Something like remorse stirred in him. She had taken great risks for him. Of all the women he had known, she had most truly and unselfishly loved him. And for her years of service he had given her contempt. He reflected, too, that he had, perhaps, made an enemy where he needed a friend. How easy, by innuendo and suggestion, to turn Hedwig against him, Hedwig who already fancied herself interested elsewhere.
Very nearly did he swing the scale in which Olga Loschek had hung her bargain with God—so nearly that in the intervals of affixing his sprawling signature to various documents, he drew a sheet of note-paper toward him. Then, with a shrug, he pushed it away. So Olga Loschek lost her bargain.
At dawn the next morning the Countess, still pale with illness and burning with fever, went back to the city.
CHAPTER XXIX. OLD ADELBERT THE TRAITOR
“Thus,” said the concierge, frying onions over his stove; “thus have they always done. But you have been blind. Rather, you would not see.”
Old Adelbert stirred uneasily. “So long as I accept my pension—”
“Why should you not accept your pension. A trifle in exchange for what you gave. For them, who now ill-use you, you have gone through life but half a man. Women smile behind their hands when you hobble by.”
“I do not hold with women,” said old Adelbert, flushing. “They take all and give nothing.” The onions were done, and the concierge put them, frying-pan and all, on the table. “Come, eat while the food is hot. And give nothing,” he repeated, returning to the attack. “You and I ride in no carriages with gilt wheels. We work, or, failing work, we starve. Their feet are on our necks. But one use they have for us, you and me, my friend—to tax us.”
“The taxes are not heavy,” quoth old Adelbert.