Her hand, in its long “Suède” glove, closed almost viciously on the filmy folds of her frock. Not another word was exchanged between them as they threaded the shady mazes of suddenly delicious green, but she felt that he was watching her all the time out of the corners of his eyes. A good man enjoys the arousing a womanly woman’s righteous indignation. Her heart beat till he saw it. He liked that.
“Ah, Dominé, there was sense in your sermon!” cried the Freule van Borck, haranguing everybody in a group on the lawn. “What I enjoy in your preaching is the protest against latter-day flabbiness”—the Freule van Borck had read and misunderstood Carlyle. “Where are the heroes of old?” she cried, pointing her “church-book” at the imperturbable Gerard, who had come strolling out, cool in the coolest of flannels, to greet the clergyman. “Where, as you asked them, are Gideon and Moses and Joshua the son of Nun, that was never afraid?”
“We give it up,” said Gerard, gravely. “Did the congregation know?”
“Be silent, Gerard. Your conduct is bad enough already. Instead of remaining to scoff, you should have gone to pray.” It was the Baron who spoke, looking up from his great St. Bernard.
“I bow to your command, sir, especially on a Sunday. But Aunt Louisa should not propound conundrums when the answers appear to have got beyond her control.”
“I was not speaking to you; I was speaking seriously,” replied the Freule, with lofty scorn. “And I thoroughly agree with the Dominé, that the age of troubadours is dead.”
The Dominé writhed. “Yes, yes,” he said—“undoubtedly. Though I should hardly, myself, have employed the names you mentioned as examples of fearlessness”—He stopped in despair. The Freule was grabbing, with her handkerchief in front of her, at a wasp which serenely buzzed behind. Mevrouw van Helmont, on a garden seat, against a great flare of MacMahons that looked, among their gold-rimmed leaves, like a mayonnaise of lobster—Mevrouw van Helmont seemed entirely engrossed by the interest of sticking her parasol into a fat bundle before her which wriggled and kicked. The Dominé sighed. This was “the Family.” These were the temporal lords of his spiritual domain. He turned, wistfully, to watch his daughter coming across the sward, by Otto’s side, between gay patches of color.
“You two have been renewing your acquaintance,” he said. “Or was there none left to renew?”
“Indeed, we are already old friends,” replied Otto, “for Juffrouw Rovers has been scolding me vigorously; and ladies, I believe, never scold mere acquaintances?” Ursula bit her under-lip. “I understand that Juffrouw Rovers objects to the killing of animals—all animals?” His heavy mustache hung unmoved as he looked across.