Part 22 (1/2)
She cast a swift, apprehensive glance round the room over his shoulder.
”No, no, not now,” she said quickly.
”Why not?”
”Father mightn't like it. I'd have to ask him.”
”D----n your father!”
”And that fool, Leopold, is so insanely jealous.”
”D----n him too,” said the young man quietly.
Whereupon he took the morocco case out of Klara's hand, shut it with a snap and put it back into his pocket.
”What are you doing?” cried Klara in a fright.
”As you see, pretty one, I am putting the bracelet away for future use.”
”But . . .” she stammered.
”If I can't put the bracelet on your arm myself,” he said decisively, ”you shan't have it at all.”
”But . . .”
”That is my last word. Let us talk of something else.”
”No, no! We won't talk of something else. You said the bracelet was for me.”
She cast a languis.h.i.+ng look on him through her long upper lashes; she bared her wrist and held it out to him. Leopold and his jealousy might go hang for aught she cared, for she meant to have the bracelet.
The young man, with a fatuous little laugh, brought out the case once more. With his own hands he now fastened the bracelet round Klara Goldstein's wrist. Then--as a matter of course--he kissed her round, brown arm just above the bracelet, and also the red lips through which the words of thanks came quickly tumbling.
Klara did not dare to look across the room. She felt, though she did not see, Leopold's pale eyes watching this little scene with a glow in them of ferocious hate and of almost animal rage.
”I won't stay now, Klara,” said the young Count, dropping his voice suddenly to a whisper; ”too many of these louts about. When will you be free?”
”Oh, not to-day,” she whispered in reply. ”After the fair there are sure to be late-comers. And you know Eros Bela has a ball on at the barn and supper afterwards. . . .”
”The very thing,” he broke in, in an eager whisper. ”While they are all at supper, I'll come in for a drink and a chat. . . . Ten o'clock, eh?”
”Oh, no, no!” she protested feebly. ”My father wouldn't like it, he . . .”
”D----n your father, my dear, as I remarked before. And, as a matter of fact, your father is not going to be in the way at all. He goes to Kecskemet by the night train.”
”How do you know that?”
”My father told me quite casually that Goldstein was seeing to some business for him at Kecskemet to-morrow. So it was not very difficult to guess that if your father was to be in Kecskemet to-morrow in time to transact business, he would have to travel up by the nine o'clock train this evening in order to get there.”
Then, as she made no reply, and a blush of pleasure gradually suffused her dark skin, lending it additional charm and giving to her eyes added brilliancy, he continued, more peremptorily this time: