BRASSBOUND. What opportunities?
LADY CICELY. Don't you understand that when you are the nephew of a great bigwig, and have influential connexions, and good friends among them, lots of things can be done for you that are never done for ordinary ship captains?
BRASSBOUND. Ah; but I'm not an aristocrat, you see. And like most poor men, I'm proud. I don't like being patronized.
LADY CICELY. What is the use of saying that? In my world, which is now your world—OUR world—getting patronage is the whole art of life. A man can't have a career without it.
BRASSBOUND. In my world a man can navigate a ship and get his living by it.
LADY CICELY. Oh, I see you're one of the Idealists—the Impossibilists! We have them, too, occasionally, in our world. There's only one thing to be done with them.
BRASSBOUND. What's that?
LADY CICELY. Marry them straight off to some girl with enough money for them, and plenty of sentiment. That's their fate.
BRASSBOUND. You've spoiled even that chance for me. Do you think I could look at any ordinary woman after you? You seem to be able to make me do pretty well what you like; but you can't make me marry anybody but yourself.
LADY CICELY. Do you know, Captain Paquito, that I've married no less than seventeen men (Brassbound stares) to other women. And they all opened the subject by saying that they would never marry anybody but me.