But not for all the world would I say anything ill of her.

She is a lady of position and altogether blameless; but, for that very reason, I do not see why one or other of us might not have tried his luck with her." At that moment several other acquaintances came up to Rudolf, and claimed him; so he parted from Kecskerey.

But henceforward an unusual air of disquietude was visible on his face, and as often as he encountered his wife, who never left Madame Karpathy for an instant, an unpleasant feeling took possession of him, and he thought to himself, "That is a woman who might have been won with sixty thousand florins." And then he reflected that, in the course of the evening, Kecskerey would tell the same pretty story to a dozen or more other men; so that within an hour's time the whole company would know all about it, and at the same time see his wife walking about with this woman, and talking and whispering to her familiarly.

What cared he for Madame Karpathy?
She might be as beautiful again as she really was, for aught that he cared; but he reflected that she might cast a shadow on his own wife, his adored, his idolized wife, and this reflection disturbed him.

Why had he ever allowed her to make this woman's acquaintance?
Flora was so kind-hearted that she would have raised this woman up to her own level; but she never reflected that this woman had a shady past, and that her own good name might be soiled by contact with her.
Of course he knew that it was Kecskerey's habit to run down every one unmercifully, but he also knew that he vouched for everything he said.
Whatever he said of anybody was never actually false.