Pater Bonifacius wrote to the War Office at Budapest asking for a reply
to these three questions. He received none. Then he persuaded Barna
Jeno--the mayor--to write an official document. The War Office up at
Budapest sent an equally official document saying that they had no
knowledge on those three points: Lakatos Andor was one of those whose
names appeared on the list of deaths from cholera at Slovnitza, and that
was quite sufficient proof to offer to any reasonable human being.

Pater Bonifacius sighed in bitter disappointment, Lakatos Pal continued
to bemoan his loneliness until he succeeded in persuading himself that
he had always loved Andor as his own son, and that the lad's supposed
death would presently cause his own.

And the neighbours--especially the women--held on to the belief that
Andor was not dead; they declared that he would return one day to enjoy
the good-will of his rich uncle now, to marry a girl of Marosfalva, and
to look forward to a goodly legacy from Pali bacsi by and by.

CHAPTER VII

"They are Jews and we are Hungarians."

But what of Elsa during this time? What of the sorrow, the alternating
hope and despair of those weary, weary months? She did not say much, she
hardly ever cried, but even her mother--hard and unemotional as she
was--respected the girl's secret for awhile, after the news was brought
into the cottage that Andor was really dead.

Eros Bela had brought the news, and Elsa, on hearing it thus blurted out
in Bela's rough, cruel fashion, had turned deathly pale, ere she
contrived to run out of the room and hide herself away in a corner,
where she had cried till she had made herself sick and faint.

"Have you been blind all these years, Irma neni?" Eros Bela had said
with his habitual sneer, when Irma threw up her bony hands in hopeless
puzzlement at her daughter's behaviour. "Did you not know that Elsa has
been in love with Andor all along?"

"No," said Irma in her quiet, matter-of-fact tone, "I did not know it.
Did you?"

"Of course I did," he replied dryly; "but I have also known for the past
six months that Andor was dead."

"You knew it?" exclaimed Irma with obvious incredulity.

"I have told you so, haven't I?" he retorted, "and I am not in the habit
of lying."

"But how did you come to know it?"

"When he did not return last September I marvelled what had happened; I
wonder no one else did. Then, when Lakatos Pal first became ill--long
even before he