'Réné tells me you will stay, Egon. I am so very glad,' his cousin said to him during the evening, and she added with a little hesitation, 'If you would take time to know him well, you would find him so worthy of your regard; he has all the qualities that most men esteem in each other. It would make me so happy if you were friends at heart, not only in mere courtesy.'
'You know that can never be,' said Vàsàrhely, almost rudely. 'Even you cannot work miracles. He is your husband. It is a reason that I should respect him, but it is also a reason why I shall for ever hate him.'
He said the last words in a tone scarcely audible, but low as it was, there was a force in it that affected her painfully.
'What you say there is quite unworthy of you,' she said with gentleness but coldness. 'He has done you no wrong. Long ere I met him I told you that what you wished was not what I wished, never would be so. You are too great a gentleman, Egon, to nourish an injustice in your heart.'
He looked down; every fibre in him thrilled and burned under the sound of her voice, the sense of her presence.
'I saw your children asleep last night,' he said abruptly. 'They have nothing of you in them; they are his image.'
'Is it so unusual for children to resemble their father?' she said with a smile, whilst vaguely disquieted by his tone.
'No, I suppose not; but the Szalras have always been of one type. How came your husband by that face? I have seen it amongst the Circassians, the Persians, the Georgians; but you say he is a Breton.'
'The Sabrans of Romaris are Bretons; you have only to consult history. Very beautiful faces like his have seldom much impress of nationality; they always seem as though they followed the old Greek laws, and were cast in the divine heroic mould of another time than ours.'
'Who was his mother?'