She arose and rallied her spirits.
"Very well! I'll take your advice. I will endure. I will be patient. I will down with every evil thought. I will show that I can be a good wife. You shall be satisfied with me. But one thing I'll tell you. My husband has threatened to strike me. If ever he does that, then God be merciful both to him and me."
Now I knew why her face had turned so red—"If my husband dishonours me by a single blow, I swear that I'll seize a gun and shoot him dead!" And with that she rushed out of the room. I felt as if I ought to call after her: "Don't go home, wretched woman!"
It was too late. She was already outside the door. She had vanished like a vision of the night.
CHAPTER XXI
MARIA NOSTRA.
Ah! what an ocean of time has passed since this happened. It must be twenty years, at least. It makes me giddy when I look back upon it. But how many evil years there were, how many days that I do not love to think about! How many have been torn from my side to whom life was a joy and on whom the future smiled! And I still remain! Only here and there, now and again, perhaps, do I encounter a grey-headed shape like myself, a relic from that brilliant time, and what a joy it then is to look back upon those old days and say: "It is not so good now as it was then!"
Some years ago I was on a visit of inspection among our large national State prisons. I happened to be at Szamosujvár and Illava, where the aristocracy of crime is collected together, persons condemned to a term of imprisonment exceeding ten years, all of them criminals once under sentence of death, but reprieved by an act of grace. Here were interesting studies of the night side of human nature.
I also visited the Maria Nostra. Here the female criminals resided, and nuns were the warders.