Csardas by Diane Pearson

interest.
    Grimly she accepted the fact that the honeymoon was over. With two small sons and overwhelming debts she had tried to salvage what was left from five years of indulgent fantasy. The jewels, the stables, the house in Buda, the furs, and the furniture were all sold. When the estate was finally settled, the debts paid, she was left with a fraction of the country property, an area amounting to no more than a large farm. The other part, which contained the manor house and the tract of forest where her husband had entertained large hunting parties, she sold, much to the consternation of her friends and relatives, all of whom would have preferred to see her living in penurious elegance in the crumbling Kaldy house than superintending a farm.
    She was conventional enough to know she could not go out and direct the overseers and peasants herself, but she did the next best thing. Her farm manager was no more than a harddriven cypher. At morning, midday, and evening, he reported back to her and was given instructions of what to do next. She made many bad mistakes, but the overwhelming advantage she had over her neighbours was that she was always there and that, although she was possibly not a very good farmer, she was a very good businesswoman and knew to the last piglet just how much she had and where it was.
    She had a small utilitarian house built right in the middle of the farm. She dismissed the majority of her peasants—after the first couple of years, when she realized she was being exploited by nearly all her labour force—and employed seasonal and migrant workers. Her neighbours were horrified but she was still “one of them,” and at first they continued to call and shower her with invitations to balls and picnics and card parties, none of which she could afford to accept. Callers received short courtesies as she was always busy with accounts and matters of the farm, and finally, except for the standard obligations necessary to her rank, she was left alone.
    She kept herself and her sons alive, and by the time it was necessary to educate Felix and Adam she had saved a little money and invested a little more. She had also lost the last of her youth. The gaiety and charm that had symbolized the five years of her marriage had calcified into a brittle, sharp manner and a keen business assessment of every situation with which she was involved. If she still had regrets, she kept them to herself.
    She knew it would be impossible to educate both her sons as gentlemen. Nonetheless they were gentlemen. Their lineage was indisputable, and she was working desperately towards the day when, little by little, she could buy back the things that should have been theirs by right. Felix, the elder, the handsomer, the one like his father, should be given what advantages there were, should be trained to behave and live like a gentleman. She managed to find a distant cousin whose sons were being educated at home by a tutor. For a privately negotiated fee (which was never referred to again by either party) Felix went to live in a manner that his father would have recognized. He learnt the classics, history, literature, how to ride and shoot like a gentleman, how to dance and talk to ladies, how to play cards, and how to wear and use a sword.
    By the time he was of an age to be entered in the military Akademie, his mother had acquired yet a little more money—the result of years of frugality—which she had invested quite wisely. There was enough for his fees and for a small bachelor apartment in Budapest, and also enough to buy back a small section of the land she had been forced to sell.
    Her hopes, alas, were not to be fully realized. Since Felix did not appear to enjoy military life and continually failed every exam, she was obviously wasting her money. The only other career open to a son of the nobility was local administration. A further large sum of money was paid as a bribe, and Felix was given a senior position in the land