“Yes, I know.”

“Well, since the Zilahs treat their love-affairs as they do their duels, and risk their whole existence, so be it!  I accept.  Your existence for mine!  Gift for gift!  I do not wish you to die!”

He did not try to understand her; but he took her burning hands between his own, and covered them with kisses.  And she, with trembling lip, regarded, through her long eyelashes, the brave man who now bent before her, saying:  “I love you.”

Then, in that moment of infinite happiness, on the threshold of the new life which opened before her, she forgot all to think only of the reality, of the hero whose wife she was to be.  His wife!  So, as in a dream, without thinking, without resisting, abandoning herself to the current which bore her along, not trying to take account of time or of the future, loving, and beloved, living in a sort of charmed somnambulism, the Tzigana watched the preparations for her marriage.

The Prince, with the impatience of a youth of twenty, had urged an early day for their union.  He announced his engagement to the society, at once Parisian and foreign, of which he formed a part; and this marriage of the Magyar with the Tzigana was an event in aristocratic circles.  There was an aroma of chivalrous romance about this action of Prince Andras, who was rich enough and independent enough to have married, if he had wished, a shepherdess, like the kings of fairy tales.

“Isn’t it perfectly charming?” exclaimed the little Baroness Dinati, enthusiastically.  “Jacquemin, my dear friend, I will give you all the details of their first meeting.  You can make a delicious article out of it, delicious!”

The little Baroness was almost as delighted as the Prince.  Ah! what a man that Zilah was!  He would give, as a wedding-gift to the Tzigana, the most beautiful diamonds in the world, those famous Zilah diamonds, which Prince Joseph had once placed disdainfully upon his hussar’s uniform when he charged the Prussian cuirassiers of Ziethen, sure of escaping the sabre cuts, and not losing a single one of the stones during the combat.  It was said that Marsa, until she was his wife, would not accept any jewels from the Prince.  The opals in the silver agraffe were all she wanted.

“You know them, don’t you, Jacquemin?  The famous opals of the Tzigana?  Put that all in, every word of it.”

“Yes, it is chic enough.” answered the reporter.  “It is very romantic, a little too much so; my readers will never believe it.  Never mind, though, I will write it all up in my best manner.”

The fete on board the steamer, given by the Prince in honor of his betrothal, had been as much talked of as a sensational first night at the Francais, and it added decidedly to the romantic prestige of Andras Zilah.  There was not a marriageable young girl who was not a little in love with him, and their mothers envied the luck of the Tzigana.

“It is astonishing how jealous the mammas are,” said the Baroness, gayly.  “They will make me pay dearly for having been the matchmaker; but I am proud of it, very proud.  Zilah has good taste, that is all.  And, as for him, I should have been in love with him myself, if I had not had my guests to attend to.  Ah, society is as absorbing as a husband!”