CHAPTER VIII
THE TRYST
The next day passed in an atmosphere of sombre expectation. Ursula and Harriet barely spoke to one another; the latter seemed to be holding aloof. Mynheer Mopius took his niece the round of the house amid a steady flow of self-laudation, and Ursula put in pleasing adjectives as full-stops. He showed her everything, even to the water-supply and the wine-cellar. There was but one exception, his wife’s store-cupboard; Mevrouw Mopius, to his annoyance, actually held out in refusing the key. But he found a compensation in unmitigated china and glass.
After a morning thus profitably spent, the afternoon brought a long drive and a visit to a flower show. The drive was merely an opportunity for parading Mynheer Mopius’s equipage among the beauties of nature, but that gentleman was made happy, after prolonged anxiety and craning, by meeting the very people he was desirous should see it. The visit to the exhibition, however, must be regarded as an act of kindness to his guest, for the committee had had the manifest stupidity to award Mynheer Mopius’s double dahlias a third prize.
In the gardens Ursula espied Gerard with his cousin Helena among a crowd of stylish-looking people, whom Jacóbus described as “swells.” She had received, that morning, the promised card for the Baroness van Trossart’s party, and she would gladly have sought an occasion of thanking the sender, but to this proposal her uncle, in a sudden fit of shyness, opposed resolute and almost rampant refusal.
“I don’t want to know the people,” he repeated, excitedly, his eyes fixed on the distinguished group by the central lake. “I don’t want to have anything to say to them. Ursula, you belong to my party. I desire you to stay where you are.”
“Oh, very well,” replied Ursula, offended; “though, of course, I should not have gone up to him as long as he was conversing with that violet-nosed old woman in blue.”
“That lady is the wife of the Governor, and I will thank you to speak of her with more respect.”