever

and again a word, a look, the merest trifle, sufficed to awake the

sleeping snake of remorse which was, dormant in his breast.

One day he took Bela with him when he rode--a rare honour for the

child, who rode superbly. His pony kept fair pace with his father's

English hunter, and even the leaping did not scare either it or its

rider.

'Bravo, Bela!' said Sabran, when they at last drew rein; 'you ride like

a centaur. Is your education advanced enough to know what centaurs

were?'

'Oh! they were what I should love to be,' replied Bela rapturously.

'They were joined on to the horse!'

Sabran laughed. 'Well, a good rider is one with his horse, so you may

come very near your ideal. Ulrich has taught you an admirable seat. You

are worthy of your mother in the saddle.'

Bela coloured with pleasure.

'In the study you are not so, I fear?' Sabran continued. 'You do not

like learning, do you?'

'I like some sorts,' said the child with a little timidity; 'I like

history, knowing what the people did in the other ages. Now the Herr

Professor lets us do our lessons out of doors, I do not mind them at

all. As for Gela, he likes nothing but books and pictures,' he added,

with a sense of his one grief against his brother.

'Happy Gela! whatever his fate in life he will never be alone,' said

his father, as he dismounted to let his hunter take breathing space.

The child leapt lightly from his saddle, took his little silver folding

cup out of his pocket, and drank at a spring, one of the innumerable

springs rushing over the mossy stones and flower-filled grass.

'One is never alone with horses?' he said shyly, for he never lost his

awe of Sabran.

'Unless one be ill; then a horse is sorry consolation, and books and

art are faithful companions.'

'I have never been ill,' said Bela, with a little wonder at himself. 'I

do not know what it is like.'

'It is to be dependent upon others. A hero or a king grows as helpless

as a lame beggar when he is ill; you will not escape the common lot;

and when you stay in your bed, and your pony in his stall, then you

will be glad of Gela and his books.'

'Oh! I do love Gela always,' said the child hastily and generously;

'and the Herr Professor says he is ever--ever--so much cleverer than I

am; a million times more clever!'

'You are clever enough,' said Sabran. 'If you do not let yourself

be vain and overbearing you will do well. Try and remember that if

your pony made a false slip to-day and you fell badly, all your good

health would vanish at a stroke, and all your greatness would serve you

nothing. You would envy any one of the boys going with whole limbs up

into the hills, and, perhaps, all your mother's love and wealth could

do nothing to mend your bones again.'

Bela listened with a grave face; when women, even his fearless mother,

spoke to him in such a way, he was apt to think with disdain that

they over-rated danger because they were women; and when his tutor so

addressed him, he was also apt to think that it was because the good

professor was a bookworm and cared for weeds, stones, and butterflies.

But when his father said so, he was awed; he had heard Ulrich and

Otto tell a hundred stories of their lord's prowess and courage and

magnificent strength, for the deeds of Sabran in the floods and on

the mountains had become almost legendary in their heroism to all the

mountaineers of the Hohe Tauern, and all the dwellers on the Danube

forest.

'But ought one not to be brave?' he said with hesitation. 'You are.'

'We ought to be brave, certainly, or we are not fit to live; but we

must not be vain of being brave, nor rely upon it too much. Courage is

a mere gift of '--he was about to say 'chance,' but seeing the blue

eyes of the child fastened upon him, changed the word and said 'a gift

of God.'

'What a handsome boy he is,' he thought, as he looked thus at his

little son. 'And how wise it is to leave children wholly to their

mothers when their mothers are wise!'

'I will remember,' said Bela thoughtfully; 'when I am a man I want to

be just what you are.'

Sabran turned away at the innocent words. 'Be what your mother's people

were, and I shall be content,' he said gravely.

'But your people too,' said Bela; 'they were very great and very good.

The Herr Professor reads us things out of that big book on Mexico, and

the Marquis Xavier was a saint,' he says. Gela likes the book better

than I because it is all about birds, and beasts, and flowers; but the

part about the Indians, and the Incas, that pleases me; and then there

are the Breton stories too that are in real history, they are quite

beautiful, and I would die like that.'

Bela's tongue once loosened seldom paused of its own accord; his eyes

were dark and animated, his face was eager and proud.

'The Marquis Xavier was a saint, indeed,' said his father abruptly.

'Revere his name. All my children should revere his name and memory.

But lean most to your mother's people; you are Austrian born, and the

chief of your duties and possessions will be in Austria. I think you

would die heroically, my boy, but you will find that it is harder to

live so. The horses are rested, let us ride home; it grows late for

you.'

Bela, whose mind was quick in intuition, felt that his father did not

care to talk about Mexico or Bretagne.

'I will ask the Herr Professor if I did wrong to speak to him of the

big book,' he said to himself as he mounted his pony; he was very

anxious to please his father, but he was afraid he had missed the way.

'I suppose it is because they were only saints, and the Szalras were

all soldiers,' he thought on reflection, soldiers being by far the

foremost in his esteem.

'He says it is harder to live well than to die well,' said Bela over

his bread and milk that night to his brother.

'I suppose that is because dying is over so soon,' said the meditative

Gela; 'and you know it must take an _enormous_ time to live to be

old--quite old--like Aunt Ottilie.'

'I should like to die very grandly,' said Bela with shining eyes, 'and

have all the world remember me for ever and for ever, as they do great

Rudolph.'

'I should like to die saving somebody,' said Gela, 'just as Uncle Bela

saved the pilgrims; that would please our mother best.'

'I should like to die in battle,' said the living Bela; 'and that would

please our mother, because so many of us have always died so fighting

the French, or the Prussians, or the Turks. When I am a man I shall die

like Wallenstein.'

'But Wallenstein was killed in a room,' said Gela, who was very

accurate.

