“He must really be smitten with the girl,” argued Cyril, mentally, “for if he wasn’t, he would take fright at the hints I gave him, and want to part company with these people at once. Well, it’s his own look-out. He ought to marry, and it’s very evident that he’ll marry whom he likes. This girl is not bad-looking, and it’s a strong point in her favour that the O’Malachy daren’t set foot on English ground. A decent veil can be drawn over his existence so long as he keeps out of the way. At any rate, it’s not my business to make a fuss, and if I did, Caerleon would probably go and propose at once. I’m glad I said what I did, for now he knows what he’s about. He can’t say that he’s been let in for anything blindfold, but I mean to be satisfied with that.”
Having decided on adopting the attitude of benevolent neutrality, Cyril accompanied his brother without a murmur to the post-office, and the telegram refusing Count Temeszy’s invitation was duly despatched. Returning towards the inn, they took their way through the Kurgarten, a desolate piece of ground adorned with a few straggling bushes and a good many dilapidated plaster statues, and here they found the O’Malachy family, occupying three of the paintless and rickety chairs arranged in a circle round the kiosk in which the waters of the medicinal spring were dispensed by an unattractive Hebe. The O’Malachy was sipping his morning tumbler of greenish and muddy-looking fluid with the air of a martyr, while his wife, in the most coquettish of Parisian morning costumes and hats, was communicating to her daughter her impressions of the few other health-seekers who patronised the Janoszwar waters, the majority of whom were the Hungarian Jewesses she regarded with such strong aversion. Nadia sat bolt upright beside her, silent and rebellious, her face, with its expression of enforced resignation, protesting, as clearly as her attitude, against her mother’s discourse and the delight she took in it. The contrast between the two figures—the one so markedly rigid and repellent, the other all that was graceful, pliant, and pleasing—was a sharp one, and Caerleon, as he approached, found himself wishing emphatically, although in silence, that Nadia could manage to avoid the contamination of her surroundings without holding herself so aggressively aloof from them. Cyril was less reticent.
“Good gracious! how sulky that girl looks,” he remarked. “Wretchedly bad form to listen to her mother’s talk with that face on. Such talk as it is, too! I wish we had Madame O’Malachy at some of the houses one goes to in London. Her conversational powers are lost out here.”
“Perhaps Miss O’Malachy finds the talk less edifying than it is lively,” said Caerleon, absently, trying to put himself in Nadia’s place, and to realise the disgust which the stream of scandal and innuendo in which her mother delighted must arouse in her.
“Don’t be a prig,” was the sole answer vouchsafed by Cyril; and they went on and greeted the O’Malachys, and annexed two unoccupied chairs near them, Caerleon contriving to place himself beside Nadia, Cyril beside her mother. Presently the O’Malachy finished his penance, and they rose and sauntered together towards the hotel.
“We have heard from my son this morning, my dear marquis,” said Madame O’Malachy to Caerleon. “He hopes to be with us to-morrow.”
“Does he intend to make a long stay here?”
“Alas, no! He is still mad on the subject of Thracia, and insists on going there almost immediately. What can he expect but defeat and ruin? But he shall not go into danger alone. There are mineral springs at Tatarjé, which the O’Malachy has been advised to visit, and we shall all accompany my poor misguided Louis. We may not be able to do much, but at any rate we shall be near him.”
“But if the country is in such a dangerous state, are you not afraid to visit it?” asked Caerleon.
“Afraid!” repeated Madame O’Malachy, high scorn in her tone. “My dear marquis, for what do you take us? We are accustomed to danger.”