"Do you know these Harfinks?" he asks, softly.
"Harfink fitted up my sugar factory," replies Erwin, and glances closely at his brother-in-law. "In consequence I have met him several times. Recently, in Marienbad, he reminded me of our acquaintance, and introduced me to his wife and daughter."
"Strange man!" says Felix, shaking his head.
"Yes, strange, silly! His wife is repulsive, both are very ordinary."
"Yes, both," repeats Felix, and with the toe of his boot draws figures in the sand. "But the daughter?"
"Well, the daughter?" Erwin glances still more attentively at his brother-in-law's face.
"She is very well educated," murmurs the latter, indistinctly.
"Her education was probably acquired in a very noble boarding-school," remarks Erwin, dryly. "During the ten minutes of our acquaintance, she used the word 'aristocratic' three times, and twice complained that society in the Kursaal was so mixed. Besides that, she found the country monotonous, the weather dull, the music 'agacante,' and concluded by saying, one rails at Marienbad and yet it was tiresome everywhere, for her friend Laure de Lonsigny wrote her quite desperate letters from Luchon."
Felix has flushed more and more deeply during this pitiless account. "Poor girl, how embarrassed she must have been," says he, excusingly.
"Embarrassed?" Erwin shrugged his shoulders. "She had a great deal of self-possession."