'You are always so particular!' said Bela impatiently, who had himself

only a vague idea of Wallenstein, as of someone who had gone on

fighting without stopping for thirty years.

'The Herr Professor says it is just being particular which makes

the difference between the scholar and the sciolist,' said Gela

solemnly, his pretty rosy lips closing carefully over the long word

_halbgelehrte._

This night after the ride he and she dined quite alone. As he sat

in the Rittersaal and looked at the long line of knights, the many

blazoned shields, the weapons borne in gallant warfare, a sudden

sensation came to him of the vile thing that he did in being in this

place. It seemed to him that those armoured figures should grow animate

and descend and drive him out. Bela, then sleeping happily, dreaming

of the glories of his ride, had raised with his innocent words a

torturing spirit in his father's breast. What had he brought to this

haughty and chivalrous race?--the servile Slav, the barbaric Persian,

blood, and all the dishonour that their creed would hold the basest

upon earth. Besides, to lie to _her_ children! Even the blue eyes

of the boy had made him embarrassed and humiliated, as if she were

judging him through her first-born's gaze. What would it be when that

child, grown to man's estate, should speak to him of his people, of his

forefathers?

For the first time it occurred to him that these boys would inevitably,

as they grew older, ask him many questions, wish to know many things.

He could turn aside a child's inquisitive interest, but it would be

more painful, less easy, to refuse to supply a grown youth's legitimate

interrogations. All these children would some time or another make many

inquiries of him that his wife, out of delicate sympathy, never had

intruded upon him. The fallen fortunes of the Sabran race had always

seemed to her one of those blameless misfortunes for which the best

respect is shown by silence. But her sons would naturally, one day or

another, be more interested in learning more of those from whom they

were descended.

The lie in reply would be easy and secure. There were all the

traditions and recollections of the Sabrans of Romaris to be gathered

from the tongues of the people in Finisterre, and the private papers

of their race which he possessed. He could answer well enough, but it

would be a lie, and a lie seemed to him now a disgrace? Before his

marriage he had looked on falsehood as a necessary part of the world's

furniture, but he had not lived all these years beside a noble nature,

to which even a prevarication was impossible, without growing ashamed

of his former laxities.

'There is not a dead man amongst all those knights who bore these arms

that should not rise to punish and disown me!' he thought with poignant

hatred of his past.

When he went to his room the impulse once more came over him to tell

his wife all; to throw himself on her mercy, and let her do the worst

she would; but he had a certain fear of her which acted like a spell on

that moral cowardice, which his Slav temperament and his hidden secret

combined to bind in a dead weight on the physical courage and natural

pride of his character.

He resolved to do his uttermost as they grew older to rear his sons to

worthiness of that great race whose name they bore; to uproot in them

by all means in his power any falser or darker faults they might have

inherited from him. He promised himself so to watch over his own words

and deeds that as they grew to manhood they should find no palliative

or example of wrong-doing in his life. The closeness of his peril, the

folly of his dalliance with Olga Brancka, had left him distrustful

and diffident of his own powers to resist evil. He said to himself

that he would seek the world no more; his wife was happiest in her own

dominion, amidst her own people; he would court neither pleasure nor

ambition again. Here he had peace; here he loved and was beloved; here

he would abide, and let courts and cities hold those less blessed than

he.

In the morning he awoke refreshed and tranquil; a beautiful sunrise was

tinging with rose the snows of the opposite Venediger peaks; the flush

of early autumn was upon the lower woods, but no snow had fallen even

on the mountains. The lake was deeply green as a laurel leaf, and its

waters rolled briskly under a strong breeze. It was a brilliant day for

the hills, and the _jägermeister_ and his men were in waiting, for he

had arranged over night to go chamois-hunting on those steep alps and

glaciers which towered above the hindmost forests of Hohenszalras. He

did not very often give rein to his natural love of field sports, for

he knew that his wife liked to feel that the innocent creatures of the

mountains were safe wherever she ruled. But there was real sport to be

had here, with every variety of danger accompanying to excuse it, and

Otto and his men were proud of their lord's prowess and perseverance

on the high hills, and only sorrowed that he so often let his rifles

lie unused in the gun-room. He went out whilst the day was still red

and young, like a rose yet in bud, and climbed easily and willingly the

steep paths and precipitous slopes which led to the glaciers.

'Count Bela wants sadly to come with us one of these days,' said Otto,

with a broad smile. 'He can use his crampons right manfully; will not

the Countess soon let me teach him to shoot?'

'I think not willingly, Otto,' said Sabran. 'She thinks children's

hands are best free of bloodshed; and so do I. It can do a child no

good to see the dying agony of an innocent creature. Teach Herr Bela to

climb as much as you like, but leave powder and shot alone.'

'I am sure the Herr Marquis himself must have been a line shot very

early?'

'I was at a semi-military college,' said Sabran, thinking of those days

at the Lycée Clovis when he had sought the _salle d'armes_ with such

eagerness, as being the scene of those lessons which would most surely

enable him to meet men as their equal or their master.

'If only Count Bela might be taught to shoot at a mark?' said the old

huntsman, wistfully.

'You know very well, Otto, that your lady decides everything for her

children, and that all her decisions I uphold,' said his master. 'Be

sure they are wiser than either yours or mine would be. She can teach

him herself, too; she can hit a running mark as well as you or I. Do

you remember the day when you arrested me in these woods?'

'Ah, my lord!' said Otto, with a rolling oath; 'never can I pardon

myself, though you have so mercifully pardoned me!'

'And my good rifle is still lying in the bed of the lake,' said Sabran,

glancing backward at the Szalrassee, now many hundred feet below them,

a mere green ribbon shining through the deeper green of fir and pine

woods.

'Yes, my lord!' answered the man, cheerily. 'The good English rifle

indeed was lost; but it seems to me that the Herr Marquis did not make

wholly a bad exchange!'

'No, indeed,' said his master, as he paused and looked down to where

the towers and spires of Hohenszalras glimmered like mere points of

glittering metal in the sunshine far below.

They were now at the highest altitude at which _gemsbocks_ are found,

and the business of the day commenced as they sighted what looked like

a mere brown speck against the greyness of the opposite glacier. Before

the day was done Sabran had shot to his own gun eight chamois on the

heights, and some score of ptarmigan and black-cock on the lower level.

He saw more than one _kuttengeier_ and _lammergeier_, but, in deference

to the traditions of the Szalras, did not fire on them. The healthful

fatigue, the rarefied air, the buoyant exhilaration which comes with

the atmosphere of the great heights, made him feel happy, and gave

him back all his confidence in the present and the future. When he

rested on a ledge of rock, listening to Otto's hunter's tales, and

making a frugal meal of some hard biscuit and a draught of Voslauer, he

wondered at himself for having so recently been beguiled by the febrile

excitations of Paris, or having desired the fret and wear of a public

career. What could be better than this life was? To have sought to

leave it was folly and ingratitude. The peace and the calm of the great

mountains which she loved so well seemed to descend into his soul.

It was twilight when they reached the lower slopes of the hills,

the jägers loaded with game, he and Otto walking in front of them.

From the still far-off islet oh the lake, and from the belfry of the

Schloss, the Ave Maria was chiming; the deep-toned bells of the latter

ringing the Emperor's Hymn.

Talking gaily with Otto, with that frank kindliness which endeared him

to all these mountaineers, he approached the house slowly, fatigued

with the pleasant tire of a healthy and vigorous man after a long day's

pastime on the hills, and entered by a back entrance, which led through

the stables into the wing of the building where his own private rooms

were situated. He took his bath and dressed himself for the evening,

then went on his way across the vast house to the white salon, where

his wife and her aunt were usually to be found at the time of the

children's hour before dinner. With some words on his lips to claim her

praise for having spared the vultures, he pushed aside the _portière_

and entered, but the words died on his tongue, half spoken.

His wife was there, but before the hearth, seated with her profile

turned towards him, also was Olga Brancka. His wife, who was standing,

came towards him.

'My cousin Olga took us by surprise an hour ago. The telegram must have

missed us which she says she sent yesterday from Salzburg.'

Her eyes had a cold gaze as she spoke; her sense of the duties of

hospitality and of high breeding had alone compelled her to give any

form of welcome to her guest. Madame Brancka, playing with a feather

screen, looked up with a little quiet self-satisfied smile.

'Unexpected guests are the most welcome. When there is an old proverb,

pretty if musty, all ready made for you, Réné, why do you not repeat

it? I am truly sorry, though, that my telegram miscarried. I suspect it

comes from Wanda's old-fashioned prejudice against having a wire of her

own here from Lienz. I dare say they never send you half your messages.'

Sabran had mechanically bowed over the hand she held out to him, but

he scarcely touched it with his own. He was deadly pale. The amazement

that her effrontery produced on him was stupefaction. Versed in the

ways of women and of the world though he was, he was speechless and

helpless before this incredible audacity. She looked at him, she

smiled, she spoke, like the most innocent and unconscious creature.

For a moment an impulse seized him to unmask her then and there, and

hound her out of his wife's presence; the next he knew that it was

impossible to do so. Men cannot betray women in that way, nor was he

even wholly free enough from blame himself to have the right to do so.

But an intense rage, the more intense because perforce mute, seized

him against this intruder by his hearth. Only to see her beside his

wife was an intolerable suffering and shame. When he recovered himself

a little, feeling his wife's gaze upon him, he said with some plain

incredulity in his contemptuous words:

'The failure of messages is often caused by the senders of them; the

people are extremely careful at Lienz. I do not think the fault lies

_there._ We can, however, only regret the want of due warning, for the

reason that we can give no fit or flattering reception of an honoured

guest. You come from Paris?'

For the first time a slight sudden flush rose upon Olga Brancka's

cheek, callous though she was. She felt the irony and the disdain. She

perceived that she had in him an inexorable foe, beyond all allurement

and all entreaty.

'I passed by Paris,' she answered, easily enough. 'Of course I had to

see my tailors, like everyone else in September. I have been first to

Noissetiers, then to London, then to Homburg, then to Russia. I do not

know where I have not been since we met. And you good people have been

vegetating beneath your forests all that time? I was curious to come

and see you in your felicity. Hohenszalrasburg used to be called the

vulture's nest; it appears to have become a dove's!'

'I spared a whole family of _lammergeier_ to-day in deference to your

forest law,' he said, turning to his wife, whilst to himself he thought

what a far worse beast of prey was sitting here, smoothing her glossy

feathers in the warmth of his own hearth. She noticed the extreme

pallor of his face, the sound of anger and emotion forcibly restrained;

she imagined something of what he felt, though she could guess neither

its intensity nor its extent. She had done herself violence in meeting

with courtesy and tranquillity the woman who now sat between them, but

she could not measure or imagine the guilt and the audacity of her.

