return my love, and thinks that she will be happy as my wife, I shall certainly return and renew my suit. But remember, Madame, she must become my wife of her own free will, and not because you insist."     

       "Oh, that's all right," said the old lady easily. "Zara is a good girl and will obey her mother to whom she owes so much."     

       "That is the very thing I don't wish her to do," insisted Hench, sharply; "it is no question of filial obedience. If she accepts me of her own free will, and without coercion from you, I marry her; otherwise I       will not."     

       "I am not in the habit of coercing my daughter," said Madame Alpenny loftily, and, as usual, evading the main point; "and I shall expect you to return with all information about your family. Then we can talk. I look upon you as a man of honour, Mr. Hench, so much so that I do not even ask you to give me any address. If you get money you will marry Zara."     

       "And if I do not?"     

       Madame Alpenny shrugged her fat shoulders. "In that case she will marry another person who has money."     

       "You are very business-like," said Hench, highly disapproving of this mercantile way of looking at things.     

       "I always am," she assured him coolly; "it saves trouble!"     

       Owain said no more at the moment, nor did he have any conversation on the subject again with the Hungarian lady prior to his departure. Madame Alpenny evidently had full confidence in his love for her daughter, and believed that Zara's beauty would lure him back again with gold in his pockets. Had she had any idea of the interview between the two young people, and the new relationship of brother and sister which that interview had suggested, she might have been less easy in her scheming mind. But Hench held his tongue and so did Zara, therefore Madame Alpenny was kept in a kind of fool's paradise. The young man reported the conversation hurriedly to the girl, and being clever, she knew exactly how to act so as to keep her mother in ignorance, until such time as she could declare her own mind and choose her own mate.     

       Meanwhile; Hench got to work expeditiously and packed his scanty luggage, after 

 Prev. P 55/242 next