He held out to Andras his big, fat hand, and repeated, as he shook that of the Prince: 

“Delighted!  Enchanted!  Prince Zilah!  Yes!  Yes!”

In another moment they were gone, and the evening seemed to Andras like a vision, a beautiful, feverish dream.

He sent away his coupe, and returned home on foot, feeling the need of the night air; and, as he walked up the Champs-Elysees beneath the starry sky, he was surprised to find a new, youthful feeling at his heart, stirring his pulses like the first, soft touch of spring.

CHAPTER VIII

“Have I no right to be happy”

There was a certain womanly coquetry, mingled with a profound love of the soil where her martyred mother reposed, in the desire which Marsa Laszlo had to be called the Tzigana, instead of by her own name.  The Tzigana!  This name, as clear cut, resonant and expressive as the czimbaloms of the Hungarian musicians, lent her an additional, original charm.  She was always spoken of thus, when she was perceived riding her pure-blooded black mare, or driving, attached to a victoria, a pair of bay horses of the Kisber breed.  Before the horses ran two superb Danish hounds, of a lustrous dark gray, with white feet, eyes of a peculiar blue, rimmed with yellow, and sensitive, pointed ears—­Duna and Bundas, the Hungarian names for the Danube and the Velu.

These hounds, and an enormous dog of the Himalayas, with a thick, yellow coat and long, sharp teeth, a half-savage beast, bearing the name of Ortog (Satan), were Marsa’s companions in her walks; and their submission to their young mistress, whom they could have knocked down with one pat of their paws, gave the Tzigana reputation for eccentricity; which, however, neither pleased nor displeased her, as she was perfectly indifferent to the opinion of the public at large.

She continued to inhabit, near the forest of Saint-Germain, beyond the fashionable avenues, the villa, ornamented with the holy Muscovite icon, which Prince Tchereteff had purchased; and she persisted in remaining there alone with old Vogotzine, who regarded her respectfully with his round eyes, always moist with ‘kwass’ or brandy.

Flying the crowded city, eager for space and air, a true daughter of Hungary, Marsa loved to ride through the beautiful, silent park, down the long, almost deserted avenues, toward the bit of pale blue horizon discernible in the distance at the end of the sombre arch formed by the trees.  Birds, startled by the horses’ hoofs, rose here and there out of the bushes, pouring forth their caroling to the clear ether; and Marsa, spurring her thoroughbred, would dash in a mad gallop toward a little, almost unknown grove of oaks, with thickets full of golden furze and pink heather, where woodcutters worked, half buried in the long grass peppered with blue cornflowers and scarlet poppies.