“Yes; it’s very hot,” he hazarded. “Shall I open the window?”
Miss Mopius somewhat recovered herself.
“Oh!” she replied, “but not as hot as Java, I suppose? Not nearly as hot as Java. I should enjoy Java. I like heat. I’m not strong, Mynheer van Helmont, but the hot weather always does me good. I’m sure I should feel much better in Java.”
“Yes,” he said, vaguely. “Would you prefer me, then, to shut the window again?”
“The window? Perhaps it would be better under the circumstances. The question you asked me just now is so momentous, Mynheer van Helmont, I do not know how to answer it. Oh, that my dear elder sister were with me still! She was very much my elder, very much so. I miss her guidance, her motherly advice.”
She hesitated, and her eyelids fluttered.
“Juffrouw Rovers’s mother?” said Otto. “I suppose she was very beautiful?”
“Well, I hardly know if you would have called her beautiful. She was not at all like me.”
“Just so,” said Otto. “I suppose Juffrouw Rovers is like her?”