CHAPTER IV.
When, the morning after her passionate outburst, Eline came down to breakfast, Henk had already gone out, bound for the stables, to look after his horses and hounds. In the breakfast-room there was no one but little Ben, eating, or rather playing with a slice of bread-and-butter. Betsy she could hear running to and fro with much animation, and giving her hurried instructions to the cook.
Frans and Jeanne Ferelyn, and Miss de Woude van Bergh and her brother, were coming to dinner that day.
Eline was looking very neat and dressy in a gown of dark gray woollen material, a gray ribbon round her waist, and a small golden [[20]]arrow glittering at her throat. She wore neither rings nor bracelets. About her forehead curled a few fine locks, in frizzy garlands, soft and glossy as frayed silk.
With a friendly nod she walked round to where the child was seated, and lifting up his face with both hands pressed a loving kiss on his forehead. Then she sat down, feeling well at ease with herself, her senses agreeably soothed by the soft warmth thrown out from the glowing hearth, while outside the snow-flakes were silently wrapping a down-like mantle around them. With an involuntary smile of satisfaction she rubbed her slim white hands, and glanced at her rosy, white-tipped finger-nails; then casting a glance outside, where an old woman, almost bent double, was pushing a barrow of snow-covered oranges in front of her, she cut open a little breakfast-roll, the while listening, with amused indifference, to the angry dispute going on between Betsy and the cook.
Betsy entered, an ill-humoured expression in her heavily-shaded, twinkling eyes, her short thick lips compressed with annoyance. She carried a set of cut-glass dessert trays, which she was about to wash, as the cook had broken one of them. Carefully, notwithstanding her anger, she placed the trays on the table, and filled a basin with warm water.
“That fool of a girl! Fancy washing one of my fine glass dishes in boiling water! But it serves me right for trusting those idiots to do anything.”
Her voice sounded harsh and rasping, as she roughly pushed Ben out of the way. Eline, in unusually good humour, offered her assistance, which was readily accepted by Betsy. She had a great many things to do yet, she said; but all the same she sat down, watching Eline carefully washing and drying the dishes one by one, with light graceful movements, without moistening her fingers or spilling one drop; and she was conscious of the contrast between her own rough-and-ready way of doing things—the outcome of robust health—and Eline’s languid grace, mingled as it was with somewhat of fear of tiring or bespattering herself.
“By the bye, when I was at the Verstraetens’ yesterday, I heard they were not going to the opera this evening, as they were tired from last night; aunt asked me if I would like the box. Do you care to go to the opera?”
“And what about your visitors?”