not surprising if Fate at last has turned upon them. But I don't
want to know anything about it. I am not good enough to grieve with them
in their misfortunes, and I am not bad enough to rejoice in their
misery. Leave the subject alone, my dear Cornelia."

Cornelia put down the little ball of silk, relieved her husband's arms
of the skein, and then sitting beside him on a little stool, kept on
stroking him with her tiny hands until she had quite smoothed out all
the angry wrinkles on his face, and he had brightened up again and
declared, like a good little boy, that he was not a bit put out and
would listen to the story again.

"Poor Leonora! her married life was very unhappy."

"But she got what she wanted."

"It seems to me that you know more of my story than I do myself."

"I only know the happy part of it. Was not her husband her youthful
ideal?"

"You amaze me. Whenever we used to meet subsequently, she was always
full of lamentations, and described herself as very unhappy. To my mind
she only took Szephalmi out of bravado, because you deserted her."

"My dear, after that I must whisper in your ear something which only one
other soul in the world but myself knows anything about. I am sure _you_
will not say anything about it, because you are good, and that other
person will be silent because she is afraid to speak. That pale lady who
was so fond of thinking of death, who went to a ball in a myrtle wreath
and a white dress with a black fringe, used to have assignations in the
dilapidated hut of an old village granny with a youth who was no other
than Szephalmi, her present husband. The affair was kept so secret that
nobody knew anything about it. The old hag, why I know not, confided the
secret to me on the very day when I arrived at Hetfalu Castle in
readiness for the wedding. It was as I have said. My pale moonbeam, when
everybody was asleep in the castle, used to put on a peasant girl's
garb, wrap her head in a flowered kerchief, and glide all alone, along
the garden paths, to the old woman's hut at the end of the village,
where the youth, disguised as a shepherd, was waiting for her. Oh! this
intimacy was of long standing. I heard them talking to each other. In my
first mad paroxysm of rage, I was for rushing out and killing the pair
of them on the spot; but gradually I recovered my senses, and I asked
myself whether it was not more shameful for me, a soldier, to have
pried upon a woman than for that woma