alous brood-hen, till
finally Melanie was obliged to run.

How much two girls can laugh together over a thousand such humorous
nothings!

And how they could chatter over a thousand still more humorous
nothings, when of an evening, by moonlight, they opened the window
looking out on the garden, and lying on the worked window-cushions,
talked till midnight, of all the things in which no one else was
interested?

Melanie could tell many new things to Czipra which the latter delighted
to hear.

There was one thing which they had touched on once or twice jestingly,
and which Czipra would have particularly loved to extract from her.

Melanie, now and again forgetting herself, would sigh deeply.

"Did that sigh speak to someone afar off?"

Or when at dinner she left the daintiest titbit on her plate.

"Did some one think just now of some one far away, who is perhaps
famishing?"

"Oh, that 'some one' is not famishing"--whispered Melanie in answer.

So there was "somebody" after all.

That made Czipra glad.

That evening during the conversation she introduced the subject.

"Who is that 'some one?'"

"He is a very excellent youth: and is on close terms with many foreign
princes. In a short time he won himself great fame. Everyone exalts him.
He came often to our house during papa's life-time, and they intended me
to be his bride even in my early days."

"Handsome?" inquired Czipra. That was the chief thing to know.

Melanie answered this question merely with her eyes. But Czipra might
have been content with the answer. He was at any rate as handsome a man
in Melanie's eyes as Lorand was in hers.

"Shall you be his wife?"

At this question Melanie held up her fine left hand before Czipra,
raising the fourth finger higher than the rest. On it was a ring.

Czipra drew the ring off her finger and looked closely at it. She saw
letters inside it. If she only knew those!

"Is this his name?"

"His initials."

"He is called?"

"Joseph Gyali."

Czipra put the ring on again. She was very contented with this
discovery. The ring of an old love, who was a handsome man, excellent,
and celebrated, was there on her finger. Peace was hallowed. Now she
believed thoroughly in Melanie, she believed that the indifference
Melanie showed towards Lorand was no mere pretence. The field was
already occupied by another.

But if she was quite at rest as regards Melanie, she could be less
assured as to the peaceful intentio