Before, when the danger had not been so immediate, she had derided him to his face for this, but now, like him, she was ready to do anything. The sweets of her position had grown upon her. For the first time in her life she had commanded instead of asking admiration and attention. She made no promises, but Volkonsky knew that she was thoroughly frightened.
They went home, and Madame Volkonsky, directing that she be excused to visitors that day, went to her room. Like all people who have something to conceal, she hated and dreaded to be seen when an emergency was at hand. She lay all day on the sofa in her bedroom, ostensibly resting and preparing for the concert of that night—but she did not sing a note, and the professor of music, who came for a last rehearsal, was ruthlessly turned away like everybody else. In the midst of her own misery, Olivia Berkeley’s calm and luminous face haunted her. Olivia’s destiny was not a particularly brilliant one—the daughter of a Virginia country gentleman of modest fortune, condemned to a humdrum life for the best part of the year—already past her first youth—and Madame Volkonsky, wife of the Russian Minister, twice as beautiful as Olivia, gifted and admired—apparently everything was on Madame Volkonsky’s side. And the two had begun life under much the same auspices. Madame Volkonsky, who was a clever woman in her way, was not silly enough to suppose that her present miseries had any real connection with the honors and pleasures she enjoyed. But being a shrewd observer, she saw that the excellent things of life are much more evenly divided than people commonly fancy—and she believed in a kind of inexorable fate that metes out dyspepsia and ingratitude and deceit to Dives, that the balance may be struck between him and Lazarus.
So all day she lay on the sofa, and thought about those early days of hers, and Olivia and Pembroke, and even her Aunt Sally Peyton and poor Miles and Cave, and everybody linked with that time. When she thought of Pembroke, it came upon her that he might be induced to spare her. She had never really understood Pembroke, although she had admired him intensely. If she had, things would have been very different with both of them. She never could understand her own failure with him. Of course she hated him, but love and hatred of the same person are not unfrequently found in women. She could not but hate him when she remembered that if he spared them and let them get away quietly, it would be because she was a woman, not because she was Elise Koller. But after all she would be rather pleased to get away from Washington now, if she could do so without being ruined. She wondered at her own rashness in returning. It seemed a kind of madness. There were pleasanter places—and it brought her early life and associations too much before her. She was not fond of reminiscences.
Occasionally as she lay upon the sofa, wrapped in a silk coverlet and gazing at the cheerful fire that blazed in the fireplace, she dropped into an uneasy sleep. This made her nerves recover their tone, and even somewhat raised her spirits. She was anxious and very much alarmed, but not in despair. About four o’clock her husband came into her room. His face was ashy and he held a dispatch in his hand.
“The Grand Duke arrives within half an hour. This dispatch has been delayed several hours. I go to the train now to meet him.”
Madame Volkonsky sat upright on the sofa.
“Will it make—any difference to us?” she asked.
Volkonsky shrugged his shoulders.
“It will simply bring matters to a crisis. It may restrain Pembroke—if not, it is his opportunity to ruin me. I shall of course tell his royal highness and his suite of the concert, and they may choose to go. Russians must always be amused. Perhaps you will have the honor of singing for his royal highness as well as the President.” His tone as he said this was not pleasant.
“I met the old Colonel Berkeley just now. He asked me how Eliza was. Is it that he is a fool or that he wishes to be impertinent?”