He contemplated her coldly, and, forcing himself to be calm, asked:
“What does this parcel of Michel Menko’s contain?”
“I do not know,” gasped Marsa. “But do not read it! In the name of the Virgin” (the sacred adjuration of the Hungarians occurring to her mind, in the midst of her agony), “do not read it!”
“But you must be aware, Princess,” returned Andras, “that you are taking the very means to force me to read it.”
She shivered and moaned, there was such a change in the way Andras pronounced this word, which he had spoken a moment before in tones so loving and caressing—Princess.
Now the word threatened her.
“Listen! I am about to tell you: I wished—Ah! My God! My God! Unhappy woman that I am! Do not read, do not read!”
Andras, who had turned very pale, gently removed her grasp from the package, and said, very slowly and gravely, but with a tenderness in which hope still appeared:
“Come, Marsa, let us see; what do you wish me to think? Why do you wish me not to read these letters? for letters they doubtless are. What have letters sent me by Count Menko to do with you? You do not wish me to read them?”
He paused a moment, and then, while Marsa’s eyes implored him with the mute prayer of a person condemned to death by the executioner, he repeated: