The pressure of the hand which the countess exchanged with him at
parting assured him that this conquering manoeuver on his part was a
complete success.
Subsequently, however, as, stretched at full length on his sofa, he was
smoking his first pipe of tobacco, he grew suspicious, and speedily felt
convinced that the countess's tale of the usurers was a fable from
beginning to end and that Vamhidy was some broker or other who lent
money privately; and he began to be not quite so proud at having ousted
the fellow from her ladyship's drawing room.
But a still greater surprise awaited him.
He had a shrewd suspicion that the Countess Kengyelesy did not require
the bill he had signed to discharge any debt to usurers; but not even
in his dreams would it ever have occurred to him that Madame Kengyelesy,
at the very moment when he had gone out into the street, had sat down on
the very same chair from which the baron had arisen, taken into her hand
the very same pen in which the ink he had used was not yet dry, and
selecting a sheet of letter paper, written a few lines of her long
pointed pot-hooks to her friend, the Baroness Hatszegi: informing her in
a most friendly manner that she had succeeded in persuading Hatszegi to
exchange the bill that Koloman was suspected of forging for one of his
own in order to give his wife the opportunity of acknowledging the
signature as her own and putting a stop to all further legal
proceedings.
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