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 NATIONAL RESEARCH TOMSK POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY

M. Tichý, V.F. Myshkin

PLASMA DIAGNOSTIC BY PROBES

Recommended for publishing as a study aid

by the Editorial Board of Tomsk Polytechnic University

2nd edition

Tomsk Polytechnic University Publishing House

2016
 UDC 533.9.082.7
BBC В333.481.2
Т81

Tichý M.
T81 Plasma diagnostic by probes : study aid / M. Tichý, V.F. Mysh-kin ;
Tomsk Polytechnic University. – 2nd ed. – Tomsk : TPU Publishing House,
2016. – 126 p.

ISBN 978-5-4387-0663-2

Scientific basis of low-temperature plasma probe diagnostics is described in

the textbook. Overview of probe methods of plasma diagnostics and a wide range of
issues in their practical use is shown. Theoretical study of these methods, detailed
description of the design features and the necessary formulas are given. Estimates of
possible errors are made, a variety of tests are described. Using the Langmuir probe
allows to obtain reliable data on the concentration of free electrons with high spatial
and temporal resolution and to obtain estimates of the ratio of the concentrations of
negative ions and free electrons in the plasma.
Designed for students studying in the direction 140800 «Nuclear physics and
technology».

UDC 533.9.082.7
BBC В333.481.2

Reviewers
Leading Researcher of V.E. Zuev Institute of Atmospheric Optics
V.A. Khan

Leading Researcher of V.E. Zuev Institute of Atmospheric Optics

Z.T. Dmitrieva

For the Tomsk University compiled from the cited sources by Milan Tichý
Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Department of
Surface and Plasma Science, V Holešovičkách 2, 180 00 Praha 8, Czech Republic

ISBN 978-5-4387-0663-2 © FSAEI HE TPU, 2015

© Tichý M., Myshkin V.F., 2015
© Design. Tomsk Polytechnic University
Publishing House, 2016
 CONTENTS

FOREWORD................................................................................................... 5
1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................... 8
1.1. Probe shapes and probe types .................................................................. 8
1.2. Measuring the probe characteristic .......................................................... 9
1.3. Probe characteristic and its interpretation ............................................. 14
1.4. The working regimes of the Langmuir probe ........................................ 18
1.5. Advantages and disadvantages
of the Langmuir probe diagnostics method ........................................... 21
2. THE LANGMUIR SINGLE PROBE METHOD .................................. 23
2.1. Theoretical foundations of the Langmuir probe method ....................... 23
2.2.1. Probe current at qνUp ≥ 0 .................................................................. 24
2.2.2. Probe current at qνUp ≤ 0 .................................................................. 25
3. GENERAL THEORIES OF THE CURRENT
TO A LANGMUIR PROBE .................................................................... 28
3.1. Starting system of equations .................................................................. 28
3.2. The „cold ion“ model by Allen, Boyd and Reynolds
(Ti / Tk ≈ 0, spherical probe) ................................................................... 28
4. THE DRUYVESTEYN METHOD FOR ESTIMATION
OF THE ELECTRON ENERGY DISTRIBUTION FUNCTION
(EEDF) ....................................................................................................... 32
5. PROBE DIAGNOSTICS OF ANISOTROPIC PLASMAS ................. 38
6. LANGMUIR PROBE IN THE NON COLLISION-FREE
CONDITIONS (TRANSITION REGIME OF PRESSURES) ............. 45
7. LANGMUIR PROBE IN A MAGNETISED PLASMA ....................... 53
8. SPACE AND TIME RESOLVED
LANGMUIR PROBE METHOD............................................................ 59
8.1. Space resolved Langmuir probe measurements .................................... 59
8.2. Time resolved Langmuir probe measurements ..................................... 59
8.2.1. Time resolved probe measurements in periodically changing
plasmas at ω < ωpi ............................................................................ 62
8.2.2. Probe measurements of time-averaged plasma parameters
at ωpi < ω << ωpe ............................................................................... 62
8.2.3. Time resolved probe measurements in single shot experiments ..... 67
9. PROBE DIAGNOSTIC OF CHEMICALLY ACTIVE PLASMAS ... 68
10. DOUBLE PROBE TECHNIQUE ......................................................... 70
3
11. TRIPLE PROBE TECHNIQUE ........................................................... 73
12. EMISSIVE PROBE ................................................................................ 76
13. SPECIAL PROBES ................................................................................ 83
13.1. Plasma impedance probe ..................................................................... 83
13.2. Plasma oscillation probe ...................................................................... 85
13.3. Ion flux pulsed and RF probe .............................................................. 87
13.4. Hairpin probe ....................................................................................... 92
14. PROBES IN (MAGNETIZED) FUSION-RELATED PLASMAS .... 95
14.1. Langmuir probe in fusion-related plasma ............................................ 96
14.1.1. Rake probe ................................................................................... 96
14.1.2. Poloidal ring of electric and magnetic probes ............................. 98
14.1.3. Langmuir probes in JET divertor ................................................ 98
14.2. Mach probe, Gundestrup probe ........................................................... 99
14.2.1. Mach probe .................................................................................. 99
14.2.2. Gundestrup probe ...................................................................... 101
14.3. Retarding field analyzer ..................................................................... 102
14.4. Ion sensitive probes, Katsumata probe .............................................. 104
14.5. Tunnel probe ...................................................................................... 108
14.6. Ball-pen probe.................................................................................... 109
REFERENCES ............................................................................................ 112

