“There aren’t any estates left, thank goodness!” she declared.  “They were all destroyed in the shelling of the town.  For all they know over there, I’m dead, too, killed along with dozens of others.  How do they know that I escaped on horseback to the Carpathian Mountains and with other refugees traveled across Roumania to the Black Sea and finally found friends who sent me to my uncle in America?  Nobody will ever know where all the people of our village went to.  Many of them perished in the mountains, many are in other countries.  How do they know but what I perished, too?  How will they ever know that I am here in America when I go by the name of Lehar?  Besides, who would ever take the trouble to look for me when our estates have been swept away by the Russians?  I will be an American!” she finished stormily, and stood looking defiantly at the girls, her head thrown back, her breast heaving, her whole body quivering with passion.

Hinpoha broke up the tension with her usual chatter.  “Tell us about some of the people you knew in Hungary, I mean important ones,” she asked curiously.  Her romantic imagination saw Veronica hob-nobbing with royalty and surrounded by splendors.  “Did you ever see a real prince?” she asked in a hushed tone.

“Lots of times,” replied Veronica in a matter-of-fact way.  “I have often seen royalty riding through the streets in Budapest and Debreczin.  Everybody bows while the royal carriage is passing, but I don’t believe many people fall in love with princes at first sight!  They’re hardly ever handsome, not at all like the princes in the fairy tales.  They’re generally fat and stupid looking.

“I have met and talked to two princes, both occasions being when I had played at a private musicale at the home of Countess Mariska Esterhazy in Budapest, where I studied in the Conservatory.”

There was a curious silence among the Winnebagos at these words, which fell so lightly, so conversationally from Veronica’s lips.  It suddenly seemed to them that although they had known her two years they really did not know her at all!  How carelessly she spoke of playing in the home of a countess!  And of meeting royalty!

“Did you really play before the king?” asked Hinpoha in an awestricken whisper.

Veronica laughed, a jolly, chummy laugh that swept away their momentary feeling of constraint and made her one of themselves again.  “Gracious, no!” she replied, highly amused.  “I never could play well enough for that!  The Countess Mariska was quite a democratic person, and had a great many pupils from the Conservatory as her proteges.  Anybody who could play at all stood a good chance of playing at one of her musicales; you didn’t need to be a genius at all.”

Sahwah’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.  Although she could play no musical instrument herself and knew less about music than any of the others, she realized, probably better than all the rest, the quality of Veronica’s performance on the violin.  Sahwah had a mysterious inner perception which made her sense things without knowing why or how.  So she knew, although Veronica modestly laid no claim to distinction, that she must have won fame and favor by her playing to a much greater extent than she had ever divulged.