“My dear, not if it be a compliment,” interposed the Baroness, mildly ignoring, as her sex was bound to do, the all-important concluding words. “Every woman likes a harmless compliment.”
“Not sensible women. Sensible women despise them,” edged in the Freule[A] van Borck. Nobody heeded her.
“Confidence! Confidence!” echoed Gerard, hotly. “Who talked of confidence?” He lapsed, purposely, into Dutch. “I decline to be told,” he said, “whether at my father’s table or anywhere else, that I behave in an ‘ungentlemanly’ manner.”
The old Baron waved a conciliatory hand. “The word was unfortunate,” he admitted, “but, Gerard, you press too heavily upon it. Glissez, n’appuyez pas. Otto meant to say you had stolen an unfair advantage. He had doubtless been wanting to tell Ursula himself. Fie, what an ado about nothing. To me it is most remarkable that, after so long an absence, Otto should still speak Dutch so well.”
The obvious retort that Dutch is spoken in Java sprang straight to Gerard’s lips, but he bit it down again.
“I consider Ursula Rovers distinctly plain,” remarked the Freule van Borck. The Freule was the Baroness van Helmont’s only sister; she had lived at the Manor-house for years. She was what humdrum people call “a character,” as if all of us were not that when you shift the lights.
“She is common-looking,” said the Baroness, “but I think she is pretty.”
“All women are pretty,” smiled the Baron, “even those whom the pretty ones think plain.”
“My dear,” his wife nodded across at him, “it is a fallacy, old as Adam, that Eve, in her Paradise, is jealous of all the Liliths outside.”