Constance listens to him with a weary, abstracted air; perhaps she has heard that story about the bear and the waterfall once or twice before, perhaps she does not hear it now, but she bends her head courteously towards him, and looks kindly at him from out of her deep, sad eyes.
"Champagne, if you please," says the Prince, interrupting the thread of his narrative, by holding up his glass to be replenished; "and so, Madame, the bear and I were vis-à-vis at about ten paces apart, and my rifle was empty. The last shot had taken effect through his lungs, and he coughed and held his paw to the pit of his stomach, so like a Christian with a cold, that, even in my very precarious position, I could not help laughing outright. Ten paces is a short distance, Madame, a very short distance, when your antagonist feels himself thoroughly aggrieved, and advances upon you with a red, lurid eye, and a short angry growl. I turned and looked behind me for a run--I was always a good runner," remarks the Prince, with a downward glance of satisfaction, the absurdity of which, I am pained to see, does not even call a smile to his listener's pale face--"but it was no question of running here, for the waterfall was leaping and foaming forty feet deep below, and the trees were so thick on either side, that escape by a flank movement was impossible. It was the very spot, Victor, where I killed the woodcocks right and left the morning you disappointed me so shamefully, and left me to have all the sport to myself."--Victor bows courteously, drinks her husband's health, and glances at the Princess with a bitter smile.--"The very spot where I hope you will place me to-morrow at your grand chasse. Peste! 'tis strange how passionately fond I still am of the chase. Well, Madame, indecision is not usually my weakness, but before I could make up my mind what to do, the bear was upon me. In an instant he embraced me with his huge hairy arms, and I felt his hot breath against my very face. My rifle was broken short off by the stock, and I heard my watch crack in my waistcoat pocket. I thought it was my ribs. I have seen your wrestlers in England, Madame, and I have once assisted in your country at an exhibition of 'The Box' but such an encounter as I now had to sustain was more terrible than anything I ever witnessed fought out fairly between man and man. Fortunately a ball through the back part of the head, and another through the lungs, had somewhat diminished the natural force of my adversary, or I must have succumbed; and by a great exertion of strength on my part, I managed to liberate one hand and make a grasp for my hunting-knife. Horror! it had fallen from the sheath, but by the mercy of Heaven and the blessing of St. Hubert, it had caught in my boot, and I never felt before how dear life was as when I touched the buckhorn handle of my last friend; three, four times in succession I buried the long keen blade in the bear's side; at each thrust he gave a quick, convulsive sob, but he strained me tighter and tighter to his body, till I thought my very blood-vessels would burst with the fearful pressure. At last we fell, and rolled over and over towards the waterfall. In the hasty glance I had previously cast behind me, I had remarked a dead fir-tree that stood within a yard or so of the precipice; I remember the thought had darted through my mind, that if I could reach it I might be safe, and the reflection as instantaneously followed, that a bear was a better climber than a Hungarian. Never shall I forget my sensations when, in our last revolution, I caught a glimpse of that naked tree. I shut my eyes then, for I knew it was all over, but I gave him one more stab, and a hearty one, with my hunting-knife. Splash! we reached the water together, and went down like a couple of stones, down, down to the very bottom, but fortunately it was the deepest part of the pool, and we unclosed our embrace the instant we touched the surface--the bear, I believe, was dead before he got there, and I thought myself fortunate in being able to swim ashore, whilst the brown body of my late antagonist went tumbling and whirling down the foaming torrent below. I recovered his skin, Madame, to make a cover for my arm-chair, but I have never been fond of water since. Give me a glass of Tokay, if you please."
"And did you sustain no further harm from your encounter?" asked Constance, rousing herself from her abstraction with an effort, and bending politely towards the Prince, who was drinking his Tokay with immense satisfaction.
"Only the marks of his claws on my shoulder," replied he, smacking his lips after his draught. "I have got them there to this day. Is it not so, Rose?" he added, appealing to his wife with a hearty laugh.
She turned her head away without condescending to notice him. Victor bit his lip with a gesture of impatience, and the Countess, rising slowly and gracefully, gave her hand to the Prince to lead her back to the drawing-room, whither we all followed in the same order as that in which we had proceeded to dinner.
"Do you not feel like a wounded man once more?" observed Valèrie, gaily, to me, as I stood, coffee-cup in hand, with my back to the fireplace, like a true Englishman. "Is it not all exactly as you left it? the easiest arm-chair and my eternal embroidery-frame, and your own sofa where you used to lie so wonderfully patient, and look out of window at the sunset. Constance has established herself there now, and considers it her peculiar property. Oh, Vere (I shall always call you Vere), is she not charming? I am so fond of her!"
Slow torture! but never mind, it is but for to-night--this experiment must never be repeated. Go on, Countess Valèrie, happy, unconscious executioner.
"You English people are delightful, when one knows you well, although at first you are so cold and undemonstrative. Now, Constance, though she is so quiet and melancholy-looking, though she never laughs, and rarely smiles, has the energy and the activity of a dozen women when it is a question of doing good. You have no idea of what she is here amongst our own people. They worship the very ground she walks on--they call her 'the good angel of Edeldorf.' But she over-exerts herself; she is not strong: she looks ill, very ill. Vere, do you not think so?"
For the first time since we entered the drawing-room I glanced in the direction of the Countess de Rohan, but her face was turned from me; she was still occupied with Prince Vocqsal, who, old enough to appreciate the value of a good listener, was devoting himself entirely to her amusement. No, I could not see the pale, well-known face, but the light streamed off her jet-black hair, and memory probed me to the quick as its shining masses recalled the wet, heavy locks of one whose life I saved in Beverley Mere.
"Come and play the march in 'The Honijàdy,'" said Ropsley, leading his fiancée gaily off to the pianoforte. "On revient toujours à ses premiers amours, but I really cannot allow you to flirt with Egerton any more," he added, with a smile of such thorough confidence and affection in his promised bride as altered the whole expression of his countenance, and lit it up with a beauty I had never before imagined it to possess.