And then the room swam round in a whirl, and she was gone.
After that they were more than ever unwilling to meet. Yet, in a little circle like theirs the thing was unavoidable, and Gerard had constantly to face what was almost more painful—the tacit misery of the fat Baroness, Helena’s comfortable aunt, who understood, with a woman’s insight in all such matters, that everything ought, somehow, to have been different to what it was.
The Baroness van Trossart complained to her husband, but the Baron said that the Van Troyens were as good a family as the Van Helmonts, and he didn’t see that it mattered.
“Personally,” he added, “I am unable to perceive much difference between the two young men. They are both fair-complexioned and gentlemanly, and ill-mannered, like their companions. I wonder that Nellie should have thought the exchange worth her while.”
The lady would have protested.
“My dear, I cannot help it. Had I been consulted I should have requested Helena to marry your three nephews Van Asveld. Their mother is pestering me to find the whole three of them places with a start of two hundred a year. The thing is impossible!” He coughed testily, and before his important eyes he held a blue-book upside down.
Equally bootless was the Baroness’s attempt to seek refuge in the sympathy of Mademoiselle Papotier. That impenetrable Frenchwoman only replied,
“Mon Dieu, Madame, le mariage n’est pas l’amour!” taking the name of three holy things in vain within one short sentence, after the manner of her race.
But one evening towards dusk, as Gerard was dressing for dinner, he heard some one enter his little front sitting-room, to whom he called out, into the heavy twilight,