Chapter XXXII (2)

'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.