Marie laughed. 'Ah!' she said, 'if men chose all the husbands, there would be few wives.'
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXXIII.
[TWO MEN.]
The Waldgrave's return to his old self, and to the frankness and gaiety that, when we first knew him at Heritzburg, had surrounded him with a halo of youth, was perhaps the most noteworthy event of all within my experience. For the return proved permanent, the transformation was perfect. The moodiness, the crookedness, the crafty humours that for weeks had darkened and distorted the man's nature--so that another and a worse man seemed to look out of his eyes and speak with his mouth--were gone, leaving no cloud or remembrance. He had been mad; he was now as sane as the best. Only one peculiarity remained--and for a few days a little pallor and weakness--of all the things that had befallen him between his first wound and his second, he could remember nothing, not a jot or tittle; nor could any amount of allusion or questioning bring these things back to him. After many attempts we desisted; but there were always some who, from this date, regarded him with a certain degree of awe--as a man who had been for a time in the flesh, and yet not of it.
With sanity returned also all the wholesome ambitions and desires that had formerly moved the man; and amongst these his passion for my lady. He lay at our house that night, and spent the next two days there, recovering his strength; and I had more than one opportunity of marking the assiduity with which he followed all the Countess's movements with his eyes, the change which his voice underwent when he spoke to her, and his manner when he came into her presence. In a word, he seemed to take up his love where he had dropped it--at the point it had reached when he rode down into the green valley and secured his rival's victory at so great a cost; at the point at which Tzerclas' admiration and my lady's rebuff had at once strengthened and purified it.
Now Tzerclas was gone from the field--magically, as it seemed to the Waldgrave. And, magically also--for he knew nothing of its flight--time had passed; days and weeks running into months--a sufficiency of time, he hoped, to remove unfavourable impressions from her mind, to obliterate the memory of that unhappy banquet, and replace him on the pinnacle he had occupied at Heritzburg.
But he soon found that, though Tzerclas was gone and the field seemed open, all was not to be had for the asking. My lady was kind; she had a smile for him, and pleasant words, and a ready ear. But before he had been in the house twenty-four hours, he came and confided to me that something was wrong. The Countess was changed; was pettish as he had never seen her before; absent and thoughtful, traits equally new; restless--and placid dignity had been one of her chief characteristics.
'What is it, Martin?' he said, knitting his brows and striding to and fro in frank perplexity. 'It cannot be that, after all that has passed, she is fretting for that villain Tzerclas?'
'After risking her life to escape from him?' I answered dryly. 'No, I think not, my lord.'