'Are you never jealous?' said her royal friend to her once. 'He is so much liked—so much made love to—I wonder you are not jealous!'
'I?' she echoed: and it seemed to her friend as if in that one pronoun she had said volumes. 'Jealous!'
She repeated the word as she drove home alone that day, and almost wondered what it meant. Who could be to him what she was? Who could dethrone her from that 'great white throne' to which his adoration had raised her? If his senses ever strayed, his soul would never swerve from its loyalty.
When she reached home that afternoon she found a card, on which was written with a pencil, in German:
'So sorry not to find you. I am in Paris to see my doctor. Zdenka has taken my service at Court. I will come to you to-morrow.'
The card was Madame Brancka's.
[CHAPTER XXX.]
Sabran, that same afternoon, as he had walked down the Rue de la Paix, had been signalled and stopped by a pretty woman wrapped to the eyes in blue fox furs, who was being driven in a low carriage by Hungarian horses, glorious in silver chains and trappings.
'My dear Réné,' had cried Madame Olga, 'do you not know me, that you compel me to flourish my parasol? Yes: I am come to Paris. My sister-in-law, Zdenka, will do my waiting. I wanted to consult my physician; I am very unwell, though you look so incredulous. So Wanda has all the Noira collection? What a fortunate woman she is. The eighteenth century is the least suited to her taste. She will heartily despise all those shepherdesses en panier and those smiling deities on lacquer. How could the Duc leave such frivolities to so serious a person? What is her doubled rose-leaf amidst all her good luck? She must have one. I suppose it is you? Well, you will find me at home in an hour. I am only a stone's throw from your hotel. Have you brought all the homespun virtues with you from Hohenszalras? I am afraid they will wither in the air of the boulevards. Au revoir!