4
 FOREWORD

The Nobel laureate Irving Langmuir made outstanding contributions in

different fields of Physics during the past century. He coined the term plasma
in relation to the physics of partially ionized gases and also invented the
Langmuir probes to measure the electron plasma density ne, the space
potential Vs and the electron temperature kBTe in cold low density plasmas.
In the year 2016 we shall celebrate 90th anniversary of the classical
paper by I. Langmuir and H.M. Mott-Smith describing the theory of
collectors in gaseous discharges [1]. It was not the first article by I. Langmuir
and his colleagues, describing the probe diagnostics, but it summarized the
effort that lasted several years [2‒5]. At that time it was «a new method of
studying electrical discharges through gases at rather low pressures». Since
that time the probes were used at wide range of pressures including the
atmospheric one, in plasma generated by direct current, radio-frequency,
laser beam, electron beam, in tokamaks, in plasmas creating conducting or
non-conducting layers and in many other applications. The original idea
presented by I. Langmuir in [1] was broadened and several new probe
designs were introduced that do not work on the Langmuir probe principle.
Let me, please, use in this foreword for description of the Langmuir probe
method, the exact words used by I. Langmuir in [1]:
«The method consists in the determination of the complete volt-ampere
characteristic of a small auxiliary electrode or collector of standard shape
placed in the path of the discharge, and in the interpretation of this
characteristic according to a new theory. In this way it is found possible to
obtain an accurate value for the potential of the space near the collector, and
much information concerning the nature, velocity and space density of the
ions. ... Our problem is to calculate the current to the electrode contributed by
each kind of ion as a function of the applied potential, in terms of the
assumed velocity distribution functions.
For example, let us consider the collector to be a wire of small diameter,
whose potential is made negative with respect to the region about it. The wire
then repels negative ions and electrons, but attracts positive ions, and so
becomes surrounded by a cylindrical positive «sheath» or region of positive
space charge. This sheath is of such dimensions that the total positive charge
in it equals the negative charge on the wire, so that the field of the wire does
not extend beyond the edge of the sheath. The current taken by the wire
therefore cannot exceed the rate at which ions arrive at the sheath edge in
consequence of their proper motions.
If we suppose the negative potential of the collector to be large
compared with the voltage equivalent of the ion velocities, then the sheath
may be divided roughly into two parts. In the center will be a region in which
5
is concentrated most of the drop of potential between the gas and the
collector, so that in this region there will be present only positive ions and
possibly a few electrons or negative ions which had exceptionally high
velocity. Outside of this is a region in which both negative and positive ions
are present in comparable quantities, but in which the normal conditions
existing in the discharge are modified through the withdrawal of positive ions
by the collector. The two regions merge into each other more or less
gradually in a way depending upon the distribution of velocities among the
ions. In the outer region, as a rough calculation shows, the potential
approaches the space value asymptotically but never reaches it in finite
distance. Actually, therefore, the sheath does not have a sharply defined edge.
Since, however, the whole drop of potential in the outer region is small
compared with the total, it will be convenient to take as sheath boundary the
surface at which the sharp drop of potential begins, and to regard the
distribution of density and of velocity of the ions as known at this surface.
This convention simplifies the discussion, and as we shall see, does not
restrict the validity of the equations derived in the present article.
Accordingly, we shall speak of the sheath as though it had a sharp edge; the
potential at this boundary we shall speak of as the space potential.
We shall further assume that the gas pressure is so low that there are
only a negligible number of collisions in the sheath between ions or electrons
and gas molecules. The ions in the sheath then describe free orbits, some of
which end on the surface of the collector. Now if the sheath has axial
symmetry so that the equipotentials are coaxial circular cylinders, it is found
from simple mechanical principles that the condition for a positive or a
negative ion to reach the collector depends not upon the nature of the field of
force along the whole orbit, but only upon the initial and final potentials and
the initial velocity of the ion on entering the sheath. The total current to the
collector can thus be found by summing the contributions of the ions of
different signs and initial velocities, and this current will be a function of the
drop of potential in the sheath and of the sheath radius only. Another relation
between these three variables can only be found by actually calculating the
distribution of potential in the sheath through the use of Poisson's equation. It
is thus seen that the problem of calculating the volt-ampere characteristic of
the collector in general divides itself into two parts, the first of which is the
purely „mechanical‟ problem outlined above, while the second is a „space
charge‟ problem. From the solution of these two problems there are obtained
two independent equations relating to the three variables just mentioned, and
by elimination of the sheath radius between these two equations a single
equation can be found expressing the current in terms of the potential.»
Well, we see that already I. Langmuir was aware of the fact that the
sheath does not have «... sharply defined edge ...», i.e. that the sheath merges

6
into the undisturbed plasma «... more or less gradually in a way depending
upon the distribution of velocities among the ions ...». In other words that
there exists the «pre-sheath» that accelerates the positive ions to almost the
electron temperature; the fact that has been treated by more than twenty years
later and that is know as «Bohm sheath criterion» [20]. However, to make the
theory simpler, he used the assumption of a sharp sheath edge. I. Langmuir
also used the assumption of a low pressure, i.e. of a negligible number of
collisions of charged particles with neutrals inside the probe sheath.
The fig. 1 shows the characteristics of probes of different form assuming
the distribution of velocities of uniform magnitude, but with directions
distributed at random in space. The
space potential is at the position of the I∞ : I0 Sphere
ordinate axis. Note that the ordinate Cylinder
axis is in this case plotted in linear
scale. In fact, in case of the Maxwellian Sphere Plane
distribution of charged particles Cylinder
energies the figure would look similar, Plane
only the part for the retarding probe
voltages would have the exponential V
form and for the cylindrical probe the
curve for accelerating voltages would Fig. 1. Current to the planar,
be described by a square root, see fig. 2. cylindrical and spherical probe
In other words by plotting the square of assuming distribution of velocities
the electron current versus the probe of uniform magnitude, but with
potential with respect to the space directions distributed at random
(plasma) potential we would obtain the in space [1]
straight line from the slope of which we
could estimate the electron density. I∞ : I0 Sphere
Hence, the so-called I2 vs Vp method
described later in this textbook chapter, Cylinder
is already also postulated in the original Plane
Sphere
I. Langmuir publication [1]. Cylinder
Let us extract from these few Plane
words that I used for the foreword the
general truth, namely that one should V
first look at what the predecessors
achieved before making his/her own Fig. 2. Currents to the planar,
research. It is often surprising, what cylindrical and spherical probe
everything has been done already, and (probe characteristics) assuming
what can serve as a solid basis for Maxwellian distribution of
future work. velocities [1]

7
 1. INTRODUCTION

Diagnostics of plasmas fall roughly into three categories: passive remote

sensing, active noncontact methods, and contact methods. Passive sensing
of incoming radiation is all that is available for plasma astrophysics studying
the Sun or plasma phenomena related to objects beyond the Solar system.
Active noncontact methods are widely applied to geophysical plasmas such
as the ionosphere (radar scattering) and to hot laboratory plasmas (scattering
of electromagnetic radiation or particle beams). Contact methods are applied
to interplanetary, magnetospheric and ionospheric plasmas, and to cold
laboratory plasmas. Among the contact methods, electric probes are without
doubt the most widely used.
The Langmuir probes are just one of the different electric probe
diagnostics that are employed today. In a broader sense, the electric probes
measure the local plasma parameters by using stationary or slow time varying
electric (and/or magnetic) fields to emit or to collect charged particles to or
from the plasma. These measuring techniques still constitute an active field
of research and are particularly well suited for low density cold plasmas, as
low pressure electric discharges, ionospheric and space plasmas.

