"But I won't have him hurt," she murmured through her tears. "Leo would kill him for sure. You don't know, Andor, what Leopold is like when the jealous rage is in him. He is outside this house now, watching. And there he will stand and wait and watch; and he will waylay Count Feri when he comes, and stab him with a hideous knife which he always carries in his pocket. Oh! It's horrible!" she moaned, "horrible! I don't know what to do. What can I do? Andor, tell me, what can I do?"
"What would you like to do?" he asked more gently, for indeed the girl's grief and terror were pitiable to behold.
"Run over to the castle," she replied, "and get the key back from Count Feri, and tell him on no account to come to-night. It is only a step; I could be back here in half an hour, and father is asleep in the next room. I should be back before he need start for the station. But Leopold is watching outside. He declared that he would strangle me or else tell father if I set foot outside this house. He is a brute, isn't he?"
"Well, you see, my dear Klara, I understand that you are tokened to Leopold now, and a man has a way of thinking that his affianced wife is his own, and not for other men to hang round her and make a fool of him!"
"Curse him!" she muttered savagely; "I'll never marry him after this."
"Oh, yes, you will," he retorted, with a light laugh; "you'll like him all the better presently for these outbursts of jealousy. A woman often gets fondest of the man she fears the most. But in the meanwhile you are at your wits' ends, eh, my pretty Klara? You can't think of any way out of your present difficulty, what? And to-night at ten o'clock there will be an awful scandal and worse—murder, perhaps!—and where will you be after that, eh, my pretty Klara? Even if your father does not break his stick over your shoulders, you'll have anyhow to leave this village, for the village will be too hot to hold you. And as your father does mighty good business at Marosfalva, he will not look too kindly on the daughter who, by her scandalous conduct, has driven him to seek a precarious fortune elsewhere. The situation certainly is a desperate one for you, my pretty one, what?"
"You need not tell me all that, Andor," she said sullenly. "Don't I know it?"
"It seems to me," he continued, slowly and deliberately, "that there never was a woman before quite so desperately in need of a friend as you are, eh, Klara?"
"I have no friend," she murmured.
"A friend, I mean, who would go and do your errand for you over at the castle, what?—and warn his young and noble lordship not to show his aristocratic face in Marosfalva to-night."