“It is the prerogative of royalty.”
Eve made a maddening mouth.
“Diplomat!” she said. Then—“As a matter of fact, stacks of us do it all the time, darling. But I never thought I should.”
The two were married one brilliant June morning, full of the airs and graces of a belated spring. Broke received twelve presents, Miss Carew six hundred and four: such is the power of money. The former had already resigned his ghost of a job and was earning much less than a living by plying his pen. From this Eve sought to dissuade him, but the man was resolute. Marriage had brought him a livery more gorgeous than any he could win, but he would stand upon his own shoe-leather.
Jeremy Broke was thirty and of a cheerful countenance. His grey eyes were set well apart, and his forehead was broad. His nostrils were sensitive, his mouth firm and shapely, his thick brown hair well-ordered, his head carried high. He was tall, and his shoulders were square. He had good hands, and cared for them as a man should. His manners were above reproach: his style, that of a gentleman. So were his instincts. . . .
He brought his wife no debts. He sold his great-grandfather’s chronometer to pay such expenses of the wedding as are usually met by the groom; and, once married, that the money they spent was not his he made most evident. Friends, acquaintances, strangers, servants—none must credit him with Eve’s wealth. He did not insist upon the truth—go about shouting ‘It’s hers’: but the things that were Cæsar’s unto Cæsar he scrupulously rendered. Most of all was he careful in private to assume no whit of that authority which riches give. He never stooped: but he never sat in her seat. It was impossible not to revere feeling so fine. His wife found it worshipful—with tears in her eyes.
Eve Malory Broke was a very striking example of the Creator’s art. Her features were beautiful, and she was perfectly made. The curves of her neck and shoulders, her slender white wrists, her slim silk stockings and the shining arches of her feet—these and other points lifted her straight into the champion class. She was lithe of body and light as air in the dance. The grace of her form and movement were such as Praxiteles rejoiced to turn to stone. You would have said that only an etching-needle could catch her very delicate dignity—but for one thing. That was her colouring. Her great brown eyes and the red-gold splendour of her amazing hair, the warm rose of her cheeks and the cream of her exquisite skin—never was leaping vitality more brilliantly declared. Old Masters would have gone mad about her. Adam would have eaten out of her hand. In a word, she became her name.
A warm, impulsive nature, rich in high qualities and puny faults, made her a wife to be very proud of, to love to distraction and occasionally to oppose. . . .
After doing their best to spoil one another for nearly ten months, Eve and Jeremy had their first pitched battle in Rome one tearful April morning. . . .