"What are you driving at? He's dead in love with Shelagh Leigh."
"That's just it. As things are, he has no hope of marrying Shelagh. She likes him, as you probably know better than I do, for you're her best pal, although she's a year or so younger than you——"
"Two years."
"Well, as I was going to say, in many ways she's a child compared to you. She's as beautiful as one of those cut-off cherubs in the prayer-books, and as old-fashioned as an early Victorian sampler. These blonde Dreams with naturally waving golden hair and rosebud mouths, and eyes big as half-crowns, have that drawback, as I've discovered since I came to live in England. In my country we don't grow early Victorian buds. You know perfectly well that those detestable snobs, the Pollens, don't think Fane good enough for Shelagh in spite of his money. Money's the one nice thing they've got themselves, which they can pass on to Shelagh. Probably they forced the wretched Miss Pollen, who was the male snob's sister, to marry the old Marquis of Leigh just as they wish to compel Shelagh to marry some other wreck of his sort—and die young, as her mother did. The girl's a dear—a perfect lamb!—but lambs can't stand up against lions. They generally lie down inside them. But with you at the helm, the Pollen lions could be forced——"
"Not if they knew it!" I cut in.
"They wouldn't know it. Did you know that you were being forced to marry that poor young prince of yours?"
"I wasn't forced. I was persuaded."
"We won't argue the point! Anyhow, the subject doesn't press. The scheme I have in my head for you to launch Fane on the social sea (the sea in every sense of the word, as you'll learn by and by) can't come off till you're out of your deepest mourning. I'll find you a quieter line of goods to begin on than the Fane-Leigh business if you agree to take up Brightening. The question is, do you agree?"
"I do," I said more earnestly than I had said "I will" as I stood at Paolo's side in church. For life hadn't been very earnest then. Now it was.
"Good!" exclaimed Mrs. Carstairs. "Then that's that! The next thing is to furnish you a charming flat in the same house with us. You must have a background of your own."