“Sherry’s? That will be delightful! I like dining at restaurants—I’m very American in that respect.”
“But so do I,” said Frothingham. “That is, in your restaurants here. The people are interesting, and they talk a lot, and loud enough so that one hears every word and isn’t annoyed by missing the sense. And how they do waste the food!”
“Food!” Catherine repeated the word with a smile that was half-humourous, half pleading. “Please don’t use that word, Lord Frothingham. It always makes me shiver. It sounds so—so animal!”
Frothingham put on the blank look behind which he habitually sheltered himself when he did not know what to say, or to do, or to think. Honoria was disgusted with him and with Catherine. “They’re not going to like each other, not even enough to marry,” she said to herself. “And it’s a pity, as they’re exactly suited. If Catherine only wouldn’t pose!”
She was, therefore, somewhat surprised when, immediately she and Catherine were alone, Catherine burst into rhapsody on Frothingham. “What a fine, strong face! So much character! What a sincere, sensitive, pure nature. He’s a splendid type of true gentleman, isn’t he, Nora? How well he contrasts with our men! Doesn’t he?”
Honoria smiled to herself. “She wants to marry him,” she thought, “and she’s building a fire under her imagination. I might have known it. She’s the very person to weave romance over a title and imagine it all gospel. What a poser!” To Catherine she said: “He’s a decent enough chap, Caterina. And you’ll admire him more than ever when you’ve read him up in Burke’s Peerage and looked at the pictures he’s given me of Beauvais House.”
“How do you spell it? B-e-v-i-s?”
“No, that’s the way you pronounce it. You spell it B-e-a-u-v-a-i-s.”
“Isn’t that interesting? It’s so commonplace to pronounce a word the way it’s spelt, don’t you think?”
“I never thought of it, my dear. Why not marry him?”