"Perhaps one of the servants saw a mouse!"
And that is how a tragedy looks from the next room when the wall is thin. If there is a thick wall it does not even seem so bad. One of the servants had seen a mouse, or a heart had been broken; for who was to know that despair and fright only have one sound to express them?
Veronica, with her illusions dispersed, ran out into the open air; she wished to hear no more, only to get away from that hated place, for she felt suffocating; away, away, as far as she could go.... And this all seemed, from the next room, as though Widow Adamecz or Hanka had seen a mouse. But, however it may have seemed to them, they had forgotten the whole thing in half a minute.
"You say it would never have occurred to you to marry her. So you had better not hurry with the wedding. Let us first see the umbrella and its contents, and then we shall see what is to be done next."
Gyuri went on quietly smoking his cigarette and thought:
"Sztolarik is getting old. Fancy making such a fuss about it!"
"I have thought it well over," he went on aloud, "and there is no other way of managing it; I must marry the girl."
Sztolarik got up from his chair, and came and stood in front of the young man, fixing his eyes on him.
"But supposing you could get at your inheritance without marrying Veronica?"
Gyuri could not help smiling.