There were low-spoken rumors of all sorts.  It was said that Marsa had been attacked by an hereditary nervous malady; and in proof of this were cited the visits made at Maisons-Lafitte by Dr. Fargeas, the famous physician of Salpetriere, who had been summoned in consultation with Dr. Villandry.  These two men, both celebrated in their profession, had been called in by Vogotzine, upon the advice of Yanski Varhely, who was more Parisian and better informed than the General.

Vogotzine was dreadfully uneasy, and his brain seemed ready to burst with the responsibility thrust upon him.  Since the terrible day of the marriage—­Vogotzine shrugged his shoulders in anger and amazement when he uttered this word marriage—­Marsa had not recovered from a sort of frightened stupor; and the General, terrified at his niece’s condition, was really afraid of going insane himself.

“Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!” he said, “all this is deplorably sad.”

After the terrible overthrow of all her hopes, Marsa was seized with a fever, and she lay upon her bed in a frightful delirium, which entirely took away the little sense poor old Vogotzine had left.  Understanding nothing of the reason of Zilah’s disappearance, the General listened in childish alarm to Marsa, wildly imploring mercy and pity of some invisible person.  The unhappy old man would have faced a battalion of honveds or a charge of bashi-bazouks rather than remain there in the solitary house, with the delirious girl whose sobs and despairing appeals made the tears stream down the face of this soldier, whose brain was now weakened by drink, but who had once contemplated with a dry eye, whole ditches full of corpses, which some priest, dressed in mourning, blessed in one mass.

Vogotzine hastened to Paris, and questioned Andras; but the Prince answered him in a way that permitted of no further conversation upon the subject.

“My personal affairs concern myself alone.”

The General had not energy enough to demand an explanation; and he bowed, saying that it was certainly not his business to interfere; but he noticed that Zilah turned very pale when he told him that it would be a miracle if Marsa recovered from the fever.

“It is pitiful!” he said.

Zilah cast a strange look at him, severe and yet terrified.

Vogotzine said no more; but he went at once to Dr. Fargeas, and asked him to come as soon as possible to Maisons-Lafitte.

The doctor’s coupe in a few hours stopped before the gate through which so short a time ago the gay marriage cortege had passed, and Vogotzine ushered him into the little salon from which Marsa had once driven Menko.

Then the General sent for Mademoiselle—­or, rather, Madame, as he corrected himself with a shrug of his shoulders.  But suddenly he became very serious as he saw upon the threshold Marsa, whose fever had temporarily left her, and who could now manage to drag herself along, pale and wan, leaning upon the arm of her maid.