1.1. Probe shapes and probe types

The measurements with electric probes belong to the oldest as well as to
the most often used procedures of the low-temperature plasma diagnostics.
The method has been developed by Langmuir and his co-workers in the
twenties [1]. Since then it has been subject to many extensions and further
development in order to extend its applicability to more general conditions in
comparison to the one presumed by Langmuir. Such investigations proceeded
continuously and the research on extension of applicability of Langmuir
probe diagnostics continues also in the present time.
The method of the Langmuir probe measurements is based on the
estimation of the current-voltage characteristic ‒ the so-called «probe
characteristic» ‒ of the circuit consisting of two metallic electrodes that are
both immersed into the plasma under study. Two cases are of interest:
• the surface areas of both electrodes being in contact with plasma
differ by several orders of magnitude and
• the surface areas of both electrodes being in contact with plasma are
very small in comparison with the dimensions of the vessel containing
plasma and approximately equal to each other.
Case (a) is called «the single probe method» and case (b) «the double
probe method». Most of this text is devoted, in accordance with the frequency

8
of use of either method, to the single probe method; the double probe method
is discussed in chapter 10.
The Langmuir probe is usually constructed in simple geometric shapes:
spherical probe, cylindrical probe and planar (flat) probe, see fig. 3. The
probe is immersed into the plasma and polarized to the potential ϕp by an
external circuit. This biases the probe to potential U with respect to the local
space plasma potential ϕs, U = ϕ p − ϕs . Then, the drained current for
different probe potentials is monitored and the plasma parameters are
calculated from the voltage ‒ current (IV) characteristic curves.

Fig. 3. Typical shapes of Langmuir probes

When constructing the probe we have to take into account that not only
the active metallic part ‒ the collecting surface of the probe ‒ is small in
comparison with the characteristic dimensions of the plasma vessel. Also the
isolated parts of the probe must fulfil the same condition since often just
these passive parts substantially influence the plasma around the probe.
Apart from the «classic» Langmuir probe there exist many other types
of probes, some of them will be discussed in the part «special probes». Let us
now just give the names of those that are used in low temperature plasma:
emissive probe, plasma oscillation/resonance probe, plasma impedance
probe, ion flux RF probe, hairpin probe, triple probe, ball-pen probe. In the
hot plasma devices there are used, apart from the Langmuir probes
constructed either as a single probe or as a 1D/2D array of probes further the
Mach probe, Gundestrup probe, Katsumata probe, ion sensitive probe, tunnel
probe, ball-pen probe. In these devices the probes can either be mounted
statically or they can be pushed to the hot plasma for a fraction of a second;
these probes are called «reciprocating probes».

1.2. Measuring the probe characteristic

A simple experimental set-up for measurements of probe characteristics
is shown in fig. 4. Apart from the DC high-voltage supply that feeds the glow
discharge and the stabilising resistor Za (the DC supply can also work in the
constant-current mode) the experimental system consists of the following
parts:
9
 1. DC voltage source for compensation of the potential difference
between the reference electrode (anode) and the probe.
2. Sawtooth- or staircase-like voltage generator.
3. Current measuring instrument.
4. Computer that stores the measured current and voltage data, controls
the measurement procedure and processes the acquired data.
The scheme in fig. 4 is, of course,
Za simplified. In practical measurements,
‒U especially when the probe is small, plasma
4 less dense or the probe current is reduced by
a magnetic field, it is necessary to measure
3 probe currents that are substantially lower
than a microampere. Nowadays there are
available so-called source/measure units
2
(SMUs) that can generate voltages up to
around 200 V and measure currents down to
1 picoamperes, e.g. by Keithley series 24xx
or Keysight (formerly Agilent) series
B2900A. However, these elaborate
Fig. 4. Typical probe circuit: instruments have the disadvantage that
1 ‒ DC bias voltage; 2 ‒ sawtooth their output cannot float at higher voltage,
(staircase) Up generator; 3 ‒ current e.g. the Keysight B2901A’s output can
voltage converter; 4 ‒ Ip-Up data
acquisition (computer)
float only up to the voltage 210 volts.
This feature of the SMU’s is given mostly
by the fact that they are computer-controlled, i.e. that their body and part of
their electronics has to be grounded. The floating part of the SMU’s
electronic can therefore bear only a limited voltage for the experiments where
it is expected higher plasma potential than 200 volts, e.g. in thermionic
vacuum arc systems [6], it is necessary to construct the special probe
measuring system.
In most cases it is sufficient, in order to let the probe measuring circuit
float at higher voltage, to separate the current measuring circuit from the
computer control circuit using either isolation amplifiers, see e.g. [152]
or opto-coupling of the computer control digital signals, see e.g. [173].
Moreover, probe circuit constructed in this manner increases the signal-to-
noise ratio, since in such a way the ground of the computer where the noise
level is comparatively high due to large currents necessary to power the
processor and the adjacent chipsets is galvanically isolated from the probe
current measuring circuit.
Example of such a probe circuit is shown in fig. 5. The computer
generates the bias voltage using a computer card provided by a D/A
10
converter. However, the voltage generated by a computer card is usually only
in the range of ±5 or ±10 V. For probe characteristic in an active plasma
usually a voltage by order of magnitude greater is needed. In order to assess
the voltage range one has to consider that it depends on the electron
temperature. The floating potential in an argon discharge is roughly 5 times
the electron temperature (expressed in volts) apart from the space/plasma
potential towards the more negative values, and in order to measure the ion
saturation current, further voltage approximately 10 times the electron
temperature is needed; similarly for measuring the electron saturation current.
For instance in argon discharge with electron temperature equal 2 eV the
range will be 35 × 2 = 70 volts. The manual adjustment of the range indicated
in the upper part of fig. 5 enables the voltage range of the probe bias to be
estimated experimentally.

Fig. 5. Probe circuit using isolation amplifiers

The isolation amplifiers serve for isolating the measuring ground from
the computer ground. For amplification of the bias voltage to the required
level the high-voltage operational amplifier is used, e.g. APEX PA141 or
similar. These types of operational amplifiers are capable to be powered by
a voltage up to ±200 V and deliver the current in the amperes range. The
probe current is converted to voltage using the current-voltage converter with
the operational amplifier. The A/D converter in the computer card measures
the voltage proportional to the probe current as well as the voltage
proportional to the probe bias (the computer card usually has at least two
analog input channels). It is necessary to note that the galvanically isolated
part of the probe circuit requires also a separated power supply; that is
usually provided by batteries or larger capacitors.

11
 Two principles of the isolation amplifiers are depicted in fig. 7 and
fig. 6 [7]. The circuit in fig. 5 uses the optical coupling elements for
separation of the analog signal. Since such an element is in principle a non-
linear device, two opto-couplers are used, one in the negative feedback of one
operational amplifier and the other in the role of the input resistor of an other
operational amplifier. In that manner the non-linearity is cancelled and the
transfer characteristic of the isolation amplifier is (fairly) linear. Example of
such an isolation amplifier is ISO100 by Burr-Brown. Advantage of this type
of isolation amplifier consists in the fact that they do not need any additional
frequency that would increase to noise level of the probe current measuring
circuit. The disadvantage is that they cannot be constructed for higher
isolation voltage; the ISO100 is constructed for maximum 750 volts
continuous isolation voltage.

