Janosics, who had hailed her arrival with ill-concealed delight, perceiving his prisoner wore a richly embroidered kerchief round her neck, proceeded to annex it, and bind it round his own. But this rough undressing, to which she was subjected as a culprit, was too much for Fruzsinka, and she soon betrayed her sex by her tears at the rough treatment Janosics meted out to her.
As might be expected, the news soon spread that this was no highwayman, but a woman, and she too of noble family.
Tárhalmy recognised her at once, and he tingled with shame at the thought of Mathias Ráby's wife being treated as a common felon. And the case of a woman of Fruzsinka's position being sent there was so rare that there was literally no provision for such prisoners in the building, and so it came to pass that the disused "archive-room," as it was called, the room where Mariska had been able to communicate with Ráby, was that now appointed for Fruzsinka.
"You will be rewarded for this," gasped the wretched woman. "I shall not trouble you long, for I shall not live over to-morrow."
And when Tárhalmy, having found a maid to wait on her, was leaving the room, she called him back to whisper:
"I know you have a daughter you love dearly. Send her away immediately from this house, so she escape the contagion I have brought with me."
Tárhalmy hastened to warn Mariska that she might go to the house of her aunt at Buda, and told her who the prisoner really was.
But the girl was terrified at the thought of leaving Ráby, perhaps to starve, nor did she shrink at the idea of nursing Fruzsinka, but begged her father to let her remain at home, and tend the sick woman.
But Tárhalmy would not let her carry her self-abnegation so far.
Meantime, the doctor came, and deceived by the patient's symptoms, which seemed to him those of an ordinary fever, made a false diagnosis of Fruzsinka's case, and failed to recognise her malady for what it really was—the oriental plague, which was then raging in the near East.