‘I wished that it had been myself.’
The words escaped her almost unawares. When they had been uttered she longed to recall them. They would sound, she knew, like a confession of sorrow to the ear of one to whom all the sorrow of her life was due.
‘Are you not happy, then, my dear?’ said Nadine Napraxine: her tone was grave and soft, and had for once no mockery or innuendo in it.
Yseulte grew paler even than she had been before; a frown of anger knitted her fair brow; her expression grew cold and hard.
‘I think you have no right to ask me that,’ she said, gathering with effort courage enough to oppose her dreaded foe. ‘I think you have no right. You are my husband’s friend, not mine.’
Nadine Napraxine smiled.
‘The frightened doe has its own bravery when roused,’ she mused; and aloud she only said, with all the sweet suave courtesy of her very gentlest manner:
‘His friend and yours. Surely that is the same thing? Or if it be not, you should be wise and make it so.’
She paused a moment, then added softly still:
‘Happiness only comes to the wise, my dear; it does not come to those who stake their all upon one cast like the mad gamblers in the salle de jeu behind those hills. But you are too young to understand; and if I spoke to you all day I should not teach you my philosophies.’