Her housewifely pleasure was spoiled for the moment, and I wished that I hadn't spoken.
After all, Lisbeth and Lilli were not to go with us to The Hague. This was the morning for opening the curio cabinets in the drawing-room, and washing the contents, and the girls were expected to help their mother. As the glass doors are never opened, unless that some guest may carefully handle a gold snuff-box, a miniature, or a bit of old Delft, the things could scarcely need washing; but the rule is to have them out once a month, and it would be a crime to break it. This Freule Menela explained in a low voice, and with the suspicion of a smile, as if she wished the two girls from London to understand that she was able to see the humorous side of these things.
"Your cousins are old-fashioned," she went on, "though dear people; I've known them since I was a child, and am fond of them for their own sakes as well as Robert's. You must not think that everybody in our country dines at five. For instance, if you visited in my set at The Hague, you would find things more as they are in France. When Robert and I are married I shall manage the house."
We listened civilly, but liked her none the better for her disavowal of van Buren ways.
"Horrid, snobbish, disloyal little wretch," said Phil, afterwards, quite viciously. "Your cousin's a hundred times too good and too good-looking for her; but she doesn't know that. She fancies herself superior, and thinks she's condescending to ally herself with the family. I do believe she's marrying your cousin for his money, and if she could get a chance to do better according to her ideas, she'd throw him over."
"It isn't likely she'll ever have another chance of any sort," said I; "Robert won't get rid of his bargain easily."
"She's going with us this morning, and makes a favor of it," went on Phil. "She says she's tired to death of the pictures; but I'm sure ten wild horses wouldn't keep her at home."
Be that as it may, the power of twenty wild horses in motor form rushed her away in our society and that of her fiancé.
In the beautiful forest, which I was happy in seeing again, we threaded intricate, dark avenues, and came at last (as if we had been a whole party of tourist princes in the tale of the "Sleeping Beauty") to the House in the Wood.
The romance of the place grew in my eyes, because a princess built it to please her husband, and because the husband was that son of William the Silent who best carried on his father's plans for Holland's greatness. I'm afraid I cared more about it for the sake of Princess Amalia and Frederic Henry of Orange, than for the sake of the Peace Conference, because the Conference was modern; and it was of the princess I thought as we passed through room after room of the charming old house, hidden in the very heart of the forest. Had she commanded the exquisite Chinese embroideries, the wonderful decorations from China and Japan, and the lovely old china? I wouldn't ask, for if she had had nothing to do with that part, I didn't wish to know.