She had never been here before, it was all
new to her. She discovered from Clementina's lamentations that they had
still a three days' journey before they reached home, and that they
would spend the coming night at the castle of Count Kengyelesy. The
coachmen had told Margari so, and he passed the news on to Clementina.
It also appeared that Count Kengyelesy was a very curious sort of man,
who contradicted Baron Hatszegi in everything, yet for all that they
were never angry with and always glad to see each other. The count was
also said to have a young wife who did not love him. So ran the gossip
of the servants. It was all one to Henrietta what they said about Count
Kengyelesy and his consort.
Between five and six in the afternoon they reached the count's castle,
which lay outside the village in the midst of rich tobacco and rapeseed
fields, and enclosed on three sides by a splendid English garden; the
place was arranged with taste and evidently well-cared for.
That the count expected the arrival of the Hatszegis was evident from
the fact that dinner was awaiting them. Kengyelesy was a little puny bit
of a man with very light bright hair, white eyelashes, and a pointed
chin made still more pointed by a long goatish beard. It always pleased
him very much when his friends confidentially assured him that he had a
perfect satyr-like countenance.
His wife was a young, chubby, lively lady with smiling blue eyes
unacquainted with sorrow, whom her husband on the occasion of a _bal
pare_ at Vienna had seen, fallen in love with, and carried off, although
the girl's father, a retired Field-marshal, was quite ready to surrender
her--they preferred, however, the romance of an elopement.
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