“But what about the property of Ille,” he chose his words carefully, “I understand that it is, unfortunately, in strange hands....”
Illey turned his head away. He realized that he had just been showing off before the other and felt ashamed. This mild-eyed good old business man reminded him of that which had attracted him at first to Anne. It was no good denying it; in those times he thought that the Ulwings were rich and that the ancestral property of Ille might again become his own. He now tried to justify himself for those old thoughts by the longing for the land of his forebears. There was one hope. He thrust it aside.
John Hubert looked at him expectantly.
“Did Mr. Illey not think of buying the property back?”
Many a proud, disinterested word came to Illey’s mind. To rise above everything, even above himself. To ask for nothing, only for Anne whom he loved. He turned his sharp gentlemanly face to John Hubert. He looked him straight in the eyes, as if making a vow:
“I think no longer of buying Ille back.”
John Hubert enquired politely after his family.
Thomas slowly turned the old seal ring on his finger. He began to speak of his father. He died young of heart disease. His mother followed him. Then the property got into the auctioneer’s hands. Only a swampy wood remained. Nobody wanted that. And a little money. He wanted to learn to work. This brought him to town. He wanted to regain possession of the land through his own exertions. Had it not given them their name, or had it not received its name from them? However it was, the land of Ille and the Illeys had belonged to each other for nearly a thousand years.
Thomas looked down wearily. He thought that the fate of the Lord-Lieutenant’s grandchildren had overtaken him too.
“I studied law,” he said quietly, “like the rest of us; politics absorbed me and I did not learn to work for money. That is in our blood. It is only when work is done gratuitously that the Hungarian nobility does not blush to work. Those of us who gave themselves for money became bad men; the good ones were ruined.”