Fig. 6. Principle of the isolation amplifier with telemetry coupling

Fig. 7. Principle of the isolation amplifier with optical coupling

12
 The circuit in fig. 6 uses the high-frequency technique (telemetry
technique): the analog signal is modulated on the carrier frequency, the
modulated carrier is transmitted to the grounded part of the device using
typically a small capacitor. In the contrary to the analog optical coupling there is
an oscillator and therefore the separate power supply can isolation amplifier is
ISO120/121 by Texas Instruments (formerly Burr-Brown). On the contrary to
optically-isolated amplifiers they can withstand the 3500 volts RMS, i.e. almost
5 kV DC isolation voltage. The modulation frequency, nominally 500 kHz,
penetrates, however, to the measured signal, and in order to minimize this
distortion bypassing of the power supply by capacitors close to the device is
recommended.
Once the hardware for the probe measurement has been set up, it is vital
to decide upon the way how the probe characteristic is to be measured. Since
the usual next step after having the probe characteristic data is performing its
first or the second derivative, the signal-to noise ratio of the probe data plays
the decisive role in later interpreting them with the aim at getting the plasma
parameters. The following conditions have to be determined in order to
decide upon the suitable way of collecting the probe characteristic data:
• Determine whether the plasma under study is stable or unstable. If
plasma is unstable, determine whether the instabilities are periodic or
stochastic. In case of periodic instabilities the time-resolved measurements
are possible (within the limits given by the time response of the probe). In
case of stochastic instabilities only time-averaged measurements are possible.
The effect of fluctuations on the probe characteristic is described in more
detail in the section on RF generated plasma.
• Consider data averaging. It is a fact known from the signal
processing theory that when averaging the data n-times (i.e. taking the
average from n samples) the signal-to-noise ratio increases as a square root of
n. In some textbooks that is called «integrating» the signal even if the
averaging is made digitally. Averaging of the probe characteristic data needs
time; therefore the experimenter has to decide what time one can devote to
data averaging in view of the time necessary for the acquisition of the whole
probe characteristic. The top commercially available instruments use the
sampling frequency around 100 MHz in order to average many samples in
a comparatively short time.
• If possible, repeat measurements of the probe characteristic several
times at the same experimental conditions. That enables you to assess the
reproducibility of the measurements. In case that a hysteresis on the probe
characteristic is discovered, proper measures have to be taken in order to
remove the hysteresis.

