Wanda von Szalras rose a little impatiently. 'He had better have followed them before he broke the bank at Monaco. It is an odd sort of notoriety with which to attract the pious and taciturn Bretons; and when he was here he had no convictions. I suppose he picked them up with the gold pieces at the tables!'
Olga, Countess Brancka, née Countess Seriatine, of a noble Russian family, had been married at sixteen to the young Gela von Szalras, who, a few months after his bridal, had been shot dead on the battlefield of Solferino.
After scarce a year of mourning she had fascinated the brother of Egon Vàsàrhely, a mere youth who bore the title of Count Brancka. There had been long and bitter opposition made to the new alliance on the part of both families, on account of the consanguinity between Stefan Brancka and her dead lord. But opposition had only increased the ardour of the young man and the young widow; they had borne down all resistance, procured all dispensations, had been wedded, and in a year's time had both wished the deed undone. Both were extravagant, capricious, self-indulgent, and unreasonable; their two egotisms were in a perpetual collision. They met but seldom, and never met without quarrelling violently. The only issue of their union was two little, fantastic, artificial fairies who were called respectively Mila and Marie.
At the time of the marriage of the Branckas, Wanda had been too young to share in opposition to it; but the infidelity to her brother's memory had offended and wounded her deeply, and in her inmost heart she had never pardoned it, though the wife of Stefan Brancka had been a passing guest at Hohenszalras, where, had Count Gela lived, she would have reigned as sovereign mistress. That his sister reigned there in her stead the Countess Olga resented keenly and persistently. Her own portion of the wealth of the Szalras had been forfeited under her first marriage contract by her subsequent alliance. But she never failed to persuade herself that her exclusion from every share in that magnificent fortune was a deep wrong done to herself, and she looked upon Wanda von Szalras as the doer of that wrong.
In appearance, however, she was always cordial, caressing, affectionate, and if Wanda chose to mistrust her affection, it was, she reflected, only because a life of unwise solitude had made a character naturally grave become severe and suspicious.
She did not fail to arrive there a week later. She was a small, slender, lovely woman, with fair skin, auburn hair, wondrous black eyes, and a fragile frame that never knew fatigue. She held a high office at the Imperial Court, but when she was not on service, she spent, under the plea of health, all her time at Paris or les eaux. She came with her numerous attendants, her two tiny children, and a great number of huge fourgons full of all the newest marvels of combination in costume. She was seductive and caressing, but she was capricious, malicious, and could be even violent; in general she was gaily given up to amusement and intrigue, but she had moments of rage that were uncontrollable. She had had many indiscretions and some passions, but the world liked her none the less for that; she was a great lady, and in a sense a happy woman, for she had nerves of steel despite all her maladies, and brought to the pleasures of life an unflagging and even ravenous zest.
When with her perfume of Paris, her restless animation, her children, like little figures from a fashion-plate, her rapid voice that was shrill yet sweet, like a silver whistle, and her eyes that sparkled alike with mirth and with malice, she came on to the stately terraces of Hohenszalras, she seemed curiously discordant with it and its old world peace and gravity. She was like a pen-and-ink sketch of Cham thrust between the illuminated miniatures of a missal.
She felt it herself.
'It is the Roman de la Rose in stone,' she said, as her eyes roved over the building, which she had not visited for four years. 'And you, Wanda, you look like Yseulte of the White Hand or the Marguerite des Marguerites; you must be sorry you did not live in those times.'
'Yes: if only for one reason. One could make the impress of one's own personality so much more strongly on the time.'