There was a gentleman there that made a speech to me about it and called it a 'venerable mansion;' but it looks as if it had been built last night."
"Is it handsome--is it elegant?" asked the Baroness.
Felix looked at her a moment, smiling. "It 's very clean! No splendors, no gilding, no troops of servants; rather straight-backed chairs.
But you might eat off the floors, and you can sit down on the stairs."
"That must be a privilege. And the inhabitants are straight-backed too, of course."
"My dear sister," said Felix, "the inhabitants are charming."
"In what style?"
"In a style of their own. How shall I describe it? It 's primitive; it 's patriarchal; it 's the ton of the golden age."
"And have they nothing golden but their ton? Are there no symptoms of wealth?"
"I should say there was wealth without symptoms. A plain, homely way of life: nothing for show, and very little for--what shall I call it?--for the senses: but a great aisance, and a lot of money, out of sight, that comes forward very quietly for subscriptions to institutions, for repairing tenements, for paying doctor's bills; perhaps even for portioning daughters."
"And the daughters?" Madame Munster demanded. "How many are there?"
"There are two, Charlotte and Gertrude."
"Are they pretty?"
"One of them," said Felix.
"Which is that?"
The young man was silent, looking at his sister.
"Charlotte," he said at last.
She looked at him in return. "I see. You are in love with Gertrude.
They must be Puritans to their finger-tips; anything but gay!"
"No, they are not gay," Felix admitted. "They are sober; they are even severe. They are of a pensive cast; they take things hard. I think there is something the matter with them; they have some melancholy memory or some depressing expectation.
It 's not the epicurean temperament. My uncle, Mr. Wentworth, is a tremendously high-toned old fellow; he looks as if he were undergoing martyrdom, not by fire, but by freezing.
But we shall cheer them up; we shall do them good.