When, that evening, as twilight came on, she had heard the sound of

wheels beneath the terraces, and in a little while had been informed

by Hubert that the Countess Brancka had arrived, her first movement

had been to refuse to receive her, her next to remember that to one

who had been Gela's wife, and now was Stefan Brancka's, the doors of

Hohenszalras could not be shut without an open quarrel and scandal,

which would regale the world and make feud inevitable between her

husband and the whole race of Vàsàrhely. The Vàsàrhely knew the

worthlessness of Stefan's wife, but for the honour of their name they

would never admit that they did so; they would never fail to defend

her. Moreover, hospitality of a high and antique type had always been

the first of obligations upon all those whom she descended from and

represented. They would not have refused to harbour their worst foe

if he had demanded asylum. They would not have turned away sovereign

or beggar from their gates. Those days were gone, indeed, but their

high and generous temper lived in her. In the brief space in which

Hubert, having made the announcement, waited for her commands, she

had struggled with her own repugnance and conquered it. She had told

herself that to turn Stefan's wife from her doors would be the mere

vulgar melodrama of a common and undignified anger. After all she knew

nothing; therefore she traversed the house to receive her unasked

guest, and gave her welcome without any pretence of cordiality or

friendship, but with a perfect and unhesitating politeness void of all

offence.

She was thankful that the Princess Ottilie was again in the south of

France with her sister-in-law of Lilienhöhe, so that her indignation,

her interrogation, and her quick regard were spared to them. Now that

her niece was no longer alone, the Princess did not think it her

bounden duty to endure these northern winds, blowing from Poland and

the Baltic over the old duchy of Austria, which she had at all times so

peculiarly detested, though she had been born a thousand miles nearer

the Baltic herself.

Olga Brancka had been profuse in her apologies and expressions of

regret, but she had at once let her carriage, hired at S. Johann, with

its four post-horses changed at Matrey, be taken to the stables, and

had gone herself to her old apartments, where in little time her two

maids had altered her heavy furs and travelling clothes to the costume

of consummate simplicity and elegance in which she now sat, putting

forth her small feet in rose satin shoes to the warmth from the great

Hirschvogel stove, which, with its burnished and enamelled colour,

illumined one side of the white salon.

Sabran and his wife both remained standing, he leaning his arm on the

scroll work of the great stove, she playing with the delicate ears of

one of the hounds. Madame Brancka alone sat and leaned back in her

low seat, quite content; she was aware that she was unwelcome, and

that her presence was an embarrassment and worse. But the sense of

the wrong and cruel position in which she placed them was sweet and

pungent to her; she was refreshed by the very sense of dilemma and of

danger which surrounded her. She had her vengeance in her hand, and

she would not exhaust it quickly, but tasted its savour with the slow

care and patient appetite of the connoisseur in such things. She had a

Chinese-like skill in patiently drawing out the prolonged pangs of an

ingeniously invented martyrdom.

'Why do you both stand?' she said, looking up at him between her

half-closed lids. 'Are you standing to imply to me as we do with

monarchs, 'This house is yours whilst you are in it?' I am much

obliged, but I should sell it at once if it were really mine. It is a

splendid, barbaric solitude, like Taróc. We have not been to Taróc this

year. Stefan says Egon lives altogether with his troopers and grows

very morose. You hear from him sometimes, I suppose?'

To Sabran it seemed as if her half shut black eyes shot forth actual

sparks of fire, as she spoke the name which he could never hear without

an inward spasm of fear.

'Of course I hear from Egon,' said his wife. 'But he writes very

briefly; he was never much of a penman. He prefers a rifle, a sword, a

riding-whip.'

'I hear you have called the last child after him? Where are the boys?

They cannot be in bed. Let me see them. It is surely their hour to be

here. Réné, ring, and send for them.'

His brow contracted.

'No; it is late,' he said abruptly. 'They would only weary you; they

are barbaric, like the house.'

He felt an extreme reluctance to bring his children into her presence,

to see her speak to them, touch them; he was longing passionately to

seize her and thrust her out of the doors. As she sat there in the full

light of the many wax candles burning around, sparkling, imperturbable,

like a coquette of a vaudeville, with her rose satin, and her white

taffetas, and her lace ruff, and her pink coral necklace and ear-rings,

and a little pink coral hand upholding her curls in the most studied

disorder, she seemed to him the loath-liest thing that he had ever

seen. He hated her more intensely than he had ever hated anyone in all

his life; even more than he had hated the traitress who had sold him to

the Prussians.

'Pray let me see the children; I know you never dine till eight,'

she was persisting to his wife, who knew well that she was entirely

indifferent to the children, but who was not unwilling for their

entrance to break the constraint of what was to her an intolerable

trial. She did ring, and ordered their presence. They soon came,

making their obeisances with the pretty grave courtliness which they

were taught from infancy; the boys in white velvet dresses, while their

sister, in a frock of old Venetian point, looked like a Stuart child

painted by Vandyck.

'_Ah, quels amours!_' cried Olga Brancka, with admirable effusion, as

they kissed her hand. Sabran turned away abruptly, and muttering a

word as to some orders he had to give the stud-groom, left the chamber

without ceremony, as she, with an ardour wholly unknown to her own

daughters, lifted the little Ottilie on her knee and kissed the child's

rose-leaf cheek.

'What lovely creatures they are,' she said in German; 'and how they

have grown since they left Paris. They are all the image of Réné; he

must be very proud. They have all his eyes--those deep dark-blue eyes,

like jewels, like the depths of the sea.'

'You are very poetic,' said Wanda; 'but I should be glad if you would

speak their praises in some tongue they do not understand. The boys may

not be hurt; but Lili, as we call her, is a little vain already, though

she is so young.'

'Would you deny her the birthright of her sex?' said Madame Brancka,

clasping her coral necklace round the child's throat. 'Surely she will

have lectures enough from her godmother against all feminine foibles.

By the way, where is the Princess?'

'My aunt is with the Lilienhöhe.'

'I am grieved not to have the pleasure,' murmured Madame Brancka,

indifferently, letting Ottilie glide from her lap.

'Give back the necklace, _liebling_,' said Wanda, as she unclasped it.

'No, no; I entreat you--let her keep it. It is leagues too large, but

she likes it, and when she grows up she will wear it and think of me.'

'Pray take it,' said Wanda, lifting it from the child's little breast.

