confided in Pater Bonifacius--I made inquiries at the War
Office and found out the truth."

"Whatever made you do that?" asked Irma, with a shrug of the shoulders.
"Andor wasn't anything to you."

"Perhaps not," replied Bela curtly; "but, you see, I was afraid that
Pali bacsi would die and that Andor would come back and find himself a
rich man. I should have lost Elsa then, so I was in a hurry to know."

Irma once more shrugged her shoulders in her habitual careless,
shiftless way--shelving, as it were, the whole responsibility of her
life, her fate, and her daughter upon some other power than her own
will. She cared nothing about these intrigues of Bela's or of anyone
else; she only wanted Elsa to make a rich marriage, so that she--the
mother--might have a happy, comfortable, above all leisurely, old age.

But she had enough common sense to see that Elsa laboured under the
weight of a very great sorrow, and while the girl was in such a
condition of grief it would be worse than useless to worry her with
suggestions of matrimony. Girls had been known to do desperate things if
they were overharassed, and Kapus Irma was no fool; she knew what she
wanted, and her instinct, coupled with her greed and cupidity, showed
her the best way to get it.

So she left Elsa severely alone for a time, left her to pursue her
household duties, to look after her father, to wash and iron the finery
of the more genteel inhabitants of Marosfalva--the schoolmistress'
blouses, Pater Bonifacius' surplices. Eros Bela continued in his
unemotional attentions to her--he was more sure of success than ever.
His words of courtship were the drops of water that were ultimately
destined to wear away a stone.

Elsa, lulled into security by her mother's placidity and Bela's apparent
simple friendship, hardly was conscious of the precise moment when the
siege against her passive resistance was once more resumed. It was all
so gradual, so kind, so persuasive: and she had so little to look
forward to in the future. What did it matter what became of her?--whom
she married or where her home would be? She saw more of Eros Bela than
she did of anyone else, for Eros Bela was undoubtedly Irma's most
favoured competitor. Elsa knew that he was of violent temperament,
dictatorial and rough; she knew that he was fond of drink, and of the
society of Klara Goldstein, the Jewess, but she really did not care.

She had kept her promise to Andor, she had waited for him