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Maria Theresa at length determined on sending her private secretary, Baron de Neni, to Versailles, with directions to observe the conduct of the Dauphiness with attention, and form a just estimate of the opinion of the Court and of Paris with regard to that Princess.
"And probably she would not have accepted me at all if you had not bullied and worried her, and ordered her to say 'Yes' to me," he rejoined dryly. "Children must obey their parents," she said, "it is the law of God." "A law which you, for one, apply to your own advantage, eh, Irma néni?" "Have you any cause for complaint?" "Oh, no! Elsa's obedience has served me well.
At the girl's words, which were accompanied by a provocative glance from her large, dark eyes, he merely shrugged his wide shoulders, and jingled some money in his pockets. The girl laughed. "Money won't buy everything, you know, my good Béla," she said. "It will buy most things," he retorted. "The consent of Irma néni, for instance," she suggested.
The report of the Baron de Neni to his royal mistress was such as to convince her she had been misled and her daughter misrepresented by Rohan. The Empress instantly forbade him her presence.
The Baron de Neni, after having devoted sufficient time and intelligence to the subject, undeceived his sovereign as to the exaggerations of the French ambassador; and the Empress had no difficulty in detecting, among the calumnies which he had conveyed to her under the specious excuse of anxiety for her august daughter, proofs of the enmity of a, party which had never approved of the alliance of the House of Bourbon with her own.
"But Maria Theresa was wary, even in the midst of the credulity of her ambition. The Baron de Neni was sent by her privately to Versailles to examine, personally, whether there was anything in Marie Antoinette's conduct requiring the extreme vigilance which had been represented as indispensable.
Irma néni said nothing for the first year, and even for two. She saw Nagy Lajos go away, and young Barna court another girl. That was perhaps as it should be. Elsa was growing more beautiful every year and there was a noble lord who owned a fine estate and a castle close by, who had taken lately to riding over on Sunday afternoons to Marosfalva, and paid marked attention to Elsa.
I do as I like, and let all the chattering women go to h l. Good-night, Irma néni good-night, Elsa! I hope you will be in a better frame of mind to-morrow." And before Kapus Irma could detain him or utter another protest, he was gone, and she turned savagely on her daughter. "Elsa!" she said, "you are never going to let us all be shamed like this? Run after him at once, and bring him back!"
The Empress, convinced of the innocence of Marie Antoinette, directed the Baron de Neni to solicit the recall of the Prince de Rohan, and to inform the Minister for Foreign Affairs of all the motives which made her require it; but the House of Rohan interposed between its protege and the Austrian envoy, and an evasive answer merely was given.
Noble lords had been known to marry peasant girls at least in books, so Irma néni had been told, and, of course, one never knows! God's ways were wonderful sometimes. But when two years had gone by, when a rich shopkeeper from Arad had come and courted and been refused, and when the noble lord had suddenly ceased his Sunday afternoon visits to Marosfalva, Irma became more anxious.
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