"Who?" asked Abellino, with sparkling eyes. "Oh, that man I should like to know!"
Kecskerey, who was having rare sport with him, drew his neck down between his shoulders, and
continued—"How many times have I not seen you fall upon his neck, and kiss and embrace him!"
"Who is it, who is it?" cried Abellino, catching hold of Kecskerey's arm.
"Would you like to know?"
"I should."
"Then it is—her husband."
"This is a stupid jest," cried Abellino, quite forgetting himself; "and nobody will believe it. That woman loves somebody, loves some one with shameful self-abandonment. And that old scoundrel, her husband, knows and suffers it in order to gratify his vengeance on me. But I will find out who he is, I will find out who it is if it be the devil himself, and I will bring a scandalous action against this woman, the like of which the world has never yet seen."
At that moment a loud manly voice rang out amidst the group of listeners who were beginning to rally Abellino, and ironically beg him not to suspect them as they were quite innocent, and could not lay claim to the honour of making Madame Kárpáthy happy.
"Gentlemen," it said, "you forget that it is not becoming in men of breeding to make ribald jests about the name of a lady whom nobody in the world has any cause or any right to traduce."