fer? Is fate so just as that

PRINCE ZILAH

By JULES CLARETIE

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER XII

A DARK PAGE

As Marsa departed with Vogotzine in the carriage which had been waiting
for them on the bank, she waved her hand to Zilah with a passionate
gesture, implying an infinity of trouble, sadness, and love. The Prince
then returned to his guests, and the boat, which Marsa watched through
the window of the carriage, departed, bearing away the dream, as she had
said to Andras. During the drive home she did not say a word. By her side
the General grumbled sleepily of the sun, which, the Tokay aiding, had
affected his head. But, when Marsa was alone in her chamber, the cry
which was wrung from her breast was a cry of sorrow, of despairing anger:

"Ah, when I think--when I think that I am envied!"

She regretted having allowed Andras to depart without having told him on
the spot, the secret of her life. She would not see him again until the
next day, and she felt as if she could never live through the long, dull
hours. She stood at the window, wrapped in thought, gazing mechanically
before her, and still hearing the voice of Michel Menko hissing like a
snake in her ear. What was it this man had said? She did not dare to
believe it. "I demand it!" He had said: "I demand it!" Perhaps some one
standing near had heard it. "I demand it!"

Evening came. Below the window the great masses of the chestnut-trees and
the lofty crests of the poplars waved in the breeze like forest plumes,
their peaks touched by the sun setting in a sky of tender blue, while the
shadowy twilight crept over the park where, through the branches, patches
of yellow light, like golden and copper vapors, still gave evidence of
the god of day.

Marsa, her heart full of a melancholy which the twilight increased,
repeated over and over again, with shudders of rage and disgust, those
three words which Michel Menko had hurled at her like a threat: "I demand
it!" Suddenly she heard in the garden the baying of dogs, and she saw,
held in check by a domestic, Duna and Bundas, bounding through the masses
of flowers toward the gate, where a man appeared, whom Marsa, leaning
over the balcony, recognized at once.

"The wretch!" she exclaimed between her clenched teeth. It was Menko.

He must have debarked before reaching Paris, and have come to
Maisons-Lafitte in haste.

Marsa's only thought, in the first moment of anger, was to refuse to see
him.