CHAPTER SIX

"We should be very much to blame," answered the baroness when next morning, as they were getting up, the baron, still in his pyjamas, had told all his suspicions concerning Diana--carefully suppressing, as was natural, any details unfavourable to himself. "We should be very much to blame," repeated the lady with emphasis as she sat before her mirror pencilling her eyebrows, "very much to blame, indeed, if we failed to keep our eyes on her. The chief is all but in love with her, and from what you tell me of her antecedents, this German, or Polishwoman..."

"Maybe a Jewess..." interjected Linnartz.

"... this person will suit our book better than any of the Levantine women who have hitherto ministered to his happiness. I shall send her an invitation..."

"Invite her to my house!" exclaimed the man, his thoughts flying back to that shameful and unique meeting of long ago.

"Yes, I'll invite her here so that he may meet her. You are a poor diplomatist, my dear. At the same time I shall be earning the countess's gratitude by taking Gregor off her hands, for she seems to be interested in that abstruse young man...."

"All right. Ask 'em to lunch."

"Luncheon! What are you thinking of? That will cost at least two hundred francs, and with champagne, even if we cut ourselves down to a couple of bottles and have it served late, it will run us into another fifty at least. No, no. We'll ask them to tea, thé intime; and I'll see to it that he will think I am having a special at-home day in her honour."

She was struggling with her bodice, and the baron who rarely assisted at his wife's toilet, was much interested in her doings. He came near and began to take husbandly liberties, whereupon she protested:

"Oh, please--do leave me alone!"

"There, there, Gertrude, why not?..."

By the time Count Gregor entered the baroness's exiguous drawing-room the other guests had assembled and were sitting among the many-coloured cushions in lively conversation. The prince was just saying to Diana:

"I am fond of Sicily, but to see it at its best it should be visited at the height of summer. Palermo in August and Christiania in January, that is the ideal."

"What lovely temperatures you are conjuring up, Prince," said Gregor kissing Diana's hand after greeting his hostess. "Is he telling the truth?"

"He is quite right," answered Diana helping to serve the guests with iced drinks. "I've always felt the same."

"Unfortunately the Germans are accustomed to extremes of climate. Is it to be wondered at that southerners are more harmonious? Between February and June we have to accommodate ourselves to a leap up from zero to about 90 degrees in the shade, and we are expected after that to be a harmonious people!"

Diana looked at him and said with a laugh:

"Who expects it of us, Count Münsterberg? One either is or isn't!"

"Very well, then, one has it," he said softly, trying to capture her hand.

"Is this a new parlour game?" asked the prince. "If so, I'd like to learn it."

Diana sat there, her laughing face shaded by a large black tulle hat, light of heart, full of youthful sportiveness, her hands stretched out on either side towards the two men who had simultaneously pressed their lips to them, two men differing vastly both as to age and character. From the next room, four eyes were watching her inimically, for the host and hostess had retired with Eckersberg to look at the libretto of a new operetta recently produced in Berlin, the notices of which had reached the officer that morning.

"We should arrange an expedition to the temple so as to put these theories of summer travel in the East to a test. At the same time we could provide a little excavation work for Mademoiselle, get back the next day... What say you, my dear Baroness?"

"Charming, Count Münsterberg! I have some plans of the temple, and perhaps we could take along Burkhardt, and Curtius's studies, maybe even Winckelmann..."

"Special camel for a travelling library," laughed Eckersberg.

The whole company gathered round the table.

"Won't the countess join the party?" put in Linnartz, wishing to make trouble. But the count answered composedly:

"I fear not. She rather dreads long excursions on horseback, or any exertion in summer."

"We shall, therefore, be only six candidates for death by sunstroke," said the irrepressible Eckersberg.

The count quickly calculated which of his two assistants would hinder him least. He was fully aware of Linnartz's malevolent intentions, but at the same time he knew that the officer was far more efficient in an emergency and would be a greater menace to his plans if...

"My good fellow, one of us must stay behind. We cannot evacuate the embassy. Of course the secretary is enormously our superior in the management of affairs, still, we cannot leave him to shoulder the whole responsibility. So either you or Linnartz must stay, and, since the baron could not possibly entrust the baroness alone to our tender cares..."

Eckersberg sank his head, with a comical expression of woe.

