Occasionally an impulse came to Yseulte to tell everything to Melville, who was not her confessor, but who had known all her people so well in their days of trial and adversity; but her pride repressed the instinct of confidence. Besides, she thought drearily, she knew well all that Melville would answer—the only reply, indeed, which would be possible to him in such a case—he would exhort her to patience, to hope, to trust in heaven and in her husband. The originality of his character would not be able to escape from the platitudes of custom; he would only say to her what she could say to herself, ‘Be courageous and be calm; time often heals all woes.’
Sometimes, too, she thought wistfully that if she bore a living child perhaps she would reach some higher place in her husband’s heart.
She had heard it often said that children formed a tie between those who were even indifferent to each other. At least—at least, she reflected, and strove to solace herself with this hope,—as the mother of a living child of his, she would be something in his house more than a mere form to wear his jewels and receive his indifferent caresses. Perhaps, she thought, if her eyes looked up at him from his child’s face, he might grow to care for her a little. At least she would be something to him that Nadine Napraxine was not. It was a desolate kind of consolation to be the only one within reach of a girl scarce eighteen years old; a sadly forlorn and wistful hope; but it was something to sustain her in the midst of her perfect isolation of thought and suffering, and it prevented her abandonment to despair. She had one of those natures to which tenderness is more natural than passion; her character was of that gentle and serious kind which enables a woman to endure the desertion of her lover if the arms of a child are about her. And so she awaited the future patiently, without much trust in its mercies, yet not without courage and not wholly without hope.
‘She looks very ill,’ said the most observant of all her friends, Friederich Othmar, more than once to her husband. But Othmar replied that it was only the state of her health, and the elder man protested in vain.
‘You think a girl of those years can be satisfied with bearing your children and being left alone in beautiful houses as a cardinal bird is shut up in a gilded cage?’ he said irritably.
‘She is certainly not left alone,’ replied Othmar with annoyance; ‘and I believe that she is precisely of that docile and religious temperament which will find the greatest enjoyment of existence in maternity. There are women formed for that kind of self-sacrifice beyond all others. She is one of them.’
‘It is not the only sacrifice to which she is condemned!’ muttered Friederich Othmar, but he feared to do more harm than good if he explained himself more clearly.
‘Has she been complaining to you?’ asked her husband with increasing anger.
‘She would never complain,’ returned his uncle positively. ‘Besides, my dear Otho, whatever we may all think of you, to her you are a demi-god, the incarnation of all mortal and immortal excellences. She would as soon strike the silver Christ that hangs over her bed as consent to see a flaw in your perfections!’
Othmar only replied by an impatient gesture.