“I have only one sister,” he said, “and she is married. But my own people would scarcely count—from your point of view.”
She looked at him, faintly puzzled.
“You mean,” she asked, “that you are not of noble birth?”
He shook his head.
“By no means! My father was a physician, and I myself write for the newspapers!”
“But you spoke of Prince Ughtred,” she remarked, “as your friend.”
He smiled.
“In England,” he explained, “all these things are regarded very differently. We are a very democratic nation, and Prince Ughtred, you must remember, is half an Englishman.”
She was silent. He had an absurd fancy that she was disappointed—that her momentary interest in him was gone. He was angry with himself for the idea, angry with himself also for the effort which his little speech had cost him. In England he counted himself a Radical, almost a Socialist, and would have laughed to scorn the idea that the slightest possible barrier could exist between men and women of unequal birth. But out here, in the presence of this girl who spoke her mind so simply, yet with such absolute conviction, he seemed to have come into touch with a new order! The aristocracy which was to her as a creed was a real and a live thing! He almost justified her in his mind. What was surely a fallacy in England might be truth here.