"I assure you that no change is needed to make my visit to you most agreeable," Rohritz rejoined, courteously.
The captain bowed: "Nevertheless you cannot deny that your pleasure may be increased, and you are still young enough to enjoy the society of a pretty and clever girl."
Rohritz bit his lip; he had a very decided, although quite excusable, dislike for what are called clever young women. Stasy turned up her nose.
"Do you think the little Meineck clever--mais vraiment clever, spirituelle?" she asked.
"She is full of bright, merry ideas, and what a pretty girl says is apt to sound well," the captain replied, dryly.
"Do you think her pretty?" Stasy drawled; she never could make up her mind to call any girl pretty.
"Pretty? She is charming, bewitching!" the captain declared, in an angry crescendo.
Just then his wife appeared, much provoked at some particularly shocking misdeed on the part of the maid to whom had been intrusted the arrangement of the guest-chambers, and she asked, "What is the matter?"
"A difference of opinion with regard to your niece Stella, Katrine dear," Anastasia said, sweetly, leaning back with a languishing air among the cushions of her arm-chair and touching her fingertips together. "Your husband thinks her so very beautiful."
"Oh, my husband always exaggerates," Frau von Leskjewitsch remarks.