"With great applause!" said her brother.
"Oh, applause--applause!" she murmured. And she gathered up two or three of her dispersed draperies. She glanced at the beautiful brocade, and then, "I don't see how I can have endured it!" she said.
"Endure it a little longer. Come to my wedding."
"Thank you; that 's your affair. My affairs are elsewhere."
"Where are you going?"
"To Germany--by the first ship."
"You have decided not to marry Mr. Acton?"
"I have refused him," said Eugenia.
Her brother looked at her in silence. "I am sorry," he rejoined at last.
"But I was very discreet, as you asked me to be. I said nothing. "
"Please continue, then, not to allude to the matter," said Eugenia.
Felix inclined himself gravely. "You shall be obeyed.
But your position in Germany?" he pursued.
"Please to make no observations upon it."
"I was only going to say that I supposed it was altered."
"You are mistaken."
"But I thought you had signed"--
"I have not signed!" said the Baroness.
Felix urged her no further, and it was arranged that he should immediately assist her to embark.
Mr. Brand was indeed, it appeared, very impatient to consummate his sacrifice and deliver the nuptial benediction which would set it off so handsomely; but Eugenia's impatience to withdraw from a country in which she had not found the fortune she had come to seek was even less to be mistaken.
It is true she had not made any very various exertion; but she appeared to feel justified in generalizing--in deciding that the conditions of action on this provincial continent were not favorable to really superior women. The elder world was, after all, their natural field.