"And now I have some pleasant news for you," she said. "My mother will be here on Thursday. You will not like her, of course, because you are already prejudiced, but I know she will like you."
I knew I should hate her mother, but of course it would not do to say so.
"Next Thursday?" I inquired. She nodded her head. "I hope she will like me," I added feeling that it was necessary.
"She was a Colingraft, you know."
"Indeed?" The Colingraft family was one of the oldest and most exclusive in New York. I had a vague recollection of hearing one of my fastidious friends at home say that it must have been a bitter blow to the Colingrafts when, as an expedient, she married the vulgarly rich Jasper Titus, then of St. Paul, Minnesota. It had been a clear case of marrying the money, not the man. Aline's marriage, therefore, was due to hereditary cold-bloodedness and not to covetousness. "A fine old name, Countess."
"Titus suggests titles, therefore it has come to be our family name," she said, with her satiric smile. "You will like my father. He loves me more than any one else in the world—more than all the world. He is making the great fight for me, Mr. Smart. He would buy off the Count to-morrow if I would permit him to do so. Of late I have been thinking very seriously of suggesting it to him. It would be the simplest way out of our troubles, wouldn't it? A million is nothing to my father."
"Nothing at all, I submit, in view of the fact that it may be the means of saving you from a term in prison for abducting Rosemary?"
She paled. "Do you really think they would put me in prison?"
"Unquestionably," I pronounced emphatically.
"Oh, dear!" she murmured.