13
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was careful to render the respect of her presence, though they
meant no more to her than the buzzing of the bees in the laburnum
and acacia flowers.
The tedious days passed monotonous and alike.
For the first time in her life she submitted to ennui without revolt;
and if in the dewy silent evenings of the early summer she went
down to the steps which overlooked the lake, and leaned there, and
drew in the breath of the mountain air with a new invigorating sense
of freedom from a burden which had for ever galled her, though she
had borne it so lightly, no one was offended by that exhilaration, for
no one was witness of it; even as no one, either, ever knew how in
such evening musings as these an angry cloud would come upon her
face and an impatient regret stir at her heart as she thought—why
had not Othmar had patience?
She remembered him with a restless and unwilling tenderness.
The knowledge of how his name had escaped her to Ezarhédine was
constantly present to her mind, and the recollection fretted and
irritated her with all the mortification of a strong pride indignant at
its own self-betrayal. Ezarhédine would, no doubt, relate the story of
her momentary weakness to her friends and his. She had no belief in
the discretion of men; they had their views and principles of honour,
no doubt, but she had never known these remain superior to the
impulses of their indiscretion or their inquisitiveness; they were
always talkative as gossips round a market fountain, curious as
children before a case of unpacked toys.
 CHAPTER XLIX.
Whilst she was thus withdrawn from the world in the observance if
not in the regrets of mourning, Othmar left Paris for the seclusion of
the château of Amyôt.
The summer and the autumn months seemed to both him and
Yseulte long and cruel; all the beauty of Amyôt in the blossoming
hours could not make their life there happy to either of them. Since
the death of Napraxine a great constraint had come between them.
Each of them was sensible of thoughts and of emotions which
neither would, or could, confide in the other.
Friederich Othmar came and went between Paris and the great
Renaissance château, but he was powerless to alter what he
deplored. There was not even any definite thing of which he could
speak. There was no fault ever to be found in the gentleness and
courtesy of Othmar to his wife; and there was no alteration in the
deference and the docility which she always showed to him. Only
there was something wanting: there was no spontaneity; there was
no sympathy; there was none of that unspoken gladness which
exhales from all real happiness as its fragrance from the rose. The
wise old man said to himself, impatient and regretful, ‘Why did
Napraxine die? But for that, time would have been her friend. He
would have grown used to her sweet presence, and habit would
have brought content. But now!——’
Now, he knew that with every day which dawned, with every night
which fell, Othmar brooded, night and day, over his lost future,
destroyed by his own rash haste.
All his mind was with Nadine Napraxine, and it fretted him at times
almost beyond endurance that he could see her and hear of her no
more, know no more of her than all her world knew, or than the
chronicles of the hour stated for public information. It seemed to
him as it did to her, as if the strangest silence had fallen on the
earth. He loved her infinitely more than he had ever done, intense
and unscrupulous as had been the passion which she had aroused in
him. She was entirely free; and he—he who had adored her—dared
not even enter her antechamber or go where he could see her
shadow fall upon the ground she trod!
The silence and the self-effacement of Yseulte were the most
dangerous anodynes which he could have had. He dreamed his life
away in visions of joys which never could be his, and the resignation
of his young companion allowed him to dream on unroused.
Friederich Othmar saw his increasing preoccupation, his growing
love of solitude, his impatience when he was recalled by force to the
things of actual life, and he could have gnashed his teeth with rage
and sorrow.
‘He will never live out his years away from his sorceress,’ he thought;
‘and when they meet again, she will do what she chooses with him.
If she like to make him the ridicule of Europe, he will accept his fate
and deem it heaven. Whilst Yseulte—Yseulte,—before she is twenty,
will be widowed in fact and left to the consolation of some little
child, plucking the daisies on the sward here at her feet.’
To Friederich Othmar love had ever seemed the most puerile of
delusions, the most illogical of all human fallacies, but now it took a
deadlier shape before him, and he began to comprehend why poets
—interpreters of human madness as they were—had likened it to the
witch’s mandrake, to the devouring sea, to the flame which no
power can quench, to all things terrible, irresistible, and deadly as
death.
Occasionally an impulse came to Yseulte to tell everything to
Melville, who was not her confessor, but who had known all her
people so well in their days of trial and adversity; but her pride
repressed the instinct of confidence. Besides, she thought drearily,
she knew well all that Melville would answer—the only reply, indeed,
which would be possible to him in such a case—he would exhort her
to patience, to hope, to trust in heaven and in her husband. The
originality of his character would not be able to escape from the
platitudes of custom; he would only say to her what she could say to
herself, ‘Be courageous and be calm; time often heals all woes.’
Sometimes, too, she thought wistfully that if she bore a living child
perhaps she would reach some higher place in her husband’s heart.
She had heard it often said that children formed a tie between those
who were even indifferent to each other. At least—at least, she
reflected, and strove to solace herself with this hope,—as the mother
of a living child of his, she would be something in his house more
than a mere form to wear his jewels and receive his indifferent
caresses. Perhaps, she thought, if her eyes looked up at him from
his child’s face, he might grow to care for her a little. At least she
would be something to him that Nadine Napraxine was not. It was a
desolate kind of consolation to be the only one within reach of a girl
scarce eighteen years old; a sadly forlorn and wistful hope; but it
was something to sustain her in the midst of her perfect isolation of
thought and suffering, and it prevented her abandonment to despair.
She had one of those natures to which tenderness is more natural
than passion; her character was of that gentle and serious kind
which enables a woman to endure the desertion of her lover if the
arms of a child are about her. And so she awaited the future
patiently, without much trust in its mercies, yet not without courage
and not wholly without hope.
‘She looks very ill,’ said the most observant of all her friends,
Friederich Othmar, more than once to her husband. But Othmar
replied that it was only the state of her health, and the elder man
protested in vain.
‘You think a girl of those years can be satisfied with bearing your
children and being left alone in beautiful houses as a cardinal bird is
shut up in a gilded cage?’ he said irritably.
‘She is certainly not left alone,’ replied Othmar with annoyance; ‘and
I believe that she is precisely of that docile and religious
temperament which will find the greatest enjoyment of existence in
maternity. There are women formed for that kind of self-sacrifice
beyond all others. She is one of them.’
‘It is not the only sacrifice to which she is condemned!’ muttered
Friederich Othmar, but he feared to do more harm than good if he
explained himself more clearly.
‘Has she been complaining to you?’ asked her husband with
increasing anger.
‘She would never complain,’ returned his uncle positively. ‘Besides,
my dear Otho, whatever we may all think of you, to her you are a
demi-god, the incarnation of all mortal and immortal excellences.
She would as soon strike the silver Christ that hangs over her bed as
consent to see a flaw in your perfections!’
Othmar only replied by an impatient gesture.
Both irritation and self-reproach were aroused in him, but they did
no more than disquiet and annoy him. He saw no means by which
he could be kinder, or gentler, or more generous, to Yseulte than he
was already. Love was not his to command. He could not help it if
day by day an unsatisfied passion gnawed in him for an absent
woman, and if day by day the fair face of his young wife receded
farther and farther from him into the shadowy distance of a
complete indifference. All which he could compel himself to render,—
consideration, deference, kindness, attention,—all these he poured
out upon Yseulte with the utmost liberality. What was missing was
not in his power to give. He felt with a shudder that the longer time
went on, the more their lives passed together, the greater would
grow the coldness he felt for her. He recognised all her sweetness
and grace; he was not ungrateful for the affection she bore him; he
admired the many delicate beauties of her mind and character. But
she was nothing to him; she never would have the power to quicken
his pulses by one second. She was all that purity, honour, and
