"I am very glad our nest pleases you. The chief credit for its arrangement belongs to my wife. You cannot imagine how she runs herself out of breath to pick up pretty things. But it is like Austria here, is it not?"
"Entirely," the Baroness assures him.
"My wife is incomprehensible to me," the master of the house remarks, after the above interchange of civilities, glancing uneasily at the clock on the chimney-piece. "It is now just half an hour since I helped her half dead out of a fiacre, with I cannot tell how many packages. I trust she is not----"
The portière rustles apart. Extremely slender, bringing with her the odour of violets, and shrouded in a mass of black crêpe de Chine and black lace, dying with fatigue and sparkling with vivacity, the Baroness Rohritz enters, fastening the clasp of a bracelet as she does so.
"Good-evening. I beg a thousand pardons! I am excessively glad to make your acquaintance, Baroness Meineck. Can you forgive my ill-breeding in keeping you waiting on this the first evening that you have given me the pleasure of seeing you here? It is terrible!"
"Ah, don't mention it," the Baroness replies, and, although the younger lady speaks German in her honour, answering in French: she is very proud of her French.
"Mais si, mais si, I am most unfortunate, but innocent,--quite innocent. It is positively impossible to be in time in Paris. Well, and how do you do?" turning to Stella and lightly passing her hand over the girl's cheek. "You are always twitting me with my enthusiasm, Edmund: did I exaggerate this time?"
"No, not in the least," her husband affirms: it would have been difficult, however, for him to make any other reply without infringing upon the rules of politeness.
"Who made your dress for you? It is charming. And how beautifully you have put in your roses!--but violet suits light blue better than yellow. Shall we change?" And, unfastening the roses from Stella's shoulder, Thérèse Rohritz takes a bunch of dark Russian violets from her girdle and arranges them on Stella's gown, all with the same graceful, laughing, breathless amiability.
To conquer all hearts, to make everybody happy, to give every one advice, to attend to every one's commissions, to oblige all the world,--this is the mania of Edgar's sister-in-law. He once declared that she went whirling through existence, a perfect hurricane of over-excellent qualities.