“Oh no,” she answered—“not exactly. I may go to a few of the dances and take a tour (dance) with the young men—I should, of course, have many partners; but what is that? Then I shall become affianced, and my betrothal will be a very great event; and afterwards there will be my trousseau, and the preparing for my home, and then my marriage with the husband whom my parents have chosen for me.”
“And you look forward to that?” I said.
“Of course; what else does any girl look forward to?”
I could not speak at all for a minute; then I said, “I am truly thankful I am not a German.”
She smiled.
“If we,” she said slowly, “have one thing to be more—what you call grateful for—than another, it is that we don’t belong to your so strange country of England. Your coldness, and your long time of remaining without your dot and your betrothal and your so nécessaire husband, is too terrible for any girl in the Fatherland even to contemplate the pain.”
“Oh!” I said, feeling quite angry, “we pity you. You see, Comtesse, you and I can never agree.”
She smiled and shook her little head.
“But what would you do,” she said a few minutes afterwards, “if these things were not arranged? You might reach, say, twenty, or even twenty-one or twenty-two, and—”
“Well, suppose I did reach twenty-one or twenty-two; surely those years are not so awful?”