The other set his face more stolidly.
“Pounds?”
“Oh, no—dollars. But they’ll do.”
“I have not spoken as yet, although I don’t mind saying that that is what I came over for.”
“I suppose you are in pretty deep—too deep to draw out?”
“I don’t know that I want to. I can be frank with you, Fletcher. Is her father solid? American fortunes are so deucedly ricketty. I am perfectly willing to state brutally that I wouldn’t—couldn’t—marry Venus unless I got a half million (pounds) with her and something of an income to boot.”
“As far as I know Creighton stands pretty well toward the top. You can never tell though: American fortunes are so exaggerated. You see, the women whose husbands are worth five millions can make pretty much the same splurge as the twenty or thirty million ones. They know so well how to do it. For the matter of that there’s one clever old parvenu here who has never handled more than a million and a half—as I happen to know, for I’m her lawyer—and who entertains with the best of them. Her house, clothes, jewels, are gorgeous. A shrewd old head like that can do a lot on an income of seventy thousand dollars a year. But Forbes, I should say, is worth his twenty millions—that’s allowing for all embellishments—if he’s worth a dollar, and Augusta is the only child. Unless America goes bankrupt, she’ll come in for two-thirds of that one of these days, and an immense dot meanwhile.”
At this moment Miss Creighton, who had been talking with charming vivacity to a group of visitors, dismissed them with tactful badinage, and beckoned to the two men in the back of the box.
“Sit down,” she commanded. “What do you think, Fletcher? I stayed away from two important meetings to-day in order to receive the Duke. Was not that genuine American hospitality?”
She spoke lightly; but as her eyes sought the Englishman’s, something seemed to flutter behind her almost transparent face.