'Of course I trust you. You know best what you wish, what you are called on to do. Never think that you need give explanation, or ask permission to or of me. That is not the man's part in marriage.'
'But I would not have you suspect—'
'I never suspect,' she said, more haughtily. 'Suspicion degrades two people. Listen, my love. In Paris I saw, I heard more than you thought. The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace. I neither suspected you nor spied upon you. I left you free. You returned to me, and I knew then that I had done wisely. I could never comprehend the passion and pleasure that some women take in hawks only kept by a hood, in hounds only held by a leash. What is allegiance worth unless it be voluntary? For the rest, if the wife of my cousin be a worse woman than I think, do not tell me so. I do not desire to know it. She was the idol of my dead brother's youth; she once entered this house as his bride. Her honour is ours.'
A flush passed over her husband's face. 'You are the noblest woman that lives,' he said, in a hushed and reverent voice. He stooped almost timidly and kissed her; then he bowed very low, as though she were a queen and he her courtier, and left her.
'That devil shall leave her house before another night is down!' he said in his own thoughts, as he took his way across the great building to Olga Brancka's apartments. He had the red autumn rose, she had gathered in his hand as he went. Instinctively he slipped it within his coat as he drew near the doors of the guests' corridor; it was too sacred for him to have it made the subject of sneer or of a smile.
Wanda remained in the little Watteau room. A certain sense of fear—a thing so unfamiliar, so almost unknown to her—came upon her as the flowered satin of the door-hangings fell behind him, and his steps passed away down the passages without. The bright pictured panels of the shepherds in court suits, and the milkmaids in hoops and paniers, smiling amidst the sunny landscapes of their artificial Arcadia; the gay and courtly figures of the Meissen china, and the huge bowls filled with the gorgeous deep-hued flowers of the autumn season; the singing of a little wren perched on a branch of a yew, the distant trot of ponies' feet as the children rode along the unseen avenues, the happy barking of dogs that were going with them, the smell of wet grass and of leaves freshly dropped, the swish of a gardener's birch-broom sweeping the turf beneath the cedars—all these remained on her mind for ever afterwards, with that cruel distinctness which always paints the scene of our last happy hours in such undying colours on the memory of the brain. She never, from that day, willingly entered the pretty chamber, with its air of coquetry and stateliness, and its little gay court of porcelain people. She had gathered there the last rose of the year.
[CHAPTER XXXIII.]
He was so passionately angered against the invader of his domestic peace, he was so profoundly touched by the nobility and faith of his wife, that he went to Olga Brancka's presence without fear or hesitation, possessed only by a man's natural and honest indignation at an insult passed upon what he most venerated upon earth.
One of his own servants, who was seated in the corridor, in readiness for the Countess Brancka's orders, flung wide the door which opened into the vestibule of the suite of guest-chambers allotted to this most hated guest, and said to his master: