pity on me. If you don't have an aversion to me,
or love another, marry me. I shall not do you a favour, you will do me
one. Unless I become your wife, I shall never be happy and contented
so long as I live, but always miserable whenever I think of you. As
your wife, I shall be at peace, and satisfied with myself. That you
are now ugly is of no consequence. I shall see you as you were,
before--" Here, for the first time, she hesitated, then with a sudden
transition, not without a faint smile, said:

"And it will have its good side, too, I shall not be obliged to be
jealous."

"But I shall!" exclaimed Pista, who had hitherto listened in silence.

"Nor you either, Pista," she said quickly, "for whenever I see your
face I shall say to myself how much I must make amends to you and,
believe me, it will bind me far more firmly than the handsomest
features could."

Pista was not a man of great intellect or loquacious speech. He now
threw his arms around Panna's neck, patted her, caressed her, covered
her head and her face with kisses, and burst into weeping that would
soften a stone. Panna wept a little, too, then they remained together
until long after noon and, in the evening, went to the spinning-room
and presented themselves as betrothed lovers. Three weeks after they
were married amid a great crowd of the villagers, some of whom pitied
Pista, others Panna, and from that time until the moment when the
incidents about to be described occurred, they lived together five
years in a loyal, model marriage.

CHAPTER III.

Besides the church and the tile-roofed town hall built of stone, the
main street of Kisfalu contained only one edifice of any pretension,
the manor or, as it is called in Hungary, "the castle" of Herr von
Abonyi. It was really a very ordinary structure, only it had a second
story, stood on an artificial mound, to which on both sides there was a
very gentle ascent, and above the ever open door was a moss-grown
escutcheon, grey with age, on which a horseman, with brandished sword,
could be discerned in vague outlines, worn by time and weather.

The owner of this mansion, Herr von Abonyi, was a bachelor about fifty
years old.

His family had lived more than three hundred years on their ancestral
estates, which, it is true, were now considerably diminished, and he
was connected by ties of blood or marriage with all the nobility in the
county of Pesth. Up to the year 1848 the whole villag