"but I thought you would all miss me. I didn't want this place to be
dull just because half the village is enjoying itself somewhere else."

It had been market day at Arad, and at about five o'clock Klara and her
father became very busy. Cattle-dealers and pig-merchants, travellers
and pedlars, dropped in for a glass of silvorium and a chat with the
good-looking Jewess. More than one bargain, discussed on the marketplace
of Arad, was concluded in the stuffy tap-room of Marosfalva.

"Shall we be honoured by the young Count's presence later on?" someone
asked, with a significant nod to Klara.

Everyone laughed in sympathy; the admiration of the noble young Count
for Klara Goldstein was well-known. There was nothing in it, of course;
even Klara, vain and ambitious as she was, knew that the bridge which
divided the aristocrat from one of her kind and of her race was an
impassable one. But she liked the young Count's attentions--she liked
the presents he brought her from time to time, and relished the
notoriety which this flirtation gave her.

She also loved to tease poor Leopold Hirsch. Leo had been passionately
in love with her for years; what he must have endured in moral and
mental torture during that time through his jealousy and often
groundless suspicions no one who did not know him intimately could ever
have guessed. These tortures which Klara wantonly inflicted upon the
wretched young man had been a constant source of amusement to her. Even
now she was delighted because, as luck would have it, he entered the
tap-room at the very moment when everyone was chaffing her about the
young Count.

Leopold Hirsch cast a quick, suspicious glance upon the girl, and his
dull olive skin assumed an almost greenish hue. He was not of
prepossessing appearance; this he knew himself, and the knowledge helped
to keep his jealousy and his suspicion aflame.

He was short and lean of stature and his head, with its large, bony
features, seemed too big for his narrow shoulders to carry. His
ginger-coloured hair was lank and scanty; he wore it--after the manner
of those of his race in that part of the world--in corkscrew ringlets
down each side of his narrow, cadaverous-looking face.

His eyes were pale and shifty, but every now and then there shot into
them a curious gleam of unbridled passion--love, hate or revenge; and
then the whole face would light up and compel attention by the
revelation of latent power.

This had happened