“And,” she said to Zilah, after she had finished the recital of her story, “it is because I am thus named that I have the right to speak to you of yourself.”

Prince Andras listened with passionate attention to the beautiful girl, thus evoking for him the past, confident and even happy to speak and make herself known to the man whose life of heroic devotion she knew so well.

He was not astonished at her sudden frankness, at the confidence displayed at a first meeting; and it seemed to him that he had long been acquainted with this Tzigana, whose very name he had been ignorant of a few hours before.  It appeared to him quite simple that Marsa should confide in him, as he on his side would have related to her his whole life, if she had asked it with a glance from her dark eyes.  He felt that he had reached one of the decisive moments of his life.  Marsa called up visions of his youth-his first tender dreams of love, rudely broken by the harsh voice of war; and he felt as he used to feel, in the days long gone by, when he sat beneath the starry skies of a summer night and listened to the old, heart-stirring songs of his country and the laughter of the brown maidens of Budapest.

“Prince,” said Marsa Laszlo, suddenly, “do you know that I have been seeking you for a long time, and that when the Baroness Dinati presented you to me, she fulfilled one of my most ardent desires?”

“Me, Mademoiselle?  You have been seeking me?”

“Yes, you.  Tisza, of whom I spoke to you, my Tzigana mother, who bore the name of the blessed river of our country, taught me to repeat your name.  She met you years ago, in the saddest moment of your life.”

“Your mother?” said Andras, waiting anxiously for the young girl to continue.

“Yes, my mother.”

She pointed to the buckle which clasped the belt of her dress.

“See,” she said.

Andras felt a sudden pang, which yet was not altogether pain, dart through his heart, and his eyes wandered questioningly from the buckle to Marsa’s face.  Smiling, but her beautiful lips mute, Marsa seemed to say to him:  “Yes, it is the agraffe which you detached from your soldier’s pelisse and gave to an unknown Tzigana near your father’s grave.”

The silver ornament, incrusted with opals, recalled sharply to Prince Zilah that sad January night when the dead warrior had been laid in his last resting-place.  He saw again the sombre spot, the snowy fir-trees, the black trench, and the broad, red reflections of the torches, which, throwing a flickering light upon the dead, seemed to reanimate the pale, cold face.

And that daughter of the wandering musicians who had, at the open grave, played as a dirge, or, rather, as a ringing hymn of resurrection and deliverance, the chant of the fatherland-that dark girl to whom he had said:  “Bring me this jewel, and come and live in peace with the Zilahs”—­was the mother of this beautiful, fascinating creature, whose every word, since he had first met her a few hours before, had exercised such a powerful effect upon him.