"Oh, my darling, don't speak so wildly," implored his mother. "There must be resources we can call upon—if we could only think of them."
"I have called on several people's resources, without any good coming of it." Loveland grinned faintly, though he was in the depths of depression, and had suffered from insomnia for at least a week, between eight and ten in the morning, when so popular a young man should (in his own opinion) have been dreaming of last night's pleasures, instead of worrying how to pay for them.
"There is surely a last resort," went on Lady Loveland.
"Miss Mecklenburg was mine—and she's failed me—thank Heaven!"
"There must be something else."
"Something still worse?"
"Don't be flippant, dearest. I can't concentrate my thoughts when you are. Ah, if we could have let Loveland Castle as well as we did twelve years ago!"
"It's crumbled a lot since. And we're too poor to repair ourselves, let alone our castles."
"You at least don't need repairing," said his mother, gazing at her son with admiration. "You're the handsomest young man in the Kingdom."
Loveland laughed, though he believed her. As a child he had been kissed by all his mother's prettiest friends, because he was so absurdly beautiful, and so precocious. If he had been a plain or stupid boy he might have grown up to be an estimable young man, as Marquises go. "Why don't you say, 'in the world'?" he asked.