"Certainly you would have killed him, Desi, had not your good angel, your dear Fanny, luckily for you, intervened, and grasped your arm, saying 'this hand is mine. You must not defile it.'"
The smile disappeared from Melanie's face.
"And now," said Desiderius, addressing his remarks directly to Sárvölgyi; "be my judge, sir. What had a man, who with such sly deception, with such cold mercilessness, desired to kill, to destroy, to induce a heart in which the same blood flows as in mine—to commit a crime against the living God, what, I ask, had such a man deserved from me? Have I not a right to drive that man from every place, where he dares to appear in the light of the sun, until I compel him to walk abroad at night when men do not see him, among strangers who do not know him;—to destroy him morally with just as little mercy as he displayed towards Lorand?—Would that be a crime?"
"Great Heavens! Something has happened to Mr. Sárvölgyi," cried Madame Bálnokházy suddenly.
And indeed Sárvölgyi was very pale, his limbs were almost powerless, but he did not faint. He put his hands behind him, lest they should remark how they trembled, and strove to smile.
"Sir," he said in a hesitating voice, which often refused to serve him: "although I have nothing to say against it, yet you have told your story at an unfortunate time and in an ill-chosen place:—this young lady is Mr. Gyáli's fiancée and to-day we had prepared for the wedding."
"I am heartily glad that I prevented it," said Desiderius, without being in the least disturbed at this discovery. "I think I am doing my relations a good service by staying them at the point where they would have fallen over a precipice."
"You are a master-hand at that," said Madame Bálnokházy with scornful bitterness. She remembered how he had done her a service by a similar intervention—just ten years ago. "Well, as you have succeeded so perfectly in rescuing us from the precipice, perhaps we may hope for the honor of your presence at the friendly conclusion of this spoiled matrimonial banquet?"
Madame Bálnokházy's wandering life had whetted her cynicism.
It was a direct hint for them to go.