“I heard in London that you were to give this fete.  The English newspapers had announced your marriage, and I did not wish to wait longer—­I——.”

He hesitated a little as he spoke, as if dissatisfied, troubled, and a moment before (Zilah had not noticed it) he had made a movement as if to go back to the quay and leave the boat.

Michel Menko, however, had not the air of a timid man.  He was tall, thin, of graceful figure, a man of the world, a military diplomat.  For some reason or other, at this moment, he exhibited a certain uneasiness in his face, which ordinarily bore a rather brilliant color, but which was now almost sallow.  He was instinctively seeking some one among the Prince’s guests, and his glance wandered about the deck with a sort of dull anger.

Prince Andras saw only one thing in Menko’s sudden appearance; the young man, to whom he was deeply attached, and who was the only relative he had in the world (his maternal grandmother having been a Countess Menko), his dear Michel, would be present at his marriage.  He had thought Menko ill in London; but the latter appeared before him, and the day was decidedly a happy one.

“How happy you make me, my dear fellow!” he said to him in a tone of affection which was almost paternal.

Each demonstration of friendship by the Prince seemed to increase the young Count’s embarrassment.  Beneath a polished manner, the evidence of an imperious temperament appeared in the slightest glance, the least gesture, of this handsome fellow of twenty-seven or twenty-eight years.  Seeing him pass by, one could easily imagine him with his fashionable clothes cast aside, and, clad in the uniform of the Hungarian hussars, with closely shaven chin, and moustaches brushed fiercely upward, manoeuvring his horse on the Prater with supple grace and nerves like steel.

Menko’s gray eyes, with blue reflections in them, which made one think of the reflection of a storm in a placid lake, became sad when calm, but were full of a threatening light when animated.  The gaze of the young man had precisely this aggressive look when he discovered, half hidden among the flowers, Marsa seated in the bow of the boat; then, almost instantaneously a singular expression of sorrow or anguish succeeded, only in its turn to fade away with the rapidity of the light of a falling star; and there was perfect calm in Menko’s attitude and expression when Prince Zilah said to him: 

“Come, Michel, let me present you to my fiancee.  Varhely is there also.”

And, taking Menko’s arm, he led him toward Marsa.  “See,” he said to the young girl, “my happiness is complete.”

She, as Michel Menko bowed low before her, coldly and almost imperceptibly inclined her dark head, while her large eyes, under the shadow of their heavy lashes, seemed vainly trying to meet the gray eyes of the young man.

Andras beckoned Varhely to come to Marsa, who was white as marble, and said softly, with a hand on the shoulder of each of the two friends, who represented to him his whole life—­Varhely, the past; Michel Menko, his recovered youth and the future.