This latter measure, however, was superfluous; for the Baroness had inspected, narrowly, these charming young ladies.
"I feel an intimate conviction that our cousins are like that," said Felix.
The Baroness hoped so, but this is not what she said.

"They are very pretty," she said, "but they are mere little girls.

Where are the women--the women of thirty ?" "Of thirty-three, do you mean ?" her brother was going to ask; for he understood often both what she said and what she did not say.

But he only exclaimed upon the beauty of the sunset, while the Baroness, who had come to seek her fortune, reflected that it would certainly be well for her if the persons against whom she might need to measure herself should all be mere little girls.

The sunset was superb; they stopped to look at it; Felix declared that he had never seen such a gorgeous mixture of colors.