In two days' time Hohenszalras received its mistress home.
She was not in any way harmed by the perils she had encountered, and the chills and fever to which she had been exposed. On the contrary, her eyes had a light and her face had a bloom which for many months had not been there.
The Princess heard a brief sketch of what had passed in almost total silence. She had disapproved strongly, and she said that her disapproval could not change, though a merciful heavenly host had spared her the realisation of her worst fears.
The name of Sabran was not spoken. Wanda was of a most truthful temper, but she could not bring herself to speak of his presence at Idrac; the facts would reveal themselves inevitably soon enough.
She sent Greswold to the Danube laden with stores and medicines. She received a letter every morning from her delegate; but he wrote briefly, and with scrupulous care, the statements of facts connected with the town and reports of what had been done. Her engineer had arrived from the mines by Kremnitz, and the builders estimated that the waters would have subsided and settled enough, if no fresh rising took place, for them to begin the reconstruction of the town with the beginning of the new month. Ague and fever were still very common, and fresh cases were brought in every hour to the hospital in the fortress. He wrote on the arrival of Herr Greswold, that, with her permission, he himself would still stay on, for the people had grown used to him, and having some knowledge of hydraulics he would be interested to see the plans proposed by her engineers for preserving the town from similar calamities.
Three weeks passed; all that time she spoke but little either of him or of any other subject. She took endless rides, and she sat many hours doing nothing in the white room, absorbed in thought. The Princess, who had learned what had passed, with admirable exercise of tact and self-restraint made neither suggestion nor innuendo, and accepted the presence of a French Marquis at a little obscure town in Sclavonia as if it were the most natural circumstance in the world.
'All the Szalras have been imperious, arrogant, and of complicated character,' she thought; 'she has the same temper, though it is mitigated in her by great natural nobility of disposition and strong purity of motives. She will do as she chooses, let all the world do what it may to change her. If I say a word either way it may take effect in some wholly unforeseen manner that I should regret. It is better to abstain. In doubt do nothing, is the soundest of axioms.'
And Princess Ottilie, who on occasion had the wisdom of the serpent with the sweetness of the dove, preserved a discreet silence, and devoured her really absorbing curiosity in her own heart.
At the end of the fourth week she heard that all was well at Idrac, so far as it could be so in a place almost wholly destroyed. There was no sign of renewed rising of the inland streams. The illness was diminished, almost conquered; the people had begun to take heart and hope, and, being aided, wished to aid themselves. The works for new embankments, water-gates, and streets were already planned, though they could not be begun until the spring. Meanwhile, strong wooden houses were being erected on dry places, which which could shelter ad interim many hundreds of families; the farmers were gradually venturing to return to their flooded lands. The town had suffered grievously and in much irreparably, but it began to resume its trade and its normal life.
She hesitated a whole day when she heard this. Though Sabran did not hint at any desire of his own to leave the place, she knew it, was impossible to bid him remain longer, and that a moment of irrevocable decision was come. She hesitated all the day, slept little all the night, then sent him a brief telegram: 'Come to the Island.'