“They don’t love you, and you know it,” said Freule van Borck, incisively. “As for me, of course I admire those who dare to confront popular hate. ‘Drive over the dogs!’ That would be my theory. I envy the woman who had the opportunity of saying it. All I advise is—take care.”
“I do,” replied Ursula, “of them all, as much as my limited means allow. And this is the way they repay me.”
“Ursula, my dear, your charities are all wrong. To give with as much discrimination as you do, you ought to be able to give much more. Only the very rich can afford to give judiciously.”
“Aunt Louisa, I believe that is very true,” replied Ursula, gravely.
“Of course it is. There are lessons, child, which only a gradual tradition ultimately develops. I am a Radical, of course. That is to say, I am an Imperialist. I believe in the Napoleons of history. But, genius apart, it takes half a dozen fathers and sons before you produce enough collective wisdom to float a family. And I have always declared you were a remarkable woman, Ursula; but I should hardly say of you, as your father-in-law once said of some celebrated artist: ‘Heredity? Nonsense! Why, Genius is a whole genealogy.’”
“Did Theodore say that?” cried the Dowager. “Now, I did not remember. But he was always scattering witty things, in bushels, like pearls before swine.”
“Thank you,” said Louisa, who had not learned in the least to bear with her sister’s infirmity.
“I don’t mean—Louisa, you must write that down for me. There is nothing that distresses me more than the thought how incomplete my work will be at the best.”
“Mynheer van Helmont is asking to see the young Mevrouw,” interposed a servant. Ursula rose hastily.
“Take my warning to heart,” Aunt Louisa called after her—“about the servants.”