is only in order to punish
Elsa that you want to sup with me?"

"Don't be stupid, Klara," he retorted. "I'll come at ten o'clock. Will
you have some supper ready for me then? I have two or three bottles of
French champagne over at my house--I'll bring them along. Will you be
ready for me?"

"Be silent, Bela," she broke in hurriedly. "Can't you see that that fool
Leo is watching us all the time?"

"Curse, him! What have I got to do with him?" muttered Bela savagely.
"You will be ready for me, Klara?"

"No!" she said decisively. "Better make your peace with Elsa. I'll have
none of her leavings. I've had all I wanted out of you to-day--the
banquet first and now your coming here. . . . It'll be all over the
village presently--and that's all I care about. Have a drink now," she
added good-humouredly, "and then go and make your peace with Elsa . . .
if you can."

She turned abruptly away from him, leaving him to murmur curses under
his breath, and went on attending to her customers; nor did he get for
the moment another opportunity of speaking with her, for Leopold Hirsch
hovered round her for some considerable time after that, and presently,
with much noise and pomp and circumstance, no less a personage than the
noble young Count himself graced the premises of Ignacz Goldstein the
Jew with his august presence.

CHAPTER XIX

"Now go and fetch the key."

He belonged to the ancient family of Rakosy, who had owned property on
both banks of the Maros for the past eight centuries, and Feri Rakosy,
the twentieth-century representative of his mediaeval forbears, was a
good-looking young fellow of the type so often met with among the upper
classes in Hungary: quite something English in appearance--well set-up,
well-dressed, well-groomed from the top of his smooth brown hair to the
tips of his immaculately-shod feet--in the eyes an expression of
habitual boredom, further accentuated by the slight, affected stoop of
the shoulders and a few premature lines round the nose and mouth; and
about his whole personality that air of high-breeding and of good, pure
blood which is one of the chief characteristics of the true Hungarian
aristocracy.

He did little more than acknowledge the respectful salutations which
greeted him from every corner of the little room as he entered, but he
nodded to Eros Bela and smiled all over his good-looking face at Klara,
who, in her turn, welcomed him with a profusion of smiles which brought