“Oh no, not any longer,” interrupted the Dominé.
“I am inexpressibly grieved to hear you say so. But it is all the more incumbent upon me to show that I, at least, am not blinded by affection—or, let me openly declare, by prejudice. I am devotedly attached to my niece, but, as I regretfully confessed to Mevrouw Noks, and—and one or two other people, with tears—aye, with tears I said it”—Miss Mopius selected a wire and planted it in the heart of her flower—“dear Otto was murdered; inadvertently, of course, yet none the less wilfully murdered.” She shut her thin lips with a snap, and twirled a wisp of green paper round the wire.
“The weather is nice and mild,” said Mopius, “and for the time of year I should call it seasonable.”
“I notice an occasional crocus,” said the Dominé.
“He deserved a better fate,” said Josine.
She shook her red ringlets and put up a thin hand to her head. “My heart aches,” she said, “to think how easily it might all have been avoided. Ursula was a child. Poor Otto! he wanted a woman of more experience—not a plaything, but a helpmate. He might have lived forty years longer. Ah, he deserved—”
“You,” interrupted Jacóbus, fiercely, with a sneer, his habitual form of humor. She bored him.
Miss Mopius rose to the occasion. Slowly she smoothed out her crimson-figured wrapper. “Yes,” she said. “Me, if you like, or any other woman past thirty. Jacóbus, you are unkind. Now you are here, you might as well give me some money for ‘Tryphena.’ We are sending out a box. I am making these flowers for it.”
“Flowers!” growled Mopius. “What—to sell?”