The other, from Sabran, said simply: 'I am coming home. I give up Russia.'
'Any bad news?' the Princess asked, seeing the seriousness of her face. Her niece rose and gave her the papers.
'Is Réné mad!' she exclaimed as she read. His wife, who was startled and dismayed at the affront to her cousin and to her sovereign, yet had been unable to repress a movement of personal gladness, hastened to say in his defence:
'Be sure he has some grave, good reason, dear mother. He knows the world too well to commit a folly. Unexplained, it looks strange, certainly; but he will be home to-night or in the early morning; then we shall know; and be sure we shall find him right.'
'Right!' echoed the Princess, lifting the little girl who was her namesake off her knee, a child white as a snowdrop, with golden curls, who looked as if she had come out of a band of Correggio's baby angels.
'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard suspended in the air.
'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when through him you are probably brouillée with your Sovereign for life.'
She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon. I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such vast importance.'
'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would condemn Réné unheard?'
'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'