Baroness Orczy

“ She watched him, till he had disappeared within the castle, then, unreasoningly, blindly, she fled through the gates, down the alley of poplar trees, towards the plain where, at least, she could be alone with her shame and her humiliation.
Oh! what a fool she had been! Acting on blind, mad impulse, she had humbled her pride before that man, offered him her gratitude, her friendship, and he would have none of it. With absolute scorn he refused to listen to her explanations and to her sorrow; he despised her too much, even to touch her hand. Fool! ”

“ That pride which is the inalienable characteristic—virtue or vice—of those magyars who have held the lands of Hungary in uninterrupted succession of generations, while the empires of Europe fell and rose again, that pride which rules their every action, which has prevented their accepting modern progress, and built a barrier round them which nineteenth-century civilisation could never pierce, that pride in Ilonka, had received a deadly wound. The descendant of a line of noble warriors, who helped to build up a kingdom, had been shamed by the chivalry and generosity of a peasant. ”

“ Ilonka remembered his last farewell to her, when his voice had ceased to tremble, and he swore to her, that never again would he speak of his dead love to her.
Dead love? could love be dead? Hers, for the handsome young hussar was surely still alive in her heart. It seemed so cruel to talk of love as dead. ”