"How dare you say it isn't true? Do you take me for an impostor? I suppose you think I am not at home in swell places like this!... Pooh! Shall I give you a proof? I can--I can!... You'll find my name scratched at the foot of this lamp. Look and you'll find it.... 'Lilly Czepanek ... Lilly Czepanek.' Look! Look, I say!"
He had started to his feet, his face rigid, and fixed his eyes in horror on the polished silver mirror of the lamp, on which was a jumble of scribbled hieroglyphics. He could not distinguish amongst them the L. C. for which he was looking till she came to his assistance. Here, no; there, no. The letters swam into one another. It was like trying to catch hold of the goldfish in the aquarium.
Hurrah! here it was. That was it--"L. v. M." and the coronet above. For in those days she had often had the audacity to call herself by the forbidden title as a temporary adornment.
"Now, do you see, Konni, that I was right? Now you won't mind how much I drink, will you, you dear, precious little muff?"
Utterly crushed by the proof, he sank back in his chair without a single word.
His uncle and Lilly went on drinking and laughing at him.
At this moment she happened to catch sight of herself in the glass. Through a billowy haze she beheld a flushed, puffy face with dishevelled hair falling about it from under a crooked hat, and two deeply marked lines running from mouth to chin. It was not a pleasing spectacle, and she was a little disturbed at it; but before she could distress herself further, the old uncle claimed her attention with a new joke.
"Do you know, Lilly dear, how the Chinese sing 'Die Lorelei'?"
Before she had heard a syllable she went into a fit of giggles. He crossed his bandy legs and played a prelude on the side of his foot as if it were a banjo, "Ping, pang, ping"; and then he began in a cracked, nasal, gurgling voice, drawling his "l's."
"O, my belong too much sorry
And can me no savy, what kind;
Have got one olo piccy story,
No won't she go outside my mind."