Page:Magdalen by J S Machar.pdf/172

 “We no longer have any aristocracy, the people is everything,” etc.)

Sunday came. At a high mass about noon the banner was consecrated, and then it was carried to the island. Here, in the shade of oaks and amidst restaurant tables, rose a platform adorned with bunting, flags, and pine boughs. The island was filling up. The dignitaries had their table near the platform. The doctor was there with his wife, the aunt with Lucy, the tax collector’s wife with her blonde daughter (being a wise mother, she had gone over to this camp, for she had well noticed the fire for her daughter in Jiří’s breast). She had heard, it is true, of Jiří’s relations with Lucy, but her daughter’s existence was more to her than everything else. She bad made up her mind to tell him at the first favorable moment that there was but one conditio sine qua non: To send that girl away from his house. The tax collector was there, a speechless bureaucrat, two adjuncts, the merchant Jiskra with his wife, Captain