“Mrs. Sinkers tried to get one for her daughter for ten millions—all she could scrape together. They agreed to a morganatic marriage for that, but not a full marriage. So, she and poor Martha gave it up. Martha’s heart is broken. The duke made love to her so wonderfully. I can’t imagine what Mrs. Sinkers was about, to allow such a thing before the affair was settled. Poor Martha was so excited that she would have accepted the morganatic marriage—she ranking merely as the duke’s head mistress. But while he was willing to take other mistresses for nothing, and even to pay them, he wouldn’t take her for less than fifty million francs.”
“Poor Martha!” said I.
“I was too wise to trifle with royal dukes,” pursued Edna, so interested in her own narrative and so eager to show how sagacious she had been that she forgot her pose and her doubts as to my sympathies. “I weighed the advantages and disadvantages of about a dozen eligible men. Only three stood the test, and it finally narrowed down to Crossley. Margot was so happy when I told her. She wanted to love him—and now she is loving him.”
A long pause while Edna calmed down to earth from her European soarings, and while I, too, returned to the normal from an excursion in the opposite direction. “How much does he want?” said I. “Let’s get to bed rock.”
“He loves her so that he is willing, so I hear— Of course, nothing has been said— You will not believe how refined and——”
“How much?” interrupted I.
Edna winced at my rudeness, then again presented an unruffled front of happy loving serenity. “Enough to pay off the mortgages and to provide them with a suitable income.”
“How much?” I persisted, laughing.
She looked tenderly remonstrant. “I don’t know, Godfrey——”
“You know about how much. What’s the figure—the price of this marked down marquis?”