nd, don't you make any mistake about that."

"You know what's at the back of my mind?" queried Andor, with a puzzled
frown. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," said Bela, with a return to his former swagger, "that you have
been saying to yourself this past half-hour: 'Oho! but Elsa is not
married yet! The vows are not yet spoken, and until they are I still
have my chance.' That's what you have been saying to yourself, eh, Mr.
Guardian Angel?"

"You d----d liar!"

"Oh! insulting me won't help you, my friend. And I am not going to let
you provoke me into a fight, and kill me perhaps, for no doubt that is
what you would like to do. I am not going to give Elsa up to you, you
need not think it; and you can't take her from me, you can't make her
break her solemn promise to me, without covering her with a disgrace
from which she would never recover. You know what happened when Bako
Mariska broke off her marriage on the eve of her wedding-day, just
because Lajos had got drunk once or twice? Though her mother whipped
her for her obstinacy, and her father broke his stick across her
shoulders, the whole countryside turned against her. They all had to
leave the village, for no one would speak to Mariska. A scandal such as
that the ignorant peasants round about here will never forgive. Mariska
ultimately drowned herself in the Maros: when she no longer could stand
the disgrace that pursued her everywhere. When you thought that to make
a girl break off her engagement the day before her wedding was such an
easy matter, you had not thought of all that, had you, my friend?"

"And when you thought of frightening me by all that nonsensical talk,"
retorted Andor quietly, "you had not thought perhaps that there are
other lands in the world besides Hungary, and that I am not quite such
an ignorant peasant as those whom you choose to despise. But you have
been wasting your breath and your temper. I am not here to try and
persuade Elsa into doing what she would think wrong; but I am here to
see that at least you be kind to her."

"Pshaw!" ejaculated Bela, with a contemptuous snap of his fingers.

"Oh! you need not imagine that I wouldn't know how you treated her. I
would know soon enough. I tell you," he continued, with slow and
deliberate emphasis, "that what you do to her I shall know. I shall know
if you bully her, I shall know if you make her unhappy. I shall
know--and God help you in that case!--if you are not kind to her. Just
think i