"Don't you listen to Béla, my little Elsa," said one of the older women; "you are still a free girl to-day. You just do as you like—to-morrow will be time enough to do as he tells you."
But this opinion the married men present were not prepared to endorse, and one or two minor arguments and lectures ensued anent a woman's duty of obedience.
Béla had said nothing while these chaffing remarks were being passed over his head; and now that public attention was momentarily diverted from him, he took Elsa's hand and passed it under his arm.
"You had better go to your mother now, hadn't you?" he said, with what seemed like perfect calm. "You said just now that you wished to speak to her."
Elsa allowed him to lead her away. She tried vainly to guess what was going on in his mind. She knew, of course, that he must be very angry. Erös Béla beaten in an argument was at no time a very pleasant customer, and now he surely was raging inwardly, for he had set his heart on exerting his authority over this matter of the csárdás and had signally failed.
But she could not see how he felt, for he kept his face averted from her inquiring gaze.
Kapus Irma greeted her future son-in-law with obvious acerbity.
"I hear you have been teasing Elsa again," she said crossly. "Why can't you let her enjoy herself just for to-night, without interfering with her?"
"Oh! I am not going to interfere with her," he replied, with a sneer. "You have given her such perfect lessons of disobedience and obstinacy that it will take me all my time in the future to drill her into proper wifely shape. But to-night I am not going to interfere with her. She has told me plainly that she means to do just as she likes and that you have given her leave to defy me. Public opinion, it seems, is all in her favour too. So I have just brought your dutiful daughter back to you, and now I am free to make myself scarce."
"To make yourself scarce?" exclaimed Irma. "What do you mean?"