ted
that they should set off very early before anyone was up and stirring.
They travelled in two carriages. In the first sat the bride and
Clementina, who had begged and prayed so urgently to be allowed to
accompany the young lady that to get rid of her they had at last
consented. The poor thing fancied she would better her position thereby:
it was not from pure love of Henrietta that she had been so importunate.
In the second carriage sat the baron and Margari. Margari was just the
sort of man the baron wanted. He was a scholar who could be converted
into a domestic buffoon whenever one was required. Now-a-days it is
difficult to catch such specimens, all our servants have become so
stuck-up. Henrietta did not dare to ask how far they were going, or
where they were to pass the night, she felt so strange amidst her new
surroundings. Her husband was very obliging and polite towards her,--in
fact he gave her no trouble at all.

Towards the evening they stopped at a village to water the horses and
there Hatszegi got out of his carriage and, approaching his wife's,
spoke to her through the window: "We shall rest in an hour," said he.
"We shall put up for the night at the castle of an old friend of mine,
Gerzson Satrakovich. He has been duly apprised of our coming and expects
us."

But the promised hour turned out to be nearly two hours. The roads were
very bad here and it was as much as the carriage wheels could do to
force their way through the marshy sand. The monotonous _Bucskak_[4]
which extended desolately, like a billowy sandy ocean, to the very
horizon, were overgrown with dwarf firs that looked more like shrubs
than trees. Not a village, not a hut was anywhere to be seen. From the
roadside sedges, flocks of noisy wild-geese, from time to time, flew
across the sky which the setting sun coloured yellow. At last a great
clattering and rattling gave those sitting in the carriage to understand
that they were passing into a courtyard and the carriage door was
opened. Henrietta got out. The young wife looked around with the same
sort of curiosity which a robber condemned to a long term of
imprisonment and conveyed to a distant jail might feel on first
surveying his new environment.

[Footnote 4: Sand hills.]

In the midst of a spacious courtyard, surrounded by stone walls, stood
an old-fashioned mansion with a verandah in front of it, resting on
quadrangular columns which one ascended by a staircase whose brick
parap