"Rozina, my wife is dead!"
Her eyes opened and a quick flush of pleasure overspread her face. "How? When? Where?" she asked eagerly.
"At Nagy-Enyed—killed by the insurgents."
"Nonsense!" cried the marchioness. "Who told you so?"
"My private secretary, your favourite, Benjamin Vajdar. He has just read it in the despatches received at the war office."
The listener's eyes flashed with scorn.
"I am telling you the truth," asserted the other, vehemently. "I give you my word of honour, it is as I say. I have this moment given Vajdar my purse and despatched him to Transylvania to bring the poor woman's body back to Vienna." The prince seated himself in an armchair opposite the marchioness, and continued: "I am even more eager than you to see her laid to rest in my family vault. My motives are deeper and stronger than yours. You have been longing for Blanka Zboroy's death because her existence meant humiliation to you. This thought has brought unrest to your pillow, but a legion of demons chases sleep from mine. Shall a Cagliari suffer any living woman to drag his name in the mire before all the world—to laugh to scorn the decree of the Roman Curia—to scratch out his name after her own and replace it with that of a Szekler peasant? That may be allowed to pass among common people, but the descendants of the Ferraras will find a way, or make one, to prevent such a scandal. It has become a necessity in my eyes that she should not walk the same planet with me."
The marchioness was listening by this time with wide eyes, flushed cheeks, and parted lips.
"Of late I have suffered heavy losses," the speaker continued. "Formerly my income amounted to a million and a half; now it is barely half a million. My estates in the Romagna have been confiscated, my serfs in Hungary freed, and I have lost frightful sums by my investments. I know many a poor devil has been forced to wont himself to rags and poverty, but for one who has been a leader among men to debase himself and drag out a miserable existence in obscurity—never! Shall I, forsooth, suspend the erection of the votive church which I began at the seat of my ancestors twelve years ago? Or shall I, discarding the masterpieces of a Thorwaldsen, embellish the sacred edifice with the rude productions of a stone-cutter? Would you have me say to the woman I adore, 'My dear, hitherto we have lived in two palaces; henceforth we must be content with one'? But most impossible of all would it be to confess my pecuniary embarrassments to my banker and my major-domo, and to direct them to cut down my future expenditures by a third, to sell my picture-gallery, my museum, and two-thirds of my collection of diamonds. No, no! What I am now telling you has never passed my lips before, nor ever will again; for I know how to apply the remedy, and I will not submit to humiliation, even though it should cost human blood to prevent it."
The speaker bent forward and went on in a more guarded tone: