“Have you seen much of Miss Vanderpoel?” Lady Mary had begun by asking.
“I have SEEN her a good deal, as no doubt you have.”
Lady Mary's plain face expressed a somewhat touched reflectiveness.
“Do you know,” she said, “that the garden parties have been a different thing this whole summer, just because one always knew one would see her at them?”
A short laugh from Mount Dunstan.
“Jane and I have gone to every garden party within twenty miles, ever since we left the schoolroom. And we are very tired of them. But this year we have quite cheered up. When we are dressing to go to something dull, we say to each other, 'Well, at any rate, Miss Vanderpoel will be there, and we shall see what she has on, and how her things are made,' and that's something—besides the fun of watching people make up to her, and hearing them talk about the men who want to marry her, and wonder which one she will take. She will not take anyone in this place,” the nice turned-up nose slightly suggesting a derisive sniff. “Who is there who is suitable?”
Mount Dunstan laughed shortly again.
“How do you know I am not an aspirant myself?” he said. He had a mirthless sense of enjoyment in his own brazenness. Only he himself knew how brazen the speech was.
Lady Mary looked at him with entire composure.
“I am quite sure you are not an aspirant for anybody. And I happen to know that you dislike moneyed international marriages. You are so obviously British that, even if I had not been told that, I should know it was true. Miss Vanderpoel herself knows it is true.”