“I really don’t see why he cannot be asked,” she answered Marie pettishly. “He is a regular visitor here.”
“But, Lili, how can you be so foolish? Mamma asked him once or twice this winter, and surely we are not quite so intimate with him that we should invite him to accompany us into the country. When you begin to ask strangers, there is always a sort of constraint.”
“But he is very sociable.”
“That’s true. He improves on further acquaintance, I must admit; but still we don’t know him as we do Paul and Etienne.”
“Oh, they are nice boys! They do nothing all day long but lounge about from the Witte to Linke, and from the Bordelaise to the Bodega, and always with that wretched Vere. We don’t see them at all just now; Paul occasionally condescends to call, and Etienne has now become quite a myth. Ask Vere, if you like,” she concluded pettishly; “then you will have the trio complete.”
Marie shrugged her shoulders. [[176]]
“Now don’t be angry with me, Lili, because mamma won’t ask de Woude. ’Tis not my fault,” she answered softly.
“Oh no, not at all! But ’tis always so when I—when I have an idea. It’s always pooh-pooh’d. I won’t bother about it any more. I don’t care a rap for the whole party.”
She left the room, with difficulty repressing her tears, while Marie took up her book with a sigh.
Madame Verstraeten had gone to sit down beside her husband in the conservatory. She had overheard something of Lili’s short passionate sentences, and a thought filled her that brought a reflection of hesitation over her kindly face.