"I must confess that I could hardly bear to part with it," her sister went on. "However, I made up my mind to do so when Tulpe, the great antiquary from Vienna, came one day and bid for it."
Sterzl, to whom the god's wanderings were known, made some allusion to them in his dry way; on which the Baroness Wolnitzka shuffled herself a little nearer to Siegburg and addressed herself to him.
"You see, count, it was something like what often happens with a girl: you drag her about to balls for years, take her from one watering-place to another, and never get her off your hands; then you settle down quietly at home and suddenly, when you least expect it, a suitor turns up. I could hardly bear to see the last of the bust I assure you."
"It must indeed have been a harrowing parting," said Siegburg with much feeling.
"Terrible!" said the baroness, "and doubly painful because"--and here she leaned over to whisper in Siegburg's ear--"Slawa is so amazingly like the Bernini. Does not her likeness to the Apollo strike you?"
"I saw it at once--as soon as I came in," Siegburg declared without hesitation.
"Every one says so--well then, you can understand what a sacrifice it was ... it cuts me to the heart only to think of it. Oh! these great emotions! Excuse me if I take off my cap ..." and she hastily snatched off the black lace structure and passing her fingers through her thin grey hair with the vehemence of a genius she exclaimed: "Merciful God! How we poor women are ill-used! crushed, fettered ..."
"Yes, a woman's lot is not a happy one;" said Siegburg sympathetically.
"You are quite an original!" exclaimed her sister, giggling rather uncomfortably--for in good society it is quite understood that when we are suffering under relations devoid of manners, and whom, if we dared, we should shut up at once in a mad-house, we may do what we can to render them harmless by ticketing them with this title--"Quite an original. Are you still always ready to break a lance for the emancipation of our sex?"
"No," replied Madame Wolnitzka, "no, my dear Clotilde, I have given that up. Since I learnt by experience that every woman is ready to set aside the idea of emancipation as soon as she has a chance of marrying I have lost my sympathy with the cause."