'The wanton!' she thought bitterly; 'she expected him to-night, though she said not till to-morrow. It was for him, that attitude like a Diane endormie, that coquette's disarray, that studied disorder of laces and gauzes, that little bouquet of heliotrope fastened just above the left breast! Oh, the beast, the beast! All that belonged to my son—every atom of it, from her little ear to her slender foot, and should have been burnt with him, like the Indian women, if I could have had my way—should have been buried with him, like his stars and his crosses. Oh, the beast, the beast! if I could only wring her neck!'
Then she rose, and murmuring some words inaudible and indifferent to her companions, she left the apartment. Othmar, alone beside his wife in the aromatic warmth of the summer evening, bent over her couch and kissed her little bouquet of heliotrope.
'Allons, berger!' she cried, with a little resistance which was not displeasure.
It pleased her that she had the power to make her husband her lover; that she could still see him moved to the folies des bergers. It was a point of vanity with her, as well as an impulse of the heart, to retain something of that empire over him which had once been so absolute. When she should wholly cease to be able to do so, it seemed to her that she would be grown old indeed. She had never put more coquetry, more sorcery, more art concealed by art into her efforts to blind and enslave her lovers, than she had done that evening when she was awaiting Othmar after three months' absence. It might not be the highest form of love, but it was the ablest. It was of a piece with that magic by which Cleopatra defied time, and changed the ravages of habit into philtres of fresh charm.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Othmar did not tell her that night of Damaris.
With daylight he remembered uneasily that it was a story which should be told. A certain nervousness came over him whenever he thought of her possible, her probable, laughter, the incredulity as to his motives which she would be sure, out of mirth, to affect if she were too unlike other women to in seriousness entertain it. He recalled the tone with which she had spoken of his escort of the girl to her island, and he shrank from hearing the same tone again. He felt that, if heard, it would anger him unreasonably, perhaps move him to the utterance of that kind of words which are most fatal to friendship, harmony, or love.
The lovely Diane endormie, who had received him with so sweet a smile, could, when aroused, select and speed arrows from her quiver which could pierce deep and rankle long.