“He will tell you.”
“Not—I am not to be married?”
The Archduchess Annunciata was not all hard. She could never forgive her children their father. They reminded her daily of a part of her life that she would have put behind her. But they were her children, and Hedwig was all that she was not, gentle and round and young. Suddenly something almost like regret stirred in her.
“Don’t look like that, child,” she said. “It is not settled. And, after all, one marriage or another what difference does it make! Men are men. If one does not care, it makes the things they do unimportant.”
“But surely,” Hedwig gasped, “surely I shall be consulted?”
Annunciata shook her head. They had all risen and Hilda was standing, the peach forgotten, her mouth a little open. As for Olga Loschek, she was very still, but her eyes burned. The Archduchess remembered her presence no more than that of the flowers on the table.
“Mother, you cannot look back, and—and remember your own life, and allow me to be wretched. You cannot!”
Hilda picked up her peach. It was all very exciting, but Hedwig was being rather silly. Besides, why was she so distracted when she did not know who the man was? It might be some quite handsome person. For Hilda was also at the age when men were handsome or not handsome, and nothing else.
Unexpectedly Hedwig began to cry. This Hilda considered going much too far, and bad taste into the bargain. She slipped the peach into the waist of her frock.
The Archduchess hated tears, and her softer moments were only moments. “Dry your eyes, and don’t be silly,” she said coldly. “You have always known that something of the sort was inevitable.”