If ever in her life, it was at this moment that she beheld her husband in an aureole of dazzling light which irresistibly attracted, overpowered, subdued.
One thing, however, struck her as strange, incredible--how could a fashionable man brought up in the atmosphere of elegant saloons, find any pleasure in playing _bravoura_ pieces in the tap room of a miserable _csarda_ to an audience of half-tipsy vagabonds?
Was this an habitual diversion of these wealthy magnates, or was it only Hatszegi's bizarre humour?
However, when "the lads" began to chime in a little too vigourously, Hatszegi restored the violin to its case, took out his pocket-book, opened it before them all and nonchalantly displayed as he did so the bundles of thousand-gulden notes which it contained.

Nay, he searched among them for stray ten-gulden notes and gave one to each of the four vagabonds "for the fine song they had taught him"-- that was the way he put it--at the same time requesting them to quit the tap-room, as the ladies in the adjoining chamber wanted to sleep and must not be kept awake by any further noise.

The vagabonds must seek a couch elsewhere.
The vagabonds, without the slightest objection, arose, drank up the dregs of the wine, pocketed the bank-notes without so much as a "thank you!" and settled down for the night on the roof of the coach-house--to the great terror of Margari, who was concealed in one of the coaches and did not have a wink of sleep all night, his teeth chattered so.
But Hatszegi, when the drinkers had withdrawn, spread out his hunting pelisse on the long table, laid down thereon and quietly fell asleep.

He did not even shut the door, nor did he have his pistols by him.
In the adjoining chamber, meanwhile, the _csarda_-woman had brought out her spindle, set all its many wheels a-working and began to tell her ladyship a lot of those wondrous tales that have neither beginning nor end, _puszta_ adventures, the atrocities of vagabonds and their fellows, the sad love stories of poor deserted maidens and such like.
And all the while the wheels of the spindle whirr-whirr-whirred monotonously, and Henrietta felt like a little child whose nurse sits beside her bed and lulls her to sleep with fairy tales.

For weeks she had not enjoyed so quiet and dreamless a slumber as she had that night beneath the roof of the _csarda_ in the midst of the lonely _puszta_.
Next morning Clementina, after first making quite sure that nobody had had his or her throat cut during the night, was moved by curiosity to ask what sort of connection his lordship had with this _csarda_ since he seemed to know everybody in it.