She is vexed with the Pole, whose affectations begin to weary her, and she is strangely inclined to defend her husband. Her old tenderness for him seems to stir afresh within her. Fainacky perceives that his game to-day will not be easily won; nevertheless he persists.
"Then you are ignorant of the debts he contracts?"
"If you have nothing more probable to tell me, you need trouble yourself no further," the Countess angrily declares.
"Pardon me, Countess," the Pole rejoins, "I should not have told you anything of the kind were I not sure of my facts. Treurenberg has accidentally had resort to the same usurer that transacts my little affairs. For, I make no secret of it, I have debts, a necessary evil for a single man of rank. Good heavens! we gentlemen nowadays----" he waves his hand grandiloquently. "Yet, I assure you, my friendship with Abraham Goldstein is a luxury which I would gladly deny myself. I pay four per----"
"I take not the slightest interest in the percentage you pay," interposes Selina, "but I cannot understand how you venture to repeat to me a piece of gossip so manifestly false."
Her manner irritates him extremely, principally because it shows him that he stands by no means so high in her favour as he had supposed. The fair friendship, founded upon flattery, or at least upon mutual consideration for personal vanity, is in danger of a breach. Fainacky is consumed by a desire to irritate still further this insulting woman, and to do Treurenberg an injury.
"Indeed!--a manifestly false piece of gossip?" he drawls, contemptuously.
"Yes, nothing else," she declares; "apart from the fact that my husband has personal control of a considerable income,--my father made sure of that before he gave his consent to my marriage; he never would have welcomed as a son-in-law an aristocrat without independent means,--apart from this fact, of course my money is at his disposal."
"Indeed! really? I thought you kept separate purses!" says the Pole, now--thanks to his irritation--giving free rein to his impertinence.
Selina bites her lips and is silent.