"That old man has completely changed. He looks twenty years younger; one scarcely recognizes him. He leads a regular life, and no doubt his doctors are clever. Besides, it is a tradition in your family that the ladies find the gentlemen amiable even in advanced old age. The day that I encountered your kinswoman at Szolnok, I thought she looked happier and more contented than I had ever seen her before."
"Hell and devils!" exclaimed Abellino, mad with rage. "What can be the reason why this woman is so happy and contented? Her husband
is incapable, I'll swear, of making her so. There's falsehood, there's fraud somehow."
"There may be falsehood and fraud, my friend," replied Kecskerey, coolly clasping one of his knees with both his hands, and swaying himself to and fro in a rocking-chair.
"If I could only prove that that woman was in love with some one; if any one were able to show the world in the clearest, the most sensational manner that she had secret relations with anybody——"
"But, as a member of the family, that would naturally bring disgrace upon you also."
"They are playing a game against me."
"It may be so. The old man is quite capable of overlooking his wife's infidelity in order to do you out of the inheritance."
"But it cannot be, it cannot be! Our laws would not allow such a scandal."
Kecskerey burst out laughing.