only glanced at him with timid, suspicious eyes and said nothing.

"Don't be afraid, sisterkin," continued Mr. John encouragingly. "I'll
bring you such a nice bridegroom that even your grandpapa, when he sees
him, will snatch up his crutches in order to go and meet him half-way."
Here the old man growled something which John smothered with a laugh.
"Yes, and if he won't give you up we'll carry you off by force."

Henrietta shuddered once or twice at her uncle's blandishments, like one
who has to swallow a loathsome medicine and has caught a whiff of it
beforehand.

The porter interrupted this cheerful family chat by announcing that his
lordship Baron Hátszegi wished to pay his respects to Mr. Lapussa.

Mr. Demetrius immediately raised himself on his elbows to read from Mr.
John's features what he was going to do. Would he tell the lacqueys to
turn Hátszegi out of the house? or would he send him word to wait in the
ante-chamber, as he himself had waited at Hátszegi's, and then put him
off till the morrow? Oh! John would be sure to do something of the sort,
for a very proud fellow was John.

But, so far from doing any of these things, Mr. John rushed to the door
to meet the arriving guest and greeted him aloud from afar in the most
obliging, not to say obsequious, terms, bidding him come in without
ceremony and not make a stranger of himself. And with that he passed his
arm through the arm of his distinguished guest and, radiant with joy,
drew him into the midst of the domestic sanctum sanctorum and presenting
him in a voice that trembled with emotion: "His lordship, Baron Leonard
Hátszegi, my very dear friend!"