"Handsome? Oh, she's good-looking enough: but she's not exactly to my taste. A little too showy, too abrupt for me. Personally I like a softer, quieter woman; but as a rule the women that I really admire haven't got twenty thousand pounds."
"I know who would suit you," said Mrs. Romaine, leaning forward and speaking in a very low voice—"Lesley Brooke."
"What is her fortune? If it's a case of her face is her fortune, she really won't do for me, Rosy, however suitable she might be in other respects."
"But," said Mrs. Romaine, eagerly, "she is sure to have plenty of money. Her father is well off—better off than people know—and would probably settle a considerable sum upon her; then think of the Courtleroys—there is a fair amount of wealth in that family, surely——"
"Which they would be so very likely to give her if she married me," said her brother, with irony. "Moonshine, my dear. Do you think that Lady Alice would allow her daughter to marry your brother?—knowing what she does, and hating you as she does, would she like to be connected with you by marriage?"
"That is exactly why I wish that you would marry her," said Mrs. Romaine, almost below her breath. "Think of the triumph for me!"
Her eyes glowed, and she breathed more quickly as she spoke. "That woman scorned me—gloated over my sorrow and my love," she said; "she dared to reproach me for what she called my want of modesty—my want of womanly feeling, and—oh, I cannot tell you what she said! But this I know, that if I could reach her through her daughter or her husband, and stab her to the heart as she once stabbed me, the dearest wish of my life would be fulfilled!"
"Women are always vindictive," said Oliver, philosophically. "The fact is, you want to revenge yourself on Lady Alice through me, and yet you don't consider me in the very least. If I married this Lesley Brooke, Lady Alice and all the Courtleroys would no doubt get into an awful rage with her and you and me and everybody; and what would be the upshot? Why, they would cut her off with a shilling and we should be next door to penniless. Then Brooke—well, he may be fairly prosperous, but he has only what he makes, you know; and I doubt if he could settle very much upon his daughter, even if he wanted to. And he does not like me. I doubt whether even you, my dear Rosy, could dispose him to look favorably on my advances."
Mrs. Romaine was perhaps convinced, but she did not like to own herself mistaken. She was silent for a minute or two, and then said with a sigh and a smile—
"You may be right. But it would have been splendid if you could have married Lesley Brooke. We should have been thorns in Lady Alice's side ever afterwards."