A Bride of the Plains

sh to marry

es there was a strange look-one which had lately been habitual to her, but which neither her mother nor Béla were able to interpret: it was a look which co

did not exist for her; she would never have dreamed of searching the deep-down emotions of her heart and of dragging them out for her mind to scrutinize. The morbid modern craze for int

ings of Icarus to a region so full of brightness and of sunlight that it was no wonder that the wings-which had appeared god-like-turn

ng upwards on heavenly wings when Andor-his lips touching her

er that he loved her, and adjured her to wait for him. She had waited for three years, patiently, quietly, obstinately, despite the many and varied sieges laid to her heart and her imagination by the inflammable, eligible youth of the countryside. Elsa Kapus-the far-famed beauty of half th

ait for him: and Elsa was still young-just sixteen wh

the worse of her on that account. When she refused young Barna-the mayor's eldest son, and Nagy Lajos, the rich pig merchant from Somsó, people shrugged their shoulders and said that mayhap Elsa wanted to marry a shopkeeper of Arad or even a young noble lord. Irma néni said nothing for the first year, and even for two.

ast in books, so Irma néni had been told, and, of cours

efused, and when the noble lord had suddenly ceased his Sunday afternoon visits to Marosfalva, I

and sound arguments Elsa had opp

marry, mother de

lsa must have got some queer notion or other in her head; that intimacy with the schoolmistress-who came from Budapest and talked a va

t every chance, however splendid, slip thr

ntentions: old Kapus was stricken with paralysis, and Elsa had, from that hour forth, to s

of suitors dangling round the beauty of the country-side: in fact her well-known pride and aloofness had brought a surfeit of competitors in the lists. Foremost amon

field. Elsa never disliked him, she accepted his attentions just as she did those of everyone else. Periodically Béla would make a formal proposal of marriage, which Irma néni, in he

nt to marry

e Count looked upon him as his right hand-moreover Béla had made Irma néni a solemn promise that if Elsa became his wife, his father and mother-in-law should

argain, Béla's suit

till exists, a mother's stern measures become very drastic indeed. A child is a child while she is under her parents' roof. If she be forty she still owes implicit obedience, unb

eft were quite pale, and that often, on the hot Sundays in July and August, when the girls go in low-necked corslets and shifts to church, Elsa wrapped a kerchief over her shoulders-the neighbours said in order to hide the corrections dealt by Irma néni's vigorous h

world that of the two sins thus in prospect

those three years is always counted to be good news. No letters or sign of life had come from him, but, then, many of the lads never wrote home while they did their three years, and Andor had no one to write to. He would not be allowed to write to Elsa, or, rather, Elsa would never be allowed to receive lett

relations except his uncle Lakatos Pál, who did not care one brass fillér about him: there had been no one to count the years, the months,

he got worse and worse and the doctor seemed unable to do any

only brother's only child was dead, and that h

that when the lad's regiment was out in Bosnia there was an outbreak of cholera among the troops. Andor was one of those who succumbed. It had all occurred less than a month before his discharge was actually due, in fact thes

ouncing his demise was sent to Lakatos Pál, his uncle and sole relative, but La

but some busy-bodies at Marosfalva might think that it was his-Lakatos'-duty to put up a st

in the hospital of Slovnitza until Lakatos Pál became sick,

splendid dancer, he was always the life and soul of every entertainment. Girls who had flirted with him wept bitter tears, the

ra: he might break his neck one day-riding or driving-for he was always daring and reckles

lared that the wording of it was very curt and vague-much more curt and vague than such letters usually were. It seems that there were a great many cases of cholera in the isolation hospital at Slovnitza and lists were sent up daily from there to Budape

s the la

side him w

ossessed; his mother's wedding-ring wh

te an official document. The War Office up at Budapest sent an equally official document saying that they had no knowledge on those three points: Lakatos Andor w

is loneliness until he succeeded in persuading himself that he had always loved And

y declared that he would return one day to enjoy the good-will of his rich uncle now, to m