ing to
Mr. Sipos.

"I?" replied the honest man, visibly perturbed, with a voice full of
emotion: "I would advise that the young lady should be married to the
baron as quickly as possible."

Madame Langai regarded him with wide-open eyes.

"What! After all that is in these papers?"

"No, after all that is in those other documents."

"What are they?" cried Madame Langai pouncing upon them incontinently
and extremely vexed, the next moment, to find them all written in Latin.
She perceived that they were Koloman's exercises, and that was all. She
did not understand their connection with the case in point.

"I'll take those documents back please," said old Demetrius, stretching
out a skinny hand towards them. "They will be of use to us though I have
a translation of them besides. Then, you think, Mr. Lawyer, it will be
as well to marry Henrietta to the baron, eh? Very well! Let me add that
on the day when Henrietta goes to the altar with Baron Leonard, I will
make you a present of all this scribble. Till then I shall require them.
Do you understand?"

Mr. Sipos was completely beaten; you might have knocked him down with a
feather. He had never been so badly worsted in his professional
capacity. Madame Langai would have besieged him with questions, but he
avoided her, put on his hat and departed.

Madame Langai thereupon turned to her father: "What is the cause of this
wondrous change?" she cried. "What secrets do those miraculous papers
contain?"

Mr. Demetrius tucked the documents in question well beneath him and
replied: "They contain secrets the discovery whereof will be a great
misfortune and yet a great benefit to the parties concerned."

"Have they any connection with Henrietta's wedding?"

"They have a direct bearing thereupon, and, indeed, necessitate it!"

"Poor girl!" sighed Madame Langai.

* * * * *

Mr. Sipos passed by his own dwelling three times before he knew that he
had reached home, so confused was he by what he had just learnt. When he
_did_ get inside the house he walked for a long time up and down his
consulting room as if he were trying to find a beginning for a business
he would very much have liked to be at the end of. At last he gave the
bellrope a very violent pull and told the clerk who answered the bell to
send him his assistant, Mr. Szilard, at once.

Szilard appeared on the very heels of the messenger. His was one of
those faces which women never