Then at last Nell had something to say for herself. "Doesn't it strike you," she asked with elaborate sweetness, "that a person may have self-respect and firmness without being either obstinate or conceited?"
"Well!" exclaimed Robert, in the pause which followed, "that's the first time I've ever heard you defend Rudolph, Cousin Helen."
"He has proved himself such a faithful skipper that it's my duty, as the owner of the boat, to defend the good qualities which have served us best," replied Nell, looking so brilliantly pretty, with her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, that I felt there might still be consolations in life for me, if only I could attain them.
The situation was now becoming strained on all sides. Not that it was made so by the conversation I have just set down, but by the peculiar relations of several persons in the party.
The original plan of the Robert-Menela-Twins visit was that, having arrived at Utrecht, they should be taken on by us to Rotterdam, before "Mascotte" and "Waterspin" bore us northward again to Zeeland. This roundabout way of journeying was the penalty of our beautiful day on the Vecht; because, to see the Vecht after Utrecht, we were obliged to land at Amsterdam; and as there was no nearer way of reaching Zeeland than by passing Rotterdam, we were not going out of our way in landing the van Buren party so near home. But to go by canal from Amsterdam to Rotterdam would take us one long day; and as we had a pair of severed lovers among us, that long day's association, on a small boat, would be awkward.
The obvious thing was for Robert to invent a pretext and vanish. But Robert, no doubt, had his own reasons for wishing to stay, and besides, he had the excuse that he could not go without taking his sisters. If his sisters went, they could not well leave the friend they had brought with them; neither did it seem practicable for her to depart in their company as she had just jilted their brother, who would have to act as escort for all three. This difficulty must have presented itself to Freule Menela, for she gave no indication of a desire to leave us. Perhaps she thought it better to endure the ills she knew than fly to others she knew not; and by way of accustoming herself to those ills, she kept unremittingly near me, when, after dinner, we assembled in "Aunt Fay's" inevitable sitting-room.
If I were a woman I should have been on the verge of hysterics, but being handicapped by manhood, I merely yearned to bash some one on the head as a relief to my feelings; and lest that some one should be Freule Menela, at last I got to my feet and announced my intention of taking a walk in the rain.
"What wouldn't I give to go with you!" exclaimed the young lady. "It's so close here, and I've had no exercise to-day. I am fond of walking in the rain."
"I will chaperon you," said the L.C.P.
"Oh, we need not trouble you, Lady MacNairne," protested Menela. "It might give you rheumatism; and girls in Holland are allowed to be very independent."