“I know, perfectly, how, at the head of your hussars, you wrested from the soldiers of Jellachich the first standard captured by the Hungarians from the ranks of Austria. Shall I tell you the exact date? and the day of the week? It was Thursday.”
The whole history, ignored, forgotten, lost in the smoke of more recent wars, the strange, dark-eyed girl, knew day by day, hour by hour; and there, in that Parisian dining-room, surrounded by all that crowd, where yesterday’s ‘bon mot’, the latest scandal, the new operetta, were subjects of paramount importance, Andras, voluntarily isolated, saw again, present and living, his whole heroic past rise up before him, as beneath the wave of a fairy’s wand.
“But how do you know me so well?” he asked, fixing his clear eyes upon Marsa Laszlo’s face. “Was your father one of my soldiers?”
“My father was a Russian,” responded Marsa, abruptly, her voice suddenly becoming harsh and cutting.
“A Russian?”
“Yes, a Russian,” she repeated, emphasizing the word with a sort of dull anger. “My mother alone was a Tzigana, and my mother’s beauty was part of the spoils of those who butchered your soldiers?”
In the uproar of conversation, which became more animated with the dessert, she could not tell him of the sorrows of her life; and yet, he guessed there was some sad story in the life of the young girl, and almost implored her to speak, stopping just at the limit where sympathy might change into indiscretion.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, as she was silent, with a dark shadow overspreading her face. “I have no right to know your life simply because you are so well acquainted with mine.”
“Oh! you!” she said, with a sad smile; “your life is history; mine is drama, melodrama even. There is a great difference.”
“Pardon my presumption!”