'She is a witch, a wicked witch,' said Sabran.
The great autumn party was brilliant and agreeable. All things went well, and the days were never monotonous. The people were well assorted, and the social talent of their host made their outdoor sports and their indoor pastimes constantly varied, whilst Hungarian musicians and Viennese comedians played waltzes that would have made a statue dance, and represented the little comedies for which he himself had been famous at the Mirlitons.
He was not conscious of it, but he was passionately eager for Egon Vàsàrhely to be witness, not only of his entire happiness, but of his social powers. To Vàsàrhely he seemed to put forward the perfection of his life with almost insolence; with almost exaggeration to exhibit the joys and the gifts with which nature and chance had so liberally dowered him. The stately Magyar soldier, sitting silent and melancholy apart, watched him with a curious pang, that in a lesser nature would have been a consuming envy. Now and then, though Sabran and his wife spoke rarely to each other in the presence of others, a glance, a smile, a word passed between them that told of absolute unuttered tenderness, profound and inexhaustible as the deep seas; in the very sound of their laughter, in the mere accent of their voices, in a careless caress to one of their children, in a light touch of the hand to one another as they rode, or as they met in a room, there was the expression of a perfect joy, of a perfect faith between them, which pierced the heart of the watcher of it. Yet would he not have had it otherwise at her cost.
'Since she has chosen him as the companion of her life, it is well that he should be what she can take pride in, and what all men can praise,' he thought, and yet the happiness of this man seemed to him an audacity, an insolence. What human lover could merit her?
Between himself and Sabran there was the most perfect courtesy, but no intimacy. They both knew that if for fifty years they met continually they would never be friends. All her endeavours to produce sympathy between them failed. Sabran was conscious of a constant observation of him by her cousin, which seemed to him to have a hostile motive, and which irritated him extremely, though he did not allow his irritation any visible vent. Olga Brancka perceived, and with the objectless malice of women of her temperament, amused herself with fanning, the slumbering enmity, as children play at fire.
'You cannot expect Egon to love you,' she said once to her host. 'You know he was the betrothed of Wanda from her childhood—at least in his own hopes, and in the future sketched for them by their families.'
'I was quite aware of that before I married,' he answered her indifferently. 'But those family arrangements are tranquil disposals of destiny which, if they be disturbed, leave no great trace of trouble. The Prince is young still, and a famous soldier as well as a great noble. He has no lack of consolation if he need it, and I cannot believe that he does.'
Mdme. Olga laughed.
'You know as well as I do that Egon adores the very stirrup your wife's foot touches!'
'I know he is her much beloved cousin,' said Sabran, in a tone which admitted of no reply.