'You are too kind; but they must not be given what they admire. It

teaches them bad habits.'

'What severe rules!' cried Madame Brancka. 'Are these poor babies

brought up on S. Chrysostom and S. Basil? Is Lili already doomed to the

cloister? You are too austere; you should have been an abbess instead

of having all these golden-curled cupidons about you. Where is the

youngest one, Egon's namesake?'

'He is in his cot,' said Gela, who was always very direct in his

replies, and who found himself addressed by her.

Meantime Bela took hold of his mother's hand and whispered to her,

'_Mütterchen_, she is rude to you. Send her away.'

'My darling,' answered Wanda, 'when people laugh in our own house we

must let them do it, even if it be at ourselves. And, Bela, to whisper

is _very_ rude.'

'Egon is so little,' continued Gela, plaintively. 'He cannot read; I do

not think he ever will read!'

'But you could not when you were as small as he?'

'Could I not?' said Gela, doubtfully, to whom that time seemed many

centuries back.

'And Lili, can she read?' said Madame Olga, suppressing a yawn.

'Oh yes,' said Gela; 'at least, two-letter words she can; and me, I

read to her.'

'What model children!' cried Madame Brancka, with a little laugh. 'And

the naughty boy who was in a rage because he was not permitted to go to

Chantilly? That was Bela, was it not? Bela, do you remember how cruel

your mother was, and how you cried?'

Bela looked at her, with his blue eyes growing as stern and cold as his

father's.

'My mother is always right,' he said gallantly. 'She knows what I ought

to do. I do not think I cried, _meine gnädige Frau_; I never cry.'

'Even the naughty boy has become an angel! What a wonderful

disciplinarian you are, Wanda! If your children were not so handsome

they would be insufferable with their goodness. They are very handsome;

they are just like Sabran, and yet they are not at all a Russian type.'

'Why should they be Russian? We have no Russian blood,' said their

mother, in surprise.

Madame Brancka laughed a little confusedly, and fluttered her feather

screen.

'I do not know what I was thinking of. Réné always reminds me of my old

friend Paul Zabaroff; they are very alike.'

'I have seen the present Prince Zabaroff,' said Wanda, wondering what

the purpose of her guest's words were. 'He was not, as I remember him,

much like M. de Sabran.'

'Oh, of course he was not equal to your Apollo,' said Madame Brancka,

winding Ottilie's long hair round her fingers.

'You have had enough of them; they must not worry you,' said their

mother, and she dismissed the children with a word.

'In what marvellous control you keep them,' said Madame Olga. 'Now, my

children never obeyed me, let me scream at them as I would.'

'I do not think screaming has much effect on anyone, young or old.'

'It paralyses a man. But I suppose a child can always out-scream one?'

'Probably. A child never respects any person who loses their calmness.

As for men, you are better versed in their follies than I.'

'But do you and Réné absolutely never quarrel?'

'Quarrel! My dear Olga, how very _bürgerlich_ an idea.'

'Do you suppose only the bourgeois quarrel?' said Madame Brancka.

'Really you live in your enchanted forest until you forget what the

world is like,' and she began an interminable history of the scenes

between a friend of hers and her husband and her family, a quarrel

which had ended in _conseils judiciaires_ and separation. 'It is a

cruel thing that there is not one law of divorce for all the world,'

she said with a sigh, as she ended the unsavoury relation. 'If Stefan

and I could only set each other free, we should have done it years and

years ago.'

'I did not know your griefs against Stefan were so great?'

'Oh, I have no great griefs against him; he is _bon enfant_: but we

are both ruined, and we both detest each other; we do not know very

well why.'

'Poor Mila and Marie!'

'What has it to do with them? They are happy at Sacré Cœur, and

when they come out they will marry. Egon will be sure to portion them;

we cannot. We are not like you, who will be able to give a couple of

millions to Lili without hurting her brothers.'

'Lili's _dot_ is far enough in the future,' said Lili's mother, who,

very weary of the conversation, saw with relief the doors open, and

heard Hubert announce that dinner could be served. By an opposite door

Sabran entered also, a moment later. The dinner was tedious to both him

and her; they alike found it an almost intolerable penance. Their guest

alone was gay, ironical, at her ease, and never at a loss for a topic.

Sabran looked at her now and then with absolute wonder coming over

him as to whether he had not dreamed of that evening in Paris, alone

beside her, with the smell of the jasmine and orange-buds, and the

moonbeams crossing her white throat, her auburn curls. Was it possible

that a woman lived with such incredible self-control, insolence,

shamelessness? There was not a shadow of consciousness in her regard,

not a moment of uneasiness in her manner. Except the one passing faint

flush which had come on her face at his words of greeting, there was

not a single sign that she was other than the most innocent of women.

The impatience, the disgust, the amazement which were in him were too

strong for his worldly tact and composure altogether to conquer them;

his eyes were downcast, his words were studied or irrelevant, his

discomposure was evident; he felt as reluctant to meet the gaze of his

wife as of his enemy. In vain did he endeavour to sustain equably the

airy nothings of the usual dinner-table conversation. He was sensible

of an effort too great for art to cover it; he felt that there was a

strange sound in his voice, he fancied the very men waiting upon him

must be conscious of his embarrassment. If he could have turned her out

of the house he would have been at peace, for, after all, her offences

were much greater than his own; but to be compelled to sit motionless

whilst she called his wife caressing names, broke her bread, and would

sleep under her roof, was absolute torture to him.

When they went back again to the white room he sat down at the piano,

glad to find a temporary refuge in music from the embarrassment of her

presence.

