‘Indeed!’ said Othmar. ‘It was most amiable of her,’ he added, after a moment’s pause; but to the penetration or to the imagination of his uncle it seemed that he spoke with embarrassment and annoyance. Yseulte had resumed her work at her tapestry. The cruel sense that she was not wanted there, that she had been brought there only out of pity, as a kind hand gives a stray animal a home, weighed on her more and more. She did not see all that others saw in her; all the attraction of her youth, and her innocence and her beauty. She had too sincere a humility for any idea of her own charms to console her. She was wise enough to perceive that the world flattered her because she was a rich man’s wife, but in her own eyes she remained the same that she had been under the grey shadows of Faïel.
‘If I were only myself again to-morrow, they would never think of me,’ she said to herself, with a wisdom born out of the poverty and obscurity in which her childish years had been spent. She was passionately grateful to Othmar, as well as devoted to him; but the suggestion that she was in no way necessary to his happiness, was even a burden and a constraint to him, had been harshly set before her by the words of Blanchette, and it was corroborated by a thousand trifles of look, and speech, and accident. His very entrance into her room had nothing of the warmth of a man who returns to what he loves; he came there so evidently because he felt that courtesy and custom required it of him.
The Baron understood what was passing in her thoughts as she bent her fair head over her tapestry-frame, the severity of her black velvet gown serving to enhance, by its contrast, the whiteness of her throat, the youthfulness of her features, the suppleness and vigour of her form. He longed to say to her, ‘My child, do not fret because he is no longer your lover—is even, perhaps, that of some one else; it is always so in marriage, even in love. There is always one who cares long, and one who cares little. It will not matter to you in the end; you will learn to lead your own life; you will have your children. I do not think you will have your lovers, as most of them do, but you will get reconciled to accepting life on a lower plane than your youthful imagination placed it on at first.’
He would have liked to say that, and much more, to her, but he did not venture. She made no confidence, no appeal for sympathy; and after all, for aught he knew, she might be entirely content with her husband’s ardour, or his lack of it. She was but a child still, and had little knowledge of the passions of men.
Othmar did not say that he had met his wife’s guest as she left his house.
She had given him her prettiest smile.
‘The Countess Othmar is quite lovely; and what a perfect manner!’ she had said. ‘What does she say to all your pessimism, to all your boutades? Does she understand them? You must send her to hear a course of Caro. Her mind can hardly be metaphysical yet. She is at the age to eat bonbons and expect caresses.’
Then she had made him a little careless sign of farewell, and her black horses had borne her through the great gates of gilded bronze of the house which always seemed to him oppressive as a gaol. The words were harmless, playful, amiable; yet they had annoyed him. He understood that she ridiculed his marriage, and that she divined that it had but little place in his affections, and as little hold upon his thoughts.
‘Poor child!’ he had said involuntarily, as he mounted his staircase to enter the presence of Yseulte.