"It is neither your fault nor hers. I know that as a fact. The cause of it all is money, the thirst for money. There is not a more miserable creature in the wide world than the daughter of a rich man. But that is the least of her misfortunes. They married her to a man who did not love her, who only took her because her grandfather was a millionaire. Her grandfather frightened her into the match by threatening her with his curse and now, when she has become the wife of this man who does not even feel friendship for her, I hear that this same old grandfather has made another will depriving her of everything."
Szilard's lips trembled at these words.
"You can imagine what will be the result. This young woman loves not and is not loved. They gave her away to an Oriental nabob who, imagining his wife to be wealthy, scatters his money like a prince. And now this man has suddenly been startled by the report that his wife has absolutely nothing!—do you know the meaning of the expression: bread of charity?"
"I have heard the expression, but the bread itself I have never tasted."
"Then you can have no idea what that sort of bread is like which a man gives to the wife whom he finds to be poor, when he fancied her to be rich—oh! that sort of bread is very, very bitter!"
Ah! thought Szilard, the bread that I offered her was only dry—not bitter.
"I can tell you on very good authority," resumed the countess, "that the baron's conduct towards his wife has completely changed since he discovered that she has been disinherited. He had lost heavily at cards when the news first reached him, and he took no pains to conceal his ill-humour from his wife in consequence. The poor of the district had got to regard Henrietta as their ministering angel because of her labours of love among them, but now she can play the part of lady bountiful no longer. She has to shut her door in the faces of her poor petitioners, for her husband will not allow any unnecessary expense. Nay, more, they say that Hátszegi now keeps his wife's private jewels under lock and key to prevent her from pawning them and relieving the needs of the poor with the proceeds, as she was wont to do, and only brings them out on state occasions when he compels her to pile them all on her person. Isn't that a humiliation for a woman?"
"If only you had become mine," Szilard mentally apostrophized poor Henrietta, "you would now have had a cosey little chimney-corner, and a nice little room all to yourself; and though I could not have bought you jewels, the best of every morsel of food we shared together would always have been yours."
"And," pursued the countess, "most degrading experience of all, Hátszegi no longer attempts to conceal from his wife his outrageous liaisons with pretty peasant women. The thing has long been a byeword, though his wife knew nothing of it—but she knows it now. Nor is this all, my dear Vámhidy. Poor Henrietta's heart is suffering from another sorrow which she feels all the more keenly because it smarts unceasingly. Her young brother, Koloman, has suddenly disappeared from Pest and left no trace behind him. They say all sorts of things about him, which I do not care about telling you, but most of them are bad enough. On the news reaching Henrietta, she asked her husband to make enquiries as to the cause of Koloman's disappearance. Hátszegi wrote to his agent and received an answer which he will not show to Henrietta on any consideration; nay, more, he commanded his wife never to mention Koloman's name before him again. The poor woman is naturally in despair. She cannot conceive why the cause of her brother's disappearance should be hidden from her. And now I am coming to the end and aim of all this rigmarole. Henrietta believes, and I am likewise convinced of it, that if her brother be alive, there is only one person in the world whom he will try and seek out and that is yourself."
"Poor lad! he loved me much," sighed Szilard.