"Kismet, or as it has recently become the fashion to say, Kâder! I withdraw my candidature, retire weeping from the scene, ladies."

No sooner had her guests taken their departure than the baroness burst out with: "Did you see?"

"Come here," called her husband from the window.

Gregor and Diana had bade the other two farewell, and were now walking away together. A long, slowly rising avenue lay before them, and they strolled up it in the deep shade of a late afternoon. At last they were alone. She had been so constantly in Gregor's thoughts lately, that he had established a kind of intimacy with her in his mind, so that when he now spoke there was a tone of affectionate camaraderie in his voice.

"I do hope you like the idea of a trip to this temple."

She gave him a kindly look, saying:

"I know the place well from pictures."

"Burkhardt, Curtius, Winckelmann," he said, mimicking the baroness's stilted way of talking. "Good Lord, poor woman!"

"She is false," put in Diana curtly.

"Well, well, what harm can she do?"

"A great deal." Then after a pause: "Surely it is unwise to ignore your enemies."

"Enemies? They leave me cold. But those at home, in Germany..."

"Well, they must have servants on the spot."

"One of my assistants in all probability. That is the custom...."

"Those two are the only ones," said Diana with a note of asperity in her voice.

Gregor, surprised at her petulance, and assuming that it was on his account, interpreted her mood as a sign of her inclination towards himself. They continued their walk, and he looked down into her face, saying very simply:

"I am happy to think that you are vexed with somebody on my behalf."

Her voice was unusually cordial as she answered:

"It is better not to have to feel vexed. Wellwishing is a more fruitful thing than ill wishing! All beautiful things begin in friendliness. Then it seems as if the sun were rising. Sometimes I feel that we should always stop at the beginning..."

He felt a glow creeping over him, and was about to speak when a passer-by took off his hat to her, and her lips, which had remained slightly apart on the unfinished sentence, snapped together.

"Who was that?"

"I don't know."

Gregor glanced over his shoulder and recognized Andreas who, likewise, had turned round to have another look at them.

"It was our young poet," said the count cheerfully. "He's in love with you; he has turned about to look at you again."

"Why me in especial?"

"Don't you like him?"

Diana deigned no reply. He persisted: "Don't you, for instance, prefer him to me?"

Diana, whose pace had slackened, whose eyes had become dreamy, whose lips were dumb, now slowly turned her head away as she thought:

"Why must men always try to probe our inclinations by setting up comparisons? Why are they incapable of making the best of the present? How vain they are, one and all! Still, this man has blue eyes and the heart of a boy, in spite of his grey hair and his title."

Her long silence made him uneasy.

"Have I offended you?" he said very tenderly, his manner almost that of a wooer. "All I meant was ... you have ... you hardly know him as yet."

Again Diana had nothing to answer, while she mused:

"What fools men are! In spite of all their titles and their renown and their grey hairs, what fools! He does not know that I loved that young man a little while back, does not know that the young man is now in love with the countess. All he wants to know is whether I love him!"

Andreas's sensitive nature made him keenly aware of the bond between these two, and his heart felt lighter, for, poet though he was, the young man in him was relieved at being able to shift some of the reproach of his own unfaithfulness upon Diana's shoulders. After their unexpected meeting he had kept out of her way, and had likewise avoided seeing as much of Olivia as his feelings prompted him to do. His mind was troubled. At bottom he was frightened of both women, and unsuccessfully endeavoured to fall back upon himself.

He tried to get an audience with the Austrian representative, but every move on his part was wrecked on the shoals of ministerial red tape, was frustrated by suspicion on the part of those in command. Nor was he himself less to blame, for his own energies were being sapped by his dreamy absence of mind, and the confusion in his thoughts consequent upon the motley character of the political life into which he wished to enter.

Olivia, being by nature chary of words, seemed to condone his silence. He had visited her twice since the day of the luncheon party, and the atmosphere of tension that surrounded her as she gazed mutely into the depths of his gloomy and passionate heart, roused him to so great a state of expectancy that he could bear the meetings no more. He was resolved not to seek her out again till the omens were more propitious. Olivia had seemed to promise him all he longed for, but no word of love had been spoken between them.

On the Friday morning Andreas received a letter addressed in a bold and virile handwriting. The message it contained ran as follows:

"They are all going for an excursion next Sunday. Come and dine with me at eight. Don't bother about evening dress.

"O. M."