imple maize-bread for better, but will employ your ladyship's gift
in the service of God and of our poorer brethren."

From that day Henrietta believed that a call from on high had summoned
her to Hidvar to be the guardian angel, the visible providence of a
poor, forsaken people, and her most pleasant occupation was now to go
from village to village,--often in the company of the priest, and at
other times accompanied by a single groom or quite alone. Thus she
visited one after the other all the surrounding parishes like any
archdeacon, enquiring after and helping their necessities, distributing
money for school-buildings and service books, collecting all manner of
stray orphans and bringing them home with her to be fed and instructed;
nay she erected a regular foundling hospital at Hidvar for the benefit
of the sprouting urchins of the district, and had the liveliest debates
with the priest as to the best method of managing it. Her benevolent
enthusiasm cost Hatszegi a pretty penny.

"She is a child; let her play!" he would only say when Margari and
Clementina represented to him that Henrietta had pawned her jewels at
Fehervar in order to teach some more little Roumanian rag-a-muffins how
to go about with gloves on like their betters. Nay the baron secretly
instructed the tradesmen with whom Henrietta had pawned her jewels to
advance her four times as much as they were worth, _he_ would make it
good again, he said--and then he would buy his wife fresh jewels. An
admirable husband, truly!

One day, Henrietta had ridden out to the neighbouring Ravacsel in order
to visit a poor Wallachian peasant woman, to whom she had sent some
medicine a few days before. The woman, naturally, never drank the
medicine, but instead of that got a village quack to rub her stomach
with some wonder-working salve so vigorously that the poor patient died
in consequence; in fact she was already at the last gasp when Henrietta
arrived. Henrietta was beside herself with grief and anger. She felt
like a doctor whose prescriptions have been interfered with by a
competitor. She could not indeed help the woman, who expired soon after
her arrival, but she had at least the satisfaction of making
arrangements for a decent funeral. In the meantime it had grown so late
that when she turned back toward Hidvar the moon was already pretty high
in the heavens.

She was alone on horseback, for it was only a two hours' journey between
the two places, and she