This page has been validated.
80
THE EUROPEANS.
[CH.
should mean what he knew, that he could hardly help laughing a little, although he tried hard. "Oh, no! oh, no!" he murmured.
"Laugh out, laugh out, if I amuse you!" cried the Baroness. "I am here for that!" And Clifford thought her a very amusing person indeed. "But remember," she said on this occasion, "that you are coming—next year—to pay me a visit over there."
About a week afterward she said to him, point-blank, "Are you seriously making love to your little cousin?"
"Seriously making love"—these words, on Madame Münster's lips, had to Clifford's sense a portentous and embarrassing sound;