spirituality of thought could make her; but she had no place in his
heart. He had even to struggle hard with himself at times not to let
the sense of her perpetual presence there become almost an offence
to him. He was a generous man, and he had always striven to be
just, but he knew that he failed to be just to her because of the fret
and fever of his own thoughts, which left him no peace, but kept
repeating for ever the same burden: ‘The woman you love is free
now. O fool! O fool!’
He believed that he altogether concealed all that he felt from
Yseulte. He did not dream that she had divined his secret. Her
manner, which had never been demonstrative, but had been always
marked by that mixture of shyness and of stateliness which were
most natural to her, was not one which displayed the changes of
every emotion; she had been reared in too perpetual a sense that it
was both low and coarse to show the inner feelings of the heart by
abrupt and transparent signs of emotion, and the calm high breeding
of her habitual tone was as a mask, though a most innocent one,
and hid alike her sorrow, her fear, her jealous terrors, and her wistful
tenderness.
‘I must never trouble him,’ she said to herself again and again. She
knew that she could not take away from him the burden of her life;
that she could not release him from the vows he had vowed to her;
but she did her uttermost to efface herself otherwise. In these
tranquil summer months no one saw more amiss with her than a
certain melancholy and lassitude, which were attributed to the state
of her health. She was often alone, by choice, in the great gardens
and the forest nooks of the park, and those poor little timid verses in
which her soul found some kind of utterance were the only
confidants of her grief and pain. They were poor things, she knew,
but her heart spoke in them with involuntary, though feeble and
halting, speech. They did her some little good. She had no mother or
friend to whom she could say what she suffered, and from a priest
she shrank; her woes—the mental woes of neglected love, the
physical woes of approaching parturition—could not be told to any
man.
‘No one has wanted me all my life!’ she thought one day, as she sat
in the gardens of Amyôt, whilst her eyes filled with blinding tears.
Her father had never heeded her; her grandmother had cared for
her, indeed, but had willed her budding life to the cloister, as a thing
for which there was no place amidst the love and the laughter of the
earth. She had been dependent, undesired, on her cousin’s charity,
and to her husband she was as little as the does that couched at
noon under his forest trees. No one had ever wanted her! The
knowledge lay on her young life as a stone lies on the bird which it
has killed. Through the hot mist of her tears she gazed wistfully at
the long lines of the majestic house which only a year before had
been to her the centre of such perfect happiness. And even that
happiness he had never shared!
The hush of the golden noon-day was about her, and the perfume of
innumerable roses filled the air.
‘My little child will want me,’ she thought, with a throb of hope at her
heart.
After a little while she rose and walked towards the house. Othmar,
who had come out from his library on to the terrace, saw her in the
distance, and descended the steps to meet her.
‘Do not tire yourself, my dear,’ he said as he offered her his arm.
His very gentleness almost hurt her more than unkindness or
discourtesy would have done. She seemed to see in it how he
strove, by all the tenderness of outward ceremonial, to atone for the
absence of all tenderness of the heart,—to pay so liberally in silver
because he had no gold to give.
She had brushed her tears away before she had risen to return to
the house; her features were calm, as usual, and if their expression
was grave, that was not new with her. She had looked almost as
much so on that first night when he had seen her sitting alone in the
drawing-rooms of Millo.
As she walked beside him through the aisles of flowers in the
sunshine of the brilliant noonday, she said, with her eyes lowered
and her voice very low:
‘If—if—I should die this time, would you remember always how
much I have felt all your goodness to me? I cannot say all I feel—
well—but I hope you would always believe how grateful I had been
—when you should think of me at all.’
Othmar was touched and startled by the words.
‘My dear child, do not speak so. Pray do not speak so,’ he said, with
real emotion. ‘Send away such cruel thoughts. You must live long,
and see your children’s children running amidst these roses. You are
hardly more than a child yourself in years even yet. And as for
gratitude—that is not a word between us; what is mine is yours.’
‘I want you to be sure of it—to never doubt it—if I die,’ she said, in
the same low, measured voice. ‘I am always grateful.’
Then she withdrew her hand from his arm, and sat down for a
moment on one of the marble seats beneath the great terrace. She
looked over the wide sunlit landscape, the radiant gardens, the dark
masses of the forests, the green plains and shining river far beyond.
Her heart was full; words sprang to her lips, fraught with all the
varying emotions of the past months. She longed to cry out to him,
‘Ah, yes! You do not love me, I know!—I know! But is there nothing
I could do? I would give my life, my soul——.’
But timidity and pride both held her mute. The moment passed; he
never saw, as he might have seen, into her innocent heart if she had
spoken.
The late autumn came, and her child was born as the first red leaves
were blown upon the wind. But, enfeebled by the distress of her
mind during so many months before its birth, it only breathed a little
while the air of earth, then sank into death as a snowdrop sinks
faded in the snow. The solace which she had looked to as a staff of
comfort and of hope broke in two like a plucked reed.
An intense melancholy closed in upon her, from which no effort could
rouse her. She said little; but when she rose from her bed and
resumed her daily life, all alone in her heart was the one great grief
which had now no hope to lighten it.
They strove to make her remember how young she was, what
unspent years yet lay to her account, what undreamed-of treasuries
of new happiness were yet untouched by her; but nothing availed to
give her any consolation.
The pale sunshine of the early winter found her white and chilled as
itself. For she had a deeper pang than ever in her heart since she
said ever to herself in her solitary grief: ‘He does not care; he is
good, he is gentle, he is compassionate; but he does not care.’
All her young life writhed in secret beneath that kindness which was
only pitiful, that tenderness which was only conventional.
‘I am nothing in his life,’ she thought with tenfold bitterness.
‘Nothing;—nothing;—nothing! Even for my child’s death he does not
really care!’
A woman far away, unseen, almost unheard of, was sole mistress of
his existence. With all the terrible insight which a love forsaken and
solitary possesses into the secrets of the life to which it clings, she
read the thoughts and the emotions of Othmar as though they were
written on some open page lit by a strong lamp. Although never a
word of self-betrayal escaped him, never more than an involuntary
gesture of lassitude or an unconscious sigh, she yet knew how
utterly one recollection and one desire alone reigned over him and
dominated him. She was no more a child, but was a woman
humiliated, wounded, isolated, who suffered far the more because
her wounds were not those which she could show, her humiliation
was not such as she could reveal, and her isolation was one of the
spirit, and not of the body.
‘You must not mourn as those who have no hope,’ said Melville to
her, believing that her continued melancholy was due to the loss of
her offspring. ‘You are so young; you will have many other children;
all kinds of joy will return to you, as their foliage will return to these
leafless trees. Be grateful, my dear, to heaven for all the mercies
which abide with you.’
She said nothing; but she turned her eyes on him one moment with
an expression so heart-broken and weary that he was startled and
alarmed.
‘What grief can she have that we know not?’ he marvelled. ‘Othmar
does not leave her; and he is the last man on earth to be cruel or
even ungentle to a woman.’
For a moment he was tempted to refer his doubts to her husband;
but, on reflection, he dared not. He had a sensitive fear of being
deemed meddlesome, as priests so often are called; and it was
difficult to make to Othmar—a very sensitive man, and at all times
uncommunicative—so strange an accusation as would seem to lie in
saying to him, ‘The companion of your life is unhappy: what have
you done?’
The winter in the country of the Orléannais grew very cold and
damp; the rivers flooded many parts of the plains, and the end of
the year menaced violent storms and widespread floods. Her
physicians begged Yseulte to go elsewhere, and recommended a
southern air; they spoke of S. Pharamond, and Othmar, though
vaguely reluctant to go thither, consented, for he had no valid
reason of refusal to give. To Yseulte herself any movement appeared
indifferent; to whatever was proposed she always assented
passively; the acquiescence of one whom no trifles or accidents of
