"Strange!" Rohritz remarks to his wife; "Edgar described the young Meineck to me as particularly gay and amusing."
"Indeed?"
"Now, for so young a creature, she seems to me particularly quiet."
"What would you have? Punchinello himself would grow melancholy with such a life as hers."
Her husband reflects for a few moments. After a while he says, "I wonder whether, after all, she was not a little smitten with Edgar?"
"Upon what do you base your conjecture?" Thérèse asks, in astonishment.
"She put on so extraordinarily indifferent an expression whenever he was mentioned."
Thérèse laughs aloud.
"What is there to laugh at?" her husband asks, rather crossly.
"Forgive me, but you remind me of the Frenchman who proposed to a young lady through her mother, and when he was asked by her what reason he had to suppose that her daughter liked him, replied, 'I am quite sure of it, for she always leaves the room as soon as I enter it.'"