Wanda read that line with contracted brows. It angered her more than the outspoken remonstrances of the Vàsàrhely, of the Lilienhöhe, of the Kaulnitz, of the many great families to whom she was allied. De Morny!—a bastard, an intriguer, a speculator, a debaucher! The comparison had an evil insinuation, and displeased her!
She was not a woman, however, likely either for insinuation or remonstrance to change her decisions or abandon her wishes. She had so much of the 'éternel féminin' in her that she was only the more resolved in her own course because others, by evil prophecy and exaggerated fears, sought to turn her from it. What they said was natural, she granted, but it was unjust and would be unjustified. All the expostulation, diplomatically hinted or stoutly outspoken, of those who considered that they had the right to make such remonstrances produced not the smallest effect upon the mind of the woman whom, as Baron Kaulnitz angrily expressed it, Sabran had magnetised. Once again Love was a magician, against whom wisdom, prudence, and friendship had no power of persuasion.
The melancholy that she observed in him seemed to her only the more graceful; there was no vulgar triumph in his own victory, such as might have suggested that the material advantages of that triumph were present to him. That he loved her greatly she could not doubt, and that he had striven to conceal it from her she could not doubt either. The sadness which at times overcame him was but natural in a proud man, whose fortunes were unequal to his birth, and who was also sensible of many brilliant gifts, intellectual, that he had wasted, which, had they been fully utilised, would have justified his aspiration to her hand.
'Try and persuade him,' she said to Mdme. Ottilie, 'to think less of this mere accident of difference between us. If it were difference of birth it might be insurmountable or intolerably painful; but a mere difference of riches matters no more than the colour of one's eyes, or the inches of one's stature.'
The Princess shook her head.
'If he did not feel it as he does, he would not be the man that he is. A marriage contract to which the lover brings nothing must always be humiliating to himself. Besides, it seems to him that the world at large must condemn him as a mere fortune-hunter.'
'Since I am convinced of the honesty and purity of his motives, what matters the opinion of others?'
'How can he tell that the world may not some day induce you to doubt those motives?'
Wanda did not reply.
'But he will cease to think of any disparity when all that is mine has been his a year or two,' she thought. 'All the people shall look to him as their lord, since he will be mine; even if I think differently to him on any matter I will not say it, lest I should remind him that the power lies with me; he shall be no prince consort, he shall be king.'