These experiences of an English girl throw a new light on the character of the Hungarian noble families. At the outbreak of the War, she was companion to the two daughters of a Hungarian Prince who resided in the vicinity of Pressburg. This gave her an opportunity of gauging the sentiments of those connected with the House of Hapsburg. They discussed the War with frankness in her presence. The family treated her precisely as one of their own and at no time considered her as an "enemy alien." In the preface to her narrative, Miss MacDonald says: "If other British subjects in Austria proper were treated more rigorously, they must lay the blame on instructions received from Berlin. My own experiences in the Hungarian family during the throes of a World War may, perchance, induce British (and American) readers to think more highly of the gallant Magyar race." Selections from her narrative are here presented by courtesy of her publishers, _Longmans, Green and Company_. [5] I--THE CASTLE IN THE CARPATHIANS The village of K---- stands in a pleasant mountain valley among the White Carpathians on the borders of Moravia.... It cannot even lay claim to the various dissensions of its neighbouring town S---- where representatives of every race, religion, and political party to be found in Austria and Hungary, keep the town like a boiling pot. It is far otherwise in K---- which is solidly and frankly Clovak, Catholic, and anti-Austrian. The peasants who, with the exception of the priest, the schoolmaster and the inn-keeper, constitute the population of village, are all dirty, drunken, hard-working, and intelligent. * * * * * The Schloss is an old white building full of beauty and interest, built on the hill below the village, in the midst of a park where Maria Therese used to hunt.... The gardens which surround the Schloss are so beautifully laid out and so ornamented with fountains and statues that K---- is known to Hungarians as the Miniature Versailles; the head gardener being a person of such serious importance in K---- that even the Herrschaft at the Schloss speak of and treat him not as an ordinary gardener but as a Man of Art. Indoors, too, the house confirms its reputation of being a small Versailles, for the collection of pictures and antiquities, begun centuries ago, is pursued by the Prince of to-day with vigour, and carping guests have been heard to remark that though there wasn't a chair in the Schloss but had a history and a value that made ordinary mortals' hair stand on end, there also wasn't one that offered any ease or comfort except in the Prince's den where all was modern--but sacred to the Prince.