'Can he be but a marvellous comedian?' wondered the man, to whom a bastard was less even than a peasant.
There was nothing of vanity, of effort, of assumption visible in the perfect manner of his host. He seemed to the backbone, in all the difficult subtleties of society, as in the simple, frank intercourse of man and man, that which even Kaulnitz had conceded that he was, gentilhomme de race. Could he have been born a serf—bred from the hour's caprice of a voluptuary for a serving-woman?
Vàsàrhely sat mute, sunk so deeply in his own thoughts that all the festivities round him went by like a pageantry on a stage, in which he had no part.
'He looks like the statue of the Commendatore,' said Olga Brancka, who had returned for the archducal visit, as she glanced at the sombre, stately figure of her brother-in-law, Sabran, to whom she spoke, laughed with a little uneasiness. Would the hand of Egon Vàsàrhely ever seize him and drag him downward like the hand of the statue in Don Giovanni?
'What a pity that Wanda did not marry him, and that I did not marry you!' said Mdme. Brancka, saucily, but with a certain significance of meaning.
'You do me infinite honour!' he answered. 'But, at the risk of seeming most ungallant, I must confess the truth. I am grateful that the gods arranged matters as they are. You are enchanting, Madame Olga, as a guest, but as a wife—alas! who can drink kümmel every day?'
She smiled enchantingly, showing her pretty teeth, but she was bitterly angered. She had wished for a compliment at the least. 'What can these men see in Wanda?' she thought savagely. 'She is handsome, it is true; but she has no coquetry, no animation, no passion. She is dressed by Worth, and has a marvellous quantity of old jewels; but for that no one would say anything of her except that she was much too tall and had a German face!' And she persuaded herself that it was so; if the Venus de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her waist was large.
Mdme. Olga was still very lovely, and took care to be never seen except at her loveliest. She always treated Sabran with a great familiarity, which his wife was annoyed by, though she did not display her annoyance. Mdme Brancka always called him mon cousin or beau cousin in the language she usually used, and affected much more previous knowledge of him than their acquaintance warranted, since it had been merely such slight intimacy as results from moving in the same society. She was small and slight, but of great spirit; she shot, fished, rode, and played billiards with equal skill; she affected an adoration of the most dangerous sports, and even made a point of sharing the bear and the boar hunt. Wanda, who, though a person of much greater real courage, abhorred all the cruelties and ferocities that perforce accompany sport, saw her with some irritation go out with Sabran on these expeditions.
'Women are utterly out of place in such sport as that, Olga,' she urged to her; 'and indeed are very apt to bring the men into peril, for of course no man can take care of himself whilst he has the safety of a woman to attend to; she must of necessity distract and trouble him.'
But the Countess Stefan only laughed, and slipped with affectation her jewelled hunting-knife into its place in her girdle.