'He cannot have spoken to Wanda?' she thought, uneasy for the first

time, as she glanced at Sabran, who was playing with his usual

_maestria_ a concerto of Schubert's. With the plea that her long post

journey had fatigued her, she asked leave to retire when half an hour

had elapsed, filled with scientific and intricate melody, which had

spared them the effort of further conversation. Her host and hostess

accompanied her to the guest-chambers, with the courtesy which was an

antique custom of the Schloss, as of all Austrian country-houses. Their

leave-taking on the threshold was cold, but studied in politeness; the

door closed on her, and Sabran and his wife returned along the corridor

together.

His heart beat heavily with apprehension: he dreaded her next word. To

his relief, to his surprise, she said simply to him:

'It is very early. I will go and write to Rothwand about the mines.

Will you come and tell me again all you said about them? I have half

forgotten. Or if you would rather do nothing to-night, I have other

letters to look over, and I will go to my own room.'

'I will come there,' he said; and though he was well used to her

strong self-control and forbearance, he felt amazed at the force

of these now, and was moved to a passionate gratitude. 'Any other

woman,' he thought, 'would have torn me asunder to know what there has

been between me and her guest. She does not even speak; and yet God

knows how she loves me! She trusts me, and she will not weary me, nor

importune me, nor seem to suspect me with doubt. Who shall be worthy of

that? How can I rid her house of this insult? The other shall go; she

shall go if I put her out with public shame before my servants. Would

to heaven that to kill such as she is were no more murder than to slay

a vicious beast or a poisonous worm!'

He followed his wife into the octagon-room, where all her private

papers were. There were details of a mine in Galicia which were

disquieting and troublesome; on the previous day they had agreed

together what to do, but before she had answered her inspector,

fresh details had come in by the post-bag, whilst he had been

chamois-hunting. She sat down and handed him these fresh reports.

'I do not think there is anything that will alter your decisions,' she

said. 'But read them, and tell me, and I will then write.'

He drew the documents from her, and began to peruse them, but his hand

shook a little as he held the papers; his eyes were not clear, his mind

was not free. He laid them down and looked at her; she was seated near

him. She was paler than usual and her face was grave, but she seemed

quite absorbed in what she did, as she added figures together, and made

a quick _précis_ of the reports she had received. Her left hand lay on

the table as she wrote; on the great diamond of the _bague d'alliance_,

the only gift which he had presumed to offer her on their marriage, the

light was sparkling; it looked like a cluster of dewdrops on a lily. He

took that hand on a sudden impulse of infinite reverence, and raised it

to his lips.

She looked at him, and a mist of tears came into her eyes which were

tears of pleasure, of relief, of restrained emotion comforted; the

gesture gave her all the reassurance that she cared, to have; she was

sure then that Olga Brancka had never made him false to his honour and

hers. She said nothing to him of what was foremost in the minds of

both. She held the value of silence high. She thought that there were

things of which merely to speak seemed a species of dishonour. A single

word ill-said is so often the 'little rift within the lute which makes

the music dumb.'

She went to rest content; but he was none the less ill at ease,

disturbed, offended, and violently offended, at the presence of his

temptress under the roof of Hohenszalras. It was an outrage to all he

loved and respected; an outrage to which he was determined to put an

end. The only possible way to do so was to see his guest himself alone.

He could not visit her in her apartments; he could not summon her to

his; if he waited for chance, he might wait for days. The insolence

which had brought her here would probably, he reasoned, keep her here

some time, and he was resolved that she should not pass another night

in the same house with his wife and his children.

Long after Wanda had gone to sleep he sat alone, thinking and

perplexing himself with many a scheme, each of which he dismissed as

impracticable and likely to draw that attention from his household

which he most desired to avoid. He slept ill, scarcely at all, and rose

before daybreak. When he was dressed he sent his man to ask Greswold to

come to him. The old physician, who usually got up before the sun, soon

obeyed his summons, and anxiously inquired what need there was of him.

'Dear Professor,' said Sabran, with that gracious kindliness which

always won his listener's heart, 'you were my earliest friend here; you

are the tutor of my sons; you are an old man, a wise man, and a prudent

man. I want you to understand something without my explaining it; I do

not desire or intend the Countess Brancka to be the guest of my wife

for another day.'

Greswold looked up quickly: he knew the character of Stefan Brancka's

wife, he guessed the rest.

'What can I do?' he said simply. 'Pray command me.'

'Do this,' said Sabran. 'Make some excuse to see her; say that the

chaplain, or that my wife, has sent you, say anything you choose to get

admitted to her rooms in the visitors' gallery. When you see her alone,

say to her frankly, brutally if you like, that _I_ say she must leave

Hohenszalras. She can make any excuse she pleases, invent any despatch

to recall herself; but she must go. I do not pretend to put any gloss

upon it; I do not wish to do so. I want her to know that I do not

permit her to remain under the same roof with my wife.'

The old physician's face grew grave and troubled; he foresaw difficulty

and pain for those whom he loved, and to whom he owed his bread.

'I am to give her no explanation?' he said doubtfully.

'She will need none,' said Sabran, curtly.

Greswold was mute. After a pause of some moments he said with

hesitation:

'By all I have heard of the Countess Brancka, I am much afraid she will

not be moved by such a message, delivered by anyone so insignificant

as myself; but what you desire me to do I will do, only I pray you do

not blame me if I fail. You are, of course, indifferent to her certain

indignation, to her possible violence?'

'I am indifferent to everything,' said Sabran, with rising impatience,

'except to the outrage which her presence here is to the Countess von

Szalras.'

'Allow me one question, my Marquis,' said Greswold. 'Is our lady, your

wife, aware that the presence of her cousin's wife is an indignity to

herself?'

Sabran hesitated.

'Yes and no,' he answered at last. 'She knew something in Paris, but

she does not know or imagine all, nor a tithe part; of what Madame

Brancka is.'

