"Ah, but pardon!" interposed Dr. Châtelard. "It is old if you will, Sir Gerardine, but thereby it is rich. Nowhere else have I so felt the unpurchasable riches of past time. I am charmed to have come here. After your gorgeous Melbury, the piquancy of this antique abode of gentility is to me delicious!"
"Ah, well," said Sir Arthur, magnificently, "I don't say it has not got a sort of picturesqueness and all that, but it's not what we are accustomed to in England, you know. Comfort, Châtelard, the land of comfort, we say. You don't know what it is in your country. But in the good old days—people did not understand it either, here, you see. Look at that chair, now. As hard as nails, eh, Lady Aspasia? I dare say a collector or somebody might like it. What do you say—Chippendale, eh? Elizabethan? Well, it's all the same thing. It's not my sort, anyhow. I shall sell it all, bag and baggage."
"Sell the Old Ancient House!" interrupted the younger Aspasia, hotly. The aggravation her uncle had ever the talent of awakening in her was now in full force. "I think you'll find there will have to be two words to that, dear Runkle. Aunt Rosamond's devoted to it."
Sir Arthur inflated his chest.
"My dear Raspasia!" ...
There was concentrated acrimony in his accents. The elder lady scented storm, and storm was not the atmosphere she liked.
"I declare, Arty," she said, "you made me jump. I thought those stern tones were directed to me. There are two Aspasias here—Docteur Châtelard—elle est ma—namesake—appellée après moi, ou comment vous dites! Come here, namesake, and let's have a look at you."
Aspasia fell on her knees beside the imposing tailor-made figure, and raised her pretty, pert face—pinker than usual, with a variety of emotions—for inspection. M. Châtelard put up his eyeglass to look down benevolently upon her. The English Miss had yet scarcely come under his microscope; but he quite saw that she would be a fascinating study. He now thought the contrast between the two Aspasias somewhat cruel. "Fraîche comme une rose, la petite. Ronde comme une caille, mutine comine la fauvette—Mais l'autre—oh lala, quelle carcasse!"
The fine lines of Lady Aspasia's anatomy—not inharmonious, but over-prominent, it must be owned, from the hardening effects of a too great devotion to sport—appealed not at all to the temperament of the French critic.
"I don't know what you think of your godparents," Miss Aspasia was remarking, with the gusto of a well-established grievance, "but I know what I think ought to be done to mine for giving me such an i-di-o-tic name."