"Yes, it's real sweet!" he said, exaggerating his American accent, but keeping a grave face.
They were duly "at home" that afternoon, though they had intended to go out, and the caller found them in a private sitting room filled with flowers, suggesting much money and a love of spending it. Annesley had put on Knight's favourite frock, one of the "model dresses" he had chosen for her in their whirlwind rush through Bond Street, a white cloth trimmed with narrow bands of dark fur; and she had never looked prettier.
Lord Annesley-Seton, a tall thin man of the eagle-nosed soldier type, wearing pince-nez, but youthful-looking for the forty-four years Burke gave him, could not help thinking her a satisfactory cousin to pick up: and Nelson Smith was far from being in appearance the rough, self-made man he had dreaded.
He was delighted with them both—so young, so handsome, so happy, so fortunate, and luckily so well bred. He did not make the short conventional call he had intended, but stayed to tea, and at last went home to give his wife an enthusiastic account of the visit.
"The girl's a lady, and might be a beauty if she had more confidence in herself—you know what I mean: taking herself for granted as a charmer, the way you smart women do," he said. "She isn't that kind. But with you to show her the ropes, she'll be liked by the right people. There's a softness and sweetness and genuineness that you don't often see in girls now. As for the man, you'll think him a ripper, Connie—so will other women. Has the air of being a gentleman born, and then having roughed it all over the world. A strong man, I should say. A man's man as well as a woman's. Might 'take' if he's started right."
"We'll see to that," said Constance Annesley-Seton, who was not too ill to go out but had not wanted to seem too eager.
She was less than thirty, but looked more because she had worried and drawn faint lines between her delicate auburn brows and at the corners of her greenish-gray eyes. There were also a few fading threads in the red locks which were her one real beauty; but she had a marvellous hair-varnish which prevented them from showing.
"We'll see to that! If they'll let us. Are they going to let us?"
"Yes, I think so," Annesley-Seton reassured her. "They're a pair of children, willing to be guided. They can have anything they want in the world, but they don't seem to know what to want."
"Splendid!" laughed Constance. "Can't we will them to want our house in town, and invite us to visit them?"