'I go at once,' said the old man, without more words, 'though of course

the lady will not be awake for some hours. I will ask to see her

maids. I shall learn then when I can with any chance of success get

admittance. You will not write a word by me? Would it not offend her

less?'

'I desire to offend her,' said Sabran, with a vibration of intense

passion in his voice. 'No; I will not write to her. She is a woman who

has studied Talleyrand; she would hang you if she had a single line

from your pen. If I wrote, God knows what evil she would not twist out

of it. She hates me and she hates my wife. It must be war to the knife.'

Greswold bowed and went out, asking no more.

Sabran passed the next three hours in a state of almost uncontrollable

impatience.

It was the pleasant custom at Hohenszalras for everyone to have their

first meal in their own apartments at any hour that they chose, but he

and Wanda usually breakfasted together by choice in the little Saxe

room, when the weather was cold. The cold without made the fire-glow

dancing on the embroidered roses, and the gay Watteau panels, and

the carpet of lamb-skins, and the coquettish Meissen shepherds and

shepherdesses, seem all the warmer and more cheerful by contrast. Here

he had been received on the first morning of his visit to Hohenszalras;

here they had breakfasted in the early days after their marriage; here

they had a thousand happy memories.

Into that room he could not go this morning. He sent his valet with

a message to his wife, saying that he would remain in his own room,

being fatigued from the sport of the previous day. When they brought

him his breakfast he could not touch it. He drank a little strong

coffee and a great glass of iced water; he could take nothing else. He

paced up and down his own chambers in almost unendurable suspense. If

he had been wholly innocent he would have been less agitated; but he

could not pardon himself the mad imprudences and follies with which he

had pandered to the vanities and provoked the passions of this hateful

woman. If she refused to go he almost resolved to tell all as it had

passed to his wife, not sparing himself. The three or four hours that

went by after Greswold had left him appeared to him like whole, long,

tedious days.

The men came as usual to him for his orders as to horses, sport, or

other matters, but he could not attend to them; he hardly even heard

what they said, and dismissed them impatiently. When at last the heavy,

slow tread of the old physician sounded in the corridor, he went

eagerly to his door, and himself admitted Greswold.

The Professor spread out his hands with a deprecating gesture.

'I have done my best. But may I never pass such a quarter of an hour

again! She will not go.'

'She will not?' Sabran's face flushed darkly, his eyes kindled with

deep wrath. 'She defies me, then?'

'She evidently deems herself strong enough to defy you. She laughed

at me; she spoke to me as though I were one of the scullions or the

sweepers; she menaced me as if we were still in the Middle Ages. In a

word, she is not to be moved by me. She bade me tell you that if you

wish her out of your wife's house you must have the courage to say so

yourself.'

'Courage!' echoed Sabran. 'It is not courage that will be any match

for her; it is not courage that will rid one of her; she knows the

difficulty in which I am. I cannot betray her to her husband. No man

can ever do that. I cannot risk a quarrel, a scandal, a duel with the

relatives of my wife. I cannot put her out of the house as I might do

if she had no relationship with the Vàsàrhely and the Szalras. She

knows that; she relies upon it.'

'My lord,' said the physician very gently, 'will you pardon me one

question? Is the offence done to the Countess von Szalras by Madame

Brancka altogether on her side? Are you wholly (pardon me the word)

blameless?'

'Not altogether,' said Sabran, frankly, with a deep colour on his face.

'I have been culpable of folly, but in the sense you mean I have been

quite guiltless. If I had been guilty in that sense, I would not have

returned to Hohenszalras!'

'I thank you for so much confidence in me,' said Greswold. 'I only

wanted to know so far, because I would suggest that you should send

for Prince Egon and simply tell him as much as you have told me. Egon

Vàsàrhely is the soul of honour, and he has great authority over the

members of his own family. He will make his sister-in-law leave here

without any scandal.'

'There are reasons why I cannot take Prince Vàsàrhely into my

confidence in this matter,' said Sabran, with hesitation. 'That is not

to be thought of for a moment. Is there no other way?'

'See her yourself. She imagines you will not, perhaps she thinks you

dare not, say these things to her yourself.'

'See her alone? What will my wife suppose?'

'Would it not be better frankly to say to my lady that you have need

to see her so? Pardon me, my dear lord, but I am quite sure that the

straight way is the best to take with our Countess Wanda. The only

thing which she might very bitterly resent, which she might perhaps

never forgive, would be concealment, insincerity, want of good faith.

If you will allow me to counsel you, I would most strongly advocate

your saying honestly to her that you know that of Madame Brancka which

makes you hold her an unfit guest here, and that you are about to see

that lady alone to induce her to leave the castle without open rupture.'

Sabran listened, stung sharply in his conscience by every one of the

simple and honest words. When Greswold spoke of his wife as ready to

pardon any offences except those of falseness and concealment his soul

shrank as the flesh shrinks from the touch of caustic.

'You are right,' he said with effort. 'But, my dear Greswold, though

I am not absolutely guilty, as you were led for a moment to think, I

am not altogether absolutely blameless. I was sensible of the fatal

attraction of an unscrupulous person. I was never faithless to my wife,

either in spirit or act, but you know there are miserable sensual

temptations which counterfeit passion, though they do not possess it;

there are unspeakable follies from which men at no age are safe. I

do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind, and throw the

blame upon a woman; but it is certain that the old answer is often

still the true one, "The woman tempted me." I am not wholly innocent;

I played with fire and was surprised, like an idiot, when it burnt me.

I would say as much as this to my wife (and it is the whole truth) if

it were only myself who would be hurt or lowered by the telling of it;

but I cannot do her such dishonour as I should seem to do by the mere

relation of it. She esteems me as so much stronger and wiser than I am;

she has so very noble an ideal of me; how can I pull all that down with

my own hands, and say to her, "I am as weak and unstable as any one of

them"?'

