"Take care, Béla," laughed Klara maliciously; "your future wife's old sweetheart might win her from you yet."
"Take care of what?" shouted Béla in unbridled rage. He faced Andor, and his one sinister eye shot a glance of deadly hatred upon him. "Let me tell you this, my friend, Lakatos Andor. I don't know where you have sprung from to-day, or why you have chosen to-day to do it . . . and it's nothing to me. But understand that I don't like your presence here, and that I did not invite you to come, and that therefore you have no business to be here, seeing that I pay for the feast. And understand too that I'll trouble my future wife's sweetheart to relieve her of his presence in future, or there'll be trouble. And you may take that from me, as my last word, my friend. Understand?"
"What an ass you are, Béla!" came as a parting shot from Klara, who had succeeded in opening her parasol, and now stood out in the open, her face and shoulders in shadow, looking the picture of coolness and of good-temper.
"Andor," she added, with a pleasing smile to the young man, "you know your way to Ignácz Goldstein's. Father and I will be pleased to see you there at any time. The young Count will be there to-night, and we'll have some tarok. Farewell, Béla," she continued, laughing merrily. "Don't worry, my good man, it's not worth losing your temper about trifles on the eve of your wedding-day. And bless your eyes! I don't mind."
Then she swept a mock curtsy to Elsa.
"Farewell, my pretty one. Good luck to you in your new life."
She nodded and was gone. Her rippling laugh, with its harsh, ironical ring was heard echoing down the village street.
"Call her back!" shouted Béla savagely, turning on his fiancée.
She looked him straight in that one eye which was so full of menace, and said with meek but firm obstinacy:
"I will not."