“Heaven knows he needs guidance!” Selden agreed.
“You will not oppose it, then?” she asked, looking at him anxiously.
“Oppose it? What right have I to oppose it? But I don’t even wish to; on the contrary, I have half-promised to intercede for him with his mother.”
“That is good of you!” she said, and her eyes were shining again.
“Oh, come!” he protested. “I want to do it! You are absurdly grateful for little things!”
“They have always meant so much to me—the little things!” she said.
“Of course, if I had any sense,” he went on roughly, to hide his emotion, “I’d keep out of it, since it is no affair of mine.”
“Ah, well,” she began, and stopped.
“You were going to say that neither is his sister’s future any affair of mine. But it is, in a way, since without knowing it, I helped her to make up her mind; so I want the prince to treat her fairly. Where is the prince to-night?”
“He telephoned that his father is ill.”