When, the next morning, questioning Hubert, the Princess found that indeed her favourite had left the island monastery at dawn, the landscape of the Hohe Tauern seemed to her more monotonous and melancholy than it had ever done, and the days more tedious and dull.
'You will miss the music, at least,' she said, with asperity, to her niece. 'I suppose you will give him as much regret as you have done at times to the Abbé Liszt?'
'I shall miss the music, certainly,' said the Countess Wanda, calmly. 'Our poor Kapellmeister is very indifferent. If he were not so old that it would be cruel to displace him, I would take another from the Conservatorium.'
The Princess was irritated and even incensed at the reply, but she let it pass. Sabran's name was mentioned no more between them for many days.
No one knew whither he had gone, and no tidings came of him to Hohenszalras.
One day a foreign journal, amongst the many news-sheets that came by post there, contained his name: 'The Marquis de Sabran broke the bank at Monte Carlo yesterday,' was all that it said in its news of the Riviera.
'A winner at a tripot, what a hero for you, mother mine!' she said with some bitterness, handing the paper to the Princess. She was surprised at the disgust and impatience which she felt herself. What could it concern her?
That day as she rode slowly through the grass drives of her forests, she thought with pain of her companion of a few weeks, who so late had ridden over these very paths beside her, the dogs racing before them, the wild flowers scenting the air, the pale sunshine falling down across the glossy necks of their horses.
'He ought to do better things than break a bank at a gaming-place,' she thought with regret. 'With such natural gifts of body and mind, it is a sin—a sin against himself and others—to waste his years in those base and trivial follies. When he was here he seemed to feel so keenly the charm of Nature, the beauty of repose, the possibility of noble effort.'
She let the reins droop on her mare's throat and paced slowly over the moss and the grass; though she was all alone—for in her own forests she would not be accompanied even by a groom—the colour came into her face as she remembered many things, many words, many looks, which confirmed the assertion Madame Ottilie had made to her.