But a kind of respect awakened in her towards her young cousin. A girl who could charm Alain de Vannes and Othmar was not to be dismissed scornfully as a novice and a baby. The Duchesse drew some note-paper to her, and wrote a little letter to her neighbour, in which she expressed herself very admirably, with dignity and grace, as the guardian of a motherless child who was dedicated to the service of Heaven. She suggested, without actually saying so, that he had failed in reverence towards Heaven, and towards the Maison de Vannes and the Maison de Creusac, in permitting himself to offer gifts to Mdlle. de Valogne; she recalled to him, without any positive expression of the sort, that a young girl of noble descent could not be approached with gifts as a young actress might be, and that if any had been offered they should have, at least, been offered through herself.
She was honestly irritated with Othmar for having thus been wanting, as she considered, in full respect for those great families from which Yseulte de Valogne had sprung. She was excessively angry with her children’s governesses, whose negligence had rendered it possible for the girl to wander about alone, and she gave them a short but very terrible audience in her dressing-room; yet, on the whole, the affair amused her a little, and the high-breeding in her made her do justice to the honour which had forced her young cousin to tell unasked all the truth.
Later on she had a little scene with her husband, half comic, half tragic, in which they flung the tu quoque liberally one at the other, apropos of many vagaries less innocent than his fancy for Yseulte de Valogne; but she did not tell him about Othmar’s casket, for she reasoned, with admirable knowledge of men’s natures, that they cared so much more if they thought any one else cared too.
Meanwhile Yseulte, having given the casket into the hands of the maid without a word or a sign of regret, locked herself in, threw herself on her bed, and sobbed as piteously as though the magic box had been that of Pandora, and bore all hope away within it.
CHAPTER XVI.
Nadine Napraxine kept her promise to Othmar. She did for him what she had done for no other human being; she meditated on his entreaties as a thing which might possibly be granted by her. She looked for a little while through the play and the glow of his impassioned words as through some painted window into some agreeable land whither, perchance, she might travel.
The very sternness and daring of his manner of demand had its attraction for her. None of her courtiers had wooed her quite in that way: some had been too timid, some too submissive, some too worldly-wise. The insane desire to fly with her from the world to some far-away, semi-barbaric, mysterious Eden of his own making had never been so boldly and uncompromisingly set forth to her by any lover as now by Othmar. It had a certain fascination for her even while the philosophy and irony in her ridiculed the idea. It responded to the vague but very real dissatisfaction with which life, as it was, filled her. She was tired of the routine of it. Everyone said the same thing. Its very triumphs were so monotonous that they might just as well have been failures. Half her provocation and cruelty to men arose from a wish which she could not resist, to find something vivid and new to interest her. She succeeded in causing tragedies, but she did not succeed in being interested in them herself.
Othmar did interest her—in a measure.