The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the Szalrassee.
'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath the great yews beside the keep.
'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty amphitheatre.
She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.
'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the world called so proud.
'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near her wicker chair.
'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it, at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you it will be he who will be dearest to me.'
As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.
She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.
'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all the world who have passed five years and more together without once disagreeing?'