"You must stay," she whispered in her ear.
"Thus far I do not understand a word of all that has been said," Banfy remarked in an aggrieved tone.
"You do not? then we will recall to your memory a few circumstances. In your forests a panther has been seen by the peasants."
"That is possible," replied Banfy, with a laugh. (For a Hungarian noble may be permitted to jest with his guests but never to be rude, no matter how much he may be annoyed.) "It is quite possible that the panther is a descendant of the one which came into the country with Arpad, and so might be called an ancestral panther."
"It is no joke, my lord. That beast of prey has torn to pieces in the sight of several persons a Wallachian, on whose account I sent out the lord, Ladislaus Csaki, to hunt down the beast and kill him. And Csaki had seen the creature and given chase when you met him in the forest."
"My lord, Ladislaus Csaki has merely mistaken his own tiger skin for a panther."
"Do not sneer. The lair of that monster has been discovered. Do you understand now?"
"I understand, your Highness. For that reason it was a pity to put my lord Csaki to so much trouble. So it was he who discovered the building which I had hewn in the rocks in my love for a hot spring. This will hardly earn him the title of a Christopher Columbus."
"We still mock, do we? So you do not wish to bend your proud head to the dust? What if I knew the secret which caused you to have that lair made so quietly?"
Banfy began to change color. He answered in a low tone of voice like a man who found it hard not to speak the truth.