Then comes,--
'Should you marry, then be sure
Life's sorest ills you must endure.'
Lermontow.
'L'amour, c'est le grand moteur de toutes les bêtises humaines.'
G. Sand.
I really should not have supposed that our Zdena had already pondered the marriage problem so deeply," he said, gleefully; then, contemplating with a smile the mass of wisdom scribbled in a bold, dashing handwriting, he added, "there seems to be more going on in that small brain than we had suspected. "What do you think, Rosel? may not Zdena possibly have a weakness for Harry?"
"Nonsense!" replied the Baroness. She was evidently somewhat annoyed,--first, because her husband had roused her from a pleasant nap, or, rather, disturbed her in the perusal of an article upon Grecian excavations, and secondly, because he had called her Rosel. Her real name was Rosamunda, a name of which she was very proud; she really could not, even after almost twenty years of married life, reconcile herself to her husband's thus robbing it of all its poetry. "Nonsense!" she exclaimed, with some temper. "I have a very different match in view for her."
"I did not ask you what you had in view for Zdena," the major observed, contemptuously. "I know that without asking. I only wish to know whether during your stay in Vienna you did not notice that Zdena had taken a liking to----"
"Oh, Zdena is far too sensible, and, if I am not greatly mistaken, also too ambitious, to dream of marrying Harry. She knows that Harry would ruin his prospects by a marriage with her," Frau von Leskjewitsch continued. "There's no living upon love and air alone."
"Nevertheless there are always some people who insist upon trying it, although the impossibility has long been demonstrated, both theoretically and practically," growled the major.