"Why should my friends and relations mind? My rivals, perhaps yes!"
"There are no rivals!"
"None? not a single one?"
"Not one, Akos, for you are good; you honour my poor father in his misfortune, you honour my mother; and my brothers and Erzsébet are fond of you. How should you have any rival?"
"Marána!" said Akos gently; and when the girl turned to look at him, he saw that, though she was smiling, her eyes had filled with tears at the sound of her old name, coming from his lips.
It was an evening in autumn, and King Kuthen and all his family were gathered together in their largest apartment, where a fire was burning on the hearth, and the table was spread for their evening meal.
All looked grave; and indeed, since the time of his first arrival in Pest, in spite of all the festivities, and in spite of Béla's unfeigned kindness, Kuthen had always looked like a man who had something on his mind, something which oppressed him, and which refused to be shaken off.
As chief of an untamed, lawless people, far surpassing his followers in sense and understanding, he was the first to see that the polite attentions shown him by others than the King and his family, were all more or less forced. All was not gold that glittered, and his pride was wounded by the sort of condescension he met with from the Magyar nobles, when he remembered that not so long ago he had ruled a kingdom larger than the whole of Hungary.
Something, perhaps, was due to the change in his mode of life, something to the fact that he did not feel at ease when he took part in the court ceremonials and festivities, that he felt as if he were caged, and sighed for the freedom of the mountains and steppes. However it was, Kuthen had become quite grey during the comparatively short time he had spent in Hungary, and was already showing signs of age.