“‘OH, THEY ARE ALL THAT,’ CRIED OTTO, FACING ROUND”
“My dear child”—he began.
He too constantly called her that. She detested the name. She knew well enough how much he was her elder.
“I am not a child,” she cried, passionately. “I am a woman, and your wife.”
“Yes,” he replied, sternly, reading discontent in her pent-up vehemence, and perhaps a little assumption; “you are now the Baroness van Helmont.”
“I am not. I am not!” she cried, recklessly, and dropped her work in her agitation. “I mean I am not that only. I am sick of merely being that. I am your wife, Otto. I have a right to be recognized as such.”
Otto paced down the large room and up again.
“I am sorry,” he said, stiffly, “that you consider yourself slighted by any one, but I cannot ask my mother to leave the house. There are difficulties, of course, in your position. I am the first to admit them. We all have difficulties. Often they are unavoidable. Yours seem so to me.”
She looked at him, her brown eyes dilated with horror; then suddenly, very sweetly, her tenderness flowed across them.