'You may be quite sure that Idrac will go intact to the second son, as it has always done; and I believe but for his own exertions Idrac would now be beneath the Danube waters. Perhaps you never heard all that story of the flood?'
'I only hope that if I have detractors you will defend me from them,' said Prince Lilienhöhe, giving up argument.
Fair weather is always especially fair in the eyes of those who have foretold at sunset that the morrow would be fine; and so the married life of Wanda von Szalras was especially delightful as an object of contemplation, as a theme of exultation, to the Princess, who alone had been clear-sighted enough to foresee the future. She really also loved Sabran like a son, and took pride and pleasure in the filial tenderness he showed her, and in his children, with the beautiful blue eyes that had gleams of light in them like sapphires. The children themselves adored her; and even the bold and wilful Bela was as quiet as a startled fawn beside this lovely little lady, with her snow-white hair and her delicate smile, whose cascades of lace always concealed such wonderful bon-bon boxes, and gilded cosaques, and illuminated stories of the saints.
Almost all their time was spent at Hohenszalras. A few winter months in Vienna was all they had ever passed away from it, except one visit to Idrac and the Hungarian estates. The children never left it for a day. He shared her affection for the place, and for the hardy and frank mountain people around them. He seemed to her to entirely forget Romaris, and beyond the transmission of moneys to its priest, he took no heed of it. She hesitated to recall it to him, since to do so might have seemed to remind him that it was she, not he, who was suzerain in the Hohe Tauern. Romaris was but a bleak rock, a strip of sea-swept sand; it was natural that it should have no great hold on his affections, only recalling as it did all that its lords had lost.
'I hate its name,' he said impetuously once; and seeing the surprise upon her face, he added: 'I was very lonely and wretched there; I tried to take interest in it because you bade me, but I failed; all I saw, all I thought of, was yourself, and I believed you as far and for ever removed from me as though you had dwelt in some other planet. No! perhaps I am superstitious: I do not wish you to go to Romaris. I believe it would bring us misfortune. The sea is full of treachery, the sands are full of graves.'
She smiled.
'Superstition is a sort of parody of faith; I am sure you are not superstitious. I do not care to go to Romaris; I like to cheat myself into the belief that you were born and bred in the Iselthal. Otto said to me the other day, "My lord must be a son of the soil, or how could he know our mountains so well as he does, and how could he anywhere have learned to shoot like that?"'
'I am very glad that Otto does me so much honour. When he first met me, he would have shot me like a fox, if you had given the word. Ah, my love! how often I think of you that day, in your white serge, with your girdle of gold, and your long gold-headed staff, and your little ivory horn. You were truly a châtelaine of the old mystical German days. You had some Schlüsselblumen in your hand. They were indeed the key flower to my soul, though, alas! treasures, I fear, you found none on your entrance there.'
'I shall not answer you, since to answer would be to flatter you, and Aunt Ottilie already, does that more than is good for you,' she said smiling, as she passed her fingers over the waves of his hair. 'By the way, whom shall we invite to meet the Lilienhöhe? Will you make out a list?'
'The Grand Duke does not share Frau Ottilie's goodness for me.'