paying for his fiancee's farewell?" she
said. "You will despise your poor parents now, Elsa."

It was certainly an unusual thing under the circumstances; the maiden's
farewell to the friends of her girlhood, to their parents and
belongings, is a great event in this part of the world in connection
with the wedding festivities themselves, of which it is the precursor.
The parents of the bride invariably provide the entertainment, and do so
in accordance with their means.

But Eros Bela was a proud man in the county: he would not hear of any
festival attendant upon his marriage being less than gorgeous and
dazzling before the eyes of the whole countryside. He chose to pay the
piper, so that he might call the tune, and though Elsa--wounded in her
own pride--did her best to protest, she was overruled by her mother, who
was only too thankful to see this expensive burden taken from off her
shoulders.

Kapus Irma was a proud mother to-day, for as Elsa finally stood before
her, arrayed in all her finery for the coming feast, she fully justified
her right to be styled "the beauty of the county."

A picture she looked from the top of her small head, with its smooth
covering of fair hair, yellow as the ripening corn, to the tips of her
small, arched feet, encased in the traditional boots of bright crimson
leather.

Her fair hair was plaited closely from the crown of her head and tied up
with strands of red, white and green ribbons, nor did the hard line of
the hair drawn tightly away from the face mar the charm of its round
girlishness. It gave it its own peculiar character--semi-oriental, with
just a remaining _soupcon_ of that mysterious ancestry whose traditions
are lost in the far-off mountains of Thibet.

The tight-fitting black corslet spanned the girlish figure, and made it
look all the more slender as it seemed to rise out of the outstanding
billows of numberless starched petticoats. Necklace and earrings made of
beads of solid gold--a present from Bela to his fiancee--gave a touch of
barbaric splendour to this dainty apparition, whilst her bare shoulders
and breast, her sturdy young arms and shapely, if toil-worn, hands made
her look as luscious a morsel of fresh girlhood as ever gladdened the
heart of man.

Irma surveyed her daughter from head to foot with growing satisfaction.
Then, with a gesture of unwonted impulse, she took the young girl by the
shoulders and, drawing her closely to her own bony chest, she im