"It is Hungary."
"But are we not in Hungary already?"
"Countess, you are in it, but not of it. You are merely visiting us. You do not know what and who we are. You need not go so far as the poles or Abyssinia; here is a new world open to you, a large field where your passion for creating and improving can be easily gratified."
Angela opened her fan, and with an air of indifference fanned her white bosom.
"What can I do? I am not my own mistress."
"You are not your own mistress, and, nevertheless, you rule."
"Over whom?"
"Countess, it would only need one word from you to bring the green palace and all it contains from Vienna to Pesth. The society here requires that leading personality which now in Vienna is lost among the crowd, whose existence is spent in aimless inaction. Pesth needs the prince, your grandfather. He adores you. One word from you would give to our life a new being; one word from you and Prince Theobald would reside here."
Angela ceased fanning herself; with an angry gesture she folded her hands, and turned an angry look upon Ivan.
"Do you know that the subject you have just mentioned is so distasteful to me that any one who has ventured to name it to me has forfeited my acquaintance?"