am going out now, by
that front door--at once."

"And I tell you," he said, slowly and deliberately, "that if you cross
the front door step I will call your father and tell him that you go and
meet your lover--a Christian lover--the young Count--who would as soon
think of marrying you as he would a nigger or a kitchen slut. Before you
will have reached the high road your father and I will be on your heels,
and either he or I will strangle you ere you come within sight of my
lord's castle."

"You are mad!" she cried. "Or else an idiot."

"Better look for that back-door key," he retorted.

"What has the back-door key to do with it?" she asked sullenly.

"Only this," he replied, "that while that monkey-faced dog of a
Christian was whispering to you just now, I know that the key was
hanging on its usual peg, but I heard something about 'supper' and about
'ten o'clock.' May he break his neck, I say, and save me the job. Then
he ordered me out of the room. Oh! I guessed! I am no fool, you know!
When I came back I looked into your father's room--the key was gone, and
I knew. And what I say is, why can't he come in by the front door like a
man, if he has nothing to hide? Why must you let him come in like a
thief by a back-door, if you have nothing to be ashamed of? The tap-room
is open to anybody. Anybody can walk in and get a drink if they want to.
Then why this whispering and this sneaking?"

He was working himself up to a greater and ever greater passion of fury.
He kept his voice low because he didn't want Ignacz Goldstein to
hear--not just yet, at any rate--for Ignacz was a hard man and a stern
father, and God only knew what he might not do if he was roused. Leopold
did not want Klara hurt--not yet, at any rate--not until he was quite
sure that she meant to play him altogether false. She was vain and
frivolous, over-fond of dress and of queening it over the peasant girls
of the village, but there was no real harm in her. She was immensely
flattered by the young Count's attentions and over-ready to accept his
presents in exchange for kisses and whisperings behind closed doors, but
there was no real harm in her--so at least Leopold Hirsch kept repeating
to himself time and again, whenever jealousy gnawed at his heart more
roughly than he could endure.

Just now that torment was almost unbearable, and the passion of fury
into which he had worked himself blinded him momentarily to the dull,
aching pain. Klara, as he sp