this cry and the sudden appearance
of the Prince; and, trembling like a leaf, with her face still turned
toward that threshold where Andras stood, she murmured, in a voice
choked with emotion:

"Who is there? Who is it?"

Yanski Varhely, unable to believe his eyes, advanced, as if to make
sure.

"Zilah!" he exclaimed, in his turn.

He could not understand; and Zilah himself wondered whether he were not
the victim of some illusion, and where Menko could be, that Menko whom
Marsa had expected, and whom he, the husband, had come to chastise.

But the most bewildered, in her mute amazement, was Marsa, her lips
trembling, her face ashen, her eyes fixed upon the Prince, as she leaned
against the marble of the mantelpiece to prevent herself from falling,
but longing to throw herself on her knees before this man who had
suddenly appeared, and who was master of her destiny.

"You here?" said Varhely at last. "You followed me, then?"

"No," said Andras. "The one whom I expected to find here was not you."

"Who was it, then?"

"Michel Menko!"

Yanski Varhely turned toward Marsa.

She did not stir; she was looking at the Prince.

"Michel Menko is dead," responded Varhely, shortly. "It was to announce
that to the Princess Zilah that I am here."

Andras gazed alternately upon the old Hungarian, and upon Marsa, who
stood there petrified, her whole soul burning in her eyes.

"Dead?" repeated Zilah, coldly.

"I fought and killed him," returned Varhely.

Andras struggled against the emotion which seized hold of him. Pale as
death, he turned from Varhely to the Tzigana, with an instinctive desire
to know what her feelings might be.

The news of this death, repeated thus before the man whom she regarded
as the master of her existence, had, apparently, made no impression
upon her, her thoughts being no longer there, but her whole heart being
concentrated upon the being who had despised her, hated her, fled from
her, and who appeared there before her as in one of her painful dreams
in which he returned again to that very house where he had cursed her.

"There was," continued Varhely, slowly, "a martyr who could not raise
her head, who could not live, so long as that man breathed. First of
all, I came to her to tell her that she was delivered from a detested
past. Tomorrow I should have informed a man whose honor is my own, that
the one who injured and insulted him has paid his debt."

With lips white as his moustache,