A Fool and His Money

by George Barr McCutcheon

"Every time a sweet, lovely American girl is delivered into the hands of a foreign bounder who happens to possess a title that needs fixing, I call the transaction a crime that puts white slavery in a class with the most trifling misdemeanours. You did not love this pusillanimous Count, nor did he care a hang for you. You were too young in the ways of the world to have any feeling for him, and he was too old to have any for you. The whole hateful business therefore resolved itself into a case of give and take—and he took everything. He took you and your father's millions and now you are both back where you began. Some one deliberately committed a crime, and as it wasn't you or the Count, who levied his legitimate toll,—it must have been the person who planned the conspiracy. I take it, of course, that the whole affair was arranged behind your back, so to speak. To make it a perfectly fashionable and up-to-date delivery it would have been entirely out of place to consult the unsophisticated girl who was thrown in to make the title good. You were not sold to this bounder. It was the other way round. By the gods, madam, he was actually paid to take you!"

Her face was quite pale. Her eyes did not leave mine during the long and crazy diatribe,—of which I was already beginning to feel heartily ashamed,—and there was a dark, ominous fire in them that should have warned me.

She arose from her chair. It seemed to me she was taller than before.

"If nothing else came to me out of this transaction," she said levelly, "at least a certain amount of dignity was acquired. Pray remember that I am no longer the unsophisticated girl you so graciously describe. I am a woman, Mr. Smart."

"True," said I, senselessly dogged; "a woman with the power to think for yourself. That is my point. If the same situation arose at your present age, I fancy you'd be able to select a husband without assistance, and I venture to say you wouldn't pick up the first dissolute nobleman that came your way. No, my dear countess, you were not to blame. You thought, as your parents did, that marriage with a count would make a real countess of you. What rot! You are a simple, lovable American girl and that's all there ever can be to it. To the end of your days you will be an American. It is not within the powers of a scape-grace count to put you or any other American girl on a plane with the women who are born countesses, or duchesses, or anything of the sort. I don't say that you suffer by comparison with these noble ladies. As a matter of fact you are surpassingly finer in every way than ninety-nine per cent. of them,—poor things! Marrying an English duke doesn't make a genuine duchess out of an American girl, not by a long shot. She merely becomes a figure of speech. Your own experience should tell you that. Well, it's the same with all of them. They acquire a title, but not the homage that should go with it."

We were both standing now. She was still measuring me with somewhat incredulous eyes, rather more tolerant than resentful.

"Do you expect me to agree with you, Mr. Smart?" she asked.

"I do," said I, promptly. "You, of all people, should be able to testify that my views are absolutely right."

"They are right," she said, simply. "Still you are pretty much of a brute to insult me with them."

"I most sincerely crave your pardon, if it isn't too late," I cried, abject once more. (I don't know what gets into me once in a while.)