"Oh," replied the child contemptuously, "I don't care for her! She doesn't dare to punish me, for you told her she mustn't."
At this moment, the portière was gently drawn aside, and a pale, faded gentlewoman appeared. She courtesied to the ladies, and said, timidly: "The chaplain is waiting for Bella."
"But I won't have a lesson to-day!" the little girl cried, taking a ball of worsted from the table and throwing it at the speaker.
"Yes, my child, you must," said the baroness. "Go with Miss Mertens, and be a good little girl, Bella."
Bella, as though the matter affected her no more than it did Ali, who had retreated behind the sofa, threw herself into an arm-chair and drew her feet up under her. The governess was about to approach her, but at an angry look from the baroness she retired to the door again.
This disgraceful scene would probably have lasted much longer if the baroness had not brought up a corps de reserve to her assistance in the shape of a box of bonbons. The child, after she had crammed her mouth and pockets full, left her seat, and, pushing aside the hand which her governess held out to her, ran out of the room.
Elizabeth sat petrified with astonishment. The delicate features of Fräulein von Walde also showed evident disapproval; but she said nothing.
The baroness sank back among her pillows. "These governesses will be my death," she sighed. "If Miss Mertens could only learn how to treat, judiciously, a child of Bella's sensitive, nervous temperament! She never takes into account social position, temperament, and physical constitution. She would model all after the same pattern—the daughter of a grocer or a peer; a finely-strung, sensitive nature, or a robust, rude, day-labourer physique—'tis all the same thing to her. Miss Mertens is a disagreeable, pedantic schoolmistress; her English, too, is detestable. Heaven only knows in what mean little English county she learned her native tongue!"
"But really, dear Amalie," said Fräulein von Walde, "I do not find her English impure," and her voice sounded exquisitely kind and soothing.
"There you come with your never-failing angelic amiability; but, although I do not understand English, I can always hear, in one instant, how much more high-bred your accent is, my dear, when you are talking with her."