She remembered sadly what the Duc de Noira had once said to her:
'In morals as in metals, my dear, you cannot work gold without supporting it by alloy.'
Madame Brancka had patience and skill perfect enough to refrain altogether from those hints and tentatives by which a less clever woman would have attempted to approach and surprise the key to those hidden facts which she believed to be the theme of his correspondence with Vàsàrhely and the cause of his rejection of the Russian appointment. A less clever woman would have alarmed him, and betrayed herself by perpetual allusions to the matter. But she never did this: she treated him with an alternation of subtle compliment and ironical, malice, such as was most certain to allure and perplex any man, and he never by the most distant suspicion imagined that she knew anything which he desired unknown. She was a woman of strong nerve, and her equanimity in his and his wife's presence was wholly undisturbed by her consciousness that she had dispatched the anonymous suggestion as a seed of discord to Hohenszalras. She knew indeed that it was not what people of her rank and breeding did do, that it was not honest warfare, that it was what even the very easy morality of her own world would have condemned with disgust; but she bore the sin of it very lightly. If she had been driven to excuse it, she would have characterised it as mere mischief. If her sister-in-law had shown her the letter, she would have glanced over it with a tranquil face and an air of utter unconcern. If she could not have done this sort of thing she would have thought herself a very poor creature. 'I believe you could be as wicked as the Scotch Lady Macbeth,' Stefan Brancka had said once to her; and she had answered with much contempt: 'At least I promise you I should not walk in my sleep if I were so. Your Lady Macbeth was a grotesque barbarian.'
A great deal of the sin of this world, which is not at all like Lady Macbeth's, comes from the want of excitement felt by persons, only too numerous, who have exhausted excitement in its usual shapes. She had done so; she required what was detestable to arouse her, because she had lived at such high pressure that any healthy diversion was vapid and stupid to her. The destruction, if she could achieve it, of her sister-in-law's happiness, offered her in prospect such an excitement; and the whim she had taken for passion grew out of waywardness till it nearly became passion in truth. She never precisely weighed or considered its possible consequences, but she endeavoured to arouse a response in him with all the unscrupulous skill of a mistress in coquetry. When moved by Madame Ottilie's warning he strove honestly to avoid her, and often excused himself from obedience to her summons, the opposition only stimulated her endeavours, and made a smarting mortification and anger against him supply a double motor-power for his subjection. If she could have believed that she succeeded in making his wife anxious, she might have been content; but Wanda always received her with the same serenity and courtesy, which, if it covered disdain, covered it unimpeachably with admirable grace.
'If one broke her heart, she would only make one a grand courtesy with a bland smile,' thought Olga Brancka, irritably and impatiently. 'There are people who die standing. Wanda would do that.'
That ill weeds grow apace is a true old saw, never truer than of vindictive and envious passions. Sheer and causeless jealousy of her sister-in-law had been alive in her many years, and now, by being fed and unresisted, so grew that it became almost a restless hatred. It was far more her enmity to his wife than any other sentiment which inspired her with a fantastic and unhealthy desire to attract and detach Sabran from his allegiance. Joined to it now there was a sense of some mystery in him that baffled her, and which was to such a woman the most pungent of all stimulants. In all her câlineries and all her railleries she never lost sight of this one purpose, of surprising from him the secret which she believed existed. But he was always on his guard with her; even when most influenced by her atmosphere and her magnetism he did not once lose his self-control and his habitual coolness. At moments when she was most nearly triumphing, the remembrance of his wife came over him like a breath of sweet pure air that passes through a hot-house, and restored him to self-possession and to loyalty. She began to fear that all the ability with which she had procured her exemption from Court duties, and had induced her husband to remain in Vienna, was all vain, and she grew bolder and more reckless in her use of stratagems and solicitations to keep Sabran beside her in these early spring days given over to racing and sporting, and at all the evening entertainments at which the great world met, and whither she carried with so much effect her gleaming sapphires and her black pearls.
'Black pearls argue a perverted taste,' said the Princess Ottilie once to her, and she unabashed answered:
'It is perverted tastes that make any noise in the world or possess any flavour. White pearls are much more beautiful, no doubt, but then they are everywhere, from the Crown jewel-cases to the peasant's necks; but my black pearls! you cannot find their match—and how white one's throat looks with them. I only want a green rose.'
'Chemicals can supply any deformity,' said the Princess, drily. 'Doing so is called science, I believe.'
'Do you call me a deformity?' she asked, with some annoyance.