r with his
curse and now, when she has become the wife of this man who does not
even feel friendship for her, I hear that this same old grandfather has
made another will depriving her of everything."

Szilard's lips trembled at these words.

"You can imagine what will be the result. This young woman loves not and
is not loved. They gave her away to an Oriental nabob who, imagining his
wife to be wealthy, scatters his money like a prince. And now this man
has suddenly been startled by the report that his wife has absolutely
nothing!--do you know the meaning of the expression: bread of charity?"

"I have heard the expression, but the bread itself I have never tasted."

"Then you can have no idea what that sort of bread is like which a man
gives to the wife whom he finds to be poor, when he fancied her to be
rich--oh! that sort of bread is very, very bitter!"

Ah! thought Szilard, the bread that _I_ offered her was only dry--not
bitter.

"I can tell you on very good authority," resumed the countess, "that the
baron's conduct towards his wife has completely changed since he
discovered that she has been disinherited. He had lost heavily at cards
when the news first reached him, and he took no pains to conceal his
ill-humour from his wife in consequence. The poor of the district had
got to regard Henrietta as their ministering angel because of her
labours of love among them, but now she can play the part of lady
bountiful no longer. She has to shut her door in the faces of her poor
petitioners, for her husband will not allow any unnecessary expense.
Nay, more, they say that Hatszegi now keeps his wife's private jewels
under lock and key to prevent her from pawning them and relieving the
needs of the poor with the proceeds, as she was wont to do, and only
brings them out on state occasions when he compels her to pile them all
on her person. Isn't that a humiliation for a woman?"

"If only you had become mine," Szilard mentally apostrophized poor
Henrietta, "you would now have had a cosey little chimney-corner, and a
nice little room all to yourself; and though I could not have bought you
jewels, the best of every morsel of food we shared together would always
have been yours."

"And," pursued the countess, "most degrading experience of all,
Hatszegi no longer attempts to conceal from his wife his outrageous
_liaisons_ with pretty peasant women. The thing has long been a byeword,
though his wife knew nothing of it--but