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 dirty affair in Záluz̓í than I am, who have been there this very day?”

The baron began to walk up and down the room vehemently, trying in vain to quiet down the violent storm of emotions that shook him all over. The baroness never took her eyes off him the whole time.

“You wrong Cvok; he is a most noble-minded man,” he succeeded at last in saying.

“I wrong him! Is he, then, not the father of that bas?”

“Mother, stop!” cried Mundy, almost beside himself.

“Who, then, is its father?” cried the baroness in her turn.

“As you insist upon knowing it, hear, then. That child is my son!”

“Your s!” shrieked the baroness, but did not finish the word. She gave a heart-rending scream, and fell backward on the floor, a livid, senseless corpse. Her face became contracted, the muscles at one side relaxed, and her mouth was drawn in a horrible grimace, while her eyes were fixed in a ghastly stare—a dreadful object to behold! No sign of life or consciousness appeared in her, except her laboured breathing, which came irregularly, with a rattling noise, inflating her livid cheeks with every expiration.

The baron was terrified out of his senses. Finding that all his calling and trying to rouse her was in vain, he laid her on the floor, and rang with such violence that he nearly tore off the bell-handle. After he had given this alarm, all the servants came running, Baroness Sály and her companion after them, and the usually quiet business-room was filled with laments and useless cries. Only Ferdinand understood the situation at once, and,