Greswold listened and smiled a little.

'Perhaps the Countess knows more than you think, dear sir; she is

capable of immense self-control, and her feeling for you is not the

ordinary selfish love of ordinary women. If I were you I should tell

her everything. Speak to her as you speak to me.'

'I cannot!'

'That is for you to judge, sir,' said the old physician.

'I cannot!' repeated Sabran, with a look of infinite distress. 'I

cannot tell my wife that any other woman has had influence over me,

even for five seconds. I think it is S. Augustine who says that it is

possible, in the endeavour to be truthful, to convey an entirely false

impression. An utterly false impression would be conveyed to her if I

made her suppose that any other than herself had ever been loved by me

in any measure since my marriage; and how should one make such a mind

as hers comprehend all the baseness and fever and folly of a man's mere

caprice of the senses? It would be impossible.'

Greswold was silent.

'You do not see how difficult even such a confession as that would be,'

Sabran insisted, with irritation. 'Were you in my place you would feel

as I feel.'

'Perhaps,' said Greswold. 'But I believe not. I believe, sir, that you

underrate the knowledge of the world and of humanity which the Countess

von Szalras possesses, and that you also underrate the extent of her

sympathy and the elasticity of her pardon.'

Sabran sighed restlessly.

'I do not know what to do. One thing only I know--the wife of Stefan

Brancka shall not remain here.'

'Then, sir, you must be the one to say so or to write it. She will heed

no one except yourself. Perhaps it is natural. I am nothing more in the

sight of a great lady like that than Hubert or Otto would be. She does

not think I am of fit station to go to her as your ambassador.'

'You would disown her if she were your daughter!' said Sabran, with

bitter contempt. 'Well, I will see her; I will say a word to the

Countess von Szalras first.'

'Say all,' suggested Greswold.

Sabran shook his head and passed quickly through the suite of sleeping

and dressing chambers to the little Saxe salon, where he thought it

possible that Wanda might still be. He found her there alone. She had

opened one of the casements and was speaking with a gardener. The

autumnal scent of wet earth and fallen leaves came into the room; the

air without was cold, but sunbeams were piercing the mist; the darkness

of the cedars and the yews made the airy and brilliant grace of the

eighteenth-century room seem all the brighter. She herself, in a sacque

of brocaded silk, with quantities of old French lace falling down it,

seemed of the time of those gracious ladies that were painted on the

panels. She turned as she heard his step, a red rose in her fingers

which she had just gathered from the boughs about the windows.

'The last rose of the year, I am afraid, for I never count those of the

hothouses,' she said, as she brought it to him.

He kissed her hand as he took it from her; he suddenly perceived the

expression of distress and of preoccupation on his face.

'Is there anything the matter?' she asked; 'did you overstrain yourself

yesterday on the hills?'

'No, no,' he said quickly; then added, with hesitation: 'Wanda, I have

to see Madame Brancka alone this morning. Will you be angered, or will

you trust me?'

For a moment her eyebrows drew together, and the haughtier, colder look

that he dreaded came on her face; the look which came there when her

children disobeyed or her stewards offended her, The look which told

how, beneath the womanly sweetness and serenity of her temper, were the

imperious habit and the instincts of authority inherited from centuries

of dominant nobility. In another instant or two she had controlled her

impulse of displeasure. She said gravely, but very gently:

'Of course I trust you. You know best what you wish, what you are

called on to do. Never think that you need give explanation, or ask

permission to or of me. That is not the man's part in marriage.'

'But I would not have you suspect--'

'I never suspect,' she said, more haughtily. 'Suspicion degrades

two people. Listen, my love. In Paris I saw, I heard more than you

thought. The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace. I neither

suspected you nor spied upon you. I left you free. You returned to me,

and I knew then that I had done wisely. I could never comprehend the

passion and pleasure that some women take in hawks only kept by a hood,

in hounds only held by a leash. What is allegiance worth unless it be

voluntary? For the rest, if the wife of my cousin be a worse woman than

I think, do not tell me so. I do not desire to know it. She was the

idol of my dead brother's youth; she once entered this house as his

bride. Her honour is ours.'

A flush passed over her husband's face. 'You are the noblest woman that

lives,' he said, in a hushed and reverent voice. He stooped almost

timidly and kissed her; then he bowed very low, as though she were a

queen and he her courtier, and left her.

'That devil shall leave her house before another night is down!' he

said in his own thoughts, as he took his way across the great building

to Olga Brancka's apartments. He had the red autumn rose, she had

gathered in his hand as he went. Instinctively he slipped it within

his coat as he drew near the doors of the guests' corridor; it was too

sacred for him to have it made the subject of sneer or of a smile.

Wanda remained in the little Watteau room. A certain sense of fear--a

thing so unfamiliar, so almost unknown to her--came upon her as the

flowered satin of the door-hangings fell behind him, and his steps

passed away down the passages without. The bright pictured panels of

the shepherds in court suits, and the milkmaids in hoops and paniers,

smiling amidst the sunny landscapes of their artificial Arcadia; the

gay and courtly figures of the Meissen china, and the huge bowls filled

with the gorgeous deep-hued flowers of the autumn season; the singing

of a little wren perched on a branch of a yew, the distant trot of

ponies' feet as the children rode along the unseen avenues, the happy

barking of dogs that were going with them, the smell of wet grass

and of leaves freshly dropped, the swish of a gardener's birch-broom

sweeping the turf beneath the cedars--all these remained on her mind

for ever afterwards, with that cruel distinctness which always paints

the scene of our last happy hours in such undying colours on the memory

of the brain. She never, from that day, willingly entered the pretty

chamber, with its air of coquetry and stateliness, and its little gay

court of porcelain people. She had gathered there the last rose of the

year.