"One more who has thrust aside happiness," he murmurs, bitterly, adding on the instant, "If we could only recognize our happiness at the right time! If it could only say to us, 'Here I am, clasp me close!' But the truest, finest happiness is never self-asserting: it walks beside us mute and modest, warming and rejoicing our hearts, while we know not whence come the warmth and the delight."
As the stout blonde whom Leskjewitsch helped out of the sleigh not only remains to lunch, but also takes afternoon tea and dinner at Erlach Court, Rohritz has abundant opportunity to observe her. That, like all sirens who disturb domestic serenity, she should be inferior in every respect to the wife whose peace of mind she threatens, was to have been expected; but that she should be so immeasurably inferior to Katrine,--for that Rohritz was not prepared.
Anywhere else save in the country, and moreover in a world-forgotten corner of Ukrania, where the foxes bid one another good-night, and human beings are consequently easier to be induced than in civilized countries to bid one another good-day in spite of stupid social prejudices, any intercourse between this lady and the family at Erlach Court would have been impossible.
The daughter of a lucifer-match manufacturer in P----, with a moderate degree of education and a strong passion for hunting, three years ago she had married the son of a riding-teacher, a certain Herr Ruprecht, who had been first a cavalry-officer, then a circus manager in America, and finally a newspaper-man in Vienna. After these various experiences with her promising husband, they had shortly before taken up their abode in a villa not far from Erlach Court, on the opposite bank of the Save. As the husband spent most of his time with a pretty actress, the young wife passed her days in dreary solitude. The country-people called her the grass-widow.
"I need not assure you that I am not in the least jealous," Katrine remarks to Rohritz in the drawing-room, while the grass-widow with Freddy and the captain is playing billiards in the library, "but I frankly confess that I find the pleasure which Jack takes in the society of that common creature--that fat goose--incomprehensible. It irritates me. Moreover, she is ugly!"
Rohritz receives this outburst of Katrine's precisely as he receives all her outbursts,--in thoughtful, courteous silence. Frau Ruprecht certainly is common and silly; ugly she is not. She has a dazzling complexion, a magnificent bust, and a regular profile, although with lips that are too thick, a double chin, and light eyelashes. She speaks in a common, Viennese dialect, has never read a sensible book in her life, uses perfumes in excess, and has no taste whatever in dress.
But she drives like a Viennese hackman, she rides like a jockey, and her knowledge of sporting-matters would do honour to a professional trainer. She allows Leskjewitsch the utmost freedom of speech, and is ready to laugh at his worst jokes.
She disgusts Edgar Rohritz quite as much as she disgusts Katrine; nevertheless he understands what there is about her to attract Leskjewitsch.