“I won’t!” replied Frederick van Rexelaer, in a funk.
“It is blackguardly, Mynheer,” cried the matron, pushing past. “You are a coward, Mynheer, and no gentleman.”
Gerard retreated towards the gas-smitten wall, looking, in his tight-fitting blue-black hussar uniform, like an Apollo in utter disgrace. He wondered, for a moment, whether the woman was going to strike him.
“My son shall speak to you, Mynheer, as you deserve,” shrieked Mevrouw Elizabeth. “My son! I will send you my son, sir, to settle this matter.”
“Oh, do, Mevrouw, do!” eagerly exclaimed Gerard, in a sudden rush of relief.
The day after his wife’s funeral Mynheer Mopius sat in the gilded drawing-room of Villa Blanda. His demeanor was properly, pleasantly chastened, for the cud of the pompous exequies lay sweet upon his tongue.
Harriet, busy with her own thoughts at the evening tea-table, said, “Yes, it had all been very nice.”
“But the tea was cold, Harriet,” grumbled Mynheer Mopius, for the dozenth weary time. “It’s a very bad thing in a woman when she can’t make tea.”
“Of course,” replied Harriet, gazing down at her sable garments, and wondering how soon the cheap material would get rusty.
“My mother could make excellent tea,” prosed Mynheer, with a melancholy nod. “She could do everything excellently, could my mother.”
“A woman ought to,” said Harriet, “and when she’s done it, she ought to die.”
“She ought. She ought.” While Mynheer Mopius spoke, his thoughts were dwelling on Dominé Pock’s oration by the grave. How well the reverend gentleman had alluded to the charities of our dear brother afflicted! “The consolation which a noble heart can always find in wiping other eyes the while its own are streaming!”
“This cheap cloth won’t last, uncle,” said Harriet, briskly.
He pretended not to hear her. She bored him. She had been all very well while his wife dragged on, but now--! And, why, after all, should he be saddled with this sharp-tongued girl? She was no relation of his, though she called him “uncle.” Mevrouw Mopius’s childless sister had been the first wife of Harriet’s father, Dr. Verveen.
“Yes,” he repeated, mechanically, “everything my mother produced was first-rate of its kind.”
“Especially her son,” said Harriet, with a sneer that positively fizzled.