mself was my adversary, I should look
him in the face,' was all he said."

Angela sat down and hid her face in her hands.

"We had no other course than to assure him, so far as our services
went, he was free to make use of us. So it was settled. We go for him
to-morrow at daybreak. How it will all end, God only knows!"

With these words Edmund took himself away. Angela never noticed he had
left the room.

That night she never lay down. All through the long hours of the night
she walked to and fro in her room. When fatigue forced her to sit
down for a moment she could not rest. Once only the thought that was
in her mind found expression in words:

"I have treated him as Julia Gonzaga treated the man who saved her
life."

When daylight broke she threw herself, dressed as she was, upon her
bed. The maid next morning found the pillow, in which she had buried
her face, wet with tears.

CHAPTER XIV

THIRTY-THREE PARTS

It must certainly be said of our philosopher that he was acting
somewhat inconsistently. He had left his home and property, where he
had lived a simple country life amid his own people, happy in the
study of those mysterious powers--fire and water; he had abandoned all
his scientific pursuits to belong to a world to which he was, and must
ever be, a stranger, feeling more or less like a fish upon dry land.
Even his science he had turned into a farce, so bringing it into
disgrace. He had lent himself to lectures and tableaux, to singing
operas, and dancing Hungarian cotillons, to hunting foxes at breakneck
speed, to rescuing beautiful ladies, mixing himself up therewhile in
the affairs of noble families, to fighting duels with officers for the
sake of lovely countesses, and running the risk of being sabred by an
intemperate savage! It was no wonder that, reviewing all this, Ivan
should say to himself, "Good heavens, what an ass I have made, and am
making, of myself! What have I to do with all the nonsense that goes
on in this fashionable world of Pesth? Above all, what is it to me
whether Countess Angela is at war with her grandfather, whether she
goes to Vienna, or whether he comes to Pesth? Why is it necessary for
me to remain here, leading such an uncongenial life, apparently
without any object?--and, although I have an object, yet if this were
known to the world I should be considered an even greater fool than I
am at present deemed to be."

Now, as Ivan's reflections have been made pub