n?"

She cast a swift, apprehensive glance round the room over his shoulder.

"No, no, not now," she said quickly.

"Why not?"

"Father mightn't like it. I'd have to ask him."

"D----n your father!"

"And that fool, Leopold, is so insanely jealous."

"D----n him too," said the young man quietly.

Whereupon he took the morocco case out of Klara's hand, shut it with a
snap and put it back into his pocket.

"What are you doing?" cried Klara in a fright.

"As you see, pretty one, I am putting the bracelet away for future use."

"But . . ." she stammered.

"If I can't put the bracelet on your arm myself," he said decisively,
"you shan't have it at all."

"But . . ."

"That is my last word. Let us talk of something else."

"No, no! We won't talk of something else. You said the bracelet was for
me."

She cast a languishing look on him through her long upper lashes; she
bared her wrist and held it out to him. Leopold and his jealousy might
go hang for aught she cared, for she meant to have the bracelet.

The young man, with a fatuous little laugh, brought out the case once
more. With his own hands he now fastened the bracelet round Klara
Goldstein's wrist. Then--as a matter of course--he kissed her round,
brown arm just above the bracelet, and also the red lips through which
the words of thanks came quickly tumbling.

Klara did not dare to look across the room. She felt, though she did not
see, Leopold's pale eyes watching this little scene with a glow in them
of ferocious hate and of almost animal rage.

"I won't stay now, Klara," said the young Count, dropping his voice
suddenly to a whisper; "too many of these louts about. When will you be
free?"

"Oh, not to-day," she whispered in reply. "After the fair there are sure
to be late-comers. And you know Eros Bela has a ball on at the barn and
supper afterwards. . . ."

"The very thing," he broke in, in an eager whisper. "While they are all
at supper, I'll come in for a drink and a chat. . . . Ten o'clock, eh?"

"Oh, no, no!" she protested feebly. "My father wouldn't like it, he
. . ."

"D----n your father, my dear, as I remarked before. And, as a matter of
fact, your father is not going to be in the way at all. He goes to
Kecskemet by the night train."

"How do you know that?"

"My father told me quite casually that Goldstein was seeing to some
business for him at Kecskemet to-morrow. So it was not very difficult to
guess that if your father wa