The assault had come to an end on the evening of the third day. The insurgents had in great part laid down their arms, only a few detached companies still maintaining the unequal contest in the outlying districts. The victorious army was already advancing into the city along its principal streets. In the Plankenhorst parlours there were but three persons, the two ladies and Jenő. Those who had of late been such constant frequenters of that drawing-room were now fallen or scattered. As the military band at the head of the conquering forces passed the house, Jenő heard heavy steps ascending the stairs. The victors were coming; they had singled out that particular house, and there was no escape. The young man nerved himself to meet any issue--except the one actually before him. The old family friends and acquaintances, the pre-revolutionary frequenters of the Plankenhorst parties, came pouring into the room, smiling with triumph, and all meeting with a hearty welcome from the ladies, who seemed to take the whole affair as a matter of course, and to be affected by the sudden change of atmosphere no more than if the past eight months, with their stirring scenes and epoch-making events, had been but a dream. No one paid any heed to Jenő or seemed in the smallest degree conscious of his presence, until one guest entered who was polite enough to give him a word of greeting. It was Rideghváry. Making his entrance with no little pomp and ostentation, he congratulated the ladies with much effusion and shook a hand of each in both his own. Leaving them upon the entrance of a new guest, he sought out Jenő, who was sitting in one of the windows, a passive spectator of the scene before him. "Your humble servant, my young friend," was the elder's condescending salutation. "Glad to find you here, for I have matters of importance to discuss with you which may have great influence on your future. Pray be good enough to go home and await my coming." Jenő had still spirit enough to resent this summary mode of sending him home. "I am at your Excellency's service," he replied. "You will not need to go out of the house; I am living here at present,--on the third floor, at the right as you go up." "Ah, I didn't know that," answered the other, in surprise. "Have the goodness, then, to wait for me there." With that his Excellency returned to the ladies, leaving the young man to seek his chamber in no very pleasant frame of mind. That room, in which visions of rapture had visited the slumbers of the youthful lover, was a paradise to him no longer. The weary humdrum of ordinary life was beginning again. What in the world could that angular gentleman have to say to him, he wondered. He seemed long enough, in all conscience, about coming.