om and presently returned with a key in her
hand, which she surreptitiously gave to my lord.

"Splendid!" exclaimed the young man gaily. "Klara, you are a gem, and
after supper you shall just ask me for anything you have a fancy for,
and I'll give it to you. Now I'd better go. Good-bye, little one. Ten
o'clock sharp, eh?"

"Ten o'clock," she repeated, under her breath.

He strode to the door, outside which he found Leopold waiting for him.

"The horse was quite quiet, my lord," said the Jew sullenly; "the boy
had never left it for a moment."

"Oh! that's all right, Hirsch," rejoined my lord indifferently. "I only
wanted to know."

Of course he never thought of saying a word of thanks or of excuse to
the other man. What would you? A Jew! Bah! not even worth a nod of the
head.

Count Feri Rakosy had quickly mounted his pretty, half-bred Arab mare--a
click of the tongue and she was off with him, kicking up a cloud of dust
in her wake.

But Leopold Hirsch had remained for a moment standing on the doorstep of
Ignacz Goldstein's house. He watched horse and rider through that cloud
of dust, and along the straight and broad highway, until both had
become a mere speck upon the low-lying horizon.

"May you break your accursed neck!" he muttered fervently.

Then he went back to the tap-room.

CHAPTER XX

"You happen to be of my race and of my blood."

He strode at once to Klara, who greeted him with an ironical little
smile and a coquettish look out of her dark eyes.

"You never told me that you were going away to-night, my dear Leopold,"
she said suavely.

"Who told you that I was?" he retorted savagely.

"It seems to be pretty well known about the place. You seemed to have
been talking about it pretty freely that you were going to Fiume to meet
your brother when the ship he is on comes in."

"I meant to tell you just now, only his lordship's arrival interrupted
me," he said more quietly.

"And since then you have been busy making a fool of yourself before my
lord, eh?" she asked.

"Bah!"

"And compromising me into the bargain, what? But let me tell you this,
my good Leopold, before we go any further, that I am not married to you
yet, and that I don't like your airs of proprietorship, _sabe_?"

He could not say anything more just then, for customers were departing,
and she had to attend to them; he did not try to approach her while she
was thus engaged, but presently, when her back was turned,