Chapter II
Winter DaysReputations are built overnight in the town of D… In hardly any time, Gelu had become a name. His presence in the inner circle at the magistrate’s house gave him a mark of respect appreciated by mothers and daughters alike. If the girls read into his friendship with Elisabeta Donciu the evidence of a clandestine passion, their mothers prized his relationship for the respectability and good connections which it presumed. “He must be a well-bred young man,” they told themselves.
In fact, there was nothing special about Gelu that warranted his close relationship with the Doncius. They were only distant relations and his family’s influence in town was negligible. The magistrate had other relations in the city, such as Cecilia’s parents, but they were kept at a distance,
