"Don't be a child," Katrine consoles her: "the matter was of no great consequence."
"Certainly not," Stasy adds, rather out of breath from her exertions. "What he thinks can make no kind of difference to you, and he assuredly will not report elsewhere your very strange remarks. Probably they interest him so little that he will soon forget all about them."
"Come and take your bath; you are wonderfully averse to the water to-day," Katrine calls out to the girl, who still sits sadly upon the wooden step, lost in reflection. "Indeed you need not take your stupidity so much to heart: it would have been nothing at all, if there had not been rather an odd story connected with Rohritz's sudden voyage across the ocean."
"Ah!" exclaims Stella, paddling through the water to her aunt, who, clinging to the pole, is now enjoying the current. "Really, something romantic?" she asks, curiously.
"There was nothing romantic in the affair save his way of taking it," Katrine says, with a dry smile, "and therefore the remembrance of this piece of his past may be particularly distasteful to him."
"Ah, but it was a married woman, was it not? Do tell me!" Stella entreats, burning with curiosity.
"No, Solomon," Katrine replies: "it was a young, unmarried woman, not so very young either, about twenty-six or twenty-seven, well born, a Baroness von Föhren, a Livonian with Russian blood in her veins, poor, ambitious, prudent, and just clever enough to entertain a man without frightening him. I saw her once, and but once, at the theatre; she was very beautiful, and I took an extraordinary dislike to her. I am always ready to applaud Judic in opéra-bouffe, and on grand prix day in the Bois it interests me exceedingly to observe the dames aux camellias through my opera-glass; but nothing in this world so disgusts me as demi-monde graces in a woman who ought to be a lady."
"I think you are a little severe in your judgment of Sonja. She was not irreproachable in her conduct," Stasy, who has for years maintained a kind of friendship with the person under discussion, here interposes, "not irreproachable, but----"
In all that touches her extremely strict ideas of propriety and fitness, Katrine understands no jesting.
"Her conduct was not only 'not irreproachable,' it was revolting!" she exclaims. "If she interests you, Stella, I can show you her photograph; at one time you could buy it everywhere. She was made to turn a young fellow's head. With regard to women men really have such wretched taste."