“You should go to Europe and make the tour,” she said to him one afternoon.  “Of course, on leaving college you will go.”

“I don’t want to go,” Clifford declared.  “I know some fellows who have been to Europe.  They say you can have better fun here.”

“That depends.  It depends upon your idea of fun.  Your friends probably were not introduced.”

“Introduced?” Clifford demanded.

“They had no opportunity of going into society; they formed no relations.”  This was one of a certain number of words that the Baroness often pronounced in the French manner.

“They went to a ball, in Paris; I know that,” said Clifford.

“Ah, there are balls and balls; especially in Paris.  No, you must go, you know; it is not a thing from which you can dispense yourself.  You need it.”

“Oh, I ’m very well,” said Clifford.  “I ’m not sick.”

“I don’t mean for your health, my poor child.  I mean for your manners.”

“I have n’t got any manners!” growled Clifford.

“Precisely.  You don’t mind my assenting to that, eh?” asked the Baroness with a smile.  “You must go to Europe and get a few.  You can get them better there.  It is a pity you might not have come while I was living in—­in Germany.  I would have introduced you; I had a charming little circle.  You would perhaps have been rather young; but the younger one begins, I think, the better.  Now, at any rate, you have no time to lose, and when I return you must immediately come to me.”

All this, to Clifford’s apprehension, was a great mixture—­his beginning young, Eugenia’s return to Europe, his being introduced to her charming little circle.  What was he to begin, and what was her little circle?  His ideas about her marriage had a good deal of vagueness; but they were in so far definite as that he felt it to be a matter not to be freely mentioned.  He sat and looked all round the room; he supposed she was alluding in some way to her marriage.

“Oh, I don’t want to go to Germany,” he said; it seemed to him the most convenient thing to say.

She looked at him a while, smiling with her lips, but not with her eyes.

“You have scruples?” she asked.

“Scruples?” said Clifford.

“You young people, here, are very singular; one does n’t know where to expect you.  When you are not extremely improper you are so terribly proper.  I dare say you think that, owing to my irregular marriage, I live with loose people.  You were never more mistaken.  I have been all the more particular.”

“Oh, no,” said Clifford, honestly distressed.  “I never thought such a thing as that.”

“Are you very sure?  I am convinced that your father does, and your sisters.  They say to each other that here I am on my good behavior, but that over there—­married by the left hand—­I associate with light women.”

“Oh, no,” cried Clifford, energetically, “they don’t say such things as that to each other!”