lay on this instrument again."

"Why not?"

"You will see it will be so: the cards always foretell a coffin for me;
if you do not believe me, come and see for yourself."

Therewith she spread the cards again out on the table, and in sad
triumph pointed to the picture portrayed by the cards.

"See, now the coffin is here under the girl in green."

"Why, that is not you," said Melanie, half jestingly, half
encouragingly, "but you are here."

And she pointed with her hand to the queen of hearts.

But Czipra--saw something other than what had been shown her. She
suddenly seized Melanie's tender wrist with her iron-strong right hand,
and pointed with her ill-foreboding first finger to that still whiter
blank circle remaining on the white finger of her white hand.

"Where has _that_ ring gone to?"

Melanie's face flushed deeply at these words, while Czipra's turned
deathly pale. The black depths of hell were to be seen in the gypsy
girl's wide-opened eyes.

CHAPTER XVII

THE YELLOW-ROBED WOMAN IN THE CARDS

Lorand deferred as long as possible the time for coming to an agreement
with Desiderius as to what they should both do, when the fatal ten years
had passed by.

His mother and grandmother would be sure to press the latter, when the
defined period was over, to tell them of Lorand's whereabouts. But if
they learned the story and sought him out, there would be an end to his
saving alias: the happy man who was living in the person of Balint
Tatray would be obliged to yield place to Lorand Aronffy who would have
to choose between death and the sneers of the world.

When he had made Desiderius undertake, ten years before, not to betray
his whereabouts to his parents, he had always calculated and intended to
fulfil his fatal obligation. Desiderius alone would be acquainted with
the end, and would still keep from the two mothers the secret history of
his brother. They had during this time become accustomed to knowing that
he was far from them, and his brother would, to the day of their death,
always put them under the happy delusion that their son would once again
knock at the door, and would show them the letters his brother had
written; while he would in reality long have gone to the place, from
whence men bring no messages back to the light of the sun. Yet the good
peaceful mothers would every day lay a place at table for the son they
expected, when the glass had long burst of its own accord.

In plac