Sometimes it seemed to him that the tie between them was so strong, the memories of their past passion so sweet, that even his crime could not part them. Then he remembered of what race she came, of what honour she was the representative and guardian, and his heart sank within him, and he knew that his offence was one beyond all pardon.
The whole household dimly felt that some great grief had fallen on their master. His attitude, his absence from his wife's room, the arrival of Prince Vàsàrhely, the abrupt departure of the Countess Brancka, all told them that some calamity had come, though they were loyally silent one to the other, their service having been always one of devotion and veneration for their mistress, since they were all Tauern-born people, bred up by their fathers in loyalty to Hohenszalras.
'The first who speaks of aught he suspects goes for ever,' old Hubert had said to his numerous dienerschaft in the hearing of them all, when one of the pages—he who had borne the note to his master in Olga Brancka's rooms—ventured to hint that he thought some evil was abroad, and would part their lord and lady. But all the faithful silence of their attendants could not wholly conceal from the elder children that something wrong, some greater sorrow even than their mother's illness, was hanging over the old house. They were dull and vaguely alarmed. They had not even the kindly presence of the Princess, who, if she sometimes wearied them with admonitions, treated them with tenderness, and atoned for her homilies by unending gifts. They were very unhappy, though they said little, and wandered like little ghosts among the wintry woods and in their spacious play-rooms. They were tended, amused, provided for in all the same ways as usual. There were all their pastimes and playthings; all their comforts and habits were unaltered; but from the background of their sports and studies the stately figure of their mother was missing, with her serene smile and her happy power of checking all dispute or turbulence with a mere word or a mere glance.
The winter had come at a stroke, as it does without warning oftentimes in the old Archduchy; the snow falling fast and thick, the waters freezing in a night, the hills and valleys growing white and silent between a sunset and a sunset.
Their sledges carried them like lightning over the frozen roads, and their little skates bore them swift as circling swallows over the ice. It was the season Bela loved so well; but he had no joy in anything. There was no twilight hour in the white-room at their mothers feet, whilst she told them legends and stories: there was no moment in the mornings when she came into their study and found their little puzzled brains weary over a Latin declension or a crabbed page of history, and made all clear to them by a few lucid graphic sentences; there was no possible hope that, when the day was broad and bright over the wintry land, she would call to them to bring the dogs and go with her and her black horses through the glittering forests, where every bough was heavy with the diamonds of the frost. To the little boys it seemed as if the whole world had grown suddenly silent, and they were left all alone in it.
Their troops of attendants were no more consolation to them than his crowd of courtiers is to a bereaved sovereign.
Then, again, when Egon Vàsàrhely had by chance met them he had looked at them strangely, and had always turned away without a greeting. 'And when I was quite little he was so kind,' thought Bela, whose pride seemed falling from him like a useless ragged garment.
'It's all since Madame Olga came,' he said once to his brother. 'She is a bad, bad woman. She was rude to our mother.'
'I thought ladies were always good?' said Gela.
'They are much wickeder than men,' said Bela, with premature wisdom. 'At least, when they are wicked. I heard a gentleman say so in Paris.'