"Elsa isn't a beggar!"
"Not financially, or I shouldn't have suggested the match. But
she's getting on, you know, and has no pretensions to brains or
looks or anything of that sort."
"You seem to forget that she's my daughter."
"That shows my generosity. But, seriously, I don't see what there
is against Wratislav. He has no debts--at least, nothing worth
speaking about."
"But think of his reputation! If half the things they say about
him are true--"
"Probably three-quarters of them are. But what of it? You don't
want an archangel for a son-in-law."
"I don't want Wratislav. My poor Elsa would be miserable with
him."
"A little misery wouldn't matter very much with her; it would go
so well with the way she does her hair, and if she couldn't get on
with Wratislav she could always go and do good among the poor."
The Baroness picked up a framed photograph from the table.
"He certainly is very handsome," she said doubtfully; adding even
more doubtfully, "I dare say dear Elsa might reform him."
The Gr?fin had the presence of mind to laugh in the right key.
. . . . . . . . .
Three weeks later the Gr?fin bore down upon the Baroness Sophie in
a foreign bookseller's shop in the Graben, where she was,
possibly, buying books of devotion, though it was the wrong
counter for them.
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