"A profane simile!" the Assessor declared, with a shrug, swallowing his irritation in a glass of punch.
"In what capital taste the Wronsky was dressed!" came from the other side of the table. "Everything about her is so chic. She's a great acquisition to the neighbourhood."
"Still, she is not regularly beautiful," said Lothar Eichhof.
Hohenstein looked at him with his eyes half closed, after his listless manner. "You are either in love with her, or she has treated you badly," he said, in a low tone. "I tell you that if the Wronskys go to Berlin next year, as Marzell says they think of doing, that woman will create a perfect furor. Remember this."
Meanwhile, the object of this discussion was leaning back negligently in one of the low arm-chairs in the drawing-room, adding a word now and then in broken German to the general conversation, while, with eyes cast down as though finding nothing worthy of their special notice, she toyed with a costly lace fan. Her dark arched eyebrows contrasted strangely with the transparent pallor of her face, and when a slanting sunbeam called forth brilliant sparkles of light from the diamonds in her hair, certainly, in her light-blue gown trimmed with water-lilies, she justified the Assessor's declaration that she was an Undine.
"How reserved and haughty she looks!" Thea Rosen whispered to her lover, as she was walking through the room upon his arm towards the conservatories.
"I do not think her attractive," he rejoined. "I cannot conceive how Marzell Wronsky could ever fall in love with that woman."
"It is a pity you do not like her."
"You never could be friends with her, my darling."
"Why not?" asked Thea, lifting her lovely eyes to his.