The most evident thing about these sisters was dirt, anæmia, and a sort of soiled, insignificant handsomeness. They explained themselves, roughly, by describing in a cold-blooded lazy way their life at home.
A stepmother, prodigiously smart, well-to-do, neglecting them; sent first to one place then another (now Paris) to be out of the way. Yet the stepmother supplies them superfluously from her superfluity.—They talked about themselves with a consciously dramatic matter-of-factness, as twin parcels, usually on the way from one place to another, expensively posted here and there, without real destination. They enjoyed nothing at all; painted well (according to Juan Soler); had a sort of wild uncontrollable attachment for the Lipmann.
“Oh! Bertha, I didn’t know your dear ‘Sorbert’ was going to England.” “Dein Sorbet” was the bantering formula for Tarr. Bertha was perpetually talking about him, to them, to the charwoman, to the greengrocer opposite, to everybody she met. Tarr did not quite bask in this notoriety.
“Didn’t you? Oh, yes; he’s gone.”
“You’ve not quarrelled—with your Sorbert?”
“What’s that to do with you, my dear?” Bertha gave a brief, indecent laugh she sometimes had. “By the way, I’ve just seen Herr Kreisler. We’ve arranged to go out somewhere to-morrow.”
“Go out—Kreisler! Liebes Kind!—What on earth possessed you—!—Herr—Kreisler!”
“What’s the matter with Herr Kreisler? You were all friendly enough with him a week ago.”
Elsa looked at her with the cold-blooded scrutiny of the precocious urchin.