CHAPTER IX
OTTO’S WOOING
“Plush,” said the Baroness van Helmont, addressing her silken favorite, “it is a terrible thing to have an incompatible child.”
Plush made no answer, but from the other end of the room came Otto’s reply: “I can’t help it, mother. I suppose you made me what I am.”
“I? Never in my life. I could not have produced anything so strong. Plush and I, we are in harmony; we take the same view of existence.”
She languidly entangled her fingers in the meshes of her darling’s soft white hair. The lapdog, on her crimson cushion, laid two delicate little slender-wristed paws, that looked as if encased in a perfect fit of peau de Suède, over a bright black button of a nose. The pair of them, lady and lapdog, looked born to undulate.
“You are resolved, then,” continued the Baroness, “to return to Java as soon as you again get tired of us.”
“Tired of you! Mother!” His emotion made him both unable and unwilling to say more.