Meanwhile the long drawn out process between Mr. John and his sister Madame LÁngai continued its course. There was no thought of a compromise between the parties. Madame LÁngai expended so much of her private means in the action that nearly the whole of the property left her by her husband went in costs. She could now neither keep her coach nor live in a large house. She cooped herself up in a couple of small rooms, visited nobody and wore dresses that had been out of fashion for at least four years—and all to be able to carry on the action!

It was ten years before the suit came to an end.

Mr. John lost it and a fearful blow it was to him, for he had to pay out a million to his sister without any further delay. It is true he had as much again left for himself, but to be the possessor of only a single million is nevertheless a fearful thought to anyone who has hitherto been the possessor of two millions.

The poor plutocrat! How deeply it disturbed him to be obliged to pay his only sister her due portion! How the constant thought that he was now only half as rich as he had been before gnawed his life away! Poor, poor plutocrat!

Szilard had a brilliant career—a career extending far beyond the horizon of this simple story. He never married. Count Kengyelesy quizzed him often enough and was continually asking him why he did not try his luck again with his former ideal now that she had become a widow. All such questions, however, he used to evade in a corresponding tone of jocularity. But once when Kengyelesy inquired seriously why he never approached Baroness HÁtszegi and at the same time reproached him for his want of feeling in so obstinately keeping out of the poor lady's way, Szilard replied: "I am not one of those who can be thrown away to-day and picked up again to-morrow."

After that the count never mentioned Henrietta's name in Szilard's presence again—and who knows whether there was not some impediment between these two from which no sacrament could absolve them. Who knows whether it might not after all have been as well for Vamhidy to avoid any meeting whatever with—the widow of the late Baron HÁtszegi?

Yet it was she who was, in any case, the most wretched of them all. Although only six and twenty she could already be called an old woman. She was the victim of her shattered nerves night and day. The least noise made her tremble. The opening of a door was sufficient to make her start up. When she was only four and twenty she had already given up plucking out her grey hairs, there were so many of them. She found no relaxation in the society of her fellows and therefore avoided all social gatherings. Most of her time she spent at home, sitting all by herself in the remotest chamber of the house, half of whose wall was by this time overgrown by the asclepia which SzilÁrd had given her ages ago—or so it seemed to her. This was the only one of her acquaintances which had not forsaken her, and luckily for her it was tenacious of life, for if that too had perished, with whom could poor Henrietta have held converse?

So there was at least one creature in the world to whom this possessor of millions could still confide her reminiscences and her sorrows. Poor rich lady, all the poorer because of her great wealth! Poor plutocrat!

THE END

[Transcriber's Note: Most obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Foreign words may appear at some points in the text with accents and at other points without, and proper names may be spelled differently in different parts of the text. These inconsistencies have been preserved from the original publication.]