orcible lesson--if it had only been good _ton_.

CHAPTER II.

She had scarcely left the room, accompanied by Irene, when the baron
stepped up to Schnetz.

"Well, I must confess," he cried, "you are not a cheerful man to pick
bones with! For Heaven's sake, tell me, _mon vieux_, what devil
possesses you to talk in this reckless way to that old court mummy?"

Schnetz looked him coolly in the face, and once more began to rub his
mutilated ear.

"Do you really think she understood me?"

"Understood you? _Que diable!_ You certainly left nothing to be desired
on the score of plainness. I must say though, my good friend, now that
we are quite alone again, that, excellent as I find your plan of
bringing the two offended lovers together under cover of the freedom of
a masquerade, I really can't approve of the way in which you have gone
to work. For no matter how much my niece may be shaken in her whim by
the prospect of America, or how thankful she may be at heart for every
chance that is given her to capture her roving bird again--still, just
think how difficult you have made the matter for her, by bringing up
this question of the ball before that old woman! I ought to have been
kept out of the game too. Now, if she asks me on my conscience as uncle
and guardian----."

"On your conscience? On _which_, if I may ask? On your conscience as a
baron or as a man?"

"H'm! I should imagine that two old tent companions, such as we are,
would agree pretty well as to the matter itself. But you must admit
that much, which might seem quite innocent to me as a bachelor, could
hardly meet my approval as a guardian, in my official capacity, so to
speak. And more than this, it seems to me that there really are two
different moral standpoints for men and women, and what is right for
the one is not always proper for the other."

"There you hit it exactly!" cried Schnetz, flying into a rage, and
throwing his whip down on the table. "That is why we never come across
a single sprig of fresh verdure in our social relations! that is why we
must eternally carry about lies, narrow-hearted makeshifts, and mean
reservations, all because we adopt a double standard of weights and
measures, and regard a damned shrug of the shoulders as an excellent
preventive for all the cancers of society! Neither of the two sexes,
when they are together, dares express itself openly, neither says all
that it thinks, each think