“Oh, yes; he always seems to me to have been part of us, of Hermann and me, for years. He’s THERE, if you know what I mean, and so few people are there. They walk about your life, and go in and out, so to speak, but Michael stops. I suppose it’s because he is so natural.”
Aunt Barbara had been a diplomatist long before her husband, and fearful of appearing inquisitive about Sylvia’s impression of Michael, which she really wanted to inquire into, instantly changed the subject.
“Ah, everybody who has got definite things to do is natural,” she said. “It is only the idle people who have leisure to look at themselves in the glass and pose. And I feel sure that you have definite things to do and plenty of them, my dear. What are they?”
“Oh, I sing a little,” said Sylvia.
“That is the first unnatural thing you have said. I somehow feel that you sing a great deal.”
Aunt Barbara suddenly got up.
“My dear, you are not THE Miss Falbe, are you, who drove London crazy with delight last summer. Don’t tell me you are THE Miss Falbe?”
Sylvia laughed.
“Do you know, I’m afraid I must be,” she said. “Isn’t it dreadful to have to say that after your description?”
Aunt Barbara sat down again, in a sort of calm despair.