And so saying, she helped Ráby to mount, only he was so exhausted he found it difficult to keep his seat, and was crying like a child.
"Weep not thus, wretched man," she cried impatiently. "Shame on you for your weakness! Why do you look at me like that? We have nothing more to do with each other, you and I. But fly, and look not back, and beware of ever setting foot in this accursed country again, for whose sake you have made both me and yourself so miserable."
While she spoke, she cast her cloak about him to protect him from the bitter cold of the winter's night.
Ráby would have spoken one last word, but she cut him short by switching his horse's flanks with her riding whip, whereat the animal bounded away over the ground, where the snow already lay a foot deep. And the last sound Ráby heard from the "csárda" was the cracking of Villám Pista's whip.
CHAPTER XXXV.
It really looked as if Ráby's flight had been a predetermined affair, so that allowing him to get off in woman's clothes, the authorities might recapture him to lead him back to Pesth in triumph, more degraded than ever in the public eyes, only that the appearance of Villám Pista somewhat disturbed this hypothesis.
Villám Pista, otherwise Fruzsinka, in fact, had learned from spies that Ráby had escaped from prison, having pitched her camp in the neighbouring forest—a fitting abode for the half-crazed woman who now lived at enmity with all the world, though she boasted that what she robbed the rich of she divided among the poor—a sentiment which caused the ten thousand ducats to be taken off Gyöngyöm Miska's head and set on hers. But when she heard of the pursuit of Ráby, her heart smote her with pity for the man she had so cruelly wronged, who was now a persecuted fugitive.
With her companions she had lain concealed in the forest near the inn, till the arrival of the Pesth heydukes warned her that the time for reprisals had come—with what results we have seen.
But she only learned in what disguise Ráby had fled, when she saw him. In an instant her plan was formed. The Pesth pursuers were all around; if Ráby escaped them, he would be taken at the Austrian frontier, where, seeing the Hungarian trappings of his horse, they would relegate him to the Pesth authorities to deal with. And meditating on this thought, she re-entered the inn. "She has escaped me," she cried, "and has dashed off on one of the heyduke's horses."