Then, as with her accustomed gentleness she chose to remain silent, rather than resent his sneer, he added curtly:
"If you want to make me happy and comfortable you will follow Ilona's advice in all things."
"I will do my best, Béla," she said quietly.
Then for some reason which the young man himself could not perhaps have explained he once more started talking about Andor.
"It was very hard on him," he said, with a shrug of his wide shoulders, "to die just when he was on the point of getting his discharge."
And after an almost imperceptible moment of hesitation he added with studied indifference: "Of course, all that talk of his being still alive is sheer nonsense. I have done everything that lay in my power to find out if there was the slightest foundation for the rumour, but now I—like all sensible people—am satisfied that Andor is really dead."
Elsa was walking beside him, her hand resting lightly on his arm, as was fitting for a girl who was tokened and would be a bride within the week: she walked with head bent, her eyes fixed upon the ground. She made no immediate reply to her fiance's self-satisfied peroration, and her silence appeared to annoy him, for he continued with some acerbity:
"Don't you care to hear what I did on Andor's behalf?"
"Indeed I do, Béla," she said gently, "it was good of you to worry about him—and you so busy already."
"I did what I could," he rejoined mollified. "Old Lakatos Pál has hankered after him so, though he cared little enough about Andor at one time. Andor was his only brother's only child, and I suppose Pali bácsi[3] was suddenly struck with the idea that he really had no one to leave his hoardings to. He was always a fool and a lout. If Andor had lived it would have been all right. I think Pali bácsi was quite ready to do something really handsome for him. Now that Andor is dead he has no one; and when he dies his money all goes to the government. It is a pity," he added, with a shrug of the shoulders. "If a peasant of Marosfalva had it it would do good to the commune."