“Stop a moment while I ring and ask how many pigeons there are,” replied the Baroness, who was eminently practical.
“You wouldn’t keep them away because of that!” cried Helena, laughing.
“Indeed I should. Gerard detests cold meat. And there’s nothing a man resents like getting what he doesn’t eat in a house where his tastes are known. You’ve asked people enough unexpectedly already.”
“Only Georgetta van Troyen and her brother. That was to escape a tête-à-tête with Mechteld van Weylert. We shall be quite a small party.”
“I don’t mind large parties, like to-morrow’s,” replied Mevrouw van Trossart, turning from a confabulation with her confidential maid. “Well, tell them to come. Ann, just say to the man, ‘My compliments, and the Jonkers[E] are welcome.’ You are terribly gay, child; you can’t bear a moment of quiet.”
“Dear mamma, did you want me to sit all the afternoon opposite Maggie van Weylert? Confess though she is your niece, you would not do it yourself. With some women conversation is just contradiction. And there are few people outside this house, except Gerard, I care to be alone with. No guest, or a number, that is my view.”
“Gerard would feel flattered,” replied the Baroness, smiling over her plump hands. “You had better not tell him, or he will ask you to afford him the opportunity of being alone together for life.”
“How terrible! Mamma, you are perfectly ruthless. There is not a creature in the world, not even myself, I am fond enough of for that. Besides, surely one should never marry a man one likes to be alone with; it is the most fatal way of dying to society at once.” She laughed, and threw back the yellow curls from her blue-veined forehead; she was all pink and gold, like a bunch of wild rose and laburnum. “What I should like to do,” she went on, “would be to marry Otto, and flirt with Gerard and other people. But, of course, it would be horribly improper, and it couldn’t be done.”
“Don’t be silly,” remonstrated the Baroness van Trossart, trying to frown. “You are getting too old, Nellie, for saying things you ought to be ashamed of. Now go and get ready.”
“I am half Otto’s age,” replied the girl, rising.
“That may be. But an _ingénue_ should die at nineteen. We women, my dear, are inverted butterflies, and marriage is our chrysalis, as your future mother-in-law said the other night. I can’t imagine where she gets her sayings from, I suppose she reads them somewhere. But neither she nor I would like to see a Baroness van Helmont who was _ingénue_.”