"I should avoid you in that ease; but now, all relations between us are excellent, though they are constitutional or even republican."
"I go for anarchy!" put in Baron Emil, helping Irene to a seat in the carriage.
He spoke somewhat through his nose and teeth, it was difficult to say whether by nature or habit, but that gave to his speech a character of contemptuousness and indolence.
"But of dissonances to-morrow n'est ce pas?" asked he.
"And of vexations!" concluded Irene with a smile, wherewith her hand remained on the baron's palm a few seconds longer than was necessary.
Soon after, Malvina Darvid was sitting at a small table covered with a tea service, in a study which was like the lined and gilded interior of a costly confectionery box. Massive silver artistically finished, expensive porcelain, exquisite tid-bits, enticing the eye by their ornamentation, and the taste by the odor from them, tempered, however, by the strong fragrance of hyacinths, syringa, and violets which were blooming at the window and the walls, and on largo and small tables everywhere.
The dress worn at the theatre was replaced now by a wrapper, composed of lace and material soft as down. Her posture in the low and deep armchair, the very manner even in which she arranged the folds of her robe seemed to exhale the luxury of rest; but her mind was at work, and filled her eyes with an expression of disquiet.
"'Catastrophe! Misfortune!' What could that be?" Marks of pain had begun to wind around her mouth; her hands were firmly clasped on her knees. "It may be that lost letter? A man must have a head filled with exaltation, and a character as weak as Kranitski's to write such a letter. It may be—it is even sure to be so, for during a number of days she has felt in the air a catastrophe. But if?—Well! Is that a misfortune? Oh, rather the opposite?" The supposition that the dark, grievous truth of her life might be discovered by him who would seek vengeance because of it roused no fear in her; it caused her to hope for a thing disagreeable and yet desired. Let that horrid knot in which her life was involved be untied or torn apart sometime, in any way whatever. Alone she would never have strength to untie or to cut it, she is such an eternally weak, weak, weak creature! And still anything would be better than the present condition.
Two glittering tears rolled slowly down her cheeks; above the drooping eyelids a deep wrinkle cut a dark line across her forehead. The diamond star flashing rainbow gleams from her hair, and the flowers, which dotted the room thickly with their pale colors, gave a background of wealth to that woman's life tragedy.
With a teacup in her hand Irene stood in the opposite door and looked at her mother uneasily, keenly, with such attention that her eyelids blinked repeatedly. Far from her now were those dry and sneering smiles in conversation with the baron. But she passed through the room calmly and sat in front of her mother.