"With a man I had never seen in my life until it was all settled. Just a man who is so ugly and so bad-tempered and so repugnant to every girl whom he knows that nobody would have him--but just a man who wanted a wife. The rabbi at Arad knew about him and he spoke about him to father--it seems that he is quite rich--and father has given me to him and I am to be married within a fortnight. Curse them! curse them all, I say! Oh! I wish I had the pluck to run away, or to kill myself or do something--but I am such an abominable coward--and I shall loathe to live in Arad in a tiny secondhand clothes shop, with that hideous monster for a husband--pointed at by everyone as the girl with a disgraceful story to her credit and sold to a creature whom no one else would have--in order to cover up a scandal."
Elsa was silent; her heart now was full of pity for the girl, who indeed was being punished far more severely than she deserved. It was clear that Klara was terribly resentful at her fate, and there was a look of vengeful rebellion in the glance which she threw on Elsa and Andor now.
Overhead there was flapping of wings--a flight of rooks cut through the air and there were magpies in their trail.
"Three for a wedding," said Andor with a forced laugh, trying to break the spell which--much against his will--seemed to have been suddenly cast over his happy spirits.
"One for sorrow, more like," retorted Klara.
"No, no, come!" he rejoined; "you must not look at it like that. There is always some happiness to be got out of married life. You are not very happy in your old home--you will like to have one of your own--a wedding is only the prelude to better things."
"That depends on the wedding, my friend," she sneered; "this one will be a finish, not a prelude--the naughty child, well whipped, sent out of mischief's way."
"I am sorry, Klara, that you feel it so strongly," he said more kindly.
"Yes," she retorted. "I dare say, my good man, you are sorry enough for me now, but you might have thought of all that, you know, before you played me that dirty trick."
"Just what I say," she replied, "and no more. A dirty, abominable trick, I call it, and I cannot even show you up before the village--I could not even speak of you to the police officers. Oh, yes!" she continued more and more vehemently, as a flood of wrath and of resentment and a burning desire for getting even with Fate seemed literally to sweep her off her mental balance and cause her to lose complete control of her tongue, "oh, yes! my fine gentleman! you can go and court Elsa now, and whisper sweet love-words in her ears--you two turtle-doves are the edification of the entire village now--and presently you will get married and live happy ever afterwards. But what I want to ask you, my friend," she added, and she took a step or two nearer to him, until her hot and angry breath struck him in the face and he was forced to draw himself back, away from that seething cauldron of resentment and of vengeance which was raging before him now, "what I want to ask you is have you ever thought of me?"