r to every
Hungarian peasant's heart.

Irma intercepted the look which Bela cast upon his fiancee. She, too,
turned and looked at her daughter, and seeing her there, sitting at the
feet of that miserable wreck of humanity whom she called "father!"
ministering to him, for all the world like the angels around the dying
saints, a swift look of pity softened for a moment the mother's hard and
pinched face.

"You cannot expect the girl to have much love for you now," she said,
once more turning a vicious glance upon her future son-in-law; "your
mode of courtship was not very tender, you will admit."

"I don't believe in all that silly love-making," he rejoined roughly,
"it is good enough for the loutish peasants of the _alfold_ (lowlands);
they are sentimental and stupid: an educated man does not make use of a
lot of twaddle when he woos the woman of his choice."

"All men act very much in the same way when they are in love," said Irma
sententiously. "But I don't believe that you are really in love with
Elsa."

He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed, a short, sarcastic, almost cruel
laugh.

"Perhaps not," he said. "But I want her for my wife all the same."

"Only because she is the noted beauty of the countryside, and because
half the village wanted her."

"Precisely," he said with a sneer; "there was a good deal of bidding for
Elsa, eh, Irma neni? So you elected to give her to the highest bidder."

"You had been courting her longer than anybody," rejoined Irma, who this
time chose to ignore his taunt.

"And I would have won her sooner--on my own--even without your help, if
it had not been for that accursed Andor."

"Well! he is dead now, anyway. All doubts, I suppose, are at rest on
that point."

"There are a few fools still left in the village who maintain that he
will turn up some day."

"We all hope he will, because of Lakatos Pal. The poor man is fretting
himself into his grave, since he has realized that when he dies his
money and land must all go to the Government."

"He can sell his land and distribute his money while he lives," retorted
Bela; "but you won't catch him doing that--the old miser."

"Can't anything more be done?--about Andor, I mean."

"Of course not," he said impatiently; "everything that could be done has
been done. It's no use going on having rows by post with the War Office
about the proofs of a man's death who has been food for worms these past
two years."

"Well! you know, B