"You must have wondered already at my coming here. You can well understand that I have not come without a reason. We have both of us one person to fear, in like degree, and of whom we must be jealous; and if we do not understand each other one of us may lose an individual dear to her."
"Speak, oh speak!" replied Madame Banfy, and drew her sister down to her on a sofa in a corner of the room.
"Our husbands have hated each other from the first. They were always of opposite opinions, in different parties, and had become accustomed to consider each other as foes. Woe to us if this hatred should come to open battle and we should see our dear ones fall at each other's hands."
"I can assure you positively that Banfy cherishes no unfriendly intentions toward your husband."
"I am not afraid of Apafi's overthrow, but of your husband's. The throne to which he was called by force has worked a great change in Apafi. I notice with astonishment that he is beginning to be jealous of his power. Already at Neuhaüsel he expressed himself in the presence of the Grand Vizier as disturbed because Gabriel Haller had aspirations toward the Prince's crown; in consequence of which the Vizier had poor Haller beheaded at once without my husband's knowledge. Even now Apafi recalls the message which your husband once had sent to him, that in a short time he would tear his green velvet cloak from off his shoulders."
"Oh my God, what must I fear!"
"Nothing so long as I have not lost my husband's favor. While others sleep I am awake at my husband's side and keep watch for the manifestations of his feelings; and God has given me the strength to be able to struggle against monsters who would drown in blood the memory of his rule. In spite of all this, now and then there appears in my husband a condition of mind when my influence loses all its magic, when he steps out of his own nature and his gentleness turns to a brutality demanding action. Then his eyes, which at other times overflow with tears at the death of a servant, become bloodshot and seem eager for murder; he who at other times is so cautious, then becomes hasty. And this condition, I blush to acknowledge to you, is drunkenness. I do not bring it up against him as a complaint, the man we love has no faults for us, we forgive him everything"—
"With one exception—his infidelity."
"That too—that too," the Princess made haste to add. "When his life is at stake we must forgive that too."
"Oh, Anna," said Margaret, in distress, "you leave me to suspect mysteries that you do not reveal."