'Am I made of wax?' he said to her with scorn, when she ventured to hint at her wishes.
'How I wish I had not asked him to remain here!' she said to herself many times. It was not possible for her to dismiss her cousin, who had been from his infancy accustomed to look on the Hohenszalrasburg as his second home. But as circle after circle of guests came, went, and were replaced by others, and Egon Vàsàrhely still retained the rooms in the west tower that had been his from boyhood, his continual presence grew irksome and irritating to her.
'He forgets that it is now my husband's house!' she thought.
There was only one living creature in all the place to whom Vàsàrhely unbent from his sullen and haughty reserve, and that one was the child Bela.
Bela was as beautiful as the morning, with his shower of golden hair, and his eyes like sapphires, and his skin like a lily. With curious self-torture Vàsàrhely would attract the child to him by tales of daring and of sport, and would watch with intent eyes every line of the small face, trying therein to read the secret of the man by whom this child had been begotten. Bela, all unconscious, was proud of this interest displayed in him by this mighty soldier, of whose deeds in war Ulrich and Hubert and Otto told such Homeric tales.
'Bela will fight with you when he is big,' he would say, trying to inclose the jewelled hilt of Vàsàrhely's sword in his tiny fingers, or trotting after him through the silence of the tapestried corridors. When she saw them thus together she felt that she could understand the superstitious fear of oriental women when their children are looked at fixedly.
'You are very good to my boy,' she said once to Vàsàrhely, when he had let the child chatter by his side for hours.
Vàsàrhely turned away abruptly.
'There are times when I could kill your son, because he is his,' he muttered, 'and there are times when I could worship him, because he is yours.'
'Do not talk so, Egon,'she said, gravely. 'If you will feel so, it is best—I must say it—it is best that you should see neither my child nor me.'