sleep in the next
room. I should be back before he need start for the station. But Leopold
is watching outside. He declared that he would strangle me or else tell
father if I set foot outside this house. He is a brute, isn't he?"

"Well, you see, my dear Klara, I understand that you are tokened to
Leopold now, and a man has a way of thinking that his affianced wife is
his own, and not for other men to hang round her and make a fool of
him!"

"Curse him!" she muttered savagely; "I'll never marry him after this."

"Oh, yes, you will," he retorted, with a light laugh; "you'll like him
all the better presently for these outbursts of jealousy. A woman often
gets fondest of the man she fears the most. But in the meanwhile you are
at your wits' ends, eh, my pretty Klara? You can't think of any way out
of your present difficulty, what? And to-night at ten o'clock there will
be an awful scandal and worse--murder, perhaps!--and where will you be
after that, eh, my pretty Klara? Even if your father does not break his
stick over your shoulders, you'll have anyhow to leave this village, for
the village will be too hot to hold you. And as your father does mighty
good business at Marosfalva, he will not look too kindly on the daughter
who, by her scandalous conduct, has driven him to seek a precarious
fortune elsewhere. The situation certainly is a desperate one for you,
my pretty one, what?"

"You need not tell me all that, Andor," she said sullenly. "Don't I know
it?"

"It seems to me," he continued, slowly and deliberately, "that there
never was a woman before quite so desperately in need of a friend as you
are, eh, Klara?"

"I have no friend," she murmured.

"A friend, I mean, who would go and do your errand for you over at the
castle, what?--and warn his young and noble lordship not to show his
aristocratic face in Marosfalva to-night."

"I haven't such a friend, Andor, unless you . . ."

"Well! You don't want me to go out and kill Leopold Hirsch, do you?" he
said dryly.

"Of course not."

"Or engage him in a brawl while you run round to the castle?"

"It would be no good. He'd only tell father," she said, while a shiver
ran through her body; "and they would kill me on my return."

"Exactly. What you want is, to stay here quite quietly, just as if
nothing had happened, whilst the friend of whom I spoke just now went
and got back that key which is causing so much trouble."

"Yes, yes, that's what I want, Andor,"