"Pardon before punishing--the other!" exclaimed the Prince, angrily.

The other! Yanski Varhely instinctively clinched his fist, thinking,
with rage, of that package of letters which he had held in his hands,
and which he might have destroyed if he had known.

It was true: how was pardon possible while Menko lived?

No word more was spoken by either until they reached the villa; then
Prince Zilah shook Yanski's hand and retired to his chamber. Lighting
his lamp, he took out and read and reread, for the hundredth time
perhaps, certain letters--letters not addressed to him--those letters
which Varhely had handed him, and with which Michel Menko had practically
struck him the day of his marriage.

Andras had kept them, reading them over at times with an eager desire for
further suffering, drinking in this species of poison to irritate his
mental pain as he would have injected morphine to soothe a physical one.
These letters caused him a sensation analogous to that which gives repose
to opium-eaters, a cruel shock at first, sharp as the prick of a knife,
then, the pain slowly dying away, a heavy stupor.

The whole story was revived in these letters of Marsa to Menko:--all the
ignorant, credulous love of the young girl for Michel, then her
enthusiasm for love itself, rather than for the object of her love,
and then, again--for Menko had reserved nothing, but sent all together--
the bitter contempt of Marsa, deceived, for the man who had lied to her.

There were, in these notes, a freshness of sentiment and a youthful