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Updated: June 1, 2025
Count Josef evidently went zealously to work to obtain from the Russian Government Menko's release. He had promised Varhely, the evening he received his old comrade at dinner, that he would put all the machinery at work to obtain the fulfilment of his request. "I only ask you, if I attain the desired result, that you will do something to cool off that hotheaded Menko.
A second time he would not escape Siberia." Varhely had made no reply; but the very idea that Michel Menko might be free made his head swim. There was, in the Count's eagerness to obtain Menko's liberty, something of the excitement of a hunter tracking his prey. He awaited Michel's departure from the fortress as if he were a rabbit in its burrow.
It was this constant hope that the day would come when justice would be meted out to Menko's treachery. The letters proved conclusively that Menko had been Marsa's lover; but they proved, at the same time, that Michel had taken advantage of her innocence and ignorance, and lied outrageously in representing himself as free, when he was already bound to another woman.
Menko's gray eyes, with blue reflections in them, which made one think of the reflection of a storm in a placid lake, became sad when calm, but were full of a threatening light when animated.
He was left free to act as he pleased; his wife would willingly give up a part of her dowry to regain her independence. It was only just, she said insolently, that, having been mistaken as to the tastes of the man she had married for reasons of convenience rather than of inclination, she should pay for her stupidity. Pay! The word made the blood mount to Menko's face.
Marsa answered simply with these words: "I will never bear the name of a man I despise." The wound made in her heart by Menko's lie was incurable; the Tzigana would never forgive.
Varhely is there also." And, taking Menko's arm, he led him toward Marsa. "See," he said to the young girl, "my happiness is complete." She, as Michel Menko bowed low before her, coldly and almost imperceptibly inclined her dark head, while her large eyes, under the shadow of their heavy lashes, seemed vainly trying to meet the gray eyes of the young man.
The Tzigana, taking Vogotzine's arm, led him gently toward the door, a little alarmed at the purple hue of the General's cheeks and forehead. "Come, take a little fresh air," she said to the old soldier, who regarded her with round, expressionless eyes. As they disappeared in the garden, Varhely drew from his pocket the little package given to him by Menko's valet.
Rapidly, and as if impelled, despite herself, Marsa caught the wrist of her husband in her icy hand, and, terrified, supplicating, she cried, in a wild, broker voice: "No, no, I implore you! No! Do not read it! Do not read it!" He contemplated her coldly, and, forcing himself to be calm, asked: "What does this parcel of Michel Menko's contain?" "I do not know," gasped Marsa. "But do not read it!
She was coming toward Zilah; in a moment, he would be able to touch her, if he wished, through the leaves! Even Vogotzine held his breath. Zilah eagerly questioned Marsa's face, as if to read thereon a secret, to decipher a name Menko's or his own.
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