“Oh, come, aunt!” said Harry, looking nettles; “Madelaine is not Dutch, nor yet fat.”
“I know better, my boy. Dutch! Dutch! Dutch! Look at her father and her mother! No, my boy, you could not make an alliance with a girl like that. She might do for a kitchen-maid.”
“Auntie, she’s a very charming girl.”
“Silly boy! Go and travel, and see the daughters of France.”
“And she’ll be rich some day.”
“If she were heiress to millions she could not marry you. As some writer says, eagles do not mate with plump Dutch ducklings. No, Henri, my boy, you must wait.”
Harry frowned, but Aunt Margaret paid no heed.
“That is a boyish piece of nonsense, unworthy the Comte des Vignes, my dear boy. But tell me—you have been with your father—what does he say now?”
“The old story. I’m to choose what I will do. I must go to work.”
“Poor George!” sighed Aunt Margaret; “always so sordid in his ideas in early life; now that he is wealthy, so utterly wanting in aspirations! Always dallying over some miserable shrimp. He has no more ambition than one of those silly fish over which he sits and dreams. Oh, Henri, my boy, when I look back at what our family has been—right back into the distant ages of French history—valorous knights and noble ladies; and later on, how they graced the court at banquet and at ball, I weep the salt tears of misery to see my brother sink so low, and so careless about the welfare of his boy.”