then the wrinkled, wizened face of the old man, with the horn-rimmed
spectacles perched upon his nose, and now and then the delicate profile
of the girl, the smooth, fair tresses and round, white neck.

"Shall we not say a little prayer together?" whispered Pater Bonifacius
at last, "just the prayer which our dear Lord taught us--Our Father
which art in heaven . . ."

Slowly the young girl sank on her knees beside the gentle comforter; her
fair head was bowed, her face hidden in her hands. Word for word now she
repeated after him the sublime invocation taught by Divine lips.

And when the final whispered Amen ceased to echo in the low, raftered
room, Pater Bonifacius laid his hand upon the child's head in a gesture
of unspoken benediction.

CHAPTER XI

"After that, happiness will begin."

Pater Bonifacius' kindliness, his gentle philosophy and unquestioning
faith exercised a soothing influence over Elsa's spirits. The one moment
of rebellion against Fate and against God, before the arrival of the old
priest, had been the first and the last.

There is a goodly vein of Oriental fatalism still lurking in the
Hungarians: "God has willed it!" comes readily enough to their lips.
Though this unsophisticated child of the plains suffered none the less
than would her more highly-cultured sisters in the West, yet she was
more resigned--in her humble way, more philosophical--accepting the
inevitable with an aching heart, mayhap, but with a firm determination
to make the best of the few shreds of happiness which were left to her.

Elsa had promised before God and before the whole village that she would
marry Eros Bela on the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, and after
that single thought of rebellion, she knew that on the following Tuesday
this would have to be just as surely as the day follows the night and
the night the day.

Even that selfsame evening, after the Pater had gone and before she went
to bed, she made her final preparations for the next three days, which
were the turning-points of her life. To-morrow her farewell banquet: a
huge feast in the big schoolroom, hired expressly for the occasion.
Fifty people would sit down to that, they were the most intimate
friends of the contracting parties, hers and Bela's, and her mother's.
It is the rule that the bride's parents provide this entertainment, but
Kapus Benko and his wife had not the means for it, and Eros Bela,
insisting upon a sumptuous feast, wa