Baroness Orczy

“ The hostess has to find an amiable word for all: one of praise for the beauty of every girl, of admiration for the bearing of every young man; compliments to the mamas and papas on the charms of their progeny. As for Bideskúty, the host, he is laughingly assailed on ail sides by inquiries after his machines and his mills: the laughing-stock of all these easy-going, prosperous, aristocratic sons of the Hungarian soil. Surely it is folly to talk of improving a land that produces so much prosperity, that yields such boundless hospitality. ”

“ She shook her pretty head wisely.
“Papa is too much worried with his machines, and his arguments with the peasants; he will listen to anything mama says, in order to have peace at home.”
“Ilonka, I wish we had lived many hundred years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because, then, I could have come on Kópé's back, in the middle of the night, and climbed the walls of Bideskút with the aid of a rope and carried you away with me by force, in spite of mother and father and everybody. Money did not matter in those days, nor family either. All were equal, and a man could marry whom he loved.” ”

“ Perhaps she is aware, that half the flattering speeches are but the usages of a flowery language, the custom of the country; she has to do the same when she, in her turn, visits her neighbours, although she may be convinced that all her arrangements, her household, and her cuisine are superior to those of every other mortal in the world. Still flattery is pleasant to listen to, when one is convinced that, in any case, it falls far beneath the reality. ”

“ But most unaccountably, the young man seemed obstinate, and old Count Madách apparently had no influence over his son, and allowed him to remain single when a rich marriage, which would have retrieved the fallen fortunes, and regilt the ancestral coronet, should have been contracted long ago. Feri was said to have a leaning for the army, which was not considered a very aristocratic profession for a descendant of the ancient family of Madách, whose ancestry was lost in the mazes of the Tartar invasion. ”

“ No wonder the younger men crowded to the windows to watch the dainty apparition, no wonder the mamas looked envyingly at the fairest among the fair, no wonder the Countess Irma, with characteristic pride, looked triumphantly at her female guests, and musingly at the group of men, from which she would have no difficulty in selecting a most suitable parti . ”

“ Most of them are still in the “one year’s volunteer’s” uniform of some cavalry regiment; some show by their more serious manner, and the foreign cut of their clothes, that they are preparing for the diplomatic service: others in rough homespuns, and tight-fitting Hungarian breeches and shiny leather boots, intend, obviously, to serve neither country nor government, but to stay at home, as their fathers have done, and superintend the tilling of the land that will become their own.
“But where is Ilonka?” is the general question that comes from every side ”