"Why Jones?"
"Because Smith is engaged beforehand by too many people. Honestly, without joking, I'm in danger here and everywhere, and it's a wicked, selfish thing for me to come the way I have; but Rosamond Gilder is the hardest girl to resist you ever saw, so I'm with her; and it's a long history."
"Rosamond Gilder? What—the Cannon Princess, the Bertha Krupp of America?"
"Yes, the 'Gilded Babe' that used to be wheeled about in a caged perambulator guarded by detectives: the 'Gilded Bud' whose coming out in society was called the Million Dollar Début: now she's just had her twenty-first birthday, and the Sunday Supplements have promoted her to be the Golden Girl, alternating with the Gilded Rose, although she's the simplest creature, really, with a tremendous sense of the responsibility of her riches. Poor child! There she is, walking toward us now, with those two young men. Of course, young men! Droves of young men! She can't get away from them any more than she can from her money. No, she's stopped to talk to Cleopatra."
"That tall, white girl Rosamond Gilder! Just before you came, I was wondering who she was; and when you smiled at each other across the deck it sprang into my mind that—that—"
"That what?"
"Oh, it seems stupid now."
"Give me a chance to judge, dear Duffer."
"Well, seeing you, and knowing—that is, it occurred to me you might be travelling with—the daughter of—your late—"
"Good heavens, don't say any more! I've been frightened to death somebody would get that brilliant notion in his head, especially as Monny and her aunt came on board the Laconia only at Monaco. Esmé O'Brien is in a convent school not thirty miles from there. But that's the deepest secret. Poor Peter Gilder's fears for his millionaire girl would be child's play to what might happen, before such a mistake was found out if once it was made. That's just one of the hundred reasons why it would be as safe for Monny Gilder to travel with a bomb in her dressing-bag as to have me in her train of dependants. She telegraphed to New York for me, because of a stupid thing I said in a letter, about being lonely: though she pretends it would be too dull journeying to such a romantic country alone with a mere aunt. And she thinks I 'attract adventures.' It's only too true. But I couldn't resist her. Nobody can. Why, the first time I ever saw Monny she'd cast herself down in a mud-puddle, and was screaming and kicking because she wanted to walk while one adoring father, one sycophantic governess and two trained nurses wanted her to get into an automobile. That was on my honeymoon—heaven save the mark—! and Monny was nine. She has other ways now of getting what she wants, but they're even more effective. I laughed at her that first time, and she was so surprised at my impudence she took a violent fancy to me. But I don't always laugh at her now. Oh, she's a perfect terror, I assure you—and a still more perfect darling! Such an angel of charity to the poor, such a demon of obstinacy with the rich! I worship her. So does Cleopatra. So does everybody who doesn't hate her. So will you the minute you've been introduced. And by the way, why not? Why shouldn't I make myself useful for once by arranging a match between Rosamond Gilder, the prettiest heiress in America, and Lord Ernest Borrow, of the oldest family in Ireland?"