CHAPTER XVI.
LIGHT WITHOUT AND NIGHT WITHIN.
Yet it had to be.
Madame Karpathy had promised her friend to share her labours as hostess on the occasion of the feast in honour of her husband's installation as Lord-Lieutenant, just as Lady Szentirmay had shared hers before the fox-hunt.

She had vainly tortured her brain for a whole fortnight in order that she might find an excuse to release her from her promise, and not one could she find.

Unfortunately, she was so well that she could not even complain on that score.

What she feared above all happened.
Flora did not forget the promise that had been made, and when the great day was only a week off, she wrote to her friend that she should rely upon her at the end of that time.

And so for a whole week Fanny, resigned to her fate, but with the torment of her secret passion in her bosom, suffered in silence at the thought of going to the house of him whom she loved as her soul's ideal, but who would not have been too far away from her, so she thought, if he had lived in another planet.
Flora welcomed her friend with great joy, her satisfaction was unmistakably visible on her honest, lovely face as she pressed Fanny between her arms.