“My dear, he is thirty-nine. And to argue with Don Quixote is to break a straw against armor. There is no strength like the conviction, ‘the thing is so utterly asinine that I’m sure it must be right’, especially when the thing is also pleasant. Modern Quixotes are not above distinguishing that.”
“Oh, don’t reason it out in that quiet way,” cried the Baroness, passionately. “It’s too horrible for that. I can’t bear it.”
Her husband took her hand. “Dearest,” he asked, “since when have we left off grinning over the things we could not bear?”
The only answer was Plush’s grating bark, which she always started as soon as the Baron grew affectionate to the Baroness.
“As for quarrels, they are always a discomfort, but useless quarrels are a folly as well. And a dispute with Otto would soon develop into a quarrel. He knows what we think without further telling; be sure of that. For Heaven’s sake let there not be a row. I have not been present at a row since I was twenty. Gerard ran the thing close the other day. We may just as well treat Ursula civilly. I only hope he will bring her at once. The prospect makes me nervous, and I don’t see why my dinner should be spoiled because my eldest son is a fool.”
“But Ursula should be made to feel—”
He interrupted her, a thing he was not in the habit of doing.
“Be sure that Ursula will be made to feel,” he said, “whatever we do. Trust human nature for that.”
“Had it only been Gerard,” she moaned. “And just as I had arranged about Helena!”