“But you oughtn’t to have said it here.” She was radiant, but her hands were trembling—it seemed most romantic to her, quite like a chapter out of a novel. Nobility and titles and genuine aristocracy, that not only recognised itself, but also was recognised as aristocracy by everybody, seemed to her as dream-like as fairyland. “And he does so look the part!” she said to herself. “Anyone could see that he is the real thing.”
“If you’ll drive home I’ll ask you again there,” he continued.
And he did, and she accepted him; and he was halfway to Barney’s before he came from the spell of her fresh young beauty and her frank admiration of him, and began to think of Nelly and to see Jeanne from Nelly’s standpoint again. At that moment Jeanne was busily telephoning her engagement to her intimates, her head full of castles and coronets and crests and peeresses’ robes. It seemed to her that she could not wait to begin her triumph—the congratulations of friends, the receptions, dinners, dances in honour of her and her fiancé, the flare of newspaper brasses, the big wedding, and the crescendo of her gorgeous entry into English society as Countess of Frothingham. Cinderella was no more enraptured when the prince lifted her from the ashes than was Jenny Hooper with her ill-fed and exuberant imagination, her ill-directed and energetic ambition, her ill-informed and earnest conception of “being somebody.”
“And he’s coming to see you to-morrow, pa,” she said to Amzi Hooper, after delighting his ears with the great news. “He says your consent is necessary before the engagement’s announced.”
“I guess he and I won’t quarrel over it, Jenny,” replied her father. “If he suits you, I can stand him.”
Frothingham came the next afternoon and made his formal request. Mr. Hooper shook hands with him cordially. “I guess my girl knows what she’s about,” said he. “I’m pleased to have you as a son.”
“Thanks,” replied Frothingham—he could not altogether banish from his manner the instinctive haughtiness of English upper class toward English lower class. “When could you receive my representative? Or shall I send him to someone who represents you?”
Mr. Hooper looked embarrassed and rubbed his jawbone vigorously with his thumb and forefinger. “Yes—yes—certainly—any time you say. I’ll talk to him, myself. Can he come to-morrow? I don’t think it’ll take him long to satisfy me you’re all right.”
Frothingham stared, thinking “D——n his impudence!” He said only, “To-morrow, at eleven, then,” shook hands as warmly as he thought wise, and went back to the parlour where Jeanne was waiting for him.