“In too great haste art thou,” were her first words. “No worse I think of Cornelia, because a little she draws back. To want, and to have thy want, that has been the way with thee all thy life long. Even thy sword and the battlefield were not denied thee; but a woman’s love!—that is to be won. Little wouldst thou value it, lightly wouldst thou hold it, if it were thine for the wishing. Thy mother has taught thee to expect too much.”
“And my grandmother?”
“That is so. A very foolish old woman is thy grandmother. Too much she loves thee, or she had not sent thee to Arenta’s last night with her best ivory winders.”
“Oh, Arenta is a very darling! Had she been present this morning, she had taken the starch out of all our fine talk and fine manners. We should have chattered like the swallows about pleasant homely things; and left title-making to graver fools.”
“If, now, thou had fallen in love with Arenta, it had been a good thing.”
“If I had not seen Cornelia, I might have adored Arenta—but, then, Arenta has already a lover.”
“So? And pray who is it?”
“Of all men in the world, the gay, handsome Frenchman, Athanase Tounnerre, a member of the French embassy. How a girl so plainly Dutch can endure the creature confounds me.”
“Stop a little. The grandmother of Arenta was French. Very well I remember her—a girl all alive, from head to foot; never still. Thy grandfather used to say, ‘In her veins is quick-silver, not blood,’ And, too soon, she wore away her life; Arenta’s mother was but a baby, when she died.”
“Ah! So it is! We are the past, as well as the present. As for myself—”