'The yacht can take you to Neusatz. Come with me.'
He did not offer more opposition; he accompanied her to the boat and entered it.
The tears were in her eyes. She said nothing more, but she could not forget that scores of her own people here had owed their lives to his intrepidity and patience, and that he had never hesitated to throw his life into the balance when needed. And it had been done for her sake alone. The love of humanity might have been a nobler and purer motive, but it would not have touched her so nearly as the self-abandonment of a man by nature selfish and cold.
In a few moments they were taken to the yawl. He ascended the deck with her.
The tidings the skipper brought, the examination of the stores, the discussion of ways and means, the arrangements for the general relief, were air dull, practical matters that claimed careful attention and thought. She sat in the little cabin that was brave with marqueterie work and blue satin and Dresden mirrors, and made memoranda and calculations, and consulted him, and asked his advice on this, on that. The government official, sent to make official estimates of the losses in the township, had come on board to salute and take counsel with her. The whole forenoon passed in these details. He wrote, and calculated, and drew up reports for her. No more tender or personal word was spoken between them; but there was a certain charm for them both in this intimate intercourse, even though it took no other shape than the study of how many boatloads of wheat were needed for so many hundred people, of how many florins a day might be passed to the head of each family, of how many of the flooded houses would still be serviceable with restoration, of how many had been entirely destroyed, of how the town would best be rebuilt, and of how the inland rivers could best be restrained in the future.
To rebuild it she estimated that she would have to surrender for five years the revenues from her Galician and Hungarian mines, and she resolved to do it altogether at her own cost. She had no wish to see the town figure in public prints as the object of public subscription.
'I am sure all my woman friends,' she said, 'would kindly make it occasion for a fancy fair or a lottery (with new costumes) in Vienna, but I do not care for that sort of thing, and I can very well do what is needed alone.'
He was silent. He had always known that her riches were great, but he had never realised them as fully as he now did when she spoke of rebuilding an entire town as she might have spoken of building a carriage.
'You would make a good prime minister,' she said, smiling; 'you have the knowledge of a specialist on so many subjects.'
At noon they served her a little plain breakfast of Danubian salbling, with Carlowitzer wine and fruit sent by the steward of Mohacs. She bade him join her in it.