whole year on two pence a day in order to scrape
together a small capital for one's beloved! It would be very difficult
to cure a madness which took such a practical turn as this!

"But my dear boy!" he resumed, "what is the good of it all? What can you
do now that your secrets are discovered? It would have served you right
if the girl's parents had proceeded against you on a charge of murder,
for you were an accomplice in this poisoning business; but I am pretty
sure they will only threaten to do so in case she refuses the baron. And
what, pray, can you do in case they thus compel her to become his wife?"

"Whoever the baron may be," rejoined Szilard, "I suppose he is at least
a gentleman; and if a woman looks him straight in the face on the
wedding day and says to him: 'I cannot love you because I love another
and always will love another,'--I cannot think he will be so devoid of
feeling as to make her his wife notwithstanding."

"And if she does not say this, but voluntarily gives him her hand in
order to save you from the persecutions of her family, what then?"

"Hearken, my dear guardian! She may be compelled to write to me that
she loves me no more and I must forget her, but I shall not believe it
till she pronounces or writes down a word the meaning of which only we
two understand and nobody else in the world can discover. So long as
this one word does not get into the possession of a third person, I
shall know that she has not broken with me and no power in this world
shall tear her from my heart. She may be silent, because she is not free
to speak; she may speak because she is commanded to speak; yet, for all
that, this religiously guarded word tells me what she really feels--and
what no other human intelligence can understand. If you like, my dear
guardian, you may betray this confession of mine to Henrietta's
relatives and they will torment the girl till they get her to pronounce
the mysterious word which once pronounced will burst the bonds that
unite us. She will be driven to say something. But oh! women who love
are very crafty. The word they will report to me will not be the right
one. It is possible, too, that they may take her far away from me. Let
them guard her well I say, let those who watch over her never close an
eye. And if they give her a husband, they had best pray for his life for
they know not what a fated thing it is to give away in marriage a girl
who bears about in her heart the secret o