“That reminds me, Mr. Sidney. Arthur may be going over to the wedding. Could you——”
“I’d be delighted,” interrupted Sidney. “Anything I could do for Lord Frothingham it would be a pleasure to do. I can give him some useful letters, I think. Will he travel?”
“Possibly—I don’t know. He has no plans as yet.”
“I shall give him—if he will do me the honour of accepting them—only a few letters. The wisest plan is a proper introduction to the very best people. Then all doors will be open to him.”
“The Americans are hospitable to everyone, are they not?”
“Not to younger sons any more. And not to unaccredited foreigners. They’ve had their fingers jolly well burned. I knew of one case—a girl—quite a ladylike person, though of a new family from the interior. She married a French valet masquerading as a duke.”
“Poor creature,” said Evelyn, smiling with amused contempt.
“Yes, and another girl married—or thought she married—a German royal prince. And when she got to Germany she found that she’d bought a place as mere morganatic wife, with no standing at all.”
“Fancy! What a facer!”
“And she never got her money back—not a penny,” continued Sidney. “But, like you, I don’t sympathise with these upstart people who try to thrust themselves out of their proper station. The old families over there—and there are a few gentlefolk, Lady Evelyn, though they’re almost lost in the crowd of noisy upstarts—never have such humiliating experiences in their international marriages.”