rrying myself with the idea that I might perhaps have spoken about
these papers in my delirium. Oh! it would have been frightful if my
relations had seized them. Take them, quickly, before Clementina
returns. I must conceal everything, even from her."

Margari accomplished the task with tolerable dexterity. He only broke
the looking-glass while he was opening the casket, and that was little
enough for him. There the documents were right enough, nicely tied
together.

And then Henrietta seized his hand and pressed it so warmly and looked
at him with her lovely, piteous, imploring eyes--a very lunatic might
have been healed by such a look.

"I know you for an honourable man," continued she, "promise me not to
look at these papers, but give them to my brother Koloman, he will know
what to do with them. You will do this for my sake, dear Margari, will
you not? It is just as though one of the dead were to come back to you
from the world beyond the grave and implore you, with desperate
supplications, to free its soul from a thought which rested upon it like
a curse and would not let it rest in the grave."

Margari shuddered at these words. A corpse that returns from the world
beyond the grave! This young gentlewoman certainly had a terrifying
imagination. Nevertheless he swore by his hope of salvation that he
would not bestow a glance upon the papers, but would give them to young
Koloman.

"Hide them, pray!"

And indeed it was high time that he should bestow them in the well-like
pocket of his long coat, for Clementina's steps were already audible in
the adjoining chamber. When she appeared, however, he was sitting behind
the curtain again, reading away as if nothing had happened.

When the clock struck four, at which time Koloman usually returned from
school, Henrietta said to Margari that she had had enough of
romance-reading for that day, but thanked him for his kindness and asked
him to come again on the morrow if he would be so good. Margari
protested that he should consider it the highest honour, the greatest
joy. He would willingly read even English to her, if she liked, and
without any special honorarium either, and then off he went to seek
young Koloman.

Now it so happened that young Koloman did not come home at the usual
time that day, and Margari after looking for him in vain became very
curious as to the contents of the packet entrusted to him. What sort of
mysterious letters could they be which Miss He