od with soot. The lid was thrown open and hung crooked upon a broken
hinge.

When Elsa entered the cottage with Eros Bela her mother was busy with
some cooking near the hearth, and smoke and the odour of _gulyas_ (meat
stew) filled the place. Close to the fire in an armchair of polished
wood sat old Kapus Benko, now a hopeless cripple. The fate which lies in
wait in these hot countries for the dissolute and the drunkard had
already overtaken him. He had had a stroke a couple of years ago, and
then another last summer. Now he could not move hand or foot, his tongue
refused him service, he could only see and hear and eat. Otherwise he
was like a log: carried from his palliasse on which he slept at night to
the armchair in which he sat all day. Elsa's strong young arms carried
him thus backwards and forwards, she ministered to him, nursed him, did
what cheering she could to brighten his days that were an almost
perpetual night.

At sight of Elsa his wrinkled face, which was so like that of a corpse,
brightened visibly. She ran to him and said something in his ear which
caused his dulled eyes to gleam with momentary pleasure.

"What did you bring Bela home with you for?" said the mother
ungraciously, speaking to her daughter and rudely ignoring the young
man, who had thrown his hat down and drawn one of the chairs close to
the table. At Kapus Irma's inhospitable words he merely laughed and
shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, Irma neni!" he said, "this is the last Sunday, anyhow, that you
will be troubled with my presence. After Wednesday, as I shall have Elsa
in my own home, I shall not need to come and visit here."

"No!" retorted Irma, with a snap of her lean jaws, "you will take good
care to alienate her from her duty to her father and to her mother,
won't you?"

Then, in answer to a further sneer from him, she added, more viciously:
"You will teach her to be purse-proud like yourself--vain, and
disdainful of her old home."

Bela's one eye--under the distorted brow--wandered with a sullen
expression of contempt over every individual piece of furniture in the
room.

"It's not a home to be proud of, anyway," he said dryly; "is it, Irma
neni?"

"You chose your future wife out of it," retorted Irma; "and 'tis from
here that you will have to fetch her on Wednesday, my friend."

She was always ready to quarrel with Bela, whose sneering ways she
resented, all the more that she knew they were well-deserved. But her
las