My mother, Mrs. Loring; my mother, the Princess Frascatoni. Pronounce those two phrases, gentle reader, and you will grasp my meaning.
I was by no means sure she would have any influence with her mother, even though she was now the wife of one marquis and the mother of a marquis to be, with about half the high British peerage as relatives. But I was desperate, and a desperate man clutches at anything.
“I think you are right, papa,” said she in her mother’s own grave sweet way. “You and mamma never have been suited to each other. Besides, I don’t want her away off in America where I never expect to be again. Some of the girls who have married here like to go back there and receive the flattery and the homage. But it seems cheap to me. I’m sure I don’t care what the Americans think of me. I’m not snobbish, as I used to be. I am English now—loyal English to the core.”
“This is the place for your mother, too.” An idea occurred to me. “If I took your mother back with me, I would have my parents and hers live with us in a big place I’m going to buy in the country. You don’t know your grandparents well?”
She was coloring deeply. She must have heard more than her mother dreamed she knew. “No, papa,” said she.
“Your mother and I were disgracefully neglectful of them,” pursued I. “But I shall make up for it, as far as I can. I wish you would come over and visit us.”
“I should like it, papa,” murmured she, ready to sink down with shame.
“They are plain people,” I went on, “but they are good and honest—much ahead of these wretched parasites you’ve been brought up among.... Talk to your mother about them. Tell her what I have said.”
She understood thoroughly; that is the sort of thing fashionable people always understand. “I shall, papa,” said she. And I could see her putting on a fetching air of sweet innocence and telling her mother.
“And if she does not like it,” continued I—“can’t bear the scandal and ridicule among her fashionable friends—why, she can desert me. And that would give me ground for divorce.”