Sophie hates Timar, but receives him with honeyed words, as if it were her dearest wish to have him for her son-in-law, and live under the same roof with him.
Timar, on the other hand, means to ruin the whole of them—the master, the mistress, the young lady, and the bridegroom; all of them he would like to turn into the street, and yet he visits at the house, kisses the ladies' hands, and endeavors to make himself agreeable.
They are all civil to him. Athalie plays the piano to him. Frau Sophie keeps him to supper, and offers him coffee and preserved fruits. Timar drinks the coffee with the thought that perhaps there is rat-poison in it.
When the supper-table is brought, Timéa appears, and helps to lay it. Then Timar hears no more of Athalie's words or music; he has eyes only for Timéa. It was a pleasure to see the pretty creature. She was fifteen and already almost a woman, but her expression and naïve awkwardness were those of a child. She could speak Hungarian, though with a curious accent, and sometimes with a wrong word or phrase—ridiculous, of course, but not wholly unknown even in Parliament, and during the most serious debates.
Athalie had made an acquisition in Timéa: she had now some one to make fun of. The poor child served her as a toy. She gave her old clothes to wear which had been fashionable years ago. At one time people wore a high comb turned backward, over which the hair was drawn, and on the top rose a gigantic bow of colored ribbon. They wore crinoline round their shoulders instead of their waists, having huge sleeves stuffed and padded. This dress looked well when in fashion; but a few years after the vogue had passed, its revival suggested a masquerade.
Athalie found it amusing to dress up Timéa thus. In taste the poor child, never having seen European fashions, stood on a par with a wild Indian: the more remarkable the dress the better she liked it. She was charmed when Athalie dressed her in the queer old silk gowns, and struck the high comb and bright ribbon in her hair. She thought she looked lovely, and took the smiles of the people whom she met in the street for admiration, hastening on so as not to be stared at. In the town she was always called "the mad Turkish girl."
And it was easy to make fun of her without her taking it ill. Athalie took special delight in making the poor child an object of ridicule before gentlemen. If young men were present, she encouraged them to pay court to Timéa, and it amused her highly when she saw that Timéa accepted these attentions seriously; how pleased she was to be treated like a grown-up lady, to be asked to dance at balls, or when some pretended admirer offered her a faded bouquet, and extracted some quaint expression of thanks in reply, which caused the company to burst into fits of laughter. How Athalie's laugh resounded on these occasions!
Frau Sophie took a more serious view of Timéa. She scolded her continually; all she did was wrong. Adopted children are often awkward, and the more Timéa was scolded the more awkward she became. Then Fraülein Athalie defended her. "But, mamma, don't be always scolding the girl! You treat her like a servant. Timéa is not a servant, and I won't have you always going on at her!"
Timéa kissed Sophie's hand that she might cease to be angry, and Athalie's out of gratitude for taking her part, and then the hands of both that they might not quarrel. She was an humble, thankful creature. Frau Sophie only waited till she had left the room to say to her daughter what was on the tip of her tongue, in order that the other guests, Timar and Katschuka, might hear. "We ought to get her used to being a servant. You know her misfortune: the money which Timar—I mean Herr von Levetinczy—saved for her was invested in an insurance company. It has failed and the money is gone. She has nothing but what she stands up in."
(So they have already brought her to beggary, thought Timar, and felt his heart lighter, like a student who is let off a year before his time.)