“It is more than probable that the government of the Czar will trace his journey for him.  You shall be informed.”

Count Ladany did not seek to know for what purpose Varhely demanded, with such evident eagerness, this release.  It was enough for him that his old brother-in-arms desired it, and that it was possible.

“You see how everything is for the best, Varhely,” he said to him one morning.  “Perhaps you blamed me when you learned that I had accepted a post from Austria.  Well, you see, if I did not serve the Emperor, I could not serve you!”

During his sojourn at Vienna, Varhely kept himself informed, day by day, as to what was passing in Paris.  He did not write to Prince Zilah, wishing, above everything, to keep his errand concealed from him; but Angelo Valla, who had remained in France, wrote or telegraphed whatever happened to the Prince.

Marsa Laszlo was cured; she had left Dr. Sims’s institution, and returned to the villa of Maisons-Lafitte.

The poor girl came out of her terrible stupor with the distaste to take up the thread of life which sometimes comes after a night of forgetfulness in sleep.  This stupor, which might have destroyed her, and the fever which had shaken her, seemed to her sweet and enviable now compared to this punishment:  To live!  To live and think!

And yet—­yes, she wished to live to once more see Andras, whose look, fixed upon her, had rekindled the extinct intellectual flame of her being.  She wished to live, now that her reason had returned to her, to live to wrest from the Prince a word of pardon.  It could not be possible that her existence was to end with the malediction of this man.  It seemed to her, that, if she should ever see him face to face, she would find words of desperate supplication which would obtain her absolution.

Certainly—­she repented it bitterly every hour, now that the punishment of thinking and feeling had been inflicted upon her—­she had acted infamously, been almost as criminal as Menko, by her silence and deceit—­her deceit!  She, who hated a lie!  But she longed to make the Prince understand that the motive of her conduct was the love which she had for him.  Yes, her love alone!  There was no other reason, no other, for her unpardonable treachery.  He did not think it now, without any doubt.  He must accuse her of some base calculation or vile intrigue.  But she was certain that, if she could see him again, she would prove to him that the only cause of her conduct was her unquenchable love for him.

“Let him only believe that, and then let him fly me forever, if he likes!  Forever!  But I cannot endure to have him despise me, as he must!”