become a Zilah?"

Any hesitation even seemed to him insulting, almost sacrilegious.

"I don't say that," replied the Tzigana, "but I ask you what would
become of the Prince if, for one reason or another--"

"I can very easily inform you," interrupted Varhely. "The Prince, as you
must be aware, is one of those men who love but once during their lives.
Upon my word of honor, I believe that, if you should refuse him,
he would commit some folly, some madness, something--fatal. Do you
understand?"

"Ah!" ejaculated Marsa, with an icy chill in her veins.

"That is my opinion," continued Yanski, harshly. "He is wounded. It
remains with you to decide whether the bullet be mortal or not."

Varhely's response must have had great weight in Marsa Laszlo's
reflections, full of anguish, fever, revolt and despair as they were,
during the few weeks preceding the day upon which she had promised to
tell Prince Andras if she would consent to become his wife or not. It
was a yes, almost as curt as another refusal, which fell at last from
the lips of the Tzigana. But the Prince was not cool enough to analyze
an intonation.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "I have suffered so much during these weeks of
doubt; but this happiness makes amends for all."

"Do you know what Varhely said to me?" asked Marsa.

"Yes, I know."

"Well, since the Zilahs treat their love-affairs as they do their duels,
and risk their whole existence, so be it! I accept. Your existence for
mine! Gift for gift! I do not wish you to die!"

He did not try to understand her; but he took her burning hands between
his own, and covered them with kisses. And she, with trembling lip,
regarded, through her long eyelashes, the brave man who now bent before
her, saying: "I love you."

Then, in that moment of infinite happiness, on the threshold of the
new life which opened before her, she forgot all to think only of the
reality, of the hero whose wife she was to be. His wife! So, as in a
dream, without thinking, without resisting, abandoning herself to the
current which bore her along, not trying to take account of time or
of the future, loving, and beloved, living in a sort of charmed
somnambulism, the Tzigana watched the preparations for her marriage.

The Prince, with the impatience of a youth of twenty, had urged an early
day for their union. He announced his engagement to the society, at once
Parisian and foreign, of which he formed a part; and this marriage of
the Magyar