"What do you think of my heiress?" he said, at last, as we paused beneath a Tintoretto. I said everything suitable and encouraging I could think of.
"I am quite pleased with her," he allowed, "but I fear she will not be content with the rôle I had planned out for my Duchess. She is too individual. I feel it is I who would subside and attend to the nurseries and the spring cleaning. However, I mean to go through with it, although I am in a hideous position, because, you know, I am falling very deeply in love with you."
"How inconvenient for you!"' I said, smiling. "But please do not let that interfere with your prospects. You must attend to the subject of pleasing the heiress, as I see great signs of Lord Luffton cutting the ground from under your feet."
He stared at me incredulously.
"Luffy!" he said, aghast. "Oh, but Cordelia would take care of that.
He is her friend."
"Oh, how you amuse me, all of you," I said, laughing, "with your loves and your jealousies and your little arrangements! Every one two and two; every one with a 'friend.'"
"Anyway, we are not wearyingly faithful."
"No; but to a stranger you ought to issue a kind of guide-book—'Trespassers will be prosecuted' here, 'A change would be welcomed' there, etc."
"'Pon my word new editions would have to come out every three months, then. In the space of a year you would find a general shuffle had taken place."
"Shall you let your Duchess have a 'friend'?" I asked.