'He is always right,' said his wife, with a gesture towards Bela, who had paused in his play to listen, with a leaden cuirassier of the guard suspended in the air.
'You are an admirable wife, Wanda,' said the Princess, with extreme displeasure on her delicate features. 'You defend your lord when through him you are probably _brouillée_ with your Sovereign for life.'
She added, her voice tremulous with astonishment and anger: 'It is a caprice, an insolence, that no Sovereign and no minister could pardon. I am most truly your husband's friend, but I can conceive no possible excuse for such a change at the very last moment in a matter of such vast importance.'
'Let us wait, dear mother,' said Wanda softly. 'It is not you who would condemn Réné unheard?'
'But such a breach of etiquette! What explanation can ever annul it?'
'Perhaps none. I know it is a very grave offence that he has committed, and yet I cannot help being happy,' said his wife with a smile, as she lifted up the little Ottilie, and murmured over the child's fair curls, 'Ah, my dear little dove! We are not going to Russia after all. You little birds will not leave your nest!'
'Bela is not going to the snow palace?' said he, whose ears were very quick, and to whom his attendants had told marvellous narratives of an utterly imaginary Russia.
'Bela is not sure. Marc says Bela would have slaves in Russia, and might beat them.'
'Bela would be beaten himself if he did, and by my own hand, said his mother very gravely. 'Oh, child! where did you get your cruelty?'
'He is not cruel,' said the Princess. 'He is only masterful.'
She sent the children indoors, and remained after the sun-glow had all faded, and Mdme. Ottilie had gone away to her own rooms, and paced to and fro the length of the terrace, troubled by an anxiety which she would have owned to no one. What could have happened to make him so offend alike the State and the Court? She tormented herself with wondering again and again whether she had used any incautious expression in her letters which could have betrayed to him the poignant regret the coming exile gave her. No! she was sure she had not done so. She had only written twice, preferring telegrams as quicker, and, to a man, less troublesome than letters. She knew courts and cabinets too well not to know that the step her husband had taken was one which would wholly ruin the favour he enjoyed with the former, and wholly take away all chance of his being ever called again to serve the latter. Personally she was indifferent to that kind of ambition; but her attachment to the Imperial house was too strong, and her loyalty to it too hereditary, for her not to be alarmed at the idea of losing its good-will. Disquieted and afraid of all kinds of formless unknown ills, she went with a heavy heart into the Rittersaal to a dinner for which she could find no appetite. The Princess also, so talkative and vivacious at other times, was silent and pre-occupied. The evening passed tediously. He did not come.