Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/506

502 "I am fond of caves."

Then Baron Tolnay made an effort.

"It is more than three hours' walk, Princess."

"I know, but I am going."

"The way is tremendously rough."

"I know, –but I am going."

Only another useless wave. It passed over, leaving no mark on the rock. The resolution had not been an impulse; Princess Tryphosa had no impulses. Every thought with her required to be carefully planted and slowly ripened until it was perfect. It had taken days, even weeks, before she had confessed to herself freely that István Tolnay was deserting her for the sake of the German girl.

That point once established, she recognised the necessity of doing something. After several more days of reflection, she resolved what that something was to be. The principal cause of her uneasiness was those mountain expeditions, so fatally conducive to tête-à-têtes. Having failed to keep István from them, she had at last matured the tremendous idea of joining them herself.

Tolnay's first effort was his last. The Princess's resolutions might take long to ripen; but, once ripened, no power on earth was capable of balking them. Tolnay knew the woman too well – too fatally well – not to be aware of this. After all, it mattered nothing. It was to be regarded merely as an inconvenience – merely as one more stone to be kicked out of his path. Her whole love was an inconvenience; and yet it was characteristic of István that, even when pressed hardest between his new passion and the troublesome consequences of his old one, the wish never once occurred to him that Tryphosa's love should die a natural death, and thus release him. It was only the inconvenient expression of that love to which he objected, not the love itself.

Her announced resolution provoked him; it scarcely disturbed him, and he knew that it should not balk him. Living, as he did, only in the excitement of his present passion, everything outside it dwindled in importance. He was madly in love, and he did not care who saw it. Princess Tryphosa herself must see it sooner or later. Let her see it sooner, then, if she be fool enough to buy the information at the cost of so much personal discomfort.

The others fancied that when the moment of ascent came, and Tryphosa found herself in face of the reality, her resolution would fail. István Tolnay knew better.

This woman hated action and despised exercise; she was terrified of the robbers, she suffered from giddiness and loss of breath; but there was a feeling in her that was stronger than her hatred of action and her contempt of exercise, stronger than her dread of bodily discomfort, stronger than her fear of the robbers: it was her love for István Tolnay.

And so, to the wonder of the world, it came to pass that Princess Tryphosa, who was used to spend her day on a soft-cushioned couch, lying motionless for hours at a time; Princess Tryphosa, whose feet were used to nothing harder than embroidered Turkish slippers; who had never in her life seen the inside of a forest, nor walked up anything steeper than the staircase of a premier, – it came to pass that this marvel of luxurious indolence actually put her high-born feet to the base use of mountain-climbing.

It may sound a small thing to English ears; but many a grander