'That would be too absurd. We cannot spend our lives running away from Madame Brancka. We have a hundred engagements here. Besides, your Noira affair is not one half settled as yet, and it is only now that Paris is really agreeable. We will go back in May, after Chantilly.'
'As you like,' she said, with a smile of ready acquiescence.
She was only there for his sake. She, would not spoil his contentment by showing that she made a sacrifice. She was never really happy away from her mountains, but she did not wish him to suspect that.
The Hôtel Brancka was a charming little temple of luxury, ordered after the last mode, and as pimpant as its mistress. It had cost enormous sums of money, and its walls had been painted by famous artists with fantastic and voluptuous subjects, which had not been paid for at the present.
In finance, indeed, she was much like a king of recent time, who never had any money to give, but always said to his mistresses, 'Order whatever you like; the Civil List will always pay my bills.' She had never any money, but she knew that her brother-in-law, like the king's ministers, would always pay her bills.
'One expects to hear the "Decamerone" read here,' said Wanda, with some disdain, as she glanced around her on her first visit.
'At Hohenszalras one would never dare to read anything but the "Imitationis Christi,"' said Madame Olga, with contempt of another sort.
The little hotel was but a few streets distance off their own grand and spacious residence, which had undergone scarcely any change since the days of Louis XV. They saw the Countess Brancka very often, could not choose but see her when she chose, and that was almost perpetually.
He had honestly, and even intensely, desired not to be subjected to her vicinity. But it was difficult to resist its seduction when she lived within a few yards of him, when she met him at every turn, when the changing scenes of society were like those of a kaleidoscope, always composed of the same pieces. The closeness of her relationship to his wife made an avoidance of her, which would have been easy with a mere acquaintance, wholly out of possibility. She pleaded her 'poverty' very prettily, as a plea to borrow their riding-horses, use their boxes at the Opéra and the Théâtre Français, and be constantly, under one pretext or another, seeking their advice. Wanda, who knew the enormous extravagance of both the Branckas, and the inroads which their debts made on even the magnificent fortunes of Egon Vàsàrhely, had not as much patience as usual in her before these plaintive pretences.
'Wanda me boude', said Madame Brancka, with touching reproachfulness, and sought a refuge and a confidant in the sympathy of Sabran, which was not given very cordially, yet could not be altogether refused. Not only were they in the same world, but she made a thousand claims on their friendship, on their relationship. Stefan Brancka was in Hungary. She wanted Sabran's advice about her horses, about her tradespeople, about her disputes with the artists who had decorated her house; she sent for him without ceremony, and, with insistence, made him ride with her, drive with her, dance with her, made him take her to see certain diversions which were not wholly fitted for a woman of her rank, and so rapidly and imperceptibly gained ascendency over him that before making any engagement he involuntarily paused to learn whether she had any claim on his time. It caused his wife the same vague impatience which she had felt when Olga Brancka had persisted in going out with him on hunting excursions at home. But she thrust away her observation of it as unworthy of her.