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 Gräfin had the presence of mind to laugh in the right key.

Three weeks later the Gräfin 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.

“I’ve just left the dear children at the Rodenstahls’,” was the Gräfin’s greeting.

“Were they looking very happy?” asked the baroness.