seen her either quite intimately, in her bedroom, or at those crowded family-evenings. It was as though she had come into her own again.
Yes, as she now welcomed Van Vreeswijck, with a soft, playful word or two, Paul thought her simply adorable. He suddenly understood that, ten years ago, his sister might well have been irresistible. Even now, she had something about her so young, charming, engaging, pretty and distinguished that she was a revelation to him. She was an exquisite woman.
She had not hired a man-servant: the parlour-maid would wait. She herself drew back the hangings from the dining-room door-way and, without taking Van Vreeswijck’s arm, asked the men to come in to dinner. A pink light of shaded candles slumbered over the table, with its bunch of grapes and its pink roses and maiden-hair fern, in between the crystal and the silver.
“But this is most charming!” said Paul, to himself, for he could not tell his sister so yet, as she and Van der Welcke were talking to Van Vreeswijck. “This is most charming! A party of four, like this, in this pretty room. That’s just what I like. Compare all that formality of Bertha’s. Bertha never gives these intimate little dinners. This is just what I like at my age”—Paul was thirty-five—“no formality, but everything elegant and nicely-served and good. . . . Excellent hors d’œuvres! Constance knows how to do things! Compare the friendly, but homely rumpsteak which I sometimes