fate have power to hurt, and which belongs alike to perfect
happiness and absolute despair.
Othmar would have given ten years of his life to have been able to
go away by himself, to wander north, south, east, or west in solitary
desolation, to be alone with his undying desires, and away from the
innocent presence of a creature whom he knew that he wronged by
every thought with which he rose at daybreak and lay down at night.
Yseulte had never been more to him than a sweet and tender-
hearted child, whose personal beauties had for a little while beguiled
him into the semblance of a faint passion, into a momentary semi-
oblivion, always imperfect and evanescent. But now, quiet as she
was, and careful as she was never to betray herself, nevertheless a
constant reproach seemed to look at him from her eyes, and her
continual vicinity seemed as continual a rebuke. He was not a man,
as many are, who could lightly neglect or deceive a woman; he was
incapable of the half-unconscious cruelty with which many men,
when their fancy has passed, leave the object of it in pitiable
solitude, to console herself as best she can; he had too much
sensitiveness and too much sense of chivalrous obligation to deny,
even to his own reflections, the claims which his wife had on him for
sympathy and affection. That he could not give them to her, because
all his heart and soul and mind were with another woman, burdened
him with a perpetual sense of injustice and offence done to her. He
had sought her; he had taken her life voluntarily into his; he knew
that it would be a treachery and a baseness to fail in his duty
towards her. For that very reason her daily presence galled him
almost beyond endurance, and, though he forced himself to remain
beside her and to preserve to her every outward semblance of
regard, his whole life chafed and rebelled, as the horse frets which is
tied in stall to its manger, whilst all its longing is for the liberty of the
pasture and the air.
If Melville had followed his impulse and said to him, ‘What fault can
there be in her?’ he would have answered truthfully, ‘None: all the
fault is my own;’ and he would have thought in secret: ‘She has that
involuntary fault which is the cruellest of all others: she is not the
woman I love!’
He had to put strong constraint upon himself not to shrink from the
sound of her gentle voice, not to avoid the glance of her wistful
eyes; he was afraid that she should read the truth of his own utter
indifference in his regard; he felt with horror of himself that it was
even growing something greater, something worse, than mere
indifference; that soon, do what he would, he would be only able to
see in her the barrier betwixt himself and the fate he coveted.
‘Good God! what miserable creatures we are!’ he thought. ‘I meant,
as honestly as a man could ever mean anything, to make that poor
child’s days as perfect in happiness as mortal life can be, and all I
have actually done is to sacrifice uselessly both her and myself!
Heaven send that she may never find it out herself!’
He was far from suspecting that she had already discovered the
truth. All the fine prescience, the quickness at reading trivial signs
and forming from them far-reaching conclusions, which love lends to
the dullest were absent from him, because love itself was absent.
Her pride gave her a sure mask, and he had not the lover’s impulse
which looks for the face beneath.
Their lives outwardly passed in apparent unison and sympathy. He
seldom left her save when any urgent matter took him for a brief
space to Paris or some other European capital, and the days passed
as evenly and unmarked by any event at the château of S.
Pharamond as at that of Amyôt. People of a conspicuous position
can seldom enjoy solitude, and the demands of society provide them
with a refuge from themselves if embarrassment has forced them to
need one. Othmar, who had at no time been willing to open the
doors of his house to the world, now became almost solicitous to
have the world about him. It spared him that solitude à deux which,
so exquisite to the lover and to the beloved, is so intolerable to the
man who knows that he is loved but has no feeling to bestow in
answer. Throughout the early winter months they were seldom or
never alone. Yseulte said nothing when he urged her to surround
herself with people, but obeyed with a sinking heart. She was very
proud; she remained tranquil and gentle in manner to him and to
everyone, and, if she were at times more pensive than suited her
years or her world, it was attributed by all who knew her to the loss
of her child. She grew thin and white, and was always very grave;
but she had so admirable a courtesy, so patient a smile for all, that
not a soul ever dreamed her heart was breaking in her breast.
Sometimes when she was quite alone she wandered up the hill-side
beneath the olive trees to the bastide of Nicole Sandroz, and sat
amidst the blossoming violets, the tufts of hepaticas, with a strange
dull wonder in her at herself. Could it be only two years ago since
she had seen Othmar coming in the dusk beneath the silvery boughs
and had learned on the morrow that he had asked her hand in
marriage?
Nicole watched her wistfully, but she, too, who had lost her petiot in
the days of her youth, believed that the melancholy which she saw
in her darling was due to the death of her offspring. She strove, in
ruder words, but in the same sense, to console her as Melville had
done. Yseulte smiled gently, thanked her, and said nothing. What
was the use, she mused, of their speaking to her of the future? The
future, whatever else it brought, would only take the heart and the
thoughts of her husband farther and farther from her. She knew still
but little of the world, but she knew enough to be conscious that the
woman who fails in the early hours of her marriage to make her
husband her lover will never in the years to come find him aught
except a stranger. All the sensitive hauteur of her nature shrank from
the caresses which she knew were only inspired by a sense of pity or
of duty. She drew herself more and more coldly away from him,
whilst yet the mere sound of his voice in the distance made all her
being thrill and tremble. And he was too grateful for the relief to
seek to resist her alienation.
He did not guess, because he did not care to guess, that she loved
him so intensely that she would stand hidden for hours merely to
see him pass through the gardens or ascend the sea stairs of the
little quay. Her timidity had always veiled from him the intensity of
her affections, and now her pride had drawn a double screen
between them.
‘He only pitied me then!’ she thought, as she sat amongst the violets
at Nicole’s flower farm. ‘He only pities me now!’
Pity seemed to this daughter of a great race the last of insult, the
obole thrown to the beggar which brands him as beggar for
evermore.
‘I was hungered, and he gave me bread; I was homeless, and he
sheltered me!’ she said, in the agony of her heart. ‘And I—I thought
that love!’
 CHAPTER L.
With the turn of the year and the springing of the crocuses her
cousins had come to Millo. When she was in their presence she was
more careful than at any other time that no one should see in her
any pain which could be construed by them into a reproach against
Othmar.
‘She grows proud and cold,’ said the Duchesse. ‘The women of her
blood have always been like that—religious and austere. It is a pity.
It will age her before her time; and it is not at all liked in the world
nowadays—save just at Lent.’
Blanchette, with her keen mysotis-coloured eyes, saw farther than
her mother saw. She did not dare to tease her cousin, or to banter
her, but she looked sometimes with curiosity and wonder in her face.
One day, in a softer mood than was usual with her, she came over
the gardens from Millo and found her way to her cousin. Blanchette
liked to be welcome at S. Pharamond; her shrewd little senses smelt
the fragrance in all wealth which dogs find in the truffle; she was
always asking for things and getting them, and though she was
afraid of Othmar as far as she could be of anyone, she retained
amongst her respect for Yseulte’s position her derision for what she
termed her romanticism, her Puritanism, and her habitual ignorance
of how to extract the honey of self-indulgence from the flowers of
pleasure. But Blanchette had all the wisdom of the world in her little
fair, curly head, and though at times her malicious impulses
conquered her judgment, she usually repressed them out of
reverence for the many good gifts which fell to her from her cousin’s
hands, and those instincts of ‘modernity’ which forced her to worship
where so much riches were.
She came into the garden salon this day, the one where Melville had
once said to Othmar that to make a home was in the power of any
man not a priest. Her eyes were watchful and her manner
important; but Yseulte, to whom the child’s presence was always
irksome, though her gratitude to their mother forced her always to
receive the little sisters with apparent willingness, had not
observation enough, or thought enough of her, to notice those signs.
She was alone; it was two hours after the noon breakfast; Othmar
was away, she knew not where; he had gone out early in the
forenoon. She was lost in the weariness of those thoughts which
occupied her unceasingly, when the pretty gay figure of the child
tripped up to her side, and the thin high voice of her began its
endless chatter.
‘They were talking about you yesterday after the déjeuner,’ she said,
after her discursive gossip had embraced every subject and person
then of interest to her, pecking at each one of them furtively,
petulantly, as a well-fed mouse pecks at crumbs of cake. ‘They were
saying how beautiful you were; even mamma said that, and they all
agreed that if only you were not so grave, so cold, so almost stiff,
nobody would be admired more than you. But men think you do not
care, so they do not care. It is true,’ added Blanchette, studying the
face of her cousin out of the corner of her eye, ‘it is true that the
Princess Napraxine, whom they are always so mad about, is just as
indifferent too. But then it is another kind of indifference—hers. She
is always provoking them with it, on purpose. You go through a
room as if you were saying a paternoster under your breath. It is a
great difference——’
‘It is, no doubt, a great difference,’ said Yseulte, with more bitterness
than she was aware of; the idle words struck at the hidden wound
within her. The difference was vast indeed between herself and the
woman whom her husband loved!
Blanchette watched her sharply, herself sitting on a stool at her feet.
‘Do you know,’ she said, pulling the ears of Yseulte’s great dog, ‘that
she is coming—indeed, I think, is here? I heard them say so
yesterday. It seems that the Prince bought that little villa and gave it
to her—La Jacquemerille—when they were here two years ago. She
is very rich, you know. Her husband has left her such immense
properties, and then I think she had a great deal of money all of her
own, before his death, from some distant relative, who left it to her
because she did not want it; it is always like that.’
Yseulte rose abruptly. Blanchette could not see her face, but she saw
her left hand, which trembled.
As far as the child liked anyone, she was attached to her cousin;
since her marriage Yseulte had been extremely generous and kind to
her, and the selfish little heart of Blanchette had been won, as far as
ever it could be won, by its affections which were only another form
of selfishness. She had been unable to resist the temptation of
telling her news, and saying what was unkind; and yet in her way
she was compassionate.
‘Why are you so very still and grave?’ she said now after a pause.
‘They say it is because the child died, but that cannot be it; it is
nonsense; you would not care like that. Do you know now what I
think? Do not be angry. I think that you are so unhappy because—
because—now Prince Napraxine is dead, you fancy that she would
have been his wife if you had not been here!’
‘Silence!’ said Yseulte, with imperative command. Her face grew
scarlet under the inquisitive, searching gaze of the child. She
suffered an intolerable humiliation beneath that impertinent and
unerring examination which darted straight into her carefully-
treasured secret, and dragged it out into the light of day.
‘Ah!’ said Blanchette, with what was, for her, almost regret and
almost sympathy, ‘ah, I was sure of it! I have always been sorry that
I said anything to you that day. But why do you care? If I were you,
I should not care. What does it matter what he wishes? Men always
wish for what they cannot get; I have heard that said a hundred and
a thousand times. And you are his wife, and you have all the houses,
and all the jewels, and all the horses; and all the millions; and as he
is always thinking of her, so people say, he will not mind what you
do. You may amuse yourself just as you like. If I were you, I should
go and play at the tables.’
‘Silence! You are insolent; you hurt me; you offend me,’ said Yseulte,
with greater passion than she had ever yielded to in all her life. All
the coarse consolations which the world would have given her,
repeated and exaggerated on the worldly-wise lips of Blanchette,
seemed to her the most horrible parody of her own sacred and
intolerable woe, so carefully buried, as she thought, from any human
eye.
‘It is true,’ said the child, offended and sullen. ‘Everyone knew he
never loved you; he always loved her. Even in Paris last year——. But
what does it matter? You have got everything you can want——’
But Yseulte had left her standing alone in the golden-coloured
drawing-room of S. Pharamond, with the irises and roses so gaily
broidered on the panels of plush.
Blanchette shrugged her shoulders as she glanced round the room.
‘What idiots are these sensitives!’ she thought, with wondering
contempt. ‘What can it matter? She has all the millions——’
The mind of the little daughter of the latter half of the nineteenth
century could go no farther than that.
She had all the millions!
She had meant, quite sincerely, to give sympathy and consolation,
but she could not help fashioning both in her own likeness.
Yseulte, with a feverish instinct to reach solitude and the open air,
left her tormentor within the house, and hastily covering herself,
passed out into the gardens of S. Pharamond, and walked farther
and faster than her physical strength, which had not been great
since the birth of her child, was well fitted to bear. She longed
thirstily for the grey skies and the moist air of Faïel, for the cold
dusky seas of the north-west and the dim far-stretching lands. The
light, the buoyancy, the glitter, the dry clear atmosphere of those
southern shores, oppressed her and fevered her. If she had not
altogether lost the habit of confidence in her husband, she would
have said to him, ‘I sicken of all this drought and cloying sweetness.
Let me go where the west wind blows; where the northern billows
roll; where it is cold, and dusk, and green, and full of shadows;
where it does not mock one’s pain with light and laughter!’
But she had lost that habit utterly: she never spoke of anything she
felt or wished; she accepted all the days of her life as they came to
her.
‘I have nothing of my own,’ she thought; ‘I have no right to wish for
anything.’
He had made this place hers; he always spoke of it as hers; it was,
indeed, her own inalienably; but she did not feel it to be so. It was
only a part of his wide charity to her—the charity which she had
thought was love.
She walked far, she scarcely knew herself where, taking her way
mechanically through the grounds and into the fields and orange
woods adjoining them, following the windings of the paths which
wound upward between the great gnarled trunks of olives and
beneath their hoary branches. As she ascended under the forest of
olives, which was part of the lands of S. Pharamond, she could see
below her a broad hunting road, cut in old times by the Maison de
Savoie, neglected by the Commune, but kept in preservation by
Othmar himself. She heard a sound of horses’ hoofs, and
instinctively looked down; between the network of olive boughs she
saw a low carriage, drawn by three black ponies abreast, and
harnessed in the Russian manner, their abundant manes streaming
on the wind as they dashed headlong down the steep incline. They
were followed by two outriders in liveries of deep mourning.
The woman who drove them looked upward, and made a slight
salutation with a smile.
It was Nadine Napraxine.
In another instant the turn of the road hid them from sight, and the
beat of the galloping hoofs was lost in the sound of a little torrent
which fell down through the red bare rocks above, and fed with its
moisture the beds of violets beneath the olives.
 CHAPTER LI.
That night there was a concert at Millo. It was the fifth week of
Lent: nothing was possible but a musical party. There were famous
musicians and equally famous singers; the gardens were illumined,
and the whole arrangements had that charm and novelty which
Madame de Vannes knew so well how to give to all she did. But the
evening was chiefly noticeable for the first appearance in the world,
since her husband’s death, of the Princess Napraxine. She came late,
as she always came everywhere; she still wore black; there was no
relief to it anywhere, except that given by the dazzling whiteness of
her great pearls and of her beautiful skin. The contour of her throat
and bosom, the exceeding beauty of her arms, had never been seen
in such marked perfection as in that contrast with the sombre robe
she wore, sleeveless, and fastened on each shoulder only with a
clasp of pearls. One unanimous chorus of admiration ran from mouth
to mouth as she entered.
The tragedy of her husband’s death had left no trace on her. Her
smile had its old ironical insouciance, her lips their rich warm rose-
colour, her eyes their lustrous languor; abstinence from all the
fatigues of society, and the fresh air of the country life in which she
had passed the tedious months of her seclusion, had given her all
the vivifying forces of health without destroying that look of fragility
and languor which were her most potent charms.
‘Poor Napraxine!’ thought Melville as he looked at her; but he was
the only one there who remembered the dead man.
Neither Othmar nor his wife was present there that night.
Both feared, with a fear which lay mute at the heart of each, to see
again for the first time before the eyes of the world the woman
